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Jul 24, 2020
Today we’re going to go over the 3 most important email automation flows that ecommerce brand owners and marketers should be focusing on if you want to:
Increase ecommerce sales
Overcome common objections to convince subscribers your product is worth buying
Retain existing customers while encouraging repeat business
So you own an ecommerce brand, and you already spend a lot of money driving traffic to your site through ads, social media and influencer marketing. However, you soon realise the majority of the traffic coming to your site is not converting and they become advertising dollars wasted.
You’ve heard about email marketing and decide to start collecting your prospective customers’ email addresses.
But now what? You have a list of emails, but you don’t know what to do with it. You send out blast emails on Mailchimp every now and then hoping your subscribers convert. Some convert, most don’t.
You know there must be a better way to convert your subscribers into loyal buyers and supporters of your brand.
So, here are 3 crucial email automations you must have to boost your revenue and increase customer retention
1. An Engaging Welcome Series for New Subscribers
Customers come to your site through different channels like Facebook and Google ads, and a popup or form on your website converts them from window shoppers to subscribers.
When a customer fills in a popup or form they show a that they are engaged and interested in your brand and what you are offering.
The welcome series picks up from there. It is an onboarding email series consisting of about 5-8 emails delivered over a span of 2 weeks.
The goal of the welcome series is to nurture customers to systematically remove reasons not to purchase.
When setting up your welcome series, always remember to maintain consistent messaging with their journey so far, so if your popup has an offer of 10%, kick off the welcome series by delivering the 10% discount code as promised.
A handy tip is to deliver a dynamic discount code in a welcome email instead of on the popup. Many businesses present a percentage discount on their popup and immediately present the discount code with a standard code like “WELCOME10” or “NEW20”, but in 2020, customers expect a level of personalization when shopping online. So a welcome email presenting their personalised, dynamic coupon not only fulfils that but it trains customers to expect valuable emails from your brand. Send a dynamic code unique to them instead of
This discount code should have an expiration date to drive urgency and you can include a countdown timer to further drive the urgency and scarcity, delivering a one-two punch.
Customers may also have a few reservations about trust or details about the product. Common objections and reservations all e-commerce brands face include shipping costs, return policies and trust. These can be overcome by sharing your policies, customer reviews, customer stories, and testimonials in separate emails.
With that being said, take this as an opportunity to build desired brand associations and rapport, to increase the chance a customer will think of your brand when they’re ready to buy.
2. Incorporate a Good Abandoned Cart Sequence
The abandoned cart sequence is a series of emails triggered when someone doesn’t complete the checkout.
The contents of their cart will be populated into the emails. Many brands who do this well effectively uses humour to get attention and persuade a potential customer to cross the line.
Unfortunately, many ecommerce brands only send out 1 abandoned cart email hoping that it will convert. If you are only sending out 1 or 2 abandoned emails, you are leaving so much money on the table!
At Email Experts we recommend sending out at least 4-5 emails in your abandoned cart series, with the later emails reminding them of their cart, introducing a discount offer, and as discussed earlier in the welcome series, overcome trust reservations they might have by sending them some content on your brand, and reviews of the products they were looking at.
If you’re using an advanced tool like Klaviyo, you can split the abandon cart series based on whether they are an existing customer, or completely new to the brand. You can imagine that existing customers won’t need to be convinced of trust and shipping policies since they’ve shopped with you before, they likely just need to be reminded that the cart is still saved for them, and so segmenting the audience and message will be very effective.
We made a video about this topic on our Youtube channel and have lots of great resources there – check it out.
3. Build Goodwill with a Post Purchase Series
The Post Purchase Series is a series of emails triggered when someone places an order. The goal of this flow is to:
Thank them for their purchase
Build goodwill
If you have a set time frame for your order delivery, for example, if you know that it takes on average 5 days for an order to get to a customer, you can choose to include an email before a customer receives their order to build excitement, set product expectations and educate the customer on the product benefit and use cases.
If I bought a guitar from your online guitar store and you know it takes 5 days on average for the guitar to arrive at my doorstep, you should send me as part of your post-purchase series some valuable content and product use cases on:
How to play the guitar
How to play a certain song
How to tune your new guitar
Before it arrives, to get me really excited about my new purchase.
You can also use this Post Purchase Series to boost your referral marketing, by having an email in the flow asking for your customer to leave a review or share their purchase on social media. This is the perfect time to ask for this since customers will never be more excited about the product than the day they receive it.
Summary
And there you have it. The 3 most important email automations to increase ecommerce revenue.
To summarise:
Set up an engaging Welcome Series for new subscribers (5-8 emails)
Incorporate a good Abandoned Cart Sequence (4-5 emails, not just one)
Build goodwill with a Post Purchase Series
Want me to show you exactly how to set this up? Reach out.
Or let me know what other topics on email marketing you would like us to cover.
Check out our YouTube channel, where we have tutorials on how to build up your email marketing. Please subscribe to be notified when future content is released.
Author: Jared Chuah is an email implementation specialist at Email Experts. He has developed and implemented email strategies for iconic Australian brands, including Bulk Nutrients, Riot Art & Craft, Erstwilder and many more.
