6 of The Best Automated Email Campaigns: Part 2

Welcome back to our second part of how to master automated email campaigns. If you haven’t read the initial article, you can check it out here. In our first article, we covered welcome campaigns and customer reengagement via abandoned cart notifications.

Here, we will be dissecting how to compose four different campaigns and how to make them work for your ecommerce marketing strategy. These will include:

• re-engagement;
• product recommendation
• repeat customer and;
• standard drip email campaigns

That’s a lot to cover. But since we’ve already mastered the basics in the first article, we’ll be focusing more on the nuances of each campaign here.

Re-engagement/retargeting emails

Marketers lose 25% of their email list annually, so in order to maintain or grow their brand’s community, they have to spend a lot of resources in customer acquisition. Re-engagement emails are a superb method of damming the floodgates and preventing your community from losing interest and slipping through the cracks.

Re-engagement email campaigns are not breaking news.

One glance at your inbox will show you that most online retailers rely on these campaigns to connect with customers they haven’t seen around in a while. Unresponsive customer lists cost you via your service provider charges, so this campaign can be a decisive moment for your customer. After this crusade, your list of customers is likely to condense in size but increase the number of customers who are truly engaged with your online store.

Why should you send re-engagement emails?

Improve customer retention & loyalty - keep your customers in the loop and prevent your brand slipping from their minds.

Reduce email list churn rate

This relates to the percentage of customers who unsubscribe to your mailing list in a select period of time. A high churn rate might mean that your subscribers and your email marketing campaigns are not aligned.

Gauge engagement levels of your email list

If nothing else, this strategy provides instrumental data on how your customers are interacting with your emails. You can use this to point your marketing ship in the right direction!

Potential to boost sales

Re-engagement emails have an impressive read rate of 45%. Use this along with a clear CTA and a substantial incentive to entice your subscriber to make a purchase from your site, driving revenue into your store.

There’s a method to creating a re-targeting email that shifts your customer’s stance from disinterest to intrigue, and we’re here to explain how you can go about that. You have the option to send a once-off re-engagement email or a drip campaign to your subscribers. Here’s an example of a drip campaign:

Email 1

Emphasise the wonderful service you’ll provide to the customer, and not the subscription fee. You may also offer a preview of what you will be providing to your customers across the next year. This is FOMO marketing at its best!

Email 2

Now, it’s time to deliver an incentive to attract your customer back to your store. A discount code, gift card, complimentary gift with their next purchase or any other offer that draws them to your site.

Email 3

Ask for feedback: is there a reason the customer has stopped engaging with your brand? This email will help you to assess where you can improve on your email campaigns.

The Benjamin Franklin sales technique is an effective tool in increasing feedback submissions. Here’s a link to an article that explains the history of the technique. The basics are that people feel protective of others when they ask a favour of them, it also sparks confidence in the person.

So, using this concept, you can craft an email requesting your customer to give feedback. The key to this is in emulating your brand’s personality in the email.

Product recommendation emails

A product recommendation email is not a run-of-the-mill newsletter. It’s a targeted tool that boosts sales using customer behavioural data. It’s this level of personalisation that makes these campaigns worthwhile.

Why should you send product recommendation emails?

Increase conversions - customers who’ve clicked through a product are 5.5 times more likely to commit to a purchase than if they were to find the product organically.

Boosts customer loyalty and repeat purchases - it sets the scene for a beautiful customer relationship

Increases AOV - think of a clothes store that provides an outfit tailored to the customer. This removes a layer of hesitation that a customer may have about purchasing a piece while also bumping up the average order value. Win-win!

Help drive traffic to your site - yup, this tactic also allows your SERP to prosper.

Crossell/upsell - conversely, one of the best times to send one of these bad boys is straight after a purchase.

Repeat customer email series

I’m stating the obvious here that the central benefit to a repeat series is keeping your customers. There’s a lot of room to play around with in these email series. It’s basically a catch-all term for automated email series that don’t fall under the other categories.

Customers are your best advocators.

They hold the credit cards and the opinions of your store that, if radiantly positive, will help boost traffic. 90% of customers say that what they buy is influenced by reviews online.

Another awesome fact is that return customers spend 67% more on average than their once-off counterparts. So, asking them to come back for another shopping spree is a great strategic move for your business.

A repeat customer email series would usually look something like this:

Email 1

Follow up email after customer’s purchase to check in, see how everything went. You should also request a review if you have product reviews displayed on your site.

Email 2

Send the customer personalised recommendations. Repeat customers are more aware of their preferences, so it’s easier to offer a tailored selection of products.

Standard drip campaign

Unlike other email series, a drip campaign runs in the background rather than a scheduled delivery of emails. They’re often triggered by specific customer activity with a particular time frame in mind.

Drip campaigns come in many shapes and sizes so you can cater it to a specific goal for your Shopify store. Here is a list of possible aims for your series:

Increase customer engagement - reward, educate and incentivise customers along the sales funnel.

Provide recipients with the right information at the right time - it really is all about timing. For instance, sending a customer feedback email two weeks after a purchase is unlikely to get the response rate of one sent immediately after order confirmation.

Customer advocacy - hand over the megaphone (feedback form) to your customers. Let them help you to promote your brand. Use their product testimonials on your site to increase conversions.

Customer welcome and brand orientation - give them a fuzzy, warm and branded hello the minute they’ve signed onto your subscriber list.

Re-engaging customers - when customers receive an email completely personalised to them, they don’t feel annoyed by spam-like content and will be more likely to visit your store.

Onboarding - engage prospects with taster content.

Upselling - ride the customer purchase high by providing them with a timely upselling email.

Create and nurture leads - maintain a nice flow through your sales funnel by encouraging your leads to enter the next step in the customer journey.

Saves time - drip campaigns remove manual intervention while optimising strategic timing.

Now, we’re going to blast through a drip campaign sequence example. The goal of this series is to build hype around a new product:

Email 1

Notify your subscribers of a new product that is due to be launched soon.

Email 2

Proceed by promoting a ‘sign up for pre-order’ opportunity.

Email 3

Include the launch date of the new product, including a countdown timer (as well as any press releases if it is a high profile company).

Email 4

Announce the launch on the big day.

Email 5

Finally, notify subscribers of the success of the product and give them a last chance to purchase the remaining inventory.

That’s a wrap for this scuba dive into the mysterious, murky realms of email campaigns. Hopefully, we’ve cleared it all up a bit for you! However, if you need a tailored, expert marketing consultation, we’re here to give you that extra helping hand. Also, our blog is fantastic, just so you know!