So, you want to incorporate email marketing into your brand’s strategy – solid choice by the way – the question is, where to start?
If you’ve ever purchased anything online, you’ll know the power of email marketing. From abandoned cart reminders, sale notifications, shipping updates (and more!), email marketing can help brands sell more product, boost revenue, and increase customer loyalty.
And to make life even easier, we can do all of this (and more) with email automations.
Let's walk you through the five essential automations you need for some real successful email marketing that won’t end up in the junk folder.
Introducing the spice girls of email marketing: Welcome Spice, Abandoned Cart Spice, Post-Purchase Spice, Review Spice and Winback Spice.
Welcome Series
Think of the welcome series like a pick-up line.
This first impression can make or break your chances of creating a long-lasting customer relationship, so make it good.
“Is your name Google? Because you've got everything I've been searching for.”
That one’s going straight to the junk folder.
The welcome series gives you a chance to convey your brand’s personality, showcase your bestsellers, or direct traffic to your social media pages.
It doesn't have to be heavy on the hard sale – at least not yet. We want to nurture new prospects down the marketing funnel with engaging and personalised content, eventually leading to a purchase.
To encourage a prospect to sign up to your mailing list in the first place, many brands will offer an incentive.
After all, they chose your brand out of many, many competitors – make them feel extra special with a little thank you present.
Abandoned Cart
Your customer made it as far as adding an item to their cart... Then left?
This flow is triggered when a customer does exactly that – adds an item or two to their cart, then boots. Using an abandoned cart flow is an easy way to recapture this kind of lost revenue.
If you’ve collected enough of the customer’s data before they abandoned ship, you can hit them up with an email reminder that they’ve left something behind or forgotten to complete their purchase.
Add a personal touch by dynamically populating content, like their names or an image of the product they added to cart.
The first reminder might be sent within a few hours, then you may follow up again on Day 2 or 3, and once more on Day 7 just to really make sure they’re not coming back. You can also offer an incentive as a final push to get your customer to click that "Shop Now" button.
Post-Purchase
We don’t want to become a one-hit wonder.
The post-purchase flow (aka. thank you flow) is a pretty pivotal moment in the customer journey, and will determine whether or not your new shoppers will come back for a second date, or ghost you.
Firstly, thank them on Day 1 and keep your customer in the loop with updates about their order, shipping, dispatch, delivery, you know – the nitty gritty stuff.
But we aren’t going to stop there.
We can also use post-purchase emails to tell customers more about your brand, provide educational content on how to get the most out of their new purchase, share an ever more sincere thank you from the founders themselves, or up-sell and cross-sell other products.
Review Request
So, your customer has received their order. Now’s the perfect time to gather some feedback by asking them to leave a review.
Pro-tip: Just make sure to schedule this one after a confirmation of delivery – your customers can’t really review something they haven’t even received yet.
Gathering these reviews will help you gain valuable feedback on your products and users' purchase journey, and shows customers evidence of care that you actually want to know what they think.
This also provides you with some pretty rad social proof you can then display on your website, or use in future emails.
Customer Winback
Feeling a bit ghosted by your customers? A winback series is a great way to recapture their attention again.
To put it simply, the purpose of this automation is to remind people you still exist – and why they should come back and shop with your brand again.
If your product requires frequent replenishment (i.e. like skincare, vitamins, or pet supplies), the winback flow can also be used as a reminder for customers that it might be time for a top up.
But if even after all of this they still left you on read, adding a final sunset email into this flow will help keep your lists clean and improve unsubscribe rates.
Sounds like fun?
Get started on your email marketing journey and get tips from the experts (that’s us) by hitting us up here, or sending an email – we promise we won’t ghost you.
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