Want to drive more e-commerce sales with e-mail?
E-commerce e-mail marketing campaigns based on behavior can drive your sales up exponentially. There are various ways to increase the lifetime value of your customers. When you have a website that makes buying your products a click away, then it is just a matter of motivating your customers at the right time to make that extra sale. Implementing triggered e-mails is a key point in your e-commerce marketing services if you plan on truly growing your online business.
With the different kinds of marketing automation technology today, it makes it easy for brands to connect with their customers based on their behavior, making it possible to connect with them at the exact right time. Using triggered events will put your message in front of the right person at the right time, which is the key to effective marketing.
9 e-commerce e-mail marketing campaigns to implement for your online store
Abandoned cart
Initial (within 30 minutes)
Coupon with expiration (next day)
Confirmation/ thank you (when purchase goes through, include resources to help them with their new product, blog posts, etc.)
Cross-sell / upsell after a purchase (within 3 days)
Purchase review request, feedback, etc (based on your shipping speed)
Reactivation to dormant customers (based on the type of products you sell, at least 90 days)
Rewards e-mail
Reaches number of purchases
Reaches amount spent
Milestone events
Birthday, anniversary, etc
Special offer
General newsletter
“E-mail marketing has a 4,000% return on investment“
1. The abandoned cart triggered e-mail
The abandoned cart triggered e-mail is pretty straight forward. When someone is shopping on your site and they add something to their cart but never make the purchase, an alert is triggered in the system.
In order to win back those sales, send an e-mail to that customer within 30 minutes reminding them that they left a product in their shopping cart. If the customer just forgot to make the purchase or was distracted, this will bring them back to complete the order.
If they don’t make the purchase, send an e-mail 24 hours later and remind them again, but this time give them a coupon code that expires at the end of the day. This will motivate them to take action on something that they wanted, but for some reason decided to hold off on. An expiring offer will give them a sense of urgency to come and buy right away.
2. Confirmation / thank-you e-mail
Another very obvious e-mail to send out is the confirmation and thank you e-mail. Whenever a customer places an order, you’ll need to send them the details of their purchase and thank them for being a customer.
But to take it even further, provide some more value for your customers. Add some links in the e-mail to resources that will help them with their new product. Links to blog posts on how to use the product or video introduction can be very useful for the customer, and they’ll feel good about connecting with your brand which will keep them coming back for other items.
3. Cross-sell / upsell e-mail based on purchase
If you shop on Amazon then you know these upselling e-mails very well. It’s a great way to make another quick sale for someone who is already a customer.
When someone places an order from your e-commerce store, send them an e-mail a few days later showing them other items that they may be interested in because of their original purchase.
4. Ask for feedback
When you send this e-mail out will be based on your shipping capabilities. You’ll want to wait until you know the customer received their product and had some time to use it. Getting their feedback on a few different things can really help improve your business.
Get product reviews
Use this opportunity to ask for a product review. Product reviews on your e-commerce site will help in a few different ways. First, the social proof of other customers will be beneficial for new customers deciding on whether or not they are going to buy your product. Another benefit is that Google also appreciates product reviews and what’s called “rich snippets” for different content types, in this case, products. So getting those product reviews can also help your search rankings.
Get purchase experience feedback
Don’t just look for reviews on the products themselves, but find out if there are ways you can improve your overall sales process. Ask your customers in a brief survey how much they enjoyed the process and if/what changes they would like to see in your business. Obviously you don’t want to just jump and do everything they say, but it’s a good way to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers’ mindset and look for actionable data to improve your site and your business.
5. Reactivate dormant customers
If someone hasn’t responded to your initial follow up e-mails from a purchase, don’t be discouraged. As long as this person hasn’t opted out of your e-mail marketing, then you still have a chance to bring them back for purchasing down the road.
The timing for a reactivation e-mail will heavily depend on the kind of products you sell and the industry you’re in, but I would recommend not any sooner than 90 days.
6. Send triggered rewards e-mails
Rewards and loyalty programs are very popular because they incentivise your customers to purchase more (frequency and/or quantity). If you don’t have an official loyalty or rewards program set up, you can still send triggered rewards e-mails to your customers based on quantity, frequency, or amount that they are spending. This would also be a pleasant surprise and example of over-delivering value to your customers if they aren’t expecting it.
You can set these e-mails up based on a number of purchases they’ve made, a number of products they’ve purchased or the amount of money they’ve spent in your e-commerce store. When they reach that threshold, send them a coupon code and thank them for their business.
7. Milestone events triggered e-mails
Depending on what information you are collecting from your customers, you can trigger e-mail campaigns to go out for different milestone events in their life. Things like birthday coupons, their anniversary, etc. are ways to reconnect with a customer not only for more sales, but to show that you are building a personal relationship with them.
8. Special offer
Special offer e-mails can drive a serious amount of traffic and sales to your store. There are two ways to go about sending special offers:
1. Send your special offer when you are running a general promotion campaign for your e-commerce store. If you are promoting something on your site, your social profiles and via ads, then you’ll want to send that offer to your customer database as well.
2. Another way to implement special offers is based on timing for a new customer. Not everyone will be interested in your products at the same time (like in the promotional campaign mentioned above), but if you can determine that 75 days after the first purchase is a prime time for piquing someone’s interest again (asking, testing, and tracking are great ways to determine the best timing for your e-commerce business), then you can send up the time delayed special offers based on their last purchase date.
9. General newsletter
A general e-mail newsletter is a great way to keep your customers up to date with your company, your products, and any news around the industry. Sending a personalized newsletter giving updates on your business can help build the connection that your customer has with your brand.
An e-mail newsletter is also a good place to put in popular items from the month, new products that you’ve added to the store, showcase a featured customer to make them feel like part of the team. Not to mention having those popular products will also trigger a customer reading it to want to check them out and see if they’d also like the same thing as so many other of your customers.
If you are going to be sending out a newsletter, I would recommend having it go out either once a month or every quarter.
The frequency of your general newsletter is based on how frequently you are sending out these other offers. You don’t want to bombard someone right away and have them opt-out of your e-mail list. The best way to do this is to organize your list so that they don’t receive your newsletter until a month after their purchase, that way you are nurturing them through a funnel that isn’t too overwhelming with information from you. Your e-mail communication should taper off with a customer the further away from a purchase that they’ve made. A good rule of thumb (outside of behavior triggered e-mails) is to not send more than 4 e-mails a month maximum.
What other e-commerce e-mail marketing campaigns do you run?
Are there other e-commerce e-mail marketing campaigns based on behavior that you would add to this list? What have you found to be successful or failures? Leave your questions, thoughts, and feedback in the comments below!
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