A majority of email marketing strategies for e-commerce focus on the end of your sales funnel by sending out newsletters, promotional emails, and transactional emails. Unfortunately focusing on the end of the sales funnel means that they are missing many opportunities to convert site traffic along the way, as well as ways to connect on an individual basis with site visitors.
What Is Email Automation and How Does It Work?
With email automation, timing, and relevance are key. When an event happens, an email is triggered automatically that contains the information that is relevant to the user’s actions on the website. You can create robust campaigns and connect with users by sending them the most relevant information at the perfect time.
Tapping into the power of email automation for e-commerce is one of the easiest ways to increase revenue, as 81% of US online shoppers make additional purchases online after receiving personalized emails based on their previous shopping behavior. In addition, automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than the typical “newsletter” message. With high-performing statistics like this, it’s no wonder that email marketing is one of the top-performing marketing channels.
Email Automation Examples To Increase Sales In 2024
Automated New Subscriber Welcome Email
Engagement is key to winning over today’s buyers and getting them to become invested in your brand. So why not start right away? When a user subscribes to your email list, create a welcome email series explaining your brand and what you’re about. In a follow-up email in your welcome series, highlight your top products. Consider offering new subscribers an exclusive promotion, it’ll go a long way toward building a connection.
Automated Abandon Cart Email Series
Do you know how often users on your site browse your product, carefully adding items to a cart and then, for one reason or another, abandon it? Well, according to the Baymard Institute, the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.63%. Setting up an abandon cart email series is an effective, proactive way to reduce high cart abandonment rates.
When creating an abandon cart email series, the key element for success is timing. The first email should be sent within an hour of the cart being abandoned with a helpful (not pushy) tone. The second email should be triggered if the cart is still abandoned after 24 hours and remind the visitor that the cart will soon expire.
5 Features That Are Important to Constructing an Effective Abandoned Cart Email
- The attention-getter: Don’t miss out! Attention grabbers such as this instill some sense of urgency in customers. Nobody likes the feeling of going back to a website to purchase an item only to find out that it’s out of stock.
- Include not one, but two “Proceed to Checkout” buttons that will conveniently take potential customers directly to their cart.
- Include the items that are in the cart in case a customer forgets what he or she was looking at and if it is still in stock. This ties into the sense of urgency we discussed a moment ago.
- Include important information about shipping and return policy. If you offer free shipping on all orders, orders over a certain amount, or return orders, knowing this may make customers feel more willing to complete a purchase about items they’re not sure about.
- Contact information: Provide multiple methods for customers to get answers for any questions they may have, including an FAQ page, email address, and phone number with 24/7 customer service.
Using abandoned cart emails is such an easy way to capture sales that it’s bewildering why more stores – such as the major brands we used in our study – don’t use them. The Baymard Institute averaged the findings of 29 studies on abandoned shopping cart rates and found that the average abandonment rate is 68.07%. We researched more statistics and found the following:
- According to SaleCycle, companies globally are projected to have missed out on $3 trillion in revenue from abandoned shopping carts in 2014.
- Some of the top reasons why consumers leave their carts are:
- The shipping costs were too high
- The order didn’t qualify for free shipping
- They’re not ready to purchase the items yet
- 46% of abandoned cart emails are opened and 13% are clicked on to go to the cart.
- The average order value of purchases made from abandoned cart emails is 19% greater than that of ordinary purchases.
Don’t miss out on sales that you could easily make. With email marketing services from Boomtown, we can help you create a well-constructed abandoned shopping cart email to help your e-commerce website bring in more revenue. For more questions, please contact us.
Automated Product Follow Up Emails
When properly capitalized, repeat customers can become the lifeline of your e-commerce business. Rather than building a connection with these customers, focus on information that is relevant to them and products that solve their problems by understanding their purchasing history and recommending products accordingly.
Automated product follow-up emails are a great way to not only stay in the consumer’s mind but also promote new products relevant to their needs.
Automated Customer Re-Engagement Emails
If an email subscriber has not opened an email from your company in six months, it signifies they have become disengaged and you have lost their attention. Rather than continuously sending emails that are going unnoticed, give them one last nudge to re-engage.
Clean out your email lists of users who haven’t opened any of your last 5 email blasts. Use this list to set up a campaign to contact them, and consider offering them an exclusive incentive to reconnect with your brand.
Automated Ecommerce Email Receipts
Email receipts tend to have the highest average open rate at 70.9%, making them the perfect place to encourage your customers to take another action.
Simply take your default email receipts including any important transaction information they need and add product recommendations, ways to connect with your brand on social media, and any other top content or upcoming events.
4 Ecommerce Email Marketing Tips to 5X Your Conversion Rates
What should you be doing in your email campaigns to stand out and compete with all the email blasts featuring “Previews to Black Friday Sales”, “Black Friday”, “Cyber Monday”, “The 12 Days of Savings before Christmas”, and “Last Day for Overnight Shipping”?
Invigorate Existing Email Campaigns
Most online stores already have several email marketing campaigns running, including a welcome email series, an abandoned shopping cart series for visitors who are registered and abandoned a cart, and emails that upsell after a transaction.
- Add 10-15% off incentive during busy buyer seasons
- Push inventory by emailing “Going Fast” specials
- Upsell on items that might fit as “stocking stuffers” or complement the item they just bought
- Perhaps change the email header or background to include a bit of a holiday theme
- Perhaps add a new navigation section on your website called “Holiday Specials” or “Gifts for Her” and feature it in an email
- Explain your Shipping Schedule for the Holidays
- Provide a promo code for free shipping – so they think they are getting an exclusive offer.
Segment Your eMail List
By dividing the email contacts that you have into “budget buyers”, “buyers for her”, “buyers for kids”, and other segments, you can target emails designed to capture the attention of each group and communicate the new features on your site by adding landing pages and linking to them from your email (like a catalog section for Her, or a gift guide for every budget.) You can offer these segments special coupons as well.
In addition, you may decide to nurture people who have registered on your site through the sales process. Consider segmenting and emailing people who opened your email but didn’t click through to the landing page, or those that landed, but didn’t purchase with incentives and deeper discounts.
Standardize Your Email Marketing Campaign Template
What happens if your email is really successful and you start to sell all of a certain type of your inventory? If you have created an email template where all the images of products are the same size, and none of the text is embedded in an image, it is much easier to swap out products and push inventory that you have in stock with discounts.
AFTER the HOLIDAYS – Still an Opportunity for Email Marketing
Make sure you include a clear return policy in all your emails. It is important to make the return process as simple as possible. For instance, you can offer free shipping on returns. If they return something, this should trigger an email to offer them a related item at a discount.
After the holidays a special breed of shoppers – those looking for volume discounts – emerge. They look for deals between Christmas and New Year’s, and you can help them by sending them emails about your deals during that period of time. It is a great opportunity to position items together with a “Buy This Item and Get That Item at Half Price” special.
Don’t miss out on sales that you could easily make. With email marketing services from Boomtown, we can help you create an email strategy to help your e-commerce website bring in more revenue. For more questions, please contact us.