With the hype of Black Friday and the Cyber weekend (and Monday) currently in full swing, the world is set into a shopping spree craze with customers aiming to stock up on Christmas Presents and purchasing their “nice to haves” and “necessities” for the next year at a large discount. The volume of sale and traffic currently going online and browsing through websites like Facebook Shopping, Ozbargain and Amazon is has increased by 100%.
So if you’re an eCommerce business, or run a brick and mortar store – have you asked yourself on how you’re going to capitalise on the sale and continue growth into Christmas and New Years? As a business owner it’s clear these sales are built to drive brand awareness and capitalise on new potential customers, so what have you done to build a funnel to continually market to and remind customers of your existence in this fast moving and highly competitive world?
The answer is Email Marketing – yes, that’s right the best method to achieving the best results, building a community and organically marketing to them to remind them of your business, is to utilise email marketing.
While in theory, we understand it’s easy to say set it up and use it – but what does it actually entail? What are the best methods, how do I build an effective campaign?
Since each business is unique and their community and customers different – the base foundation remains the same.
Welcome Email Workflow
In your nominated email marketing platform, the Welcome Email workflow is the most common and necessary in some countries (due to GDPR). Make sure the workflow is a bit more complex than a single welcome email and capitalise on the open rates and reward users to joining to lure them into a sale and continual support of your future EDM campaigns.
As per the above mock up, provide a friendly message and give the subscriber a taste of what’s to come when joining the EDM (e.g. “exclusive offers and sales”, “key opinion and market updates”, “early access” etc.) – these should sit at the top of the page, before proceeding with the bait (i.e. welcome discount) which should sit as your call to action.
Once you’ve built this initial email template, ensure you add the following extras into the workflow:
- Follow Up email several days later (base it on one of the USPs in the original email)
- Slightly more personalised email (2-3 weeks later) with an exclusive offer
Abandon Cart Workflow
Similar to the Welcome Email workflow, the Abandon Cart workflow is a definite requirement for any eCommerce store. On average, you gain an additional 2-3% of lose carts using this workflow which can result in hundreds and thousands of dollars of missed opportunity.
The abandon cart workflow needs to start off small and quick, and expand out as the days get further away from the original abandon cart.
Send your customers an email like above, after an hour from the abandon cart and if there is an open on the email with no conversion, send another one 1-2 days afterwards, with a lure (i.e. discount) to incentivise the purchase and reward the email open.
Continue again 7+ days later, but focusing more on a dedicated content email – selling your product and services, rather than what they left behind. Since it’s a longer period out, the customer may have forgotten about your brand and you’ll need remind them again of why they should choose you.
If they’ve gotten this far, opened all the emails and still haven’t converted into a sale – it’s time to send a final email with the largest discount incentive possible. Noting this email should be sent 30-60 days after the Abandon cart.
In summary, these are just two of the most common workflows, there are many others that may be relevant to your business and industry. Leverage the automation feature so that you make use of some of the most common setups to win or win back customers to your business.
If you want some help, have a look at our marketing consultation services and see what we might be able to design and setup for your business.
