Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CHAPTER 1
Introduction1
CHAPTER 2
Why Email Marketing Is The Key To Ecommerce Success 3
CHAPTER 3
Choosing the Right Email Marketing Platform 9
CHAPTER 4
Growing Your Email List 11
CHAPTER 5
Segmenting Your Email List For Better Engagement 23
CHAPTER 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers 30
CHAPTER 7
Transaction Emails You Should Be Optimizing 39
CHAPTER 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns You Can Steal 50
CHAPTER 9
Email Analytics And How to Track Everything 64
CHAPTER 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies 71
CHAPTER 11
Conclusion79
i
Chapter 1 Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The first email message was sent in 1971, from Ray Tomlinson to himself.
Today, over 205 billion emails are sent and received every day according to
technology research firm, Radicati.
Email isn’t going anywhere and smart business owners know it. Your email
list, on the other hand, is a business asset that no one can take away from
you. It can always be saved and transferred between email marketing service
providers as needed.
Your email list is also something that you sell along with your business, since
an email list adds significant value in several ways. It allows direct contact
with people who have either already spent money on your business, are
interested in your product or are very passionate about your industry or niche.
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Chapter 1 Introduction
But first, let’s look at why email marketing is so effective for ecommerce
businesses in particular.
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Chapter 2 The Key To Ecommerce Success
CHAPTER 2
Why Email
Marketing Is The
Key To Ecommerce
Success
For many ecommerce businesses, a third of their website traffic
consists of returning visitors as reported by MarketingSherpa.
But the reality of website traffic is that most people who visit your website or
online store are new visitors who will never visit again—unless, that is, you
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Chapter 2 The Key To Ecommerce Success
do something to keep them coming back. Building an email list helps you get
around this issue and retain more of the traffic you worked so hard to earn.
But when it comes time to have a sales conversation and drive conversions,
there’s one channel that continues to outperform the rest: good old-
fashioned email.
Your email list and campaigns drive repeat traffic back to your website by
providing an incentive to return (either with discounts, valuable content,
new products, etc.) and directly communicating it on a regular basis.
• 38% of people say receiving special offers is the top reason they
subscribe to an email list.
In other words, if your ecommerce business hasn’t taken the time to adopt
email marketing, then you’re leaving money on the table. And if these stats
don’t convince you, here are five more reasons you should be building
your email list.
The reason email is so much more effective at driving traffic and sales is
because you get to take the conversation about your products and business
to your customer’s most personal online space: their inbox.
While platforms like Facebook and Twitter are great for free content
distribution and engaging your community, they’re also noisy and your
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Chapter 2 The Key To Ecommerce Success
audience may not be on them when you post an update. Your emails,
however, are there waiting for someone when they open their inbox.
For those that keep up with the latest in search engine optimization news,
you probably know that a lot of the tried and true methods that SEOs have
used in the past to gain higher keyword rankings are being devalued by
Google. Algorithmic changes have (rightfully) cracked down on low quality
content, keyword-based anchor text, paid links and many other linking
strategies. This has put many businesses that have used these in the famed
Google penalty box, and many more businesses in a state of constant fear
that they may lose their rankings in the future.
Most of the SEO strategies that are safe and work well (like content
marketing) take time to build upon before desired rankings are achieved,
leaving new businesses with only one option to get on the first page quickly:
Google AdWords.
This is why businesses are investing in PPC ads to build their mailing list.
This way, instead of just getting a potential one-time click in search, they are
opening the door to future communications with their target customer base,
one where they don’t have to worry about getting penalized.
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Chapter 2 The Key To Ecommerce Success
and ensures that all the time and money you’ve spent on creating content
results in more than just one-time visits.
You can engage your customers through email in much deeper ways and use
it to drive traffic to your ecommerce website.
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Chapter 2 The Key To Ecommerce Success
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you if you do any online shopping. You’re
more likely to buy from the websites and brands that you are more familiar
with and have formed a relationship with.
The relationship you build with your email list should be consensual; not just
from a marketing standpoint, but a legal one too. There’s some red tape to be
mindful of in the form of anti-spam legislation that applies to commercial
electronic messages.
If you neglect these laws, you could face some serious fines if someone were
to build a case against you—starting in the thousands—depending on the
country you’re marketing to (not just the country you’re operating in).
While anti-spam laws will differ depending on where you’re marketing to,
adhering to the following best practices is a good place to start:
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Chapter 2 The Key To Ecommerce Success
Check out The Definitive Legal Guide to Ecommerce for a deeper look
at anti-spam legislation for specific countries around the world. Don’t
be intimidated. These laws are based around best practices that ethical
businesses should be following anyway.
Now with that out of the way, it’s time to start building your email list.
8
Chapter 3 Choosing The Right Platform
CHAPTER 3
There are a lot of different email marketing services out there. Ultimately,
you’ll want one that you feel will work best for your business and your goals
that can integrate easily with your website.
9
Chapter 3 Choosing The Right Platform
• MailChimp
• Klaviyo
• Aweber
• Constant Contact
• Emma
• Campaign Monitor
• Soundest
• Rare.io
• Kevy
• Remarkety
These email marketing platforms offer a place for you to keep your mailing
list as well as a automate the production and sending of your emails.
Here are five key aspects you’ll want to consider when selecting the right
email marketing platform:
1 Email templates. Are there templates you can use or do you have to
start from scratch? Can you customize templates or add brand new
ones?
4 Detailed analytics. Can you get all the information you need to
make informed decicions?
5 Pricing model. How does the company charge you? Per email sent?
Per contact? What works best with your business’ cashflow?
There are free versions (MailChimp is popular for this reason) or free trials
to let you get a taste of the kind of value to expect from different platforms.
Once you’ve selected your platform, you’ll need to consider how you’ll start
building your list. The first thing you’ll want to do is think about where to
place your opt-in forms.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
CHAPTER 4
Growing Your
Email List
This is when you start getting creative. To grow your list of future
recipients, you need to make it easy and exciting for anyone to sign-up.
Enticing offers need to be clear and concise with a simple action item: the
opt-in form.
One of the most important elements for driving opt-ins on your website
is strategically placed opt-in forms. Opt-in forms are just a fancy word for
those email sign-up boxes you see on almost every site.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
Popular email marketing software solutions will have handy opt-in form
generators that will provide you with a snippet of code that you can just
paste into various places around your site. While it may sound excessive to
add multiple opt-in forms to your website, it’s really not. If you had eye-
tracking analytics monitoring every visitor to your website, you would see
that they do not look at every inch your website from header to footer.
They may look at the content on a blog post or your about page, your
navigation menu, or your sidebar. Hence, you need to make sure that any
one spot they look at has a conversion point for your mailing list: the
opt-in form.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
YOUR SIDEBAR
You can also place an opt-in form in their sidebar with a sentence to “sell”
your free incentive or what your mailing list has to offer. It’s a good way to
use this real estate on your website.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
POP-UP FORM
As controversial as pop-up forms are, when they’re done right, they work.
The best way to drive opt-ins is to put the opt-in form in front of every
visitor. If you have something of value to give away, you have every right to
show it to every new visitor.
If you’re using Shopify, check out the App Store for popup apps.
SumoMe also contains a free suite of tools to help you build your email
list, which includes a popup tool called “List Builder”, as well as a full-page
“Welcome Mat” that displays when a visitor lands on your site that you can
use to capture emails from visitors.
OFFLINE OPT-INS
Also, if you run a brick and mortar store, don’t forget about offline
opportunities to build your list.
Email service providers provide apps that allow you to capture subscribers
in-person. One such app is Chimpadeedoo from MailChimp, which lets
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
subscribers enter their email address on your iPad or Android tablet. Even if
you’re offline, it will collect the email addresses and import them into your
MailChimp account the next time you're online.
Growing your email list will be slow in the beginning. That’s why it’s
important to incorporate “lead magnets” into your strategy to incentivize
opt-ins and accelerate your list building efforts.
There are many options to choose from, but the key is to make it worth the
price of admission: an email.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
You can position your call to action so they’re opting in to receive members-
only special offers delivered by email.
Just remember that you should be looking for quality signups versus
quantity signups.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
• Guitar stores can give away a free chord book to help new and
intermediate guitar players.
The best converting lead magnets offer something that visitors can
immediately consume and get value from.
Having a visitor subscribe to your email list after they get their lead
magnet, gives you permission to market to them. From here, you can
start to develop a relationship with your email subscribers and promote your
business to them.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
• A persuasive headline
• A testimonial to establish social proof
• Some text or a video about your incentive
• The benefits of joining your mailing list
• And, of course, an opt-in form
Everything else that could steal attention — like your sidebar — should
be removed.
Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways to drive traffic to your lead magnet in the
hopes of converting subscribers and growing your list. Here are some proven
methods you can try:
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
Facebook pages also allow for call to action buttons. Be sure to take
advantage of these and add a link to your landing page.
Get creative with how you share a link to your landing page on social media.
Pique people’s interests by using images and attention-grabbing headlines.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
Ideally, your ad will address a pain point your customers might have and
provide your lead magnet as the solution. For example, if you run a guitar
store and your landing page is offering a free chord book for new and
intermediate guitar players, you would be targeting new guitar players
struggling to learn chords.
This is also called a “content upgrade”. If your incentive upgrades the existing
content in the blog post, your reader is more likely to click the link to the
landing page and provide their email to download the incentive.
For example, a guitar shop with a blog post teaching new guitar players
proper finger placement for chords could include the free chord book as a
content upgrade in exchange for information.
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Chapter 4 Growing Your Email List
If you want to make your email signature stand out, use WiseStamp.
As you collect a massive list of emails, it’s important to start thinking about
how you’re going to use it. This is where list segmentation becomes your
best friend.
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Chapter 5 Segmenting Your Email List
CHAPTER 5
Segmenting Your
Email List For
Better Engagement
One of the biggest mistakes many businesses make with their mailing
list is sending the same email to everyone, every time. If you think
about it, not every subscriber on your mailing list is equally engaged.
On top of that, if you sell items in different categories (for example, women’s
clothing, men’s clothing, and kid’s clothing), not every subscriber will be
equally interested in every product category.
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Chapter 5 Segmenting Your Email List
Do you want to send the same message to every person? Of course not. You
want your emails to be relevant to the recipient as often as possible.
You can differentiate your contacts in the four following ways: Customer
Type, Interest, Location and Behavior.
If people had labels like that, the salesperson that greets them would
probably say something different each time.
Luckily, many customer databases do have these labels. If yours does, then
you should consider segmenting your list based on:
This way, you can target your emails in a way that will specifically convert
potential customers into actual customers, first time customers into loyal
customers, and loyal customers into brand advocates.
It can be as simple as offering discounts for new customers or a free gift with
purchase to your most loyal customers.
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Chapter 5 Segmenting Your Email List
You probably have dog owners, cat owners, hamster owners, new pet
owners, elderly pet owners, and so on. Sending them all the same email
campaign every time isn’t going to work.
• Items they purchased. If your customer tends to buy ferret toys and
hamster wheels, then you can segment them as a small animal lover
and send mailings about new products pertaining to little critters.
Find out which option works best with your customer database, email
marketing platform and strategy, and start sending targeted emails based on
specific interests.
For example, here’s an email Nordstrom sends to subscribers they know are
interested in menswear.
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Chapter 5 Segmenting Your Email List
By segmenting your emails based on interests you’ll increase your open and
clickthrough rates and lower your unsubscribe rate, simply because you’re
not blasting products to people who are not interested in them.
For starters, if you have both an online store and a physical location, you
may want to send emails about sales that are happening in-store, but only
to people in your region. If you have customers from various countries, you
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Chapter 5 Segmenting Your Email List
Most mailing list service providers will have an option to segment based on
location. The location is usually determined when a subscriber signed up for
your mailing list.
You can also use your customer database to find the current location of your
customers based on billing and shipping addresses.
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Chapter 5 Segmenting Your Email List
Segmenting based on location can also mean segmenting your list between
customers who have purchased your products in-store or online. This way, if
you have a promotion that is only available in-store, you can avoid sending it
to those who are unable to take advantage of it.
These were probably from businesses whose emails you have not opened in
a while.
Most email marketing providers will allow you to create segments based on
subscriber activity like Mailchimp does here:
One reason you should create a separate segment for inactive subscribers
(those who have not opened emails in a long time) is because most email
marketing services are priced according to the size of your subscriber list,
and some even according to the number of emails you send every month.
So why pay for subscribers who are not engaging with you?
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Chapter 5 Segmenting Your Email List
1 You create a segment of subscribers that have not opened their emails
in a certain timeframe, say three months, six months, etc.
2 You send just that segment of people an email that asks them to
reconfirm their subscription, either to confirm they want to
continue receiving your emails or to get a special discount code
or a free resource.
3 If the subscriber does not confirm within the next week or two, they
are removed from your list.
This is a great way to make sure your email list consists of people who
actually want to get your emails (i.e. the people most likely to make
purchases). This will always boost the ROI of your email marketing, as you’ll
be paying less for your mailing list service and only sending emails to the
people who want to receive them.
You can refer to the features listings and documentation guides for more
information if you use the following email marketing platforms: Aweber,
MailChimp, Emma, Campaign Monitor or Constant Contact. Or you can
do a Google search for your software provider’s name plus “segmentation”,
“segment your list” or similar keywords to learn more.
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
CHAPTER 6
Converting
Subscribers into
Customers
Even though having visitors opt into your list gives you permission
to market to them, you have to regularly provide your subscribers with
value—via discounts or good content—if you want them to stick around and
actually open your emails.
Since not every subscriber is ready to buy, it’s important to include a healthy
amount of nurturing emails along with promotional emails. Nurturing
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
emails provide subscribers with relevant content that keeps them interested
in the brand. Promotional emails are more sales-oriented and often drive the
reader to purchase. But first, let’s start with the basics.
FORMAT
More and more email recipients are opening their emails on mobile devices,
both smartphones and tablets. It’s vital that your emails are responsive to the
size of the screen they’re displayed on. Quality email marketing platforms
will provide previews and testing capabilities so you can see your email on
desktop and mobile.
SUBJECT LINE
Your subject line is the first true contact point when it comes to email
marketing. This is what’s going to get the recipient to open the email. It’s
important to remember that the goal of your subject line isn’t about getting
the recipient to go to your blog or to buy a new product. The goal of your
subject line is to entice the recipient to open your email, no more, no less.
That might sound easy, but cutting through the noise can be a challenge.
• When possible, use local references the recipient can relate to.
• The word “free” often triggers spam filters, try “percent discount” or
“this week only.”
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
BODY CONTENT
Keep it short and make it visually appealing. Start off by ensuring the
recipient understands how they can benefit - whether it’s a great offer or
quality educational content. Only use graphics if they add value to your
email (avoid funny GIFs, include clean product images). A detailed HubSpot
analysis shows that while people say they like graphic emails, text-based
email perform better. Instead of simply including images, use bullet lists to
change the visual dynamic of the email. Try and keep your bullet list to 3
points; anything more runs the risk of information overload.
CALL-TO-ACTION
Now that the recipient has opened your email, understands the possible
benefit, and has a few bullet point details, it’s time to get them to take action.
Your email content may have multiple messages but focus on the primary
action you want the recipient to take. Multiple action items can distract and
confuse. A few other points to keep in mind:
• Make your call-to-action visible early in the email rather than making
your recipients scroll too much.
Keep in mind the occupation of your core audience members, teachers won’t
be on their emails during the day as much as a marketing professional. It’s
also important to remember the time zone your recipient is in. You might be
sending your email at the right time but your recipient might be receiving it
in the middle of the night.
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
When you send valuable, content-rich emails to your subscribers early on,
they’ll be more likely to open up your promotional emails in the future,
click-through and potentially convert.
You have three options for keeping your subscribers interested in your
business and nurturing them into potential customers.
SUBSCRIBER NEWSLETTER
Consisting of industry information, trending blog posts and non-sales
product updates, your newsletter is the easiest way to maintain mindshare
with your audience. Your emails will preferably include a mix of high quality
content that has independent value outside of your products, but still has
sales and conversions in mind.
This option is best for businesses in a niche where there are always new
things to talk about on a consistent basis. This is also a good option if your
content is topical, current or trendy. While your sales may not skyrocket
from the newsletter, brand awareness and recognition will benefit.
Email 1: Send subscriber the incentive you promised when they opted in: the
discount, free guide, link to a download, etc.
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
Email 3: After a few more days, this email would let subscribers know
about some products and services that will be of interest based on the free
incentive they received.
RSS TO EMAIL
The third option is great for store owners that actively create content for
their blog. Most email marketing services allow the option to have emails
automatically sent out to your email list every time a new blog post is
created, using your blog’s RSS feed.
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
Here are some ideas for emails you can send to market your business
and products.
SALES EMAILS
These emails are direct and to the point: their sole purpose is to make
your subscribers aware of a sale. Whenever you put a product on sale or
plan to have a store-wide sale, it’s a good idea to let your subscribers know,
especially if you’ve built a relationship with them.
SUBSCRIBER-ONLY DISCOUNTS
Whether you send a regular newsletter or set up a drip campaign about
special promotions, you can always include discount codes for your
subscribers to boost their motivation to make a purchase. Offering a feeling
of exclusivity and membership is a great way to introduce emotion into
your marketing.
For your ‘exclusive offer’, generate a single discount code that can be used
an infinite number of times, but is only available for a limited time. If you
do this, make sure to mention in your email copy that the discount code
expires on a certain date. This type of limited-time offer creates a sense
of urgency that encourages subscribers to purchase something now rather
than waiting until later.
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
Let’s say, for example, that you’ve invested in advertising to drive traffic to
a landing page and build up your email list, but you don’t yet have as many
social followers as you’d like.
To achieve your goal of increasing your social following, you can hold a
giveaway. Once the contest is underway, send an email to your subscribers
letting them know that they can enter the draw for a free product or gift card
by liking your Facebook page or whatever social platform you’re working on.
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Chapter 6 Converting Subscribers into Customers
38
Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
CHAPTER 7
Transaction
Emails You Should
Be Optimizing
When most online retailers think about email marketing, they often just
think about sending monthly newsletters or information about sales. But
email marketing is so much more than that. In fact, every email you send to
a potential, current, or former customer is an opportunity to get value as you
provide value. Transactional emails are those sent during the checkout and
purchasing action.
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
The following are examples of different transaction emails and how major
ecommerce brands are using them to boost their sales during the
buying process.
Let’s take a look at what they do right and what would could be better.
So, what can you do to get those customers back to your checkout page so
they complete their order?
For customers whose information you already have, such as those who have
created an account on your website, you can send them a friendly email
reminder that they left something in their cart. Here’s a great example of this
kind of email from Kerastase:
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
How this works is typically within 12-24 hours of your customer entering
their information and abandoning their item(s) in your store, you send them
a reminder that they still have items waiting for them.
In many cases, customers just wanted to get to the last step in the checkout
so they could see the final charges with shipping costs included, or they
simply got distracted from their shopping experience.
The example email above in particular is great because it shows the product
the customer added to their shopping cart (with an image) and gently
nudges them back to the store. It’s also personalized and adds a little extra
incentive with the ‘same day shipping’ offer. Finally, it uses a great call to
action button which makes the desired action crystal clear.
However, there is one flaw to this email’s design. A lot of email services will
hide images in an email until the recipient (your customer) tells it to display
them. If they don’t allow their email service to display the images for this
email, all they will see is this:
As you can see, without images, this email at first glance conveys almost
zero information.
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
In other words, you need to have the main message included in the email in
text so that the customer will see it immediately when they open your email.
Walmart, on the other hand, takes the approach of a mostly text based email
for people who abandon their shopping cart after logging in to their account.
Even without images enabled, customers will know exactly what the message
contains and where to go next:
But this email isn’t perfect either. It doesn’t tell the customer what is in their
shopping cart. This makes them miss the opportunity to get their customer
excited about the item(s) they were so close to purchasing.
1 Provide the main message in text so customers will see it right away
without having to enable images. This includes a link back to their
shopping cart.
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
Note that when it comes to incentives you offer in your shopping cart
abandonment email, you might want to think carefully about offering a
coupon or discount. Why? You might unknowingly train your customers to
put items in their shopping cart and leave so they can get money off of
their item(s).
GoDaddy does this well by including a coupon code for your next purchase
in your order confirmation email:
What’s great about this email is the promo code is bright, bold, and above
the information about the order you just placed.
GoDaddy also offers related products to choose from based on your purchase.
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
While this can be a great way to increase sales, be sure that you carefully
consider whether trying to sell again right away to a brand new customer is
worth it.
Your new customer probably won’t cancel their order just because you
approached them to make another purchase, but they also might not take up
the offer if they’re a first time shopper.
This may be a better strategy for your repeat customers as opposed to new
ones. As an alternative, you could ask first time buyers to ‘like’ your business
on Facebook which may be a more palatable option for them at this stage in
the relationship.
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
The only drawback on the above email from Express is that the calls to
action in this email are not personalized to the customer’s purchase. It
would be much more effective if they noted the customer’s purchase was a
pair of slacks, and the ads were targeted to shirts and ties instead of suits or
women’s clothing.
Thus, the keys to a successful email after shipping an order are the following:
• Make it easy for your customer to track their order. Include the
expected delivery date and tracking number linked to the shipping
company so people can click once to see exactly where their order is
in the shipping process.
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
delivered (and that your business is trustworthy), get them excited, and
make the customer happy - a happy customer is more likely to share their
shopping experience with others.
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
What’s the difference between these two emails? While Moo sends the
customer to a third party survey tool for feedback, Toys R Us sends
customers to a survey on their own website. This makes it easy to
encourage their (hopefully) satisfied customer to start shopping once their
review is completed.
Thus, the keys to a successful email for feedback are the following:
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Chapter 7 Ecommerce Transaction Emails
customer happy. As mentioned earlier, it’s easier to make sales with existing
customers than new ones, so focus on customer retention more than
acquisition when possible.
Summary
When you send an email to your customers, you’re having a conversation
with them in their most personal online environment - their inbox. In other
words, you need to make every email count.
Getting creative with transaction emails can be an effective way to not only
be transparent with your customers about their purchases, but also get them
back to your store for repeat sales.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
CHAPTER 8
Proven Ecommerce
Email Campaigns
You Can Steal
Even with a healthy list of email subscribers, sometimes it can be
challenging to think of creative and conversion-focused email campaigns to
send to your list.
To help you come up with some ideas, we’ve assembled seven high-impact
ecommerce email examples for you to take inspiration from and put to
use in your business today.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
The folks at Petflow regularly borrow content from their Facebook page and
put it to work in their email campaigns.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
The email below is what you get when your order arrives. Instead of simply
sending a robotic order notification, they take the opportunity to build
education into the email and set their customers up for success with their
products – which ends up being a win-win for everybody.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Take a look at your own transaction emails and see where there are
opportunities to make them more valuable - even if it’s something as simple
as asking people to like you on Facebook.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
STORQ only carries a handful of products so this is a smart way for them
to stay in front of their customers without sending repetitive product
promotion emails. If you’re looking for an easy way to get started with email
marketing, try using a tool like Pocket to save the best links and resources
related to your industry, and then send your list a curated roundup of useful
tips or cool content each month.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Offer limited time discounts, and incentives like time sensitive free shipping
can be a great way to get people off the fence and over to your checkout page.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
The lesson here is that making your subscribers feel special by offering them
“subscriber only” deals can help you not only build customer loyalty, but also
make sales.
One of the more crafty emails they sent is this store credit email.
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Chapter 8 Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Instead of simply offering “15% off ” they offer a very specific amount of
money for their customers to spend on their site. The theory being that it’s
harder for people to “waste money” than it is to pass up a percentage discount.
Next time you want to send a promotional email with a discount, consider
testing this store credit approach. To offer monetary discounts like this in
Shopify, read the Shopify resource on creating monetary discounts.
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The email is framed mainly as a thank you message that offers support but
it also slips in calls to action for his website, his social profiles and even a
request for user-generated product photos. I wouldn’t be surprised if people
reply to this email with product testimonials as well.
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any emails that catch your eye. At the end of every month, do a quick review
and see what principles you can apply to your next campaign.
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Chapter 9 Email Analytics
CHAPTER 9
Email Analytics
And How to Track
Everything
Your email analytics are a goldmine of insight and untapped
opportunities. Besides the total number of email subscribers you have and
are getting per day, you should be looking at:
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Chapter 9 Email Analytics
Whether that means going to your store to buy a product, following you on
Twitter, or reading your latest blog post. Your focus is to get those that do
open your emails, to click the links in them.
Most email marketing services are pretty good at providing you a lot of data
and analytics out of the box. If you need help finding this data we talked
about in this section, be sure to look through your email marketing service’s
help center or documentation.
Every email list will be different and every industry is different. You should
experiment with different sending dates and times to learn when you get the
best results, especially early in your email marketing journey since you can
afford to take risks. Conduct some split tests (A/B tests) to see which times
get better open and click rates, which we’ll go into in chapter 11.
A good place to start looking for your optimal email sending times, is your
peak purchase times. This gives you some insight into your customer’s online
habits. To track this information, ensure you have Google Analytics setup
for ecommerce. We will also be talking more about tracking everything
and analytics in chapter 10. If your customers are purchasing from your
site in the late afternoon, then naturally, that would be a good time to send
emails since they are already online and likely will see your email when you
send it.
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Chapter 9 Email Analytics
example, whether you have a subscriber in New York or in London, they will
receive your scheduled email for 8am on Thursday in their timezone.
Track Everything
You should have Google Analytics set up on your website and if you don’t,
you can check out our blog post to get you set up. This blog post walks
you through the steps you need to take and will ensure you are set up with
ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics.
Once you’re setup with Google Analytics, one of the first things you can
do is track how well links in your email marketing campaigns are
performing using UTM parameters. You’re probably wondering what
UTM stands for; it’s Urchin Tracking Module. Basically, it helps Google track
specific links to give you more insight to how users navigate your content.
You can also begin to track what percentage of your traffic is opting into
your email list. This will allow you to see what type of traffic is converting
best (for example, traffic that found your website on Google is found to opt-
in the most) and where visitors are converting.
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You’ll be asked to “Set up goals”. Click it and click the button “+ NEW
GOAL” to set up your first goal.
Creating your goal is very easy. Give your goal a name, I put “Email
list signup”, leave the Goal slot ID as the default, and for Type, choose
Destination. Click Next Step.
From here, under Goal details, you will only need to put information into
the Destination field. This will be the URL of your “thank you” page, or
the page the visitor is redirected to after signing up. This won’t be the full
URL. So if the URL of your thank you page is www.shopify.com/thankyou/
you will only enter /thankyou/ into this field. Everything else can be left as
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That’s it! You’re now tracking your email list sign ups. To keep an eye on how
well your list building campaign is going, head over to the Reporting tab in
Google Analytics, and look under Conversions and Goals in the left menu.
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Chapter 10 7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
CHAPTER 10
7 Advanced
Email Marketing
Strategies
Before going into these tips, it’s important that you’re using email
marketing software that won’t hold you back.
Many of the tips in this post require integration between your shopping
cart and email list, automation, and list segmentation. These are not ‘nice to
haves’, but essentials for highly effective ecommerce marketing. The email
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You’ll want to experiment with the timing of this email, along with the prize
offered, to get the maximum number of product reviews. This is where A/B
testing becomes your best friend.
Keep in mind that you’re testing the impact of a single, isolated variable
at a time. This way your experiments yield real insights you can act on in
the future.
In an ideal world, you would A/B test every email you sent out. In practice,
this can be quite time-consuming, so you’ll need to figure out which emails
would have the biggest impact on your bottom line if they had a higher
engagement rate.
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So, how can you use email marketing to reduce cart abandonment?
If you’re using software that enables automation, you can quite easily setup
a rule that detects whether a person visits the cart or checkout page, but not
your confirmation/thank you page.
When this criteria is met, an email can be sent to them (providing you have
already gathered their email address) asking them why they didn’t complete
their transaction.
You can see a great example of this in action on the Flaviar website. After
signing up to their mailing list, if you add any item to your cart and don’t
complete the purchase, you’ll soon receive an email like the one below.
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This is not only a great way of crushing technical bugs, but when worded
well, can also be a valuable way to collect customer objections, that you can
then address earlier in the sales funnel.
Howards Storage World found that by categorizing their customers into five
categories based on engagement and loyalty, and targeting certain categories
with gift card incentives, they were able to increase their short-term
revenue by $250,000.
Their most loyal group of customers had a gift card redemption rate of 34%,
representing $105,000 of the total revenue driven from this campaign.
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This group, who hadn’t shopped with Howards Storage World in over 12
months, represented a $108,000 increase in revenue ($3,000 more than the
most loyal customers), and had an average spend 16% higher than the most
loyal customers.
There are a few good lessons in that we can take away from this case study.
The first is to segment your customers by loyalty and target them with
campaigns that are relevant to their level of activeness.
If you want to take this one step further, you could automate this whole
process using event-based triggers. For example, if a customer spends
25% above your average order value, you could add them to a sequence of
‘reward’ emails. Alternatively, if a customer hasn’t purchased anything within
12 months, you could create a ‘reactivation sequence’ to incentivize them to
make another purchase.
One of the easiest ways to ensure you’re never rushing to send a campaign
out is to build a 12-month newsletter calendar that includes both retail
holidays and events specific to your own business’ seasonality.
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While many email marketing tools have a calendar feature built in, many opt
for a free tool called Trello.
What makes Trello particularly useful is that different members can easily
add suggestions and ideas for upcoming newsletter campaigns. On top of
this, you can also set automatic reminders to ensure that you begin working
on campaigns well in advance of their send dates.
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that subscribers who received both were 22% more likely to make purchases
than those who only received emails.
They don’t need to be direct competitors, just websites that might share the
same audience or customers as you. Alternatively, you can use MailCharts
to track competitor emails.
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Chapter 11 Conclusion
CHAPTER 11
Conclusion
Email marketing is a powerful channel for nearly every ecommerce
business. Whereas most channels—like SEO and social media—are volatile
and subject to change, the email list you build over time will become a pillar
of your business that continues to drive both new and repeat visitors to the
products in your store.
There are virtually no limits on how far you can segment customers, target
them across multiple channels, and personalize your communication to
speak directly to your customers. The potential for increasing sales through
email marketing is NOT to be underestimated. Start collecting visitor emails
today, identify segmentation opportunities and always provide value.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Corey Ferreira
Corey Ferreira is a passionate entrepreneur, coconut
water lover and content creator at Shopify.
Braveen Kumar
Braveen Kumar is a Content Crafter at Shopify where
he develops resources to empower entrepreneurs to
start and succeed in business.
Disclaimer: Any of the logos, design rights, trade, service or collective marks that are
mentioned, used or cited in this book are the property of their respective owners. Their use
in this book does not imply that you may use them for any purpose other than for a similar
informational use.
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