You’ve worked hard to set up an effective, traffic-generating website, you’ve developed an opt-in form to gather email address—so now what? With these systems in place, the next step is to start up an email marketing campaign.
Easier said than done, you say?
Let’s look at how a few businesses have successfully used email marketing. You can use these principles to guide the development of your email marketing, and harness its full potential.
Case study #1
A mobile accessories company turned to email marketing to engage customers and nurture leads. With a campaign designed to thank customers, the company increased conversions by 252 percent and grew revenue-per-email to 152 percent.
The company took advantage of high inventory, and instead of relying on past promotions like BOGO, to show their appreciation to customers, while simultaneously earning revenue. Here’s how they did it: By developing an email campaign that offered customers a free gift if they made a purchase above $9.99. They developed the email marketing campaign based on a sense of urgency, limiting the time period of the free offer, and including a brief message in the copy of the email and a clear call to action.
Case study #2
An equestrian supplier used automated email marketing to develop a series of 40 emails that outperformed other emails the business sent in batches. A few of the email series that were particularly successful included:
- A shipping reminder. The company’s customers can choose to have products like vitamins autoshipped. The company then sends a reminder more than a week before the shipment is sent, and the email includes helpful links to various contacts within the company, an area for feedback, a reminder that shipping is free if the total is over a certain amount, a button to change the order, and relevant offers and promotions.
- Product review forms. Once a customer purchases a product, the company sends an email requesting a product review. This email marketing campaign serves multiple purposes. First, it helps the company solicit valuable testimonies from customers that it can later use in promotional materials and on the website. These testimonials give other customers more confidence to buy. They also give the company immediate feedback about products, which they use to adjust various aspects like the product itself or the marketing. As a result, they’ve seen return rates decrease.
- Abandoned shopping carts. Every customer that starts the online shopping process with the company but abandons it receives automated emails. The first email is sent the day after the user abandons the purchasing process. It includes information about the products reviewed during the search process, along with pricing information, customer reviews, and links to start the process up again. The email also includes a reminder of the company’s product guarantee, free shipping terms and price-matching offer. The company gets a revenue per email of $4.80, and 50 percent of the people who read the email click through (that’s a 50 percent conversion rate).
Creative use of email marketing can put your business on the fast track. To start your campaign off on the right foot, get your team together and start brainstorming goals for the campaign. Identify your target customers, define the outcomes, and then develop a time frame for developing the emails.