Email marketing is easy. It’s just sending a couple of emails here and there right? Wrong. If you’re not running email marketing or you’re sending emails out using only guesswork, you’re not making the most of its full potential.
Not only does email marketing help bring your potential customers back onto your website and through to conversion, it also helps to retain and increase the lifetime value of your existing customers.
So what are the fundamentals of email marketing? The best place to start is by setting up the 5 email flows that tend to produce the best results:
1. Welcome series
The welcome series can be triggered in a number of ways including signing up for a newsletter or an incentive (like a free sample, discount, or entry into a giveaway).
Holsper gathers email addresses for their welcome series through an offer pop up.
Once the user has provided their email, Holsper gives them the opportunity to get a larger offer if they also provide their phone number for SMS marketing.
As well as giving the subscriber what they signed up for (a discount code etc.), the welcome series also gives you the opportunity to showcase your brand and products. I recommend your welcome email flow follows a similar structure to this:
The first email of a welcome series is one of the most important with one of the highest open rate and click through rate. Make the most of this by including a small intro to your brand, showcasing some of your products, and highlighting your USPs, as well as providing the offer the user signed up for.
For example, after signing up for the discount on Holsper’s website, you’ll receive this first email including all the key information.
Holsper continues their welcome series with a similar structure to the table above:
- Email 2 – A reminder for the subscriber to use the code.
- Email 3 – Introduces the subscriber to their brand.
- Email 4 – Highlights two of Holsper’s product collections with three best selling items listed for each collection.
- Email 5 – Focus on the pain point of pillowcases not matching decor and how Holsper solves this with their pillowcase range.
2. Abandoned cart
If someone leaves your website after placing items in their basket, you’re going to want to get them back to complete that purchase. This is where the abandoned cart flow comes in. Reminding the potential customer of the products they liked and giving them the option of going back to their basket and through checkout is what abandoned cart flows are all about.
For example, if a potential customer places an item in their basket on Fussy’s website then leaves their site, Fussy sends a follow up email within a couple of hours to encourage them back to their site and through checkout.
This was then followed by another email offering 10% off.
3. Browser abandonment
As long as you have a potential customer’s email address, you can send them browse abandonment emails, whether they leave your site on the homepage, a category page, an internal search results page, or a product page. I recommend focusing on product page abandonment as these potential customers will have a higher intent to purchase. However, it is important to set limits for the number of browser abandonment emails that are sent as you don’t want to overwhelm and annoy your subscribers.
Pet brand, Ruffwear, leverages product page abandonment emails, reminding customers of the product they viewed but didn’t add to basket or purchase. Their browse abandonment email series consisted of two emails one day apart reminding the customer of the product they looked at. Here’s the first email of the series:
Followed by the second email in the series:
4. Upsell/cross sell
Cross selling and upselling email flows are sent post-purchase to encourage your customers to make an additional purchase. For example, If you’re a clothing brand and a customer buys a pair of trousers, an upsell email could encourage them to buy a more expensive pair of trousers. Whereas a cross sell email could encourage them to buy an accessory for their trousers, like a belt or shoes. Typically this email flow will include around 3 emails:
This example from Dollar Shave Club is an upsell email sent straight after an order to encourage the customer to make additional purchases to be delivered alongside their existing order, saving on delivery costs.
The example above is post-purchase. But that doesn’t have to be the case. You can send cross-sell emails before a customer buys from you. Ruffwear do this by integrating a cross-sell component in their browse abandonment emails, showing these suggested products under the reminder of the product the subscriber was interested in.
5. Back in stock
By leveraging a back in stock email flow, you’ll have a group of potential customers who are just waiting for your email so they can make a purchase. Don’t miss out on this revenue by leaving them disappointed that you don’t have stock and without any way of knowing when it’ll be back in stock. Just by providing a back in stock email, your conversion rate should increase. But add in another email to create worry that they’ll miss out on the product again and the conversion rate should increase even more.
Here’s an example of a back in stock email from Lucy and Yak.
6. Replenishment
When it comes to food, drink, and beauty products (to name just a few), these items aren’t going to last forever. And it’s so frustrating when you run out of something just when you need it most. Don’t let your customers experience this disappointment. Use your historical data and knowledge of your product lifecycle to work out when your customer may need to reorder the product. Then send out well-timed reminders to reorder the product before they run out.
For example, The Body Shop sends reminder emails to customers when they’re running low on body care products like this banana shampoo.
7. Birthdays and anniversaries
A great opportunity to engage with your subscribers and thank them for engaging with your brand is by sending an automated email on their birthday. This email could just be to say happy birthday or if it could include a time-limited birthday offer.
Body care brand St Ives celebrates their customer’s birthdays by gifting them an offer they can use when they order.
Another annual email flow you can run is to celebrate your business anniversary. Within this email, you could take the opportunity to educate subscribers about your brand story or run an offer or giveaway.
Cult Beauty sent out an email on their 6th birthday to inform subscribers about their brand anniversary, celebrating with a birthday themed limited edition lip balm shade.
8. Post-purchase
Once someone has purchased from your site, you don’t want them to be gone from your business forever. As well as providing post-purchase customer service, it’s also worth nurturing your existing customers to remain engaged with your brand. Right after purchasing, customers are waiting to hear from you. You have their full attention. Make the most of it.
Alongside order confirmation and shipping emails, these emails could be included in your post-purchase flow:
For example, dog food brand Sundays run a post-purchase series. Here are two of the emails in their automated flow – a how-to email and an email combining a review request and a refer a friend request.
Start with these high converting email flows before branching out to other flows and you’ll be well on your way to email marketing success.
Need a specialist to look over or help you set up your email marketing? Get in touch to schedule a free initial call.