I receive about 10 to 12 emails a day from different brands like Michael Kor, Pandora, dockers, and Tiffany and Co. I like reading those emails because it allows me to spy on my competitors. After all, I work for a luxury jewelry brand. I always want to know what other people are doing, and some of my favorite emails from these companies are personalized ones. It seems somebody took their time to write the email, but they didn’t because I already know what’s happening behind closed doors. Right? So, one of my favorite ones I always get is birthday emails.
I always like to see how creative they are. The subject lines, the design, and these people know a lot about me because I’m just giving them information all the time. After all, I want to know how creative they can be. So the thing about email automation is collecting a lot of data. I’ll go for that. I will explain all these things today, so you guys can better understand what it is. So email, let’s start with email. Email creates a conversation, you could send promotions, and it builds brand loyalty. It creates brand awareness. Which every brand needs! So let me tell you what email automation is.
Email automation is the best way for brands to engage email messages, you know, with their customers at the right time with the right action. So, we want to know when the right time to send an email is, and we’ll know what effect the customer has taken on our website or with the brand so we can know when to hit them. For example, when I receive birthday emails, these brands already know it’s my birthday. Maybe I’ve said to them through a product. I selected a form, and I filled out a popup. So they know this stuff. So they want to come back and re-target my inbox. So I can buy more. Email automation is not a replacement for your current email marketing strategy or system. It’s not looking to replace.
What you’re doing is just looking to add value to it. So let’s talk about what actions some people call actions or triggers. So here’s an example of a trigger. I gave you an example, a birthday is a trigger. So if it’s your birthday, the brand knows it, they’re going to prepare real customizable or personalized emails such as, it’ll say happy birthday, Windy; we notice you’ve been a loyal customer in the past. Here’s maybe a 25% coupon. You’ve bought this stuff. If we could show what I purchased before, depending on what kind of business it is, or products that are very similar to what I’ve purchased previously. So it’s very personalized, it’s for this person. So that’s very different from the email campaign. That can be very generic, and people love personalization. People get excited when they receive something made especially for them, even if it is a computer doing it. So we’re going to talk about some of what I call email series that we can automate and personalize emails.
Virtual cart abandonment. Go onto a website, browse, and put it in my cart, but somebody calls me on the phone, and I have completely forgotten about my order. Brands are going to take that data and send you a cart abandonment. We know the product, and they are highly committed to buying. So we’re going to hit them with a couple of emails.
So we may send one within two hours of them putting the product in the cart. It’ll just say, hey, you forgot your product. Complete your purchase.
Then we hit them in the next six to nine hours saying, oh, we know you’re busy, but don’t forget to buy this. If we want to get a little more aggressive, we might go 12 and 24.
Some people go a little further than that, but the more emails you send, the lower likely customers will convert. So if you go to the 12 and the 24 hours, which you can do is hit them with a coupon and say, hey, we know you wanted to buy this cause you put it in your car, here’s the 25% coupon, complete your purchase, right.
Browse abandonment is very similar. A customer that’s already subscribed, meaning you already have the email. So your tracking every page, every product they see. If whichever product they stay on the longest, we’ll send an email after 12 hours and say, hey, you’re looking at this. You want to buy it right now. Here’s a coupon to complete your order.
So there’s the customer Win Back. A customer may have had a bad experience with the brand or just bought it a long time ago. We want to bring them back and say.
“Hey, don’t forget about us. We missed you. Come back and buy something. Thank you.” So we want also to think the customers for joining the brand because winning customers. It is a lot of work! So you want to make them feel special. So they can know that we’re there for them.
Product reviews and cross sale are emails to send to customers to build trust. So if the customer buys this product, obviously they want to buy it, we want to know their experience now, not only for us, so that we can market it. So the rest of the world can know how great your brand and product are. So keep that in mind.
So just customers that always come back. Sometimes brands forget about the customers that are loyal to them and who consistently and constantly buy from them. We need to make them feel special and welcome series.
We want to tell a customer, hey, welcome to the brand. We’re here to help you. We’re fantastic, and we want you to have an excellent experience. So those are some of the actions or triggers we want to set up for our customers. So on average, email automation can generate about 70% of the revenues that have just been sitting from customers who wish to purchase.
How do I maximize email automation? Collect as much data about your customers as you possibly can. I think a brand I follow does an excellent job with this is Pandora. They want to know your name, your birthday when you got married, the special dates, and your mother’s birthday. They want as much information as you can give them. They want to know if you prefer gold or silver. So do the same thing, collect as much data as the customers will provide you. With that, you could create different groups, thus segmentation. So if you are a company that sells t-shirts and you have one customer that only buys white t-shirts, you put them in a white t-shirt segmentation.
The next crucial thing is AB testing. AB testing is just an experiment. You create a campaign. Oh, flow and have the same type of, you make some changes with two different variables, and we want to test all the time to see which one converts better. Because not everybody likes the same message, subject, line images, and content, it might be the font. So we want to get as much data as possible. Okay,
here’s a tool that you can use to get a better idea:
- So the popups will allow you to do different things. If someone’s exiting your website or just came on there for the first time, you could set up this popup to collect data like emails, birthdays, zip codes, and anything you want to order, but don’t make a long form for the first time. So because that could create fatigue, and they, like, I’m not filling this out. So what you should do is collect emails and stages. So the first time they come, get a name and email. So that way, you already have a point of contact. What’d you do is start sending promotional emails to them? And then once, you already have an email whenever they buy something. Now you have an address. Um, you have a credit card, and so on.
- The second is just email service providers focusing on e-commerce and email automation. I don’t have a preference. Whatever works with what you’re trying to do will work.
