Using automation for eCommerce email marketing lets your business deliver the kind of personalised experiences customers value from brands, without the stress of handling everything manually. For any eCommerce business, email marketing is one of the best marketing channels you have. It’s a direct route to customers who have either already bought from you, or
Using automation for eCommerce email marketing lets your business deliver the kind of personalised experiences customers value from brands, without the stress of handling everything manually.
For any eCommerce business, email marketing is one of the best marketing channels you have.
It’s a direct route to customers who have either already bought from you, or at least given you permission to show up in their inbox (so they’re at least aware of, and interested in you).
And it also delivers one of the highest ROIs in eCommerce marketing, returning between $36 and $40 for every $1 spent.
There are so many automated sequences you can create for your eCommerce brand, but there are a few tried and tested sequences that we’ve seen deliver commercial returns for clients time and again.
Welcome sequences should be the first emails you send when someone signs up for your emails.
Customers are never going to be more ready to engage with your brand than when they first sign up to your emails, so a welcome sequence is an ideal chance to start telling your story and building relationships
with customers.
Welcome sequences can also be great to building engagement in other areas of marketing. For example using a welcome sequence email to encourage users to follow you on social media.
Everyone loves a bargain, and sales sequences are ideal for warming your audience up for an upcoming sale.
These can be effectively used if you have VIP or loyalty segments in your email list who would value getting to know about sales before anyone else (and even getting specific offers).
You should make these emails visually appealing and provide a wide range of the offers available during your sale to entice your audience.
If you have your targeting set up correctly you could even create bespoke sales emails relevant to what your customers have bought in the past to make them even more personal.
Here’s a good example of a sales email as part of a sequence we created for TV beds, which generated more than £3,000 in sales:
You’ll know how easy it is to get distracted by life when you’re browsing online. Someone knocks on the door. One of your kids suddenly needs something. Or you get up for a drink and suddenly find yourself doing jobs around the house.
An abandoned browse sequence can reengage shoppers and remind them what products they were looking at or showing an interest in.
Gravity Fitness do a good job of this with this abandoned browse email, which not only shows the customer the product they were looking at, but use it to highlight a few other products the customer might be interested in as well.
Imagine a customer gets to the point of putting items in their basket and then gets distracted.
Now those items are just sat there, forgotten about, so close to a sale you can taste it.
But the customer has forgot all about them.
Abandoned cart emails for brilliant for giving customers a little nudge to remind them they were in the middle of completing a purchase when whatever it was got in the way.
Here’s a really simple, direct, but effective abandoned cart email example you could use.
One tip to make this type of email more effective, is to try and make it personal.
A generic “don’t forget about your purchase” email might work.
But a more personalised email with product images and details of what was in the cart (even something as simple as the example above) can push those conversion rates up even more.
One option for your abandoned cart emails is to entice a sale by offering a discount after a certain number of email reminders.
I wouldn’t recommend going straight in with a discount though. Sometimes a gentle reminder can be enough to complete the sale before you start giving money away.
It doesn’t even have to be a cash discount either. Just an added extra like free shipping is worth a go with items already sitting in a shopping basket.
More than 7 in 10 customers say they want personalised experiences with brands, and more than three quarters say they’re frustrated when these experiences don’t happen.
Does it get more personal than remembering someone’s birthday?
This is an easy win for eCommerce businesses because you can easily capture this information in a form.
Once you have it, set up an automatic sequence that goes out on a customer’s birthday offering a special discount (or even just celebrating the day and wishing them happy birthday).
And it doesn’t just have to be limited to birthdays.
Say you’re a jewellers that sells engagement rings, you could send emails timed for the date your customer got engaged.
Or it could be any product that can be related to some kind of anniversary.
Thank you email sequences are simple but highly effective emails that can help build some brand loyalty with customers.
Remember, customers have dozens of email subscriptions, and you’ll know from your own inbox how many of those are just trying to sell to you.
A simple thank you email after a purchase (or even something just thanking them for being a customer) can make you stand out and build some brand loyalty for not much effort.
One thing I would warn against though, is using thank you emails as an immediate cross sell to a customer.
These shouldn’t really be treated as sales emails, they’re about building relationships and loyalty with your subscribers that will pay off in the long run.
Once you’ve bought something you’re going to want to know how to take care of it to make it last longer, or maybe even how to put the thing together.
This is a perfect opportunity for an email explaining how to do these things.
Whether it’s how to assemble their new TV stand or how to clean their new glass table top without leaving streaks, educational or informational emails are useful for helping customers achieve a goal, and keeping
you in their mind.
Nothing is more effective for convincing future customers to buy from you than a positive review from someone who’s just bought your product or used your service.
But, getting good reviews can be difficult. The customer has to go out of their way to leave a review and it’s not always obvious where or how they do it.
A product review email sequence, with a link or QR code to a Google Business Profile, Trustpilot account or whatever it is, takes the hassle out of leaving reviews and makes it as easy as possible for a customer to do it.
It can also remind customers who had planned on leaving a review but forgot.
Here’s a simple example of a product review email from Holland & Barrett.
Customers aren’t always going to buy everything they need in one go. Sometimes they might completely forget something, or not even realise there’s another product available related to what they’ve just bought.
Think accessories in fashion or add ons for game consoles, or extra equipment for gym goers.
Cross sell emails help you promote these extra products or services that would complement what a customer has just bought.
I wouldn’t send these straightaway because you don’t want to come across as money grabbing when someone has only just given you their cash.
But timed a few days or weeks after a purchase can help earn you a few extra sales.
It is important to make the cross sell relevant to something the customer has already bought though.
For repeat purchase items, say you’re selling coffee pods or something a customer will need to buy again in a few weeks or months, these running low sequences are a great reminder tool to top up before the customer runs out.
For coffee sellers, an email a few weeks after a customer makes a purchase can remind them to check if their coffee is running low and to reorder before they run out.
Depending on the product and order volume, you can time these sequences to each product.
It’s likely to happen that at some point you’ll run out of stock on a particular item, and still have customers waiting to buy it.
It’s no good for you because your goal is to make money, so the last thing you want is a customer going somewhere else or forgetting about the purchase.
Back in stock sequences let you take a customer’s details and notify them when the item is available again as a nudge to buy it now.
You can even frame these emails around building brand loyalty by building “VIP” lists for customers to get notified when items are back in stock, and also add them to a list notifying them first when new items are being made available.
Building this feeling of exclusivity around future products can make your customers feel more special and attached to their brand if they feel like they’re getting access to things before anyone else.
One word of warning. It can help to set rules on how much inventory you have available before sending out this type of notification.
The last thing you want is to send a back in stock email to a list of people bigger than the number of items you have in stock and have people be told it’s run out again so they still can’t buy it.
If you want to start generating more money from email marketing, our email marketing agency can help.
We’ve got experts in all major email marketing platforms including Klaviyo, Mailchimp and HubSpot along with a team of email copywriters and designers who can write and create email templates that convert more of your subscribers into paying customers.
1. Let’s Talk
Book a 30 minute consultation call with one of our team so we can understand your goals for digital marketing and what services you need within your budget.
2. Let’s get strategic
Once we know where you want to get to, we’ll put a plan in place to get you there. You’ll get a clear outline explaining all the costs and what results you can expect.
3. Let’s start growing your business
Once we’re all pointing in the right direction our expert team will get to work delivering what we’ve promised and getting you the best ROI possible.
