Email Marketing Programs in 2024: Welcome, Win Back, Abandoned Cart & More
While an email marketing program may not seem as trendy as the latest social media platform, don’t underestimate email as a channel to use to grow your business. Email, eDM, or ‘electronic direct mail’ is a personal line to your customer’s inbox. It can be highly personalised, making it more relevant than other mass channels and more likely to help you convert a sale or lead. The great news is that once set up, many emails can be automated through your chosen email marketing platform. Here we’ll look at the features you’ll need as part of a successful email marketing strategy for your business, big or small.
Capturing email addresses and consent
Before you can start your email marketing program, you’re going to need some customer email addresses! The foundation of a useful email database is ensuring all your customers have opted in to receive marketing emails from your brand. Emailing customers without this consent is considered breach of the Spam Act 2003 in Australia. It’s also advised to avoid purchasing lists of email addresses. Apart from these consumers not having given consent to receive emails from your brand, they haven’t indicated they’re interested in your brand either, so they’re not likely to purchase from you anyway.
It’s also a requirement for your company to have a Privacy Policy, which discloses how you will use and store customer data, as well as how customers can contact you to remove them from your database.
To being to gather email addresses and consent, there are a few ways to go about this:
Adding a popup to your website. The pop-up requests an email address, usually in exchange for an incentive like a discount code or gift with purchase
Run lead generation competitions like ’25 words or less’ competitions with an optional email opt-in section
Adding opt-in boxes onto your website footer.
The welcome email
A welcome email serves as an initial point of contact with new subscribers, offering a prime opportunity to make a lasting impression. The welcome email format should introduce your brand and hero products or services and contain an offer to help convert your new subscribers into customers. This offer might be a discount or free product with their first purchase, or a free download of useful information. In your chosen ecommerce platform, you can set up these discounts to only be applicable for customers who haven’t made a purchase yet, as long as your email platform is integrated with your ecommerce platform.
A second welcome email may be beneficial if your customer hasn’t opened the first welcome email, made a purchase or taken the desired action after receiving their first email. To further encourage a first purchase, set up a second email in your email platform where you can test deepening the initial discount offered (for example, increasing the discount offered from 15% off to 20% off).
Cross-sell and upsell emails
Cross-sell and upsell emails are great strategies for growing customer lifetime value. As your customers have already made a purchase from you, they like your brand and are more likely to give you money again than customers who have never heard of you, so they’re hot prospects! Examine your sales data and use the segmentation functionality in your email platform, to set up cross sell or upsell emails relevant to your products.
Here are some examples of potential cross-sell and upsell opportunities:
For an insurance company, cross-sell car insurance to customers who have already purchased home insurance but don’t yet have car insurance
For a cat grooming company, cross-sell grooming accessories like brushes to customers who have already purchased shampoo and conditioner but haven’t bought brushes yet
For a skincare company, cross-sell skin health vitamins to those customers who have already bought a face wash or moisturiser, but haven’t purchases skin health vitamins yet
For a haircare company, upsell a bundle of shampoo and conditioner to customers who may have purchased the items separately in the past
For highly engaged app users, upsell from the free version to the paid version for exclusive features and functionality.
Win back or churn reduction emails
Customer churn, or the customers that leave and don’t purchase from you again, is an inevitable part of business. However, customers that have lapsed or not purchased from you for a while are not necessarily lost. As they’ve previously purchased from you, you may be able to win them back with the right offer.
To send successful win back emails, firstly find out the frequency between purchases of your products. For example, if customers usually purchase your products every 8 weeks, and a customer hasn’t purchased for 10 weeks, they may respond well to an offer to entice them back. In a win back email campaign, test different offers like a discount code, free shipping or gift with purchase, to see which is most successful at bring customers back to you.
Abandoned cart emails
Abandoned cart emails offer a great way to capture lost sales opportunities by reminding shoppers to complete their purchase. These emails can be automated via your email platform and integrated ecommerce platform. As abandoned cart emails are very common now, many customers expect a discount code to complete their purchase and may even abandon their cart on purpose to get that code! Do some testing to see what makes a good abandoned cart email for you, and which incentives drives customers back to complete their purchase. A discount code usually does the trick.
Do keep in mind that customers need to have given consent to receive marketing emails and abandoned cart emails. Some ecommerce platforms and email platforms will send abandoned cart emails to all customers, regardless of whether they have opted in to receive marketing emails or not. When setting up any email automations for abandoned cart emails, be sure to add a filter to ensure the customer has given the appropriate consent to receive marketing emails.
Loyalty program emails
If you’re using a loyalty program, email plays a vital role in retaining customers and growing customer lifetime value. Via email automation, you can send customers emails when they earn points and rewards as part of your program, new benefits are available, or when they reach a new loyalty program tier. This helps to keep your program and your brand front of mind and bring customers back to your store to purchase again.
Ready to get started with an email marketing program?
Get in touch! We can help you set up a platform and integrate it with your ecommerce platform. Plus, we’ll help with great looking email templates and email automation to keep things running smoothly.