The basics of an effective email strategy.
Why email marketing is still so valuable and how to set up a compelling email journey for your customers.
You are not alone if you feel like you receive so many emails every day. According to FinancesOnline’s report, 333 Billion emails will be sent in 2022. And you’re simply getting your share.
You may think email marketing is useless if you’re not in the digital marketing industry and wonder why everyone still sends you marketing emails. The fact is that email is still one of the best performers of all digital marketing channels. Therefore, I wish to share some tips on building an email marketing strategy to optimize your conversion rates.
There are basically three types of emails you need to consider in an effective email strategy.
1- Transactional emails
They are the ones you have to set up when your website goes live, and they are crucial to the operation of your website. Transactional emails can be used to generate some additional revenue, but their primary purpose is to inform or help your customers.
Transactional emails have higher open and clickthrough rates and are perfect for telling more about your company. So you should be very careful about setting them up. However, some countries have special rules regarding transactional emails (for instance, the US CAN-SPAM Act). So always check regulations when optimizing transactional emails and be on the safe side.
The most common examples of transactional emails
- Account Alerts (account creation emails, subscription ending, expiring credit cards, etc.)
- Security alerts
- Welcome email
- Purchase confirmation,
- A delayed order or an out-of-stock item
- Changes in shipping status
- Order delivered confirmation
- An item is back in stock and ready to be purchased
- Password reminders or resets
- Customer support inquiry has been delivered
- Cart abandonment notifications
- Sending an invoice and/or receipt
Tips & Tricks
1- Be very clear and straightforward. Be consistent in your tone of language with your web/app language, don’t use a misleading subject line, and ensure the transactional information is at the top of your message.
2- Use personalization and make your marketing offers fit within the context. Such as;
“Hi Kaan.
We have received your order, and these are the products that are also purchased together with your order. Just to make sure you didn’t miss anything! “
3- Always include a link version of your primary call to action apart from your button. Especially for your password reset emails.
4- Social proof, testimonials, awards, donations to charities, etc., in the bottom section allows you to create brand loyalty.
5- Never give messages on images; use plain text instead. Many people do not even let your emails install images, but they will still see the text.
6- If you don’t want to be pushy in sales, you can ask for reviews, answer a survey, etc.
Remember that transactional emails will win in terms of open and clickthrough rates. Take advantage of their potential! :)
2- Promotional (Mass) Emails
Mass emails are the ones you send very often, without so much personalization and try to give a broad message. All newsletters, product updates, new features, new product lines, discount campaigns etc., are a part of the group. Your audience receives these announcements very often, and it’s typical to have lower engagement rates than personalized campaigns. However, you will bring additional money to the table thanks to the rule of large numbers.
The most common examples of mass marketing emails
- Promotional, seasonal discounts, special campaigns etc.
- Newsletters
- Product updates / new feature announcement
- Polls, survey requests
- Follow us on social media emails
- Cross-sell and upsell emails
- New blog posts, podcasts, live sessions announcement etc.
Even sending those emails to huge masses, you can still add some personalization and increase your open and clickthrough rates. Personalization doesn’t mean putting customers’ names in the subject line; you can segment your customers depending on their past engagement and use different images and messages even within your mass email campaigns. For example, you sell outdoor gear and have a Father’s Day discount of 20%. Consider splitting your consumers into groups such as campers, hikers, paddlers, climbers, etc. and sending them individual messages, images, CTAs and fast-selling items from their categories rather than sending everyone the same message and image.
Two easiest ways to segment your customers
1- Include a “Let us know you better” section and ask about your customers’ interests.
Everyone won’t use it for sure, but you’ll start collecting valuable data without guesswork. For example, if you sell outdoor gear, ask them what sports they are interested in. Or, if you sell pet supplies, ask them what kind of pet they have and if they have any allergies. In other words, begin from the essential attribute to the least important one, but your goal must narrow your recommendations to what is most relevant to your customers.
2- Tag all your pages and track your customers’ sessions.
Gather data from your viewed blog posts, product categories, and listing pages. For example, when your customer views an article about mountain climbing, tag that profile and combine all tags to calculate the persona score. Ready-made models are available, or you can make your own. But customers’ intent changes over time, so don’t forget to add a multiplier to the time and frequency.
3- Lifecycle (Journey) Emails
These are my favourites. The reason is not only because you must analyze tons of data but also because optimizations never end. Your customers’ activities trigger these emails, and you can create different flows for each event. Here are some of the most popular series, but don’t forget that the sky is the limit regarding journey emails.
Welcome series
After signing up, my customer needs to know you better. So I should first send them;
- A welcome email: Fundamentally, “Thanks for signing up, and we’re glad to have you on board.”. You can reach us via these channels at any time.“ email.
- “Who we are?” email: Who we are, why you should trust us, our core values and our value proposition.
- The best features email: Just in case you missed it, you can use these services for free, we provide these services, etc.
Product onboarding series
A step-by-step series of product features is designed to catch users’ attention with the features they are looking for. Don’t forget you might have tons of features, but users might be interested in only a few. So;
- Do not overload one email with too many features.
- One email should contain a maximum of three messages.
- Adding customer case studies to support those features would be beneficial.
- If you provide an onboarding session in person or virtually, include a call to action in every product onboarding email.
Upsell / cross-sell product discovery series
- Card abandonment emails
- Product recommendation emails based on the last purchases
- Viewed but not purchased reminders
- Viewed or added to card products’ discount notifications
- Blog posts from the category of the viewed product
- Hot selling products etc.
Product usage (mainly for SaaS and marketplaces)
- Weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports
- Account activity notifications
- Exceeding limits, running out of deposits
- And more depending on the type of product you have…
There are still many ways to improve email strategies and optimize conversion rates. Then there are some golden rules, such as optimizing the number of emails sent at a particular time, delivering the right message, not using clickbait, etc. The goal of this post is to give some information about how an effective email marketing strategy should be built. However, there are tons of areas to focus on, from A/B tests to open-rate optimizations. So please let me know in the comments if you want me to provide information on a specific area.
Thanks for reading this article! Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions. Don’t forget to follow to get the latest tips, tricks, and news about digital marketing, growth hacking, e-commerce, marketplaces and start-ups.
