The Three Key Emails That Will Win You More Business
Learning the secret behind personalized emails customers won’t delete
Every day, customers get savvier about what they’re looking for from an online shop, and quicker to press delete without opening any email you send them.
To avoid that, there’s a simple solution: anticipate your customer needs and send them emails right when they need them. There are three crucial points which are paramount to capturing customer interest, getting them to open your emails, and even more importantly,
You want your customers to be glad that they gave you their email address, and learn that your emails are the best, most relevant and personalized messages in their inbox. Here’s how you can create that value for them.
1. The “Abandoned Cart”
This one is talked about by nearly everyone in the business, but I rarely see it done right.
An abandoned cart email must do three things:
First, it must be sent at a time that makes sense for your customers. This varies a lot from industry to industry, and even within verticals. If you’re a B2B, you might find that sending emails a day after an abandoned cart is no good, because your customers are still building their carts, and will continue to do so for a longer period.
Get in tune with your customers and find that time point that makes most sense to them.
Maybe that’s immediately after the cart is abandoned, maybe that’s two weeks later. If you don’t know where to start, test out a few emails. See which ones have, not only the highest open rate, but result in the greatest recovery of revenue.
Secondly, an abandoned cart email must also go beyond the items left in the cart. Letting your customers know their products are there waiting for them is great, but it doesn’t create that additional value we were talking about.
Take the opportunity to provide additional product recommendations. Customers will appreciate seeing items related to the ones in their abandoned cart, and maybe consider adding them when they return. You can also recommend products based on their usual behaviour, which they may have forgotten to order the first time around.
Finally, there should be a series of emails, not one.
People — your customers — are busy. One email is easy to miss, but two gives them a chance to see it, forget about it, and then be reminded another time. Of course, this may vary depending on your industry, but it’s a safe bet that most customers won’t mind a least a second reminder.
2. The “After-Purchase”
Most people use this as a simple receipt. In fact, it can be so much more than that. Like the abandoned cart email, most companies use this but hardly anyone does it in a way that maximises their return from the effort.
It’s not enough to let the client know what they bought and when they can expect it to arrive. The after-purchase email is an amazing, and often-missed, opportunity to provide additional added value for the customer.
Of course, the first order confirmation email should be purely functional, but there are opportunities after that first one that can augment what you offer your customers.
First, consider sending an email acknowledging their purchase with you. Offer advice on the item or items they purchased, for example maintenance, care, or other items that go well with the first.
Then, you can piggyback off the first purchase to try to secure ongoing loyalty. Thank them for their custom and offer them an incentive to shop again with you, ideally tailored around the original purchase. For example, if they bought a consumable product, offer them a discount if they buy it again within a week. If they purchased a piece of furniture, offer than a discount on soft furnishings.
With those two small actions, tailored to the individual, you can continue adding value to your emails and build a strong and fruitful relationship with your customers.
3. The “We Miss You!”
Finally, who hasn’t had a previous customer shop once and then drop off the face of the earth? With personalized We Miss You emails, it’s possible to recapture customers you thought were lost.
Again, the trick is to make the email relevant to the situation, depending on previous purchases if possible, as those will bear the most relevancy.
This type of email might be the trickiest to get right, but when it’s done correctly, the impact can be really powerful.
The trick is to first anticipate when your customers might be wondering something about their previous purchase. Like the after-purchase emails above, what you ideally want to achieve is that right as your customer is thinking, “Oh, looks like I’m about to run out of candles. I’d love to stock up again. What was the name of the store I bought them from?” They get an email from you, right to their inbox, with a discount on candles.
It can seem hard to master the personalized email, but research has shown that customers don’t want generic, bland emails.
Those get deleted without a second glance.
Emails which anticipate customer needs, answering the questions they didn’t know they had, and making them personalized offers too good to refuse, are valuable.
Want to see how we make emails personal? Check out our twenty-minute demo showcasing that, as well as our other amazing features.
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