Whenever we work with new ecommerce clients, we're always surprised at how they're using -- or not using - email to boost new sales.
Some stores blast out random marketing newsletters to their entire subscriber list, without knowing who exactly is reading these emails, or even if the subscribers want to receive them in the first place. Store owners will do this over and over and over again...
Until they annoy all their subscribers and then go out of business.
And then there are Shopify stores that do a good job of sending out newsletters to announce new products or promotions. They have an editorial calendar and they've scheduled the next week or two of worth newsletters to go out to their list.
However...
...these same companies haven't embraced email automation to regularly send out highly targeted emails that customers want to receive.
While blindly machine-gunning newsletters to your entire email list will undoubtedly produce some sales - especially for businesses with a lot of subscribers - these stores are leaving a lot of money on the table by not segmenting and automating their email marketing.
By implementing some of the strategies shared in this short post, you should see email driving 20-30% – or more – of your total sales revenue within 6-8 weeks.
In 2016, Klaviyo found that the average company with an annual revenue of under R100k made an extra R8,560 per quarter by implementing just the Abandoned Cart sequence. That's an extra R34,240 a year generated by one email sequence.
Stores that made between R100k and R1M in revenue saw an extra R30,199.14 per quarter (that's R120,476.56 a year!) with ONLY the Abandoned Cart email sequence.
Here is what we did with this information..
We took this information and build out a email marketing strategy and tested it out on our own small-but growing shopify store.
7 weeks in we were seeing 24% of all revenues attributed to email..
This also means:
- More repeat purchasers
- Higher lifetime customer values
- Better ROI from our paid advertising campaigns
- A rapidly growing email subscriber list from collecting leads on-site
Basically, implementing this email marketing correctly will make every single visitor to your website that much more valuable. No matter where they actually come from.
We’ve since launched a Klaviyo E-commerce Marketing Service too for other brands, and our clients are seeing similar results.
Now let’s get into it…
Part 1: Email Platform
Choosing the right email platform is key.
For Shopify stores it is our personal opinion you need to be using Klaviyo if you’re at all serious about growing email as a sales channel.
Yes… there are alternatives, some of which can be cheaper
Yes… other platforms offer *some* of Klaviyo’s powerful features
But ultimately…
You want the BEST available, and our research says that Klaviyo is, without a shadow of a doubt, the #1 choice for Shopify stores.
It will make you more money than the other options. Period.
Part 2: Email Automations
Automated, personalized email sequences (called ‘Flows’ in Klaviyo) are a huge revenue driver.
These are the most exciting campaigns to us, and the highest ROI email strategies for an e-commerce brand.
Why?
Because you plan, design and set them up ONCE…
Then they keep working – and keep driving sales – forever.
As soon as a new lead or customer makes a qualifying behavior on your website, they automatically trigger these pre-written sales and nurturing sequences over the coming days, weeks and months.
What’s more, everything is automatically personalized to the individual customer.
Yes… these automated emails need ongoing optimization and testing.
But outside of that they’ll run themselves, once the up-front setup work is done.
Here are 5 of the highest ROI automated email campaigns to implement. There are more than 5 you should be using of course, however you can expect these 5 alone to generate anywhere from 10-20% of your total sales. In some cases more. They are the most effective starting point.
In no particular order…
1 – ABANDONED CART SEQUENCE
You’re very likely familiar with this concept already.
A series of 3-4 emails sent to people who begin the checkout process but do not actually purchase.
The sequence encourages people to come back and purchase by overcoming objections, seeing if they need more info before buying, and sometimes incentivizing the sale using discounts.
2 – NEW CUSTOMER THANK YOU SEQUENCE
This is triggered immediately by a customer’s first purchase. The sequence contains 4-10 or more emails.
The goal here is to:
Positively re-enforce the buying decision
Build anticipation for the arrival of their order
Brand indoctrination: share your story
Up-sell related products to immediately increase LTV
Educate people not only about your products, but also about your market
Obviously there is a LOT that goes into this sequence.
However, try to cover the points above over the course of 4-10 emails and 1-3 weeks following the initial purchase and you’ll be ahead of 90% of brands.
3 – THE BRAND WELCOME SEQUENCE
This is huge. Perhaps our personal favorite.
This sequence (also anywhere from 4-10+ emails) is sent to new *leads* as they first interact with your brand, usually through giving you their email addresses on-site.
The emails educate and warm up your prospects with a goal of converting them to new customers after they’ve given you an email address.
On that note…
You should absolutely be collecting email leads on your site. This is often done through exit-intent overlays, header bars or on blog/landing pages offering coupons or content downloads.
If you’re not doing this effectively, you’re likely missing out on a considerable number of new customers every single day.
4 – THE WIN-BACK SEQUENCE
Another powerful, automated email flow.
The goal here is to re-activate or ‘win back’ customers who have not purchased or engaged with your emails for some time.
A short sequence of 3-4 emails is triggered after a few months of a customer’s inactivity.
This is somewhat of a last-ditch attempt to re-engage someone with your brand using a special offer. If they still don’t respond to this, they should be removed from your email list completely and are assumed to be a lost customer.
Removing these old customers is actually a GOOD thing, for multiple reasons I won’t get into here.
5 – THE PRODUCT-SPECIFIC UP-SELL SEQUENCE
Up-selling doesn’t just happen on-site.
Email is a fantastic place to up-sell, cross-sell and increase average customer values.
Aim to create specific up-sell sequences for each of your best-selling products.
Incentivize (or not) people to buy more related and “frequently purchased together” items via highly personalized emails based on recent purchase behavior.
A series of 3 emails delivered a few days after customers are expected to have received their last purchase should do the trick.
As mentioned, there are FAR more than 5 automated email flows you can use to drive incremental sales. But the ones we’ve just covered are the most important to get started with, and will drive the most revenue.
When you’ve got these covered, there are lots more you can implement to add additional sales.
Part 3: Manually Sent Campaigns
These are one-off emails, sent multiples times per month (hopefully multiple times per week) and should be planned in advance.
Don’t make the common mistake of assuming these are mostly discount-led emails, and all about offering % or R off promotions.
There are SO many other ways to send high ROI campaigns without constantly discounting.
One combination that seems to be working well for us is limiting promotional, discount-based email campaigns, and sending more VALUE based emails instead.
This means…
links to your blogs, videos, ebooks or any other content you produce that’s fun/educational and relevant to your market.
You can tastefully drop links to your products inside the content.
This strategy builds huge goodwill with your list. It also keeps your email engagement high AND it generates sales…
Far more sales than you’d think, actually.
You can also email about new product releases, new reviews/testimonials, competitions, or anything else that doesn’t feel like direct, in-your-face selling.
Your customer and prospect lists will eat these emails up, and BUY from them.
Here’s what we’re doing currently in this area for own our test-case brand…
3 manual campaigns per week, comprised of:
- Promotions
- New products
- Links to GREAT posts on our blog
- Customer reviews and testimonials
We’re seeing about 55% of all email-driven revenue coming from these campaigns. And that’s mainly using value-led, non promotional emails.
Share and get 15% off!
Simply share this product on one of the following social networks and you will unlock 15% off!