In this week’s article, I am going to discuss email marketing which, in my mind, is the second most important tool for omni-channel success behind only your ecommerce site.
If you happened to read the article by John James that I linked to in this post, you can easily see that improving your conversion rates, number of site visits per each new customer, and average number of lifetime purchases per customer drives much higher lifetime value per customer. Email marketing is the most consistent driver of growth for number of visits and purchases over the course of a customer’s lifetime for almost all retail verticals.
Step 1 to a successful email marketing strategy is acquiring your customer’s (or potential customer’s) email address. There are several effective techniques that you can use to encourage your customers to give you their email addresses both online and in-store. I will list a few here that you have probably encountered yourself while shopping:
In-Store
Offering paperless, emailed receipts at checkout
Discount coupon good for next visit on signing up
Simply asking if they would like to join at checkout
Online
Popup banner offering discount on first order for signing up
Checkbox during checkout offering notifications of deals and specials
Back in stock notification offers
Email signup box on every page of your website
Step 2 to a successful email marketing strategy is creating a marketing calendar. How often you email your customers and the content involved depends on your product lines and your resources. Many retailers are prepared to email their customers on a daily basis basis but most small retailers don’t have the resources to create and send emails that often. I recommend a minimum of 1 email per month with additional emails in months where seasonal sales, etc. are happening. A weekly email supplemented by special events emails is what I consider ideal for most small businesses if they have the resources to generate the content needed for that many emails.
There are also several automated emails that need to be implemented. Many of the obvious ones such as order confirmation, order shipped, order delivered, and abandoned cart emails can be generated by most modern eCommerce platforms and can be customized to include marketing. Others such as a welcome email for signing up for newsletters, etc. can be generated by most bulk email services like Constant Contact or MailChimp.
Step 3 to a successful email marketing strategy is sticking to your calendar! A lot of retailers I have worked with get everything in place and diligently stick to their schedule for a few months but then start to miss dates until they might only be sending out the occasional sale email. One excuse that has I still can’t believe I heard is that they are too busy dealing with orders to keep up with the email campaign that was generating them. Have a plan to grow if you start becoming successful or you won’t be able to keep doing the things that are making you successful in the first place!
Next week I will go over the different types of emails you can use to promote your business and how best to utilize them.
Good luck selling!
Jim