Star

Tag Archives: email marketing

Use Black Friday email campaigns to boost sales in your e-commerce store

Black Friday email campaigns that boost sales

November 4, 2015

Another Black Friday is just around the corner and—likely—another record-breaking holiday sales season will come with it. Email campaigns are a proven way to effectively announce sales and boost profits. But what should you send? Take a look below for some ideas to use for the holiday season.

Our latest Spree-as-a-service offer frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

The Sale Announcement Email

We’ll start with the simple one first: Make sure your customers know you’re having a sale, and what it is, because you can bet your competitors will. Keep it simple. Everyone loves sales, so you’re subject header can just be “50% off Everything!” It will almost guarantee you that shoppers will at least open the email to find out more.

The Free Gift Email

Everyone loves free right? Including a free gift if customers hit a certain dollar amount is a great way to boost the average sale amount. If a customer has spent $90 and is $10 away from earning a free gift, they’ll likely spend that extra ten dollars to hit the target.

 

Again, the subject can be simple. “Free” will almost always get someone interested. You can also spin this so it doesn’t seem so salesy, and being that Black Friday is around Thanksgiving, in the body of the email you can include something along the lines of “Our way of saying thanks,” or “Our way of giving back during the holiday season.”

The Extended Sale Email

Black Friday sales don’t have to end on Fridays. If you’re in e-commerce—and you’re reading this blog so I’m assuming you are—the sale can last all the way to Cyber Monday. Last year, retailers brought in over $2 billion on the Monday after Black Friday.

Not everyone gets around to shopping on Black Friday. They may have missed the boat and will jump out of their seats when they see your “Extended 40% Sale off EVERYTHING” email.

The Black Friday Giveaway

This is similar to philosophy to the “Free Gift” email—people love free stuff and rewards. Giveaways and contests are a great way to inject more life into your sales than those of your competitors.

The terms of the giveaway or sale will be up to you. One common strategy is to offer your customers a chance to win a gift to your site for every purchase they make. Or, you can guarantee a small prize—say a $5 gift card— for any purchase, with a chance to win the Grand Prize, such as a $1K gift card.

The Humor Email

Do you know what people like almost as much as free stuff? Funny jokes. Announcing your sale in a way that J.Crew did last year is a great way to get a leg up on competitors and their potentially similar sales.

You can also include jokes specific to your business or industry. For example, if you’re in the clothing business, a post-Thanksgiving email featuring your stretchy pants might not be a bad idea.

Rember that your email marketing campaign should be a part of the entire Q4 sales and marketing strategy. Read more on how to prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Holiday season here.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

email marketing tips for ecommerce

How to make email marketing work for you

October 28, 2015

Marketing emails can be a great tool to boost sales. But to do so, you have to do it right. What do I say to my customers? And just as importantly, when do I say it, and how often? These tips will make sure you’re emailing the right way and will help you take your business to the next level.

Our latest Spree-as-a-service offer frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

Content and Relevance:

This isn’t Lord of the Rings and one email does not rule them all. In other words, what’s relevant to some customers won’t connect with others. For example, if you sell clothing, sending your male customers a coupon for a sale on ladies’ underwear is not going to get you very far. Worse yet, it might make the impression that your store specializes in women’s apparel and have your male customers looking elsewhere.

Tracking your customer information, such as gender and age, will help you send targeted emails, which will, in turn, increase your open rate. Tracking sales information will help you target as well. The above example was pretty simple, but what about a business that doesn’t make it as easy as splitting up your customers into a 50/50 (emails for males, emails for females) group?

If you sell a wide variety of items, such as pet supplies, it would make sense to track customers’ sales. If Susan has spent a year buying nothing but cat toys, would it make sense to send her information on a sale for all goldfish products? Probably not.

Keep in mind, there are times when it makes sense for you to send customers information about the stuff they don’t typically buy. Keep this in mind for the holidays, when customers aren’t necessarily shopping for themselves. Speaking of appropriate times…

Timeliness:

When to send an email is just as important as what to send. The sooner you send an order confirmation, the better. The longer the customer goes without receiving that confirmation, the more apprehensive he or she will be that something went wrong with the process.

Likewise, a shipment confirmation will also placate any fears that the order is NOT on the way. With the confirmation, include a realistic time that the customer can expect to receive the package, such as 3-5 business days.

Lastly, an email asking the customer how he/she likes the product is a nice way to wrap up the sale. It shows that you care that your customers receive their products as they wanted when they wanted. Schedule this for a couple of days after the long end of your confirmation (using the above example, send the email on day six or seven). If you send this email too soon, it will have customers thinking they should have received it by now and something went wrong when in reality the item is still on its way.

As far as emails that are intended to have customers buy again, research shows there are certain times that will lead to higher purchase rates. Monday through Wednesday, as well as Sunday, have proven to be the best days to send your sales emails.

On top of that, there are certain times of day that correlate with higher purchases as well. During the workdays, as well as during commutes home, have proven to be the best times to reach out to customers.

Frequency:

This last point is key, and can also be tricky to manage correctly. Email too often and you risk annoying the customer, who will in turn likely tag your emails as spam. Not good. Go too long without contacting your customers and you risk them forgetting about your company and going with a competitor. Also not good.

There’s no all-encompassing guide to point to that will provide best practices for all businesses, but as a general rule, you don’t want to email your customers more than once a week (with the exception of the aforementioned post-transaction confirmation emails), and you also don’t want to go more than a month without sending out your email campaign.

Hitting that sweet spot of perfect frequency will often depend on your business. For example, if you work in a subscription business, you’ll want to time replenishment emails with the frequency of the customers’ needs. If he/she buys dog food once a month, a reminder to place the order every three weeks would be appropriate, to give the customer some leeway and provide time for shipping. This way, the food will be there by the end of the month and Fido won’t go hungry.

Tools that Can Help

When you’re starting out, you can probably manage many of these tasks on your own. But what about when you’re handling 100, 500, or 1000 orders per month? Using an email service like MailChimp or Klaviyo will help. Coupling one of those services with a tool that can automate the process will allow you to easily and efficiently communicate with your customers.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

5 emails to customers that will increase your sales

5 emails to customers that will boost sales

September 8, 2015

Communicating with your customers is the key to e-commerce success. But what should you send? Push too hard for sales and you risk getting marked as spam. Don’t reach out enough, and you risk losing sales that a simple email would have sealed for you. Here are five emails that you should employ in your outreach plan today.

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

1) Thank you for your Order

There’s no tidier way to wrap up customers’ transactions than thanking them for ordering. It shows that you care that they got the order on time and as expected. Fail to do this and you fail to establish a bond with the customer. There’s no reason for them not to shop with a competitor in the future.

Also, It will also open up a dialogue in case they DON’T receive the item on time, or as expected. There’s no better way to lose customers than by disappointing them. By opening up the communications, you can fix the problem and they will buy from you again.

2) Order Status Updates

Keeping in line with some of the key points above, if you keep the communication open, it will alleviate fears from the customer. Telling patrons, “Order Confirmed” and “Your item has been shipped,” will put to rest any doubts that a problem happened in between the time they paid and the time the item they receive the product.

3) Product Review

Providing a quick and easy way for customers to review your products is another great method to enhance customer loyalty. If it’s not exactly as they wanted it, customers should be able to say so. Remember, you’re selling things based on a picture, so things might not be perfect every time. And if you notice a significant amount of customers complaining about an item, you can use the constructive criticism to either change how you present the product or remove it from your inventory altogether.

4) Product Reorder Reminder

If you’re in the subscription business, this is key to gaining customer retention. You want to hit the sweet spot of sending the email late enough that it’s time to restock, but in enough time that the customer will receive the subscribed item(s) before the last order’s supply runs out.

For example, if you sell coffee, and customers orders a one-month supply, you’ll want to reach out to them about three weeks after they received their last shipment. That way, you’re close enough to the point that it’s time to restock, but have enough time to get the coffee to their doorstep before Day 30. Because if your customers are anything like me, you don’t want to mess with them without their coffee.

5) Personalized Recommendations

It never hurts to suggest an item or items that you think your customer might enjoy. Staying with the above example, if your customer orders dark coffee, and you just got in a new Brazilian Super Dark Roast, it couldn’t hurt to let your customer know you just got this product in.

During holiday sales, it couldn’t hurt to suggest some products that are out of your customers’ typical buying habits. At these times, patrons are looking to buy gifts, instead of typical orders, so you can cash in on the shopping rush with your existing customers. Just be careful doing this during normal times of the year, as it’s a good way to get your emails marked as spam.

Additional Tips and Tools

Sending these emails yourself will be fine when you’re first starting out. However, down the line, you may want to look at a service like MailChimp or Klaviyo that will help you send those emails. You can even automate these third-party services so emails go out at the moment of a desired action. For more best practices, including when and how frequently to send emails, visit our article, “How to Make Marketing Emails Work for You.”

Vendo marketplace platform frees you from the burden of self-hosting and maintenance. Contact us now for a demo and launch an eCommerce platform at a fraction of a typical cost and within weeks instead of months.

replenishment emails in an inbox

Turn one-time buyers into recurring customers with replenishment emails

May 12, 2015

Email marketing can be an invaluable tool for the retention of customers. Are you getting the most out of it? How about with your automated emails? A quick little replenishment email fired off from your system at the right time to the right place can make a world of difference when it comes to converting one-time buyers into dedicated, recurring customers.

Spree as a Service comes with the same functionality as the open-source plus all the SaaS advantages, such as free integrations and features, no upgrades or maintenance, and effortless scalability. Try our free trial or request a demo.

What are Replenishment Emails?

In a nutshell, replenishment emails are simple, periodic emails that remind a client that now might be a good time to place another order.

How this differs from other email reminders is that a replenishment email is specifically targeted to customers who recently purchased a product that will eventually run out, expire and need a refill. For example, those of you that are dog/pet owners may recognize this scenario:

You have a dog. Your dog needs food. You buy dog food. Your dog eats the food. The food starts to run out.

It’s inevitable that the bag of food will run out. The problem is that sometimes we don’t realize this until it’s either a day away, or that morning we wake up, go for a scoop, and hear the empty scrape off the bottom of the bag.

Fortunately, replenishment emails step in before running out becomes a pain. Let’s pick up where we left off with the above scenario.

The dog food is about to run out. You don’t even notice. Then, an email arrives reminding you to buy dog food. You order more. Dog keeps eating. Dog is happy. Repeat process next month.

Replenishment emails help take some of the burdens of the responsibility off of the customer, acting as helpful reminders that a purchase is necessary.

Why should we use replenishment emails? Why not just wait for customers to come back on their own accord?

If you’re an online business that ships its products to the customer, even a day of delay and necessity could cause the customer to rush down to their local store to buy from your competitor.

Sure, you might be thinking, “it’s okay to lose a sale from a recurring customer since you just acquired 9 other new customers that same month.” However, those are ten one-time purchases, rather than 10 recurring purchases.

It’s easier to retain a customer than earn a new one. You don’t have to constantly convince your existing (and satisfied) customers that you are the right choice since you’ve already earned their trust.

They have a need that you know you can genuinely, specifically, and easily fulfill. Plus, the time it takes to sell to them is nothing compared to the time it takes to make new sales, so don’t let your existing customers slip away!

Okay, I’m sold. How do I start sending replenishment emails?

Well, you could start by keeping track of when each customer makes a purchase and then remember to send them an email sometime down the road. However, for most businesses, sending out hundreds to thousands of emails each month by hand isn’t all that viable. Instead, we strongly recommend you sign up with an email marketing solution.

MailChimp is one service that you can integrate with your storefront to help you send out replenishment emails automatically. All you have to do is type up your email beforehand and set the conditions for sending them out to your clients.

How should I phrase my replenishment emails?

Keep it simple, straightforward, and on topic.

You aren’t trying to sell your customers something they don’t already need and there’s no need to push other products since you can save those for your other promotion strategies.

Make it a friendly reminder, with a little discount or free shipping if they place their order, nothing more. The urgency and the need enough should make it a fairly reliable conversion.

When is a good time to send this email?

Timing is key to making more sales and keeping your customers happy.

For instance, you don’t want your car to only let you know you need gas after you run out. While it’s nice to know why the car stopped running, it would be even nicer to know a little earlier and not deal with the pain of walking to the gas station.

It’s all about finding that middle ground between “too late” (when people will be unhappy) and too early (when people would rather wait). Serve them when they are aware of a need, but not after they’ve found other solutions.

From our experience, we found that somewhere two-thirds to three-quarters of the way towards needing that refill would be a pretty prime time to send out a replenishment reminder.

Essentially, you want them to have enough time to take action to avoid any interruptions in the product and service they enjoy. Fido shouldn’t miss a meal, and a road trip’s no fun when you run out of gas.

For services that use a monthly subscription, or whose product will likely run out in a month, sending that email at the start of week three should be spot on.

As well, for those of you who have a two-week free trial for their service, you will want to send out an email just before the trial expires expire—so they don’t experience an interruption in the service—and then again when it does expire.

The Bottom Line:

Replenishment emails help you spend less effort chasing down leads and converting your customers into recurring buyers.

As you can tell by now, this sort of email marketing doesn’t exactly work for every type of product (furniture would be a good example of items that do not need to be replenished on a monthly basis… unless of course, you live some sort of wild rock-star life).

However, even if you aren’t in the dog show business, you might actually be running a business that offers a product or service that could follow the replenishment process.

Think about the products you sell. Do any of them have a finite quantity (such as cleaning products, food), require refills (coffee machines, water filters), or wear out (razor blades, scrub brushes, and even running shoes only go so far).

If there’s a chance one of your customers will need more, look into getting started with replenishment emails.

Continue reading