5 conversion boosting e-mail campaigns

Acquiring new customers takes a lot of time, energy and high investments. But what happens to those customers that bought something in the past? Most of the time - nothing at all. I come across a lot of online shops that actually don’t use their data, which – in my opinion – is a huge miss. Information you have about existing customers can help you send them relevant offers that help you drive your conversion through the roof. Forget birthday campaigns – it’s time for some real conversion stars!

Sure, first impressions are important. A good first impression is what makes a satisfied customer come back to your online store. But it doesn’t stop there. Or at least it shouldn’t. If your database is set up correctly, an online shop automatically collects a lot of data about your existing customers with every transaction they make. And there is a huge potential for online shops that actually use this data for targeted loyalty/marketing campaigns.

The following generic type of campaigns can be very useful in your marketing strategy:

1. Welcome campaigns

A good example of a loyalty campaign is a welcome campaign. A welcome campaign consists of a series of e-mails sent after an initial registration or sale. Especially for online shops selling complex or expensive products this can be a very effective way of generating interest and informing prospects and/or customers.

2. Cross or upsell campaigns

You probably know that relevancy is the key to success in email marketing. So if a customer buys a scratching pole for a kitten, you know that in a few months’ time, when the cat has grown bigger, it will be needing a higher scratching pole. By setting up follow up campaigns you can use this knowledge to automatically send them an offer when that time has come.

3. Abandoned shopping cart campaigns

Another very effective way of boosting your conversion is sending your customers an email whenever they abandon their online shopping cart. Because these campaigns are so relevant for their recipients, abandoned shopping cart emails can increase conversion rates by 67% !

4. Win-back/retention campaigns

Let’s start with the facts:

• Companies typically lose 50% of their customers every 5 year
• Companies have a 5 - 10% chance of turning a prospect into a customer
• Companies have a 20 - 40% chance of winning back an ex-customer

(Source)

What happens to those customers that were once so happy buying from you – but didn’t come back the following years? It would be a great loss to just ignore this fact and to just keep on sending generic news/information, or doing nothing at all. Acknowledge the fact that they abandoned your shop instead and remind them of your shop. Win customers back by sending them an 30% discount voucher for their next purchase if they decide to return to your webshop.

5. Celebrate your customer

Forget birthday campaigns. In the week that someone turns older another year they’re already flooded with emails wishing them happy birthday, and sending them ‘special celebration offers’. Strange, seeing that the birthday boy or girl will probably already be getting a lot of presents – and not actually having to buy their own. What would you think if a friend gives you a discount coupon to buy a present in his/her shop on your birthday? Exactly… Instead of that, try to celebrate the day when a person became your customer. This will be more likely to convert and is something innovative.

What you need to get started

Fortunately, a lot of (email) marketing tools offer integrations to automatically synchronize data from your database, allowing you to setup targeted email campaigns. So all you actually need are a database and perhaps an integrated marketing software.

Flexible and dynamic database model

To be able to use the available data in your e-marketing strategy you need a database model that actually supports all of this data, and is able to use it in a flexible and dynamic way. Regular lists of subscribers/customers are just not enough!

So, what is a good database? Look for a tool that is able to utilize lots of data. Preferably go for a multidimensional data model that secures the customer data, orders, ordered products, abandoned carts, etc.

For online shops, data like interests, customer group or sex are simple data that can be used to personalize the campaign. But for triggered campaigns or drip-marketing it is essential to actually transfer the complete order history, ordered products and even abandoned cart items. Within these data packages, attributes like a timestamp, image URL, product URL, status, title, description and price should be available to personalize and trigger dynamic campaigns based on your different touch points.

What it comes down to

My message to you is to actually start thinking what data you are collecting at the moment and how you could use it for automating strategies. Do some research on what ESP supports your e-commerce platform and which one supports the above criteria. Remember: it costs 5 times more money to acquire a new customer than to actually retain existing customers – so please marketers; start using that data!