4 Simple Email Marketing Automation Tweaks that Increase Sales
Email marketing provides businesses with unique opportunities. Gregory Zakowicz, senior ecommerce expert at Omnisend, shares four easy email marketing automation tweaks to increase sales.
Is your email marketing program generating as many sales as it should? For many brands, the answer is “no.” Gregory Zakowicz, senior ecommerce expert at Omnisend, examines four simple email marketing automation strategies you can employ to increase sales based on the Ecommerce Statistics Report H1, 2021.
The effectiveness of email marketing has been well documented over the years, and email automation has a lot to do with its success. Automated emails make up 32% of all email orders while accounting for only 2.4% of sends. Maximizing the effectiveness of these already powerful messages is essential for growing an ecommerce brand’s business.
Four Email Marketing Tweaks for Improved Sales
When optimizing automated emails, many brands feel stuck, not knowing how to improve their email program without investing a lot of time and resources. But the secret to increasing revenue from these messages isn’t very complicated. Here are four surprisingly easy ways to improve the performance of your automated email program.
1. Split welcome series messages by click activity
An email welcome series is a set of messages sent to a new subscriber. The average conversion rate is greater than 50%. While a generic set of messages sent to all subscribers can be practical, it does not cater to the individual intent and interests of the customer, leaving money on the table.
By monitoring subscriber click activity within the initial welcome email, brands can split their messages and send category or product-specific messages to subscribers based on that data, creating a more relevant and personal welcome series. For instance, subscribers who click on the “sweaters” link in the welcome message would receive a second welcome message featuring top-rated sweaters and customer testimonials instead of the generic email sent to everyone else.
Because these messages are closely related to the interests of the email subscriber, they better guide customers down the path to purchase. If you’re looking for a place to start, pick a category from your navigation bar and build a custom second message based on these clicks.
From there, build out a series of messages as you see fit.
See More: Email List Building: 5 Tips To Build a High-Quality List
2. Split cart abandonment by cart total
It’s estimated that nearly 70% of all online shopping carts are abandoned. For ecommerce brands, recovering these lost sales can be a boon to their bottom line.
Abandoned cart emails convert 483% better than promotional emails. They have a nearly 40% conversion rate—meaning 4 out of 10 shoppers who click on an abandoned cart email go on to complete their purchase.
Though these messages are high-performers, you can still improve them. One way is to split your messages based on the cart total.
Let’s say your website offers free shipping over $35. Deliver one message to those under the threshold that promotes your free shipping offer when reaching the minimum spend. Promote other value-adds for those already over the threshold, such as free returns.
Splitting your messages on cart total is an easy way to nudge your customers toward making that purchase.
3. Split cart abandonment by purchase history
Another simple way to split your abandoned cart messages is by looking at the abandoner’s purchase history. Knowing whether the abandoner has never bought from you, is returning after making one purchase, or is a loyal customer allows you to customize your message in multiple ways. For instance:
- Entice new customers by focusing on your company’s value-adds, such as flexible return policies or speedy and low-cost (or free) shipping. These shoppers might receive three messages in the entire series, with one that includes a discount with a higher minimum spend.
- First-time returning customers might receive three messages dominated by urgency (e.g., these items won’t last long). The third message could offer a discount with a lower minimum spend.
- Repeat customers might receive only one or two messages, plus a discount with no minimum spend.
How you communicate with your different cart abandoners is entirely in your control.
4. Use SMS in your email marketing automation
A fourth simple tweak to your email marketing automation has nothing to do with email. SMS marketing is a great addition to automation workflows. It’s a rapidly growing marketing channel: customers are on pace to send three times as many SMS messages in 2021 than in 2020.
Adding SMS gives brands another way to engage shoppers via their chosen channel, whether they’re on the go or in front of their computer. Send a welcome SMS with an incentive to give new subscribers easy access to their welcome discount. SMS can remind customers their products are within reach and put the shopping cart at the cart abandoners’ fingertips. Or, SMS messages can serve as last-chance reminders reserved for your most loyal customers.
See More: 4 Ways To Improve Email Marketing Campaign Deliverability
Increase Sales, Not the Workload
Increasing your email marketing sales does not mean you need to increase your workload drastically. Making small but smart edits to your existing automation can result in significant sales growth for any business of any size, regardless of its resources.
What email marketing automation tools and strategies would you recommend? Share with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to know!
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