5 Automated Emails Every E-Commerce Marketer Should Be Sending.
Running an e-commerce store can be hard.
You have to worry about everything from inventory and stock, to managing your site, hiring employees, marketing, and about a hundred other things to make sure your business is running smoothly. You probably don’t have time to sit at your computer all day sending out marketing emails manually.
That’s where automation comes in. Automating your emails makes your email marketing easy and saves you time that can be spent focusing on other aspects of your business. Implementing automation means that you only need to create an email template once, then set and forget.
It’s also a much better time investment than simply sending out an email blast once a week – relevant automated emails drive 18 times more revenue than email blasts. So not only are you saving time, but you’re also getting more sales. The best part is that you don’t even have to do anything after you’ve set up these 5 automated emails.
1. Welcome Emails
Having a good welcome email is really important for your e-commerce store. Your new subscriber has just signed up to your email list; this is the moment when they’re the most likely to buy from your store because this is when they’re the most interested in your brand. In fact, welcome emails generate 8 times more revenue than regular bulk emails.
To read more about how to create a welcome email campaign, read here: 3 Emails Every Ecommerce Store Needs in Their Welcome Series.
Welcome emails also happen to be really easy to automate – especially on SmartrMail. After creating the template for your welcome email, SmartrMail allows you to automate when you want it to be sent to your new subscriber.
For a more in-depth guide on how you can integrate automation in your welcome email campaign, read here: How to Automate Your Welcome Series Emails with SmartrMail.
2. Automated Product Recommendation Emails
Most of the promotional emails sitting unopened in my inbox are bulk email newsletters. The reason why most of them are unopened is because they’re irrelevant. The best way to combat a decreasing open rate is to personalize your email newsletters. Personalized emails have a 75% higher open rate and lead to 6x more transactions than emails without any personalization.
You can easily incorporate personalized product recommendations to help make your email newsletters more relevant for your subscribers.
Showing subscribers personalized product recommendations based on their interests is much more relevant and effective than, say, sending out an email blast about one of your new products.
SmartrMail makes creating and automating personalized product recommendation newsletters really easy.
Simply create the template for your auto product emails once, and set the frequency of how often you want these newsletters sent out.
To read more about how frequently you should email your list, read here: How to Determine Your Store’s Optimal Email Frequency
SmartrMail also allows you to easily personalize your auto product emails. Setting your content mix to ‘recommended’ rather than ‘popular’ shows subscribers product recommendations that are relevant to them and their activity.
3. Cross-Sell Emails
Your job as a marketer isn’t done once a customer has completed a purchase. Alongside other post-purchase emails, such as order confirmation emails and replenishment reminders, cross-sell emails can be a great opportunity to boost customer lifetime value by encouraging these shoppers to come back and buy from your store again and again.
Similar to product recommendation emails, your automated newsletters can work to cross-sell products based on other items your subscribers have purchased already.
A clever way to do this is to frame this cross-sell email as a product education email that helps customers get the most out of their new product.
Sending your customers cross-sell emails can be easily done on SmartrMail with our Auto Follow-Up Emails.
Firstly, you will need to create a Smart Segment of customers who have purchased the particular product you want to create a cross-sell email for. SmartrMail allows you to quickly and easily search and select the product you want to highlight.
You can now create a new Auto Follow-Up Email to send to this new Smart Segment.
SmartrMail then allows you to automate this cross-sell email, meaning you can schedule this email to be sent at any time after a customer has purchased the product (and joined the Smart Segment).
We recommend scheduling product education/cross-sell emails one or two days after the order is due to arrive.
For more information on post-purchase email marketing, read here: How to Craft the Perfect Post-Purchase Follow-Up Sequence.
4. Abandoned Cart + Follow Up Emails
No matter what, online shoppers are always going to abandon their carts, whether it’s because they encountered unexpected shipping costs, they found a better deal elsewhere, or they simply forgot.
But never fear! Over one-third of clicked abandoned cart emails result in a conversion. Sometimes it just takes a reminder for a customer to convert.
Automating your abandoned cart email campaign with SmartrMail means that you only need to create your templates once, schedule when you want your emails sent out, and then let the app do all the work for you.
Sending out the first abandoned cart email within one hour is important. Your customer will still probably be interested in going through with the transaction. Include a clear button that will allow them to easily navigate back to their abandoned items.
Customers might not convert immediately. However, because 72% of customers who buy after initially abandoning their carts do so within 24 hours, it’s a good idea to target these shoppers within the same day.
SmartrMail also allows you to create and automate two follow-up emails.
Including a free shipping or discount offered in these follow-up, emails increase the likelihood of a conversion. Adding a sense of urgency to your abandoned cart campaign can also work to the same effect.
To learn how you can create an effective abandoned cart email campaign, read here: 3 Emails to Increase E-Commerce Abandoned Cart Recovery in 2017.
5. Win-Back Campaign
Over time, your email list’s subscribers will slowly stop engaging with your emails. In fact, your email list will probably decay by around 25% every year. Rather than continually sending them the same content, which they clearly aren’t interested in, try re-engaging inactive subscribers with a win-back campaign.
Creating a win-back campaign on SmartrMail, like cross-sell emails, can be done with Auto Follow Up Emails.
The first step is creating a Smart Segment of your inactive subscribers, who have not made any orders or opened any emails in a certain time period.
Start creating a new Auto Follow-Up Email that will be sent to this new Smart Segment of your inactive subscribers.
SmartrMail then allows you to easily automate your win-back email campaign, which will allow you to send out your email as soon as the subscribers become a part of the inactive subscribers Smart Segment.
For more information on re-engaging customers, as well as how to create your own effective win-back campaign, read here: How to Re-Engage and Win Back Your Store’s Customers with Email Marketing.
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Conclusion
Automating your email marketing will help you free up your time to take care of other aspects of your e-commerce store.
SmartrMail allows you to quickly set up templates for different campaigns, like welcome emails, auto product emails, auto follow-up emails, and abandoned cart emails. From here, you can automate the scheduling of these emails, meaning that you can choose who you want to send these emails to and when you want them to be sent.
Your job as an e-commerce marketer is made so much easier.
