How much time and effort do you put into your marketing emails? Do you just send, essentially, the same email week after week, without giving it much thought? If the answer to this question is ‘Yes’, then you’re probably saving yourself a lot of time, but wasting a lot of money on an ineffectual email marketing campaign. In order for email marketing to achieve success, you need to send interesting, unique emails that are appropriate for the customer lifecycle.
If your email marketing efforts are flagging, here are a few of the emails that you can send that will be sure to give your ROI a boost:
Welcome
The welcome email is one of the most important ones you will send. They are personal and friendly, help you build trust with your customers and give you the ideal opportunity to let them know all the benefits that your mailing list offers. They also serve as a reminder to a subscriber that they signed up to your list, so they are not ‘surprised’ by your emails in the future. Welcome emails also have some of the highest open rates of any email (around 50%, according to Experian), so your welcome email should be designed to make an impact on the customer.
This welcome email, from Pets At Home, shows their new subscribers the type of email that they will receive, along with the benefits that the mailing list offers:
Abandoned Shopping Cart
This type of email could really give your sales a boost. If a customer abandons an item in their shopping cart, it may not be because they’ve changed their mind about it. They may have got distracted, may not have had time to complete the order, or could simply have forgotten about it. If you don’t let your customer know about their abandoned cart, that order will never be completed, and you will have lost a sale.
Abandoned shopping cart emails can be incredibly beneficial. A study by SAP Hybris found that these emails can generate over £12 per message sent, and customers who return to a site spend 55% more than people who didn’t abandon their cart.
Abandoned shopping cart emails don’t need to be complicated. Simply remind your customer about what they ordered, and give them a clear button they can click to complete the order. This example, from Moss Bros, shows what an abandoned shopping cart email should contain. They even suggested some other items that the customer may like:
Birthday Emails
Every so often, you should use your marketing emails to take the time to celebrate your customers, and thank them for their loyalty. One of the simplest, and most effective, ways of doing this is by sending your customers a birthday email. And, because they are highly targeted and incredibly personal, birthday emails tend to be highly effective.
In order to send birthday emails, you will need to capture your customer’s date of birth. This can be done when they sign up for your newsletter, or when they make a purchase. If you let your customers know that they will receive a treat on their birthday, they will be more likely to offer this information.
Most birthday emails also include a ‘gift’ for the customer, usually in the form of a freebie or discount. In this email, Pizza Express lets the customer choose which gift the would like for their birthday:
These are just a few of the emails you can send to help boost sales and improve your ROI. As long as you’re being creative and constantly thinking on things that will benefit your customers, you should achieve consistent email success.
