Want to Increase Revenue? Use Email Marketing
Email marketing can send revenues soaring, especially for internet-based stores or retailers wanting to establish an online presence. But only if you’re using savvy marketing tactics. Without a strategic plan behind your campaign, email marketing can fall flat. Learn how an e-retailer combatted plummeting email rates and turned its email marketing campaign around.
The retail store
evo is an outdoor fashion apparel and gear retail store with a strong online presence. However, its email marketing campaigns were stagnant, metrics were falling and the marketing channel itself wasn’t generating much results at all in terms of revenue.
With a strategic campaign to turn around its email marketing strategies, evo was able to drive revenue by 20 percent with an automated program. After evaluating previous campaigns, the retailer’s marketing team determined that its voice was worn out and the emails were not relevant to its target audience, which consisted of a large demographic of individuals interested in outdoor and action sports who were largely affluent, male and lived in urban mountain areas.
The group decided to use triggered emails and automation to better target customers with the right messages. After a few initial email sends, it was clear that new technology was necessary to implement the kind of campaign evo knew would improve results. Here’s how the campaign was set up.
The campaign
Behavior-based sends
The action gear and apparel e-retailer drilled down into the most important messages to target first. They landed on cart abandonment and browse abandonment messages. They created automated email messages to send to users who browsed but didn’t buy and those who added items to a cart but didn’t buy.
Source: MarketingSherpa.com
(shopping cart abandonment message)
They also added another campaign for price drops. Anytime the price was lowered on an item that a user had previously viewed, browsed and abandoned, the user received a personalized message. The email subject line included the term “price drop” in some fashion, along with a product image and link to view the new price.
The takeaway
Choose a few select email campaigns that will target customers based on behaviors. Cart abandonment, browse abandonment and discounts are some of the more effective ways to base a behavior email series. Avoid tackling lots of actions all at once, without giving any one or two behaviors the attention they deserve to get results.
Structuring the emails
evo’s team moved on to creating email templates that would reflect the brand’s standards, but would also give the team a way to scale their efforts. The email template was consistent with the brand’s other marketing messages, but they took a more dynamic approach with subject lines. Following guidelines to create specific subject lines (including brand names of items viewed or browsed), the brand was able to highlight a unique-to-the-user experience.
In addition, the emails included a link to offer feedback, a move that would prove to be very effective. As a result of customer feedback, evo was able to limit the product displays that users had looked at, which made many of them uncomfortable with the retailer’s tracking efforts. Instead, the brand included a mix of previously seen and related products when displaying customer preferences.
The takeaway
Keep the structure of your emails simple and, especially important, consistent with your brand’s messaging. Use dynamic, relevant subject lines that offer users a unique experience. Finally, offer a clear way to provide feedback and use them to adjust campaigns on-the-fly.
Target customers based on behaviors and create a unique store-like experience with best practices for email automation for online and brick-and-mortar dependent retailers. With dynamic adjustments made as you go along, your business can put email marketing to work, driving engagement, customer loyalty and revenue.
Comments
No comment yet.