If we sneak peek into the past, it’s evident that a series of changes has been undergone in terms of how marketing is done. While traditional marketing relied heavily on mass communication, today’s modern marketing communication is nuanced by the availability of large amounts of consumer data and the personalization opportunities associated with it. However, though it’s said that “Do not cling to events of the past”, the evolution of email has proven that innovation is merely a remix of what already exists.
Email — conventionally considered as a decades-old technology — remains most people’s preferred way to communicate. Ludicrous, isn’t it? Even with all the convenience, that novel digital communication channels like — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, etc offer — email still manages to keep its promise with continued relevance. According to a recent study, 80% of retailers identified email marketing as their greatest customer retention strategy, where social media channels were indicated by just 44%. Today, we are going to look into some email practices that might assist your efforts to bring back the customers that you think you’ve already lost.
Implement Omnipresent Marketing
Abandoned cart emails are effective when it comes to recovering revenue, but it’s even more powerful when combined with other marketing strategies. Omnipresent marketing is about communicating with your customers across channels in different ways based on how they interact with each channel – and how they’ve interacted with previous brand messages.
Let’s say that you run an e-commerce storefront that sells household appliances. Upon landing on your website, a new visitor is being greeted with a pop-up offering them 20% off on their first purchase. The user eventually adds something to their cart after browsing for a few minutes, but abandons the process for some reason unknown. 24 hours later the customer receives a cart abandonment email, however, he/she still remains unconvinced. This is the part where the term omnipresent is relevant. The next time the user opens Facebook, he/she is shown an ad that features the product he/she added to the cart. In brief, the idea is to position your brand wherever your customers are.
Humanize Your Abandoned Cart Emails
Humanizing your emails is a lot more than personalization. Here’s how you can give a humane touch to your emails.
- The sender’s name and address should be included to build credibility and trustworthiness in the users. No reply from name must be avoided.
- Don’t be so mechanical, but follow a one-to-one email style. The email should sound personal and the recipient should be able to relate to it. Checkout Harvard Business Review insights on the words and phrases that you must use while writing your email.
- Add context or create relevance to your email messages.
- Go further than first-name personalization and create email messages based on selected user segments.
- Create follow-up email series.
- Provide options to reach out for assistance through email or by contacting customer support executives.
Use Data to Drive Your Email Campaigns
In TargetBay, we treat data as a potential asset and leverage it to improve our email campaigns. I would like to use a framework called Trinity—created by Avinash Kaushik—to explain how marketers should use data. The trinity is a simple holistic approach that helps marketers to identify actionable insights and metrics.
There are 3 elements to Trinity, which can help you organize your email data. The first element is “Behaviour Analysis”, which answers the most basic questions about your abandoned cart email campaigns.
- What is your email open rate?
- What is your email CTR?
- What links in your email get the most clicks?
- What time do recipients open your email?
The second element ” Outcome Analysis” gives insights into your campaign results.
- How many people completed their purchase?
- What is the average campaign revenue?
- What is the average revenue per subscriber?
- What is the average campaign ROI?
One of the major pitfalls of using data in email marketing is not being able to understand the customers’ hidden motivations. In other words, what drives their specific behaviors? This is why the final element “Experience Analysis” is relevant. This element allows you to comprehend why the recipients of your campaigns do what they do. It answers some of the difficult questions such as:
- Why do some email campaigns perform better than others?
- Why are you falling behind your subscription rates?
- Why is your email campaign revenue getting lower during certain months of the year?
One of the critical success factors of an abandoned cart email campaign involves data-centered segmentation based on customers’ behaviors and interests. This is exactly why it is necessary to fill the knowledge gaps you have about your target audience and previous campaigns. Hopefully, with the help of a framework like Trinity, marketers can better organize and make sense of the data they collect.
Implement Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) features
Sending a recovery email with a discount code is how retailers typically address the cart abandonment issue. This might work at times but in the long run, this is just a band-aid solution. Offering a discount might work well with price-conscious shoppers, however, it doesn’t help much when it comes to shoppers who abandoned their cart due to complex checkout or technical issues.
With AMP, retailers can improve their UX, and streamline the entire checkout process. Being AMPed means that your email will be more interactive. In fact, it will look and function similar to your landing page. Here’s how an AMP powered abandoned cart email will look like.
AMP helps e-commerce brands to deliver the whole checkout process directly to the email inbox. Instead of trying to convince the consumer to revisit your website’s checkout flow, which has already failed them once, you can provide a new, more straightforward route to complete the purchase instead.
Let Your Emails Reflect Empathy
Drafting empathetic emails begin with asking yourself a specific question ” How good is your understanding regarding your customers?” This is crucial as your messages should resonate with them. For us, the marketers at TargetBay, empathy is about prioritizing the customers’ needs while sending out an email campaign. That means, your emails shouldn’t just serve the purpose of a brand. There must be a way to incentivize the recipients to read your emails. It all comes down to balancing self-promotion with true customer benefits.
Also, the colors and images you use to design your email play a crucial role in evoking emotion in your customers.
Focus on the Email Header
This might seem like an aggrandizement, but it’s not. An email header is the most important visual aspect of your email campaign. It has got the most important task of all — to grab the attention of the recipient as soon as they open your message. Studies have revealed that an average person receives 121 emails per day. So, the question is how many such emails go unnoticed?
You will only have a few seconds to get your recipients interested in your email. This means that the email header shouldn’t be out of context or vague. Now, What do you need to do? Well, you need a clear understanding of how your banner might look like. Also, you need your logo to be recognizable so that your audience will remember you. Finally, the message should be straightforward, but compelling enough to catch the recipients’ attention. Here’s an example:
THAT’S ONE GOOD-LOOKING CART YOU’VE LEFT BEHIND!
Build a Marketing Funnel
Successful marketing is integrating different channels, creating a funnel that allows various assets to work together. Suppose you are selling attires online. The primary marketing requirement is to identify a target segment. Once you’ve done that, you need to build an email list to establish communication. In order to do that, you need to create a landing page and drive traffic to it. Furthermore, you will have to offer discount codes or lead magnets to get the users to sign-up.
I guess I’ve made the point. The process goes on and on, and it’s easy to lose one’s way. This is why marketing funnels are of paramount importance. It helps marketers organize their marketing channels together more effectively, keep track of their business goals, and improve their conversions.
Here’s an example of what kind of assets could go into your marketing funnel:
Carefully Examine Your Email Marketing Options
Email marketing is a big deal, and whether your objective is to engage with existing customers or new prospects, you need an email marketing software that can help you manage your lists, communicate, and campaign effectively. Here are a few important things to be considered while choosing an email solution.
- Choose an email marketing platform that integrates seamlessly with your CRM software.
- Make sure the platform supports mobile-optimization.
- Ensure the platform enables you to send automated responses or aggregate customer responses into tickets.
What’s Next? Get Started
Shopping cart abandonment continues to be a problem for online retailers, despite the recent improvements in technology. To tackle this challenge, brands must meet consumers’ ever-changing needs in an increasingly dynamic digital landscape. Abandoned cart software is a retailer’s backup plan for dealing with an inevitable event. The abundance of consumer options can stall consumers’ decision-making, and this is why every Ecommerce store must need a cart recovery strategy. A person who abandoned their cart has already shown a great intent to purchase, only to trip at the last moment. Pick one new strategy mentioned in this article and plan to take one step forward this month. Improving your cart recovery approach is an incremental process that requires great consistency. So, slow down a little bit, but never back down.
If you don’t have an existing email strategy to recapture your abandoned shoppers, our pre-built abandoned cart email templates are a great place to start.
