Tags: ecommerce

The Ultimate Guide To eCommerce Email Marketing (Online Retailers, This One’s For You…)

January 19th, 2016 by John McIntyre

I’ll start this post with a warning.

This is part 1 & 2 of a whopping 10,000+ word guide to eCommerce email marketing. Before you continue, bookmark this page now because you’ll want to return to it later.

Part 1 –The Tools of an eCommerce Email Marketing Strategy (Published December 9th, 2015)

Part 2 –eCommerce Email Marketing Campaign Roadmap – Stage 1 (Published January 19th, 2016)

Part 3 –  eCommerce Email Marketing Campaign Roadmap – Stage 2 (Coming February 2, 2016)

Imagine having email campaigns that trigger automatically — based on how someone interacts with your company and your website.

These “automated” campaigns then go out to do your bidding…

…they build relationships and trust… they indoctrinate subscribers into your brand (so they buy from you instead of your competitors)… they keep people engaged (so they never stop opening, clicking and buying)… and finally…

…they drive a predictable stream of sales, every day of every week of every year.

And that’s just the automated side of things.

Then you’ve got the manual side of things… and while it might be manual, it’s no less important than the automated side.

• Regular promotions
• Segmented blasts
• Reengagement campaigns

… there’s a lot of money to be found.

This 3-part guide has everything you need to set up a full-scale eCommerce email marketing program without outside help.

So let’s get into it, but first…

What is eCommerce Email Marketing?

> Ecommerce email marketing is the art and science of using email to generate sales for your store.

It can be simple, such as sending an email to people who abandon their shopping carts. Or complex, like having numerous campaigns that work together synergistically to multiply sales exponentially.

At the end of the day, when you look behind the promotions, offers, free shipping coupons and lead nurturing emails —email marketing is about building relationships.

…Nothing more, nothing less.

If you approach email marketing for online retailers with this perspective in mind, you’ll do much better:

• You’ll create better promotions that sell more product.
• You’ll nurture your subscribers better, which will lead to more long term sales.
• You’ll segment your database more effectively, which will (once again) generate more sales.

Email marketing isn’t about blasting the crap out of your database any more than sales is about cold-calling people and screaming through the phone at them.

You’ll learn more about this when you read about lead nurture email campaigns in this guide.

There’s a lot more to email marketing for eCommerce stores and online retailers than simply sending a weekly email and one cart abandonment email.

But we’ll get to that in a moment.

First, let’s take a look at your tools, because like any good craftsman, we need the right tools.

**eCommerce Email Marketing Tool #1: The Perfect eCommerce Email **

When we get into the campaigns section, you’ll see specific examples of each type of email. Before we do that though, let’s dive into the pieces of the perfect ecommerce email.

The “From” Name

The “From” Name is the name that appears next to the email address when the email appears. It looks like this in the inbox:

…and this when the email is open:

Now, some companies like to get all fancy by using a personal name in the “From” field. They do this because they think it’s going to get them attention.

However, in our experience, if your brand doesn’t revolve around like a specific person, like Oprah or Dr Phil, you’re better off using your brand or company name, just like the example above.

From Email

This is where I see a lot of otherwise smart companies make a silly mistake.

They send emails from a “no reply” email address, such as noreply@google.com.

But if you force people to go find your contact form on your website, or your support area, do you really think you’re going to hear from them whenever they have something important to tell you?

Of course not.

Make it easy for people to contact you by using an email address that they can send emails to, such as hello@google.com. You’ll look more approachable, you’ll get more customer feedback, and you’ll be more successful as a result.

Plus, by using an email address people can actually reply to, you can ask people to reply to your emails in your various campaigns (which we’ll get to in just a moment).

Subject Line

Check this out:

Neil Patel, content marketer and founder of CrazyEgg, crunched some Experian data and created this incredible graph:

In other words, of everything listed above,** **spend most of your time focused on your subject line****.

This reminds me of the famous quote from David Ogilvy:

> “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

Don’t get caught up trying to perfect your…

• from name
• your design
• time of the day
• call to action

…Employ best practices, and invest your creative juices coming up with compelling subject lines and testing them. Because that’s where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

Here are some tips for your subject lines:

Employ the “4 Second Test”

Litmus, an email marketing tool, discovered you have only 4 seconds to capture someone’s attention and get them to open and read your email. So when you’ve written your subject line, study it carefully and see if it gets you hooked in 4 seconds.

Ideally, you should get that down to 1 second.

Avoid Sales Words (and Other Overused Words)

Great marketing is about pattern interrupts, but if you’re doing the same thing as everyone else, you’ll blend into the furniture and no one will pay attention.

So don’t use words everyone else uses when selling something. Words like…

• free,
• help,
• percent off,
• reminder, and so on.

Personalize with Their City Name

When email first began, personalization with someone’s name was new and got people’s attention. But today, it’s easy and everyone’s doing it, so it doesn’t work anymore.

Instead, personalize with their city name. MailChimp research suggests it works even better.

Mix it Up

Most newsletters and email campaigns begin with high open rates, and then decline over time.

To mitigate this happening, don’t re-use subject lines, and don’t make your subject lines too similar to each other. Remember, great marketing is about interrupting someone’s pattern, and to do that, you need to keep it fresh.

Shorter is Better

As a general rule of thumb, stick to 50 characters or less.

Since most people scan their inbox, make it easy on them when figuring out whether to open your email. If you absolutely must have a longer subject line, make sure that the first 50 characters are the juiciest part.

Don’t save the punchline for the end of the subject line because most people will miss it.

Don’t be in a Rush to Promote Something

Yes, it’s fine to promote your products in the subject line, but no, it’s not ok (nor is it effective) to use promotional subject lines in every email you send.

That means…

• avoid bombastic promotional phrases,
• avoid ALL CAPS,
• and go easy on the exclamation marks.

Geez!!!!!!!!!!!!

**Have You Tried Asking Questions? **

Subject lines framed as questions tend to perform better.

Don’t Mislead

The first time you trick a subscriber into opening your email by using a misleading email, they’ll be annoyed at you. The second time, they’ll ignore you.

Clarity trumps persuasion.

Be honest and direct about what your email contains, while also being compelling.

Use Urgency, but Don’t Over-do It

Businesses use urgency (ie. 24 hours left!) because it works, but like any marketing strategy used too often, it loses it’s effectiveness if you over-do it. Use urgency when it makes sense, but don’t come to depend on it.

Always be Testing

I can’t mention this enough. Test, test, TEST. While I’ve described best practices here for email subject lines that will work for most companies, you’ll need to test, tweak and optimize to find the perfect subject lines that work for your company.

The topic of subject lines is way too big to cover entirely here, so I’ll point you to some fantastic Digital Marketer posts you can take a look at (after finishing this post, of course). If you ever struggle to come up with ideas for subject lines, these posts will help:

Once you have your subject line written, use a free rating tool like SubjectLine.com to evaluate your subject line.

Alright. That’s it for subject lines.

Like I said, we could talk about subject lines all day, but we have to get moving.

Pre-Header

The pre-header text is the text that appears in your email next to your subject line. It’s what people see after they’ve read the subject line, and plays a role in determining whether they’ll open the email, so you want to get it right.

Think about your pre-header text as a continuation of your subject line. Use it to expand on your subject line, and dial up the curiosity and emotion that is already associated with the subject line.

Ramit Sethi does a great job with his pre-header text, beginning with a story:

DODOCASE, not so much:

Don’t even get me started on Fitocracy:

It’s obvious what you need to do. Don’t let it go to waste. It’s valuable real estate, and it pays to take advantage of it.

Design

Generally speaking, when it comes to eCommerce email marketing, less is more.

Less images. Less fancy design elements. Less “pizazz”.

While the debate between what converts best — text emails or HTML emails — continues to rage (read about it here and here), you can be certain of two things:

1. If your email is 100% text with no branding elements whatsoever, it will probably get marked as spam because people won’t know immediately who the email is from (this happened to a campaign we sent a few months back).

2. If you go too heavy on the fancy design elements – like beautiful images, animated GIFs, and crazy layouts – your email is more likely to be picked up by email algorithms and sent to the promotions tab or folder.

You have to strike a balance; simple enough that your email feels at least somewhat personal, fancy enough that it gets attention but without triggering the promotions tab (or worse, the SPAM folder).

Email Copy

As with design, keep the copy simple and to the point. Avoid being clever or cutesy. Be clear and concise.

The magic of many of the campaigns we’ll be discussing below is due to the timing and behavioural nature of the emails, not a result of having the best copy.

Timing

I’m sorry, but I have to tell you that… when it comes to timing, the honest answer is:

It depends.

Despite what some companies will tell you, or what you probably want to believe, there is no “perfect” time for sending eCommerce emails that works for every company out there.

Instead of taking a cookie-cutter approach to timing emails, I encourage you to invest time and energy into thinking carefully about it.

Who are your customers and when do they like to read emails? You might already know this from historical data, or you might be able to figure it out based on your customer demographic.

Most emails are read within 4 hours of being sent, so think carefully about what people are likely to be doing in the few hours after sending your email. Are they likely to have some free time to read your email in the few hours after you send it? Are they going to be in the mood to buy?

Take a look at revenue and orders for time of the day. This will give you an idea of when people like to purchase, and these times will typically work best for sending emails (especially if you time your emails to go out just before buying spikes on a given day).

Lastly, hop on over to your competitors’ websites, sign up to their mailing lists, and see when they send their emails.

However, be careful about data gathered with this approach, as your competitor might have no idea what they’re doing with email. Be sure to test whatever you discover against your other preferred sending times.

Mobile-Compatibility

Interestingly, when considering mobile optimization, it pays to keep your emails simple. The simpler the content, the easier is it to design and optimize for mobile display.

Images

If images are disabled, does your email still make sense?

I’ll lead with an example from WhatCounts, a boutique email marketing agency:

Who is this email from? What’s it all about? Is this relevant TO ME?

If the value of your email isn’t crystal clear the SECOND someone opens it, you’ll lose them. In this email above from WhatCounts, the reader has to dig to see who it’s from and what it’s about. Don’t make someone dig for the value, or they’ll delete you.

Instead of leading with a large image, use HTML for the text and the image for the background. This way, if the image doesn’t appear, at least the reader will be able to read your headline.

This email improves towards the bottom, in the sense that I can read some text and figure out what they want me to do (click a link to view a blog post or ebook).

The lesson?

Always send a test email to an account that has images disabled and check to see if it makes any sense at all. If it looks like the WhatCounts email above, update the email so that it makes without the images.

Note how this email from Tony Robbins is easy to understand even if the images are disabled:

Now, let’s talk about Tool #2…

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eCommerce Email Marketing Tool #2: Email Marketing Software

Chances are, you already have email marketing software.

Most email marketing software isn’t ideal for eCommerce companies — usually because most email marketing software is simple.

In other words, using the right email marketing software for your store will go a long way to helping you capture the potential available revenue.

If you don’t have email marketing software yet (or if you’re prepared to switch platforms), use Klaviyo.

Klaviyo was designed specifically for eCommerce companies and online retailers, and powers some serious players. It’s what we use for our clients, and recommend to everyone we speak with. Also, I’m not affiliated with the company, and get nothing if you sign up with them (or for mentioning them here).

Klaviyo integrates with Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce and all the other platforms.

eCommerce Email Marketing Tool #3: Pop-Up Software

When people buy, you’ll capture their email address.

But to send campaigns to people who haven’t bought anything yet, you’ll need to capture their email address before they purchase.

While you could fork out $4,000 a month to deploy a pop-up service, you can get similar “exit intent” technology from Picreel and ExitMist at a fraction of the price (from $14/month and $19/month respectively).

You can find other software out there for regular pop-ups, sidebar pop-ups, slider pop-ups, and it’s probably worth testing all of them. However, you’ll tend to get the best mileage from an exit-intent pop-up, since this gives people the space to purchase if they want to — without distracting them with a regular pop-up. Then, when they go to leave your website, your exit-intent pop-up appears, and makes them an offer.

Here’s DODOCASE with their exit-intent pop-up. It’s simple, clean, and easy to understand – the key components of all good pop-ups. There’s no way you could be confused by this pop-up.

Sign up and get 10% off. Easy.

Here’s another simple example from Finch Goods, a men’s fashion and lifestyle company.

It’s almost identical to the DODOCASE pop-up, except instead of offering a percentage discount, it’s offer a specific cash discount ($5).

They could bump their opt-ins here by adding an attention-grabbing image of 5 x one-dollar bills, or 1 x five-dollar bill.

While Cloudways isn’t an eCommerce company, this example is still instructive.

Instead of offering a discount or credit, Cloudways reminds people of their “double your money back” guarantee.

I wanted to include this example, because it highlights the fact that you can make virtually any offer in your pop-up. In an ideal world, you’ll test this on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and find the offer that leads to the best revenue over 30-90 days (or similar).

Instead of a discount, you could remind people about your guarantee, or offer them free shipping on orders above $40, or refer them to a specific product category, or feature a product that’s HOT right now.

In this example from Clearly, you can see that instead of getting people onto their email list, they’re using their pop-up to remind people about the discount and free shipping (as well as targeting it towards first time shoppers only).

In my opinion, this is a poorly designed pop-up.

First, they should be collecting emails. Second, they are distracting people from buying by sending them to their social profiles. You’ll see companies doing this a lot. Forsaking email and sending people to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. So sad.

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The Ultimate Guide To eCommerce Email Marketing [Part 2]: eCommerce Email Marketing Campaign Roadmap – Stage 1

Kudos to you for sticking with us for part 2! It’s time to start creating emails:

Your eCommerce Email Marketing Campaign Roadmap

This is where the real fun begins.

For the sake of simplicity, just like DigitalMarketer breaks down the funnel into different stages, each with their own goal, we’re going to break down the eCommerce email funnel into 3 stages:

• **Stage 1: Interested **– People who have signed up for a coupon, guide, etc, but haven’t bought anything yet. The goal of stage 1 is to get them to make their first purchase.
• Stage 2: Engaged – People who have bought one or several products. The goal of stage 2 is to get them to stay engaged, and buy again and again over time.
• Stage 3: Lapsed – People who have stopped purchasing and stopped opening and clicking emails. The goal of stage 3 is to get people to reactivate by buying something, opening an email, or clicking a link.

Now, for each stage, there are specific email campaigns and email triggers we use to achieve the goal of that stage.

For example…

• In stage 1, we’ll send a welcome email that is designed to welcome them to the family, indoctrinate them into our brand, and encourage them to make their first purchase.
• In stage 2, we’ll optimize our transactional emails to provide product recommendations based on what they just bought.
• In stage 3, we’ll send a reengagement campaign that unsubscribes people if they don’t respond.

You’ll hear more about these campaigns (and all the other wonderful campaigns you can create) in a moment.

First, here’s a handy image that lists all of the email campaigns we’ll be creating:

One of the best things about the campaigns listed here?

Almost all of them are automated, so once you’ve set them up, most of them will go on driving sales for you for, well…. forever.

Now, without further ado, let’s get into the actual campaigns!

Stage 1 – Interested: The Welcome Email

Did you know that 74.4% of consumers expect a welcome email when they subscribe to a company’s mailing list?

As a result of this expectation, subscribers who receive a welcome email show, on average, 33% higher engagement, than subscribers who don’t receive a welcome email.

This engagement translates to 4 times more opens and 5 times more clicks than standard bulk newsletter promotions.

Ultimately, this means that welcome emails see more than 3x the transactions and revenue per email compared with regular promotions.

Set Up

The welcome email has several components that make it effective. Let’s look at each one separately.

Subject Line

Our favorite subject line is “Welcome to the family (please read)”, however you can tweak this into variations like “Welcome to BRAND_NAME” and “Hello, (from BRAND_NAME)”.

The important thing is to acknowledge it’s a welcome email in the subject line.

Welcome

Before you do anything else, say hi to them. Welcome them to the family. You can do this by saying “Welcome” or “Hi”.

Brand Indoctrination and Unique Selling Proposition

After you have welcomed them, it’s time to begin the brand indoctrination process. There is no perfect way to do this. You can do it by listing a few bullet points on what makes you special, or by adding a few sentences or a paragraph of copy on the same thing.

This is the place to explain…

• What makes you different?
• What makes you special?
• Why should I shop with you instead of your competitors?
• What ideal result will shopping with you bring about?

You’ll see how other companies are doing this in the examples below.

What Happens Next

Once you’ve told them what makes you different, you need to explain what they should expect from your emails.

• Will you be emailing them every day?
• Weekly?
• Will your emails include content?
• Videos?
• When do you have sales?

The details will vary from company to company, but the goal is the same: tell them what happens next so they know what to expect from you.

Make an Irresistible Offer

A surprising number of companies skip this step. They put in the hard work and effort to create a gorgeous welcome email, but they leave out the most profitable part — the offer.

Regardless of whether you offer anything in exchange for their email address, you should make them an offer in the welcome email. If you don’t want to give them a discount, give them free shipping, a free gift, or some amount of points.

Just give them something, and make sure you communicate it clearly in the email with big, bold text, and a button that stands out.

Promote Your Social Profiles

Finally, add links to your social profiles at the end of the email — whether this means social icons linked to your profiles on each social platform (think Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram…you get the point), or asking them to Like you/Follow You/Connect with you on [PLATFORM]. However, this should not be a key feature of your welcome email, and is probably best left to your lead nurture sequence (more on that soon).

Welcome Examples

Example: Aritzia

So, there are a few things going on.

First, there’s the big “Hi” top and to the left. Second, it acknowledges the subscriber as being new by saying “Since you’re new here, we’d love to…”. That’s when they begin the brand indoctrination process.

They’ve even thrown some personality into the mix by saying things like, “Customer service is our middle name”.

To top it off, the email is designed to look similar to a webpage (this is a recurring theme you’ll see in many of the emails). You’ve got the logo up top, a menu bar that leads to the main store categories, and then the content of the email.

How to improve it:

• Double-check how it looks with images disabled (the text appears to be hard-coded into the image, and this is bad).
• Offer some kind of incentive to encourage the first purchase (if they can’t offer a discount, they could offer free shipping on all orders over $100 – any incentive is better than no incentive)

Example: Art.com

Here’s Art.com with a great email.

Notice the pre-header “20% Off your entire order”? That would have appeared next to the subject line. Like the previous example, they make the “welcome” part of the email front and center. They’ve done well to offer the incentive “GET 20% OFF YOUR ENTIRE ORDER”.

How to improve it:

• Add 1-2 sentences of brand indoctrination. Why is Art.com different? Why do I want to shop at Art.com instead of their competitors? Tell me.
• Change the design of the incentive. Add a border around it. Maybe a dashed border, with a drop shadow to make it pop off the page. The goal is simply to make it stand out more.

Example: Bonobos

Bonobos create gorgeous emails — and effective.

In this welcome email from Bonobos, they’ve chosen to strip things down and keep it simple. You’ll see the same basic design – logo, menu with categories, then the content.

How to improve it:

• Add 1-2 sentences of brand indoctrination. Personally, I don’t know much about Bonobos, so if I received this email, I’d be unexcited.
• Tell me what makes them great, and why I should be excited about buying from them. The easy way to do this is to take a few lines from the about page.
• Product suggestions. Unless I already knew what I wanted to buy, I probably wouldn’t click “Shop now” and browse their website. But if they showed me a picture of something I might love, like “a top of the line coat” (from their homepage), I’d be more interested.

Example: Fab

This is an excellent email from Fab.

It’s simple, clear and easy to understand. It highlights the benefits of Fab in the header (free shipping, free returns, guarantee). Plus, they squeeze a little brand indoctrination into the email.

How to improve it:

• Instead of getting people to download the Fab Mobile App, test sending them to a product of some kind. Or, if the app turns out to produce better conversions, add some copy that explains the benefits of using the app.
• Tweak the brand messaging to be more specific. Currently, it doesn’t mean anything. Try mentioning specific products, categories, or types of customers (ie. men and women over 40 love Fab!).

Example: Huckberry

Huckberry nails their welcome email.

It’s clear. It’s eye-catching with the image. And it explains the purpose of the emails, as well as the brand. After reading this email, you know exactly what to expect from Huckberry (sales on Tuesday and Thursday that last 7 days), and what makes them special.

How to improve it:

• Instead of generic product icons (Grooming Essentials, etc), make specific product suggestions, with a small link to the category.
• Add “(please read)” to the subject line

Example: JCREW.com

J.Crew is doing a lot right with this email. The big “HELLO THERE…” at the top. The explanation of what the emails are about.

How to improve it:

• Where’s the incentive? There’s no offer in this email. Add some kind of offer. A discount. Free shipping on orders over $50. A free gift. Something is better than nothing.
• The “See what’s happening on JCREW.com” call-to-action (CTA) is weak. That’s like telling me to go check your fridge for cookies. I feel weird doing that. Instead, get the plate of cookies yourself, put it in front of me, and ask me if I want one. In other words, instead of vague, boring CTAs, offer me a few specific things.

Example: Mack Weldon

This is a sexy email from Mack Weldon. Notice how the “YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ THIS” headline makes you want to read further. Then, when you continue to read, there’s some subtle brand indoctrination going on, with a dash of personality thrown in.

How to improve it:

By now, you probably know what I’m going to say…

• This email needs an offer! The welcome emails that generate revenue make it easy, and exciting, for someone to buy. Brand messaging and indoctrination is only one part of the welcome email.

Example: Michaels

Most of the time, I love emails from Michaels, an art supplies store.

This is a solid email, with almost all of the key elements of a great welcome email. There’s the welcome. Some mild brand indoctrination. Easy-to-read design. And of course, a great offer towards the bottom.

How to improve it:

• The only thing I’d change in this email is the brand indoctrination. I’d add 1-2 sentences which explain specifically why Michaels is different, and what that means for me as a potential customer.

Example: Tradesy

If you’d read this far, you can probably critique this email yourself. You might say that it’s a decent email. That it welcomes people. That it makes them an offer. That the design fits into our “ideal email”.

And you’d be right. Nice work, Tradesy.

How to improve it:

• This email needs some brand indoctrination,. You can’t assume that someone who joins your mailing list knows everything about you. You want to use it as an opportunity to educate them.

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Stage 1 – Interested: Lead Nurture

When was the last time you received an email from your favorite brand that wasn’t trying to sell something?

If you’re like most people, it has probably been a while. Hell, maybe you’ve never received a nurture email.

While nurture emails comes in all shapes and sizes, the quality that they all have in common is that their primary goal is not to sell something. Sure, they might link to products, and even “soft sell”, but they’re not the typical promotional emails most companies send.

This is a shame, because nurture emails and campaigns work.

Set Up

Nurture emails all share one quality: their goal is not to sell.

If you keep that in mind, you’ll be a good “nurturer”.

Think about it this way…

Your customers have other problems in their lives aside from the problems that your product solves. Most companies focus solely on selling their products. They don’t care about the other problems their customer has.

And herein lies the opportunity.

Since most companies (including your competitors) aren’t nurturing subscribers and leads, if your company does nurture leads, who do you think customers are going to choose when it comes to buying products to solve their problem?

Here are some specific ideas for your nurture emails:

Brand Indoctrination

One of the best things you can do with nurture emails is to continue your brand indoctrination process. Ideally, all the following ideas should be designed to fit into and reinforce your brand.

Education

I speak to a lot of online retailers and eCommerce companies who don’t believe that it’s possible to educate their prospects and customers. They’re selling kitchen knives, or soap, or automotive parts. They can only write so many emails about their products… and then what? They run out of ideas.

But you don’t have to run out of ideas.

For example, take kitchen knives. You could write emails about:

• The evolution of the kitchen knife (from 200 BC to now).
• Why expensive kitchen knives matter.
• Do high-quality kitchen knives affect how your food tastes?
• How can you use different types of kitchen knives?
• Here’s the knife that Jamie Oliver uses.
• The trick is to think of all the related stories, ideas and questions that people would find interesting.

Let’s try something else… something boring… like bathroom soap:

• 17 dangerous chemicals in household soaps (and 1 brand that doesn’t have these chemicals).
• How soap has changed over the ages.
• Did kings have soap 500 years ago?
• How soap was invented.
• The 5 best soaps for soft skin.
• Does the soap you use matter, or is it all the same?

…you get the idea.

Did you notice how each of these ideas leads naturally into a pitch for a product?

If I write an email about the 5 best soaps for soft skin, I can link to 5 soaps on our store.

If I write about the knife that Jamie Oliver uses, I’ll make sure we link to it in the email.

Despite the opportunity for selling, it doesn’t feel like a pitch, and therefore doesn’t leave people with a sour taste in their mouth.

Entertainment

Funny cat videos, songs you’re listening to around the office, the latest joke you heard… it’s all fair game for entertainment in nurture emails.

Of course, what you can share will depend on your brand, but keep in mind that providing entertainment is a great way to stand out from the hordes of boring companies out there.

Stories

One of my favorite types of nurture emails are stories.

You can tell stories about your business, where and how it got started, and what drives you today. You can also tell stories about your employees, and your customers.

Customer stories are great, however you need to be careful to avoid over-selling the testimonial or story.

Sequence Examples

Let’s put all of this together.

Here’s what a 5-email nurture campaign might look:

> Email 1 –> Welcome to the family (please read)

> Email 2 –> Brand indoctrination part 1 (100 word brand story, with open loop)

> Email 3 –> Brand indoctrination part 2 (100 word brand story, with open loop)

> Email 4 –> Educational email > Email 5 –> Cool video

This is in addition to promotional emails (which should be going out on a regular basis, too.

The best frequency of emails will vary by company. Provided you’re sending promotional emails 1-2 times a month, send the nurture campaign to send every 7 days.

Lead Nurture Email Examples

Example: Citrix

While Citrix isn’t an online retailer of physical goods, this is a good example of a nurture email.

In this email, Citrix is promoting a whitepaper — a free digital report on how to manage teams. Anyone who downloads this whitepaper and consumes it will be further sold on the benefits of Citrix.

While Citrix might not sell itself directly in the whitepaper, the whitepaper positions Citrix as an expert in the eyes of the reader.

How to improve it:

• Add a section with the header “In this whitepaper, you’ll discover:” and 3 bullets on the 3 top outcomes the subscriber wants. This will make the email more scannable for people trying to get through their inbox as fast as possible.

Example: Exposure

This email from Exposure, a photography company, is a great example of a nurture email.

Being a photography website, they’ve done well to incorporate beautiful imagery into the email. However, they’ve also maintained the mobile-compatibility, as well as the communication even if you get rid of the images.

How to improve it:

• Change the “Read The Whole Story” buttons to orange, or some other color that stands out. The current grey buttons they’re using are difficult to see and blend into the background.

Example: Fandango

This is a decent lead nurture email from Fandango.

Instead of selling their movie tickets, they’re emailing about The Academy Awards. They’ve done well to use the blue button on the dark red background as this makes it stand out.

How to improve it:

• The headline may be hard to read for some people. Make the background dark, and the headline lighter, to increase readability.
• I love movies, but I don’t particularly care about The Academy Awards. If I got this email, I wouldn’t click through to the website. So they could improve this by improving the targeting and only sending this to people who are interested in The Academy Awards.

Example: FiftyThree

What a wonderful email from FiftyThree!

The design is top notch, with the important things featured front and center. The logo and menu are there, but they’re not overpowering the email.

What’s great about this email is that it sells the notebook, while also maintaining a “nurture-y” feel. It leads with a video, and instead of talking about the notebook, it leads with the inspiring “bring ideas to life”.

If I received this email, I would probably pause, scroll through it, and maybe even watch the video, just to see if I’d like to get one of these notebooks.

How to improve it:

• The sort of person who would buy a notebook from FiftyThree is the sort of person who likes to read. So give them stuff to read. Throw in some bullets on who it’s for, on what it does for me, and how my writing experience will change.

Example: Harry’s

This email from Harry’s, a company that makes face wash, is a great example of how simple nurture emails can be.

Harry’s sells face wash, a mostly boring product. Most people would throw up their hands and tell me that they have nothing to write about, if they had to write about face wash.

But here is Harry’s, making it work.

I don’t wash my face with face wash. But if Harry’s showed me why washing my face was worth it, and how I could do better, then I might sign up and grab some.

This is something to keep in mind with your nurture emails. Use your copy to create situations and trigger the pain that leads someone to buy your product.

For example, if you’re selling face wash like Harry’s, send nurture emails that educate people on why face wash is essential to a healthy lifestyle, and why most face wash products are dangerous. That leads naturally into a pitch for Harry’s.

How to improve it:

• More teaser copy! To get more clicks on the content, Harry’s should tease people more about the content. In this article, you’ll discover… Then add 3 bullets on what they’ll discover.
• The content landing pages should be optimized for conversions.

Example: Huckberry

I’m always impressed by Huckberry emails.

In this email, Andy, one of the co-founders of Huckberry, introduces one of their partners. But instead of doing it in a boring, drab, salesy way, he does it by telling a story about how he met the founders of the company. Facts tell and stories sell!

In this case, the subscriber is brought into the story in a way that he or she will identify with the brand being introduced.

How to improve it:

• This email would be better with a headline, but only if it fits with the Huckberry brand. My gut says it does, if done in a subtle way. The addition of a headline improves scannability.

Example: Michaels

Michaels is back with another solid email.

In this email, they continue re-selling the subscriber on their emails, expand on some ideas from their welcome email, and provide links to the different areas of the website.

The headline at the top is a nice addition, and gives me a way to evaluate the contents of this email fast — while I’m scanning through my inbox.

How to improve it:

• Like the Michaels welcome email above, Michaels should add more supporting copy in this email. While this email here does a great job of selling their email newsletter, it doesn’t do a great job of selling Michaels as a brand and company.

Stage 1 – Interested: Promotions for First Purchase

This is the easy part.

You’ve welcomed your subscribers into your tribe. You’ve warmed them up with content, brand indoctrination and more. You’ve even made a few “soft offers” to people in the content of your emails.

Now it’s time to sell and sell hard.

The goal?

Get people to make their first purchase.

Set Up

Creating promotions is relatively straightforward.

Pick an offer…

Create an email…

** Send** it out.

However, depending on the size of your database and operation, you may want to segment people.

For example, you could target people who have only visited specific categories on your website, thereby displaying their interest in a specific type of product.

Ideas for your offers:

• Instead of a blanket discount, require people to purchase a certain amount, such as $100 – 20% off on all orders over $100.
• Offer free shipping for a limited time, or only on orders over a certain amount.
• Overstocked on a certain item? Offer it as a gift to customers who spend a certain amount.
• Offer points, or some kind of reward-based system to encourage purchases.

Also, whenever you make some kind of special offer, include a reason for the offer. Don’t offer a discount with no reason. Instead, tell them it’s because you bought too many and now you need to clear space in your warehouse.

Your conversions will improve if you provide a reason for the special offer.

Finally, you can (and should) hit this on both automated and manual fronts.

Take the nurture sequence from the last section:

> Email 1> – Welcome to the family (please read)

> Email 2> – Brand indoctrination part 1 (100 word brand story, with open loop)

> Email 3> – Brand indoctrination part 2 (100 word brand story, with open loop)

> Email 4> – Educational email > Email 5> – Cool video

Each of these emails should have “soft offers” for products on your website, again, to encourage the first purchase.

And if you offered an incentive for the signup, your welcome email will contain the coupon code and a big, bright, shiny button for purchase.

The educational email should lead into a soft-sell. For example, tell the story of the origin of the kitchen knife, and finish the story by mentioning that you have the most modern and up-to-date kitchen knives, which retain the lessons of the past. Then add a link to purchase.

The cool video should relate to your products somehow — or it should be embedded on your website (in your blog) and be surrounded with links, images, and so on, that lead people to other sections of your website to make a purchase.

Next, add a timed promotion:

> Email 6> – Limited time offer (ie. 48 hours)

> Email 7> – Limited time offer (ie. 24 hours left)

Finally, depending on what email software you’re using, you can set up page triggers. So if a subscriber who hasn’t purchased yet visits a specific category but doesn’t buy, you can send them a quick discount offer (or just a reminder) to grab something from that category.

Promotional Email Examples

Example: Apple

For the most part, Apple does a great job with their email marketing (though I’ve seen a few blank emails from them due to too many images).

In this email, the image is eye-catching, and the targeting is relevant (it’s Valentine’s day soon). The button is easy to find.

How to improve it:

• The headline is too clever. It’s trying too hard. I have to think to understand it. They’d get better results by using something more direct, like “iPod Touch For Valentine’s Day?”.

Example: Bonobos

Here’s a great example of a text-based email, that sells, and comes with personality. Bonobos nails it with this one. It stands out, precisely because it’s not what you’re expecting from a company like Bonobos. The call to action is clear. And everything is easy to read.

How to improve it:

• This email is a drab mix of grey and white, and that means a bright orange or blue (or some other bright button) would stand out like nothing else. Change the buttons to orange or similar to highlight them and make them stand out. It’s a small change, but I can’t find anything else to dislike about this email.

Example: Jet

Jet has come out of nowhere.

In this email, they lead with some personality and pop culture (do you know that song?), and make it dead obvious what they want you to do next. There’s plenty of whitespace. The text is easy to read. It’s easy to glance at this email and know if it matters to me or not.

How to improve it:

• Add a menu below the logo that links to the most popular categories in store.
• Add images and product suggestions below the button, in case I’m in the mood to browse through the email some more. Right now, it might be too short to catch my attention properly. It’s tough to say too much in an email (since I can leave at anytime), but it’s frustratingly easy to say too little.

Example: Julep

Julep, a company that sells beauty products and nail polish, *nails *(pun intended) this promotional email.

They’ve got the elements that matter. Menu. Clear text. Obvious button. And they’re not trying to be clever or cutesy with it.

How to improve it:

• The design makes you focus on the center circle. But this means some people won’t see that Julep is offering a free gift on orders over $50. This free gift offer should be featured in the white circle, above the button, so that more people can see it.
• Product images and suggestions. If I’m in my inbox and I’m looking for distraction, I might open this email and want to read more. But if I have to click through to the website, I’m probably just going to hit “Archive” or “Delete”.

Example: Memebox

Here’s an email after my own heart — I got my stripes in the copywriting world, so text emails always make me smile.

In this email, Memebox promotes their Korean beauty products using more text than most companies would. They’re doing a lot right with this email. Simple, clear offer. Big button. Supporting copy.

How to improve it:

• While the use of text in this email is great, bunching it into one large paragraph isn’t. Memebox should add a few linebreaks to make their “wall of text” more readable.
• Also, the addition of a blue text link to the paragraph might bump the CTR by a few points.

Example: Twist

Twist. Epic product. Epic emails. What is it, you ask? Simply the coolest thing ever. LED lightbulbs that double as speakers, so you can “play music in every room of your house”.

See that headline at the top? That’s a great example of a simple, straightforward headline. It’s not trying to be cutesy or clever. It tells you exactly what you get from Twist: the ability to “play all of your music in every room of the house”.

What else is this email right?

It contains a nice promotion ($50 off a speaker 3-pack – normally $149). It includes supporting copy (A speaker system without the pesky wires) and brand indoctrination (Our bulbs are rated to last over 35,000 hours).

How to improve it:

• The only thing I would change with this email is perhaps add more supporting copy, or a testimonial. The premise seems a little unbelievable and gimmicky, so adding a proof element like a testimonial might add considerable trust.

That’s a wrap for Part 2. Bookmark this post and check back on February 2, 2016 for Part 3 – eCommerce Email Marketing Campaign Roadmap Stage 2!

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