Does your ecommerce already have a Leads nutrition strategy? Do you have a relationship with your current base? Did you know that, by adopting some techniques, you can have a significant increase in the sales of a company without necessarily increasing the base?
According to studies , the main sources of ecommerce acquisition are organic search (22%) and paid ads (20%). But there is even a third acquisition channel that continues to grow: email (18%).
Access to an email account becomes easier year after year due to the popularization of the mobile phone and the very importance of email as a communication channel. Every day, more people are accessing email, reading more emails, and buying more emails.
The Return on Investment of your Email Marketing campaigns is 3800% , according to North American studies. That is, for every $1.00 (dollar) invested, there is a return of $38.00.
However, few companies invest in this area.
Here we bring you 3 strategies to transform your Leads into customers through email.
1 – Automation for those who abandoned the shopping cart
According to the Baymard consultancy , 67% of people who click to buy a product end up giving up at the next stage.
In other words, out of 100 potential customers, 67 of them navigated to your website, chose a product, and were redirected to the purchase page, but ended up giving up. That creates two problems for the marketing team:
- Understand why the customer gave up on the purchase and reduce those loss percentages.
- Recover as many customers as possible.
Marketing Automation attacks that second point.
And it is not about sending a “mechanical” email, similar to those templates you find on the internet. We are talking about investing time, energy and resources to create the most effective and personalized nutrition of lost leads possible.
There are several cases of companies that treated this problem seriously and had good results. The Boot Barn company , for example, managed to recover 12% of sales with this type of remarketing.
How to start
Instead of sending that email template from the internet, you will get much more results if you are strategic and know how to personalize your email well.
Here is an email sequence you can use to get started.
First email: memory
Most companies send a discount coupon immediately, and people know it. Some of them may abandon the cart just to find out if you will send a discount coupon right away. Burning your discounts like this in the beginning can hurt your income.
Instead of sending a discount, remind the Lead what was left in the cart. Tell him he forgot something there. Show him some pictures of the products. You can give it some kind of benefit (people love free shipping). And put a link to continue the purchase.
Second Email: Going Around Objections
What is the reason that makes people give up buying? If you don't know, ask. Put a question in the first email: "Why did you postpone the purchase?" Leave that campaign rolling for a month, look up the data, and find out why.
That kind of information is worth gold. Use it to improve your entire Sales Funnel and build the second email in your automation pipeline.
Understand the objections and try to circumvent them.
You can emphasize that previous offer of free delivery of the first email or inform that your website is protected against fraud. Get statements from customers who bought the product in the cart and show them in your email.
Third email: Discount email
It's time to give people who haven't bought yet a push. Offer discounts of 5%, 10% or the amount you think is relevant to your margin.
All emails must remind the customer about the products left in the cart. Do not forget to place a CTA in all emails, redirecting to the purchase page. It facilitates the return to complete the purchase.
And how much time do I put between sending each email?
- First email – Send 24 hours after the Lead abandoned the cart;
- Second email – Send 24 hours after the first email;
- Third email – Send 72 hours after the second email.
Why wait 24 hours to send the first email? A study carried out by MarketingSherpa obtained the best results in this time.
Some companies even create a sequence of up to 7 emails. Stay tuned and constantly monitor the performance of your campaign in search of improvements.
2 – Welcome email
Did you know that 74.4% of consumers expect a welcome email when they convert to your website? And what's more: Leads who receive a welcome email have a 33% greater commitment to your brand in the long term. Finally, welcome emails have an open rate 4 times higher than average and a click rate 5% higher than other campaigns.
The welcome email is the one where you establish the first contact between the company and the new Lead. You can have a welcome email for clients, but in this case we are talking about that Lead who converted for the first time on your website.
They are those people who converted to your website via pop-up, sidebar, signed up for your newsletter or turned into a Landing Page to download some content.
How to start
The welcome email has some objectives:
- Initiate the first relationship between Lead-company;
- Begin the “indoctrination” process;
- Give incentives to Leads;
- Create expectations;
- Encourage Leads to engage with you on other channels.
First relationship between Lead-company.
This part is easy. Literally welcome the Lead for joining your mailing list. You must make him feel welcome, in the same way as when you are received when entering a business.
The “indocrination” process begins
Create three or four sentences that convey your company's message, showing why it is different and why people should be excited to buy your product.
This part is more of an art than a science. The main thing is to show why you are special.
give them incentives
In the event that the Lead has become a banner offering a discount on your website, give them the discount along with a call-to-action to use that coupon on your website.
Define expectations
This part is related to the customer education process. You need to make the lead wait for your next contact, so tell them that you intend to do it in the next emails.
Do not trivialize your discounts. If your strategy is just to send discounts, change your approach. Be creative and send content that generates value for the customer, such as videos, tips on how to get the most out of the products that he himself bought/searched for.
Send decoration advice in the event that the Lead has left some furniture in the cart.
Encourage Leads to engage with you on other channels
Create a space with links from your social networks . But don't make that your main goal, as you'll get much more results if you send leads directly to your website.
Also give them reasons to follow you on those channels. For example, instead of a simple “Like our Facebook page”, write “Like our Facebook page and receive exclusive tips and promotions”.
Examples:
This is the first email that the Ann Taylor company sends to Leads. Note the welcome message, along with a discount coupon at the bottom of the email.
A clean email is easy to read. The H1 in the header makes the main message of the email clear. Below they explain a bit about how the website works and some benefits.
Check out this welcome email from NOMAD. In just a few lines, they show the company's differentials. And that without wanting to push/force a sale on the first contact.
3 – Relationship and Nutrition of Leads
When companies nurture their Lead base, they get 50% more prepared customers at the time of purchase. What's more: properly nurtured Leads buy 47% more .
The bad news is that few ecommerces invest in nutrition.
You must have already seen this image elsewhere. A general rule of thumb says that only 3% of your website visitors are ready to buy something.
Despite being a general rule and not a scientific fact, this idea of distribution helps to understand a little more about the advantages of working with nutrition.
Most companies target these visitors who are ready to buy. On the other hand, we have many other visitors who will not buy, because they are not prioritized in the strategies.
How to start
First of all, don't be inconvenient.
Instead of sending random emails with promotions and discounts all week, think about the type of audience you are reaching and which segmentation you will use to define, for example, which product to recommend.
Think about what stage the customer is in in the purchase process to define whether the approach will be indirect (welcome email) or direct (promotions).
These are just a few ideas. If you want to delve deeper into the subject of nutrition, enter the post What is Lead Nutrition and how to benefit from this technique .
Educators
Teach them something, whether it's about your product, your company, or the delivery process. It can be something about the manufacturing of the product, about your niche.
For every type of product or service, there is some content that is useful to your customer that you can write about.
The process is more or less this:
- We sell mattresses;
- So we can write something related to mattresses;
- Our mattress helps people get a better night's sleep, so we can write about the science behind a good night's sleep;
- Write about the quality of the materials used in the manufacture of the mattress;
- Write about health problems related to a bad old mattress;
- Create playlists on Spotify for a good night's sleep.
Imagine that you are doing research on mattresses and you are impacted by such a campaign. Put yourself in the customer's place and think about what you would like to receive.
Make customers identify with your brand
It is in nutrition where you will maintain that initial contact that you established in the welcome emails.
Build an email or a series of emails telling a little about the history of your company, explain why you are different from the competition. Connect your brand to greater purposes: here at RD Station, for example, we offer software, but we also add value by helping our clients get the most out of RD Station and Digital Marketing . We do this through content generated by the Marketing Team and by our Customer Success team, with excellent service.
And finally…
Communication in nutrition needs to be interesting and useful. As I said above, don't be inconvenient.
The whole thing revolves around your product and brand. You can and should mention them in your nutrition, but don't force the bar.
You can use various types of content in your nutrition lines, such as videos, audios, blog posts, podcasts, third-party content and so on.
After all, any content that can be interesting and useful for your type of client and that does not harm you (promoting the competition), becomes excellent material to be used in your future nutrition campaigns.
Conclusion
The great challenge we have in nutrition is to get across a personalized, attractive and interesting message. If we work on those factors, we will build what Ryan Deiss called the Invisible Selling Machine : an automated selling power machine that transforms visitors into friends, friends into customers, and customers into fans.
This post was originally written by Vinicius Mello in Portuguese and contains adaptations made by the author for the Latin American and Spanish markets.
