With the highest ROI (return on investment) of any medium, using email marketing for your eCommerce site is essential. However, with a limited budget, yet a myriad of potential areas to focus on, what should be your first steps?

Analyse and Action

You know your business better than anyone, so a first step should be to look at your customer base and order pattern to see if you can spot areas for improvement. For example, you might notice:

Low repeat orders
Accounts often created with no follow up order
A large number of inactive older customers

Most online stores suffer from these issues, but on a positive note, none are so insurmountable that they cannot be addressed, so let’s get started with…

Your first campaign

Once you have your list, it’s time to decide which area of concern to focus on first. Our advice would be to choose the area that has the greatest potential to increase revenue. In our experience, great results can be had from targeting existing customers who have become inactive over time. By offering this group a time limited, personalized coupon in order to motivate them to return – a group which could number in the hundreds at least, you will have taken your first step to proactively increase sales and revenue.

see the Winback Advanced MailBeez module >

Targeting the second problem area

When budget allows, and after you have hopefully seen some positive results from the Winback campaign above, it’s time to take another pressing area of concern out of action – abandoned cart customers, in other words, those visitors who were ready to buy, but for some reason left the checkout process without ordering. This customer group is, in many ways, already expecting a follow up email, such is the prevalence of this practice amongst larger stores; so why shouldn’t you do it?

If you have been following our blog, take a look at a recent post we published about crafting a well written abandoned cart email in order to maximise your campaign here.

see the No Purchase Advanced MailBeez module >

Confronting the final area of concern

Once the two major issues above have been addressed – the problems of inactive older customers and abandoned cart situations, it’s time to look to the third most pressing problem – low repeat orders.

If your store sells products that can be bought regularly, then a core aim of your business should be that a customer must return to purchase again from your store, and not from the competition. Losing future business to competing stores from your existing customer base is simply sloppy salesmanship. They bought once, twice, why not thrice?

In order to ramp up repeat business, you must target existing customers after they have placed an order with a personalized email that includes their previous order information in an attractive product grid style, and at the same time, a coupon code to motivate them to return. Of course, we would not suggest rewarding after just one sale, instead, try setting the parameters to target customers who have placed for example, 2 orders in 90 days.

see the Reorder Advanced MailBeez module >