The Five Essential Emails for Successful eCommerce Email Marketing

welcome to the curiosity podcast a show about everything ecommerce and digital
business the aim is simple to help you thrive online and now your host Matt
Edmondson welcome my fellow ecommerce entrepreneurs my name is Matt Edmondson
Welcome
and this show is for those of us who are curious about e-commerce and want to know how to get better at doing digital
business coming up in today's show we are gonna be talking about email
marketing oh yes that magic topic of email marketing we're gonna look at five
essential emails that I think you need for any successful e-commerce email
marketing campaign and that is not an easy sentence to say let me tell you you've probably heard it might be dead
or even emails dying is not the thing anymore but that is simply not true it is very
much alive so we are going to talk about all of that in today's show I will of course put any links that I mentioned
along with the show notes from today's show on my website met Edmondson comng
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on over to the website madman CENTCOM and you can copy them because we'll put them there for you it's as easy as that
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check it out you know it's a really interesting project we've got three projects or pretty much in the pipeline
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Email Marketing
about email marketing now this you know was one of those things that over the
years I just assumed every e-commerce business was doing right I just assumed rightly or wrongly
that every e-commerce business out there was doing email marketing right I don't
know why I assume that I just did and very early on in my coaching and
consulting life which I started you know a number of years after running my own
e-commerce businesses I started doing more coaching more consulting I was surprised I mean genuinely gobsmacked by how many
companies that I came across that just would not do an email marketing it
really really shocked me I remember the first client that I ever went to as
doing a consultant project with and they were a reasonably sized e-commerce business turned over several million
five or six million dollars online annually and they're like you know we want to grow to the next phase Mac
coming into a consulting project with us let us know what you think of like cool so I went in and after about half an hour of having a
conversation with various people went into the CEOs office of the company I
said listen is great you've got a great business here turning over you know four or five million online I reckon in the
Email Marketing Strategy
next thirty minutes I can give you a strategy which will add a million pounds to your bottom line without any real major effort on your
part would you be interested in hearing that strategy and of course he was and
so for the next thirty minutes I explained what that strategy was and of course it was email marketing they just
weren't doing it now despite popular belief email marketing is still the best
a most effective marketing channel across all industries it has the ability
to reach out to an audience that is already engaged right and it gives businesses a much higher return on
investment than any other digital channel and that's a really important thing okay according to an emarketer
study the average marketing ROI for email is four times higher than any
other digital marketing channel at about a hundred and twenty-two percent okay a
hundred and twenty two percent says four times higher than any other marketing channel now before you writes me and say
Matt that's not my experience because of dot dot dot you understand and this is an average right the bottom line is you
can be getting great ROI with Facebook Ads you can be doing paid media you could be doing SEO and you can have all
these strategies you know user-generated content influencer marketing and all
that sort of stuff and they can be producing great returns for you and they're fantastic forms of marketing and
you should look at them and invest in them but the bottom line is you also on top of that should have a good email
marketing campaign as you build your email lists your email marketing should
be you know just streaming out really honestly you know email marketing has
evolved from where it was when I started out you know back in
which was just I mean it was real basic back then you sent one email and you you
know you had your whole email list you emailed in the BCC section of your email program and I don't know if you remember
that way you descend warning outs like a million people well a thousand people it would take you all afternoon to out
everybody's email address you put them all in the BCC so then no one knew each other's email address and out it went
obviously its evolved from those days and thank goodness that it has right
I mean toast emails now I offer a really high return on investment but in the age
of GDP are yes those horrible four letters GDP are and we've got to be much
more strategic right in order to maximize that return it's not like years ago when I could just literally get
anybody's email list and email it and it was just it was what it was and people kind of accepts it now you have to jump
through different hoops just to get their name and address on an email list but you know what it is still worth
doing it but doing it right because you definitely want to avoid the
multi-million euro fines have been issued because of Jeep DPR breaches
right so and this is true even if you're in Europe if even if you're in the States you've got to comply with GD P R
if you mail anybody in Europe is just it is what it is so since I mean it's
really important to make and actually I think it's good common sense not only do I want to avoid the fines but as email
is evolved in people's time has become more time-sensitive and people have become more anti-spam taking the time to
a to woo for want of a better expression the person to get their name and email
address and give them high quality content and get their permission to email them and continually email them
means actually your email is going to be much more effective rather than if you just blanket spam a whole bunch of
people right so it makes sense to get their engagement and to get to get their
permission to send them emails okay all of this of course is a backdrop
Email Blasts
to the fact that I want to talk about five specific emails that we use really
effectively in our email marketing okay I'm going to talk about five specific emails that we use but I just wanted to
give you a bit of a backdrop email marketing is super important if you're not doing it you know slap yourself in
the face and get on it and if you are doing it how well are you doing it how
well are you engaging people make sure you comply with known international laws
wherever possible to simply get a good audit trail would be my top advice for
when people subscribe to your email newsletters okay and get people's buy
into them right because you'll earn their trust you're gonna earn their loyalty okay and that's what you want and if you've got that then these five
emails are going to work super super well okay so let me jump straight into
the first type of email and that is called an email blast we also call these
segmented emails now this is where we send one email to many people okay and
four we may segment our email list so rather than let's say I've got a hundred thousand people on my email list rather
than sending one email to a hundred thousand people I'm gonna segment that list I can it used to be years ago our
email blasts was literally one email to a hundred thousand people now we have to be a little bit more clever we have to
know about the customer and their shopping habits and target them with relevant content and promotional offers
right so I'm segmenting them out for example if i underscore and a client
only ever bought nike products I'm not gonna email them added as promotions or Reebok promotions right I'm just not
going to do it because they're obviously very clear they want Nike they're a Nike brand and so we need to sort of stay on
top of our game have to be continually working to understand our customers more
and more watching their behavior online watching what they do to make sure we've segmented them well enough to send them
relevant relevant and targeted content which will engage them but we do this with email blasts okay or
segmented emails which is where we send one email like I say to many people and that many people is going to be all of
the people in that segment for example back to my sports store I would have like a Nike segment and I'm gonna send
Nike stuff Nike emails to those clients okay and I'm gonna do a number of things here in
those emails and this is this is where you'll have seen it you know from most companies this is the traditional form
of email marketing are these email blasts these blanket emails segmented emails where they send you know one
email to you and it's the same email they've sent to you know people around the country they generally have a
catchy subject line with the idea that it's immediately gonna catch the attention of the customer and draw them
in because you obviously want to resonate with them right but you're gonna do that whether it's about a
product or about a service it doesn't matter you want to show them how they're going to be transformed by using your
product or service and you're going to want to try and do that and convey that in the subject line and the use of
emojis all helps right so you want to get and create that catchy subject line with an emoji you're gonna want to use
things like their first name in the email so you know we talked a few weeks ago didn't we about personalization
personalization of the customer experience people like to hear their name still still want to see their name still like to see their name down in the
emails you can get creative with using their names but people do like to see
their name so you'll see a catchy subject title you'll usually see your name in the email and when you respond
to customer emails like this or when you when you personally gonna click the Buy
Now button think what is common to those right and you want to be personable you
want to be empathetic you want that kind of sense of camaraderie like they belong to your tribe they want to know that
they're being understood and you've got their best interests in mind think about what makes you give a brand
or an email or a company that kind of trust that credibility that loyalty to click the email and go through to the
website because that's the ultimate purpose of these segmented emails is to get you
to click on a link and go to the website in order to buy right that's what we
want happen if you haven't subscribed to a whole bunch of these emails do it's one of the best forms of education you
can have just go certainly go run your competitors subscribe to their emails what are they sending out do you think it's working what can you learn from
those email blasts and how easy is it to unsubscribe all of those kind of things see what they do you know subscribe to a
bunch of emails and then unsubscribe from them what do they do how do they manage that unsubscribe feature what
could you learn from it okay because that's essential to maintaining a really great segment email marketing list that
is engaged that has got high open rates and that is you know buying stuff from you basically so that's email type
Ecommerce News
number one before we go to email number two let's take a quick break in do the
news [Music] we are now gonna take a few minutes to
stop pause and review this week's ecommerce news hey Matt hey how we doing
better than last week much better than last night okay and as Joe has been still wearing his safety shoes yes he is
to at work okay no I know okay for those of you didn't listen to last
week's podcast you have no idea what we're talking about that it was very funny anyway you should listen to it
crack on what we got this week okay so I came across this website called
beardbrand calm okay now I don't have a beard and I'm not looking for any
accessories for a beard but no hands to grow one soon no no but I thought it was
actually a cool looking site mm-hmm and so what they do is they sell beard
grooming products mmm obviously yes obviously and on their website their
mission is and I quote to make men awesome nice yep and so they believe that a man
can be a better man hmm by using the products that they sell is that all it takes apparently all they
need is confidence and a bit of self investment so okay yeah so that's what
they are selling but um so I know that's all about humorous and stuff but what I
did like about their site was that it's um like one they gave really good
categorized content mm-hmm and we know how much you like categorize come to I do I really do you're you're a big fan
of it yep I am and especially in the way of blogs mm-hmm which I thought was really good because it's not just here
are my products by them it's more like resources as to why you should why this
is good for you and okay so these guys have a good blog as well yeah okay it's just quite well-rounded I thought and I
think the other thing they do really well is they focus on that mission like as funny as it may seem to make men
awesome but they do they pull everything back on their on their all their content goes back to that
mission okay so I think she's always a good thing yeah actually actually a really good
format I think I guess I'm gonna go check it out what's the website beardbrand com
okay so we'll go have a look see what I say cool okay what's next so have we
finished yeah we have finished there's nothing else I need to say on that okay all right so number two mmm things
to sell at a flea market okay you know this is an e-commerce podcast right yeah
okay cool yeah Herriman the reason I brought this up is not because you know I think you should go ahead hang out at
a flea market but for someone who's starting off on their entrepreneurial journey and they've got an idea of
selling something a good place to test it out is it a flea market could be I would
never have any thoughts is that a really bad idea no no I think it's a great idea because you're dealing with people right
and people at flea markets they want a bargain and as do most online shoppers I
think I'd never would have thought of it but Knight I'll give you points for that that's a good idea yeah go try it at a
flea market yeah okay what sort of things well according to this one list
of things that I saw clothing purses shoes jewelry upcycle furniture artwork okay so if you
don't clothing your flea markets a good place to go you know what if you could
you could do it whereby if you've got some kind of have vintage style clothing I imagine that would be really great to
get feedback on you could even get free models to see where this let me take a photo and then they'll give it you back
if they don't bite okay cool yeah yeah yeah like it item number three mm-hmm
online article that says your customers will spend more on Halloween in
than last year oh well again Halloween just around the corner just around the corner and this is an American website
that I was looking at so what are your thoughts for people spending money in
the UK on Halloween oh um haven't lived in the States for a
while and haven't seen Halloween in America and haven't seen it in the UK is definitely a bigger thing in the States than it here in the UK and I'm intrigued
actually they're saying people are spending more money on Halloween my impression is in the UK and I have no
scientific data to back this up it's just an impression how many kids knock on my door every year at Halloween I kind of feel
Halloween's losing its popularity slightly because of the safety aspect of it right parents to stop willing to let
their kids go and knock on a stranger's door anymore and parents being busy
often don't want to go out with their kids whilst their kids knock on doors but that said um if the numbers are
saying that spending is going up I imagine spending on sweets is going up yeah okay I'll take that yeah I think
also what's going up is spending on costumes of course yeah cuz they have to
get bigger and better every year right yeah you can't just put a white sheet cut some eyes out yeah yeah Ellie case
anymore it's not allowed yeah and I think also with social media when you're seeing other people like what other
people are up to it's inspiring to try and yeah yeah I don't know if s
inspiring bye okay yeah they feel inspire yeah yeah tightly yes social media and e-commerce and Halloween I
think that when consumers see their e-commerce friends mmm interacting with
them on social media and kind of getting there not just a brand who sells X Y and
say they are also getting involved with everyday life so they get involved in
Halloween and yeah and humanizes a brand right it humanizes the friends yeah and
I think that's really great for engagement as well like so they might you know some brand might be all dressed
up in their Halloween gear but then the next day when Halloween's over some people might think oh I really like
those guys and the way they did things and and they'll be more attracted to them yeah that's true actually get on it with
Halloween and the cool thing about Halloween is and I think we do is particularly well in the UK maybe they
do it better in the States Halloween is obviously several weeks before Black Friday right and because
retail sales again pushed further and further back towards Black Friday it could be I've seen it with a lot of
companies actually you're now starting to use it as a way in to try and get those pre Black Friday sales so you
could take advantage of Halloween from an offer or promotional point of view to
try and drum in those sales especially if you're in a nation or a country that actually does Halloween I appreciate
there's a lot around the world that don't and but if yours does then you know definitely be thinking about it
geez you know what we got to lose all right then I guess all that there's left to say now is happy Halloween indeed
Email Sequences
have a happy Halloween thank you I do
that's the news so now let's get back to it okay so before the news we looked at
our first email type which we called the email blasts or segmented emails the second email type which I think is
essential to your e-commerce email marketing campaigns and you know what even after the news that's still not
easy to say but is essential to your email marketing is sequence emails right
or email sequences now what do I mean by these you will have come across them many many times right so email blasts is
where if you remember we send one email to a whole bunch of people right email
sequences are where we send one email to one person which is triggered by a
behavior or an action taken by that person okay so the classic example would
which you've seen a lot is the abandoned cart email right so I come to the
website I put stuff in my cart for whatever reason I don't buy it so the
system then triggers because I behaved in a certain way ie I've not purchased the goods that I've put in my cart after
a an hour or two hours or three hours it's gonna send me an email one email to one person right and that emails gonna
say hey Matt listen it's great to see you on the site we noticed you've put some stuff in your shopping basket here's just a reminder of what you've
got in there it is still in your basket just click this link now you'll go back to the website and see it all magically
appear in your basket it's not disappeared go ahead have a go see what happens right so that might be the first
email but the cool thing about sequences is you don't is you don't just have to
do it once you can actually program now with a lot of these email systems
multiple emails so for example with the abandoned cart we might say right if the
person put stuff in their cart and doesn't buy then after an hour I want you to send this email right now if they
don't click the link in that email after a day I want you to send them another email and in that
email I want to do this this isn't this right and it may be after three days if they've not gone back to the website and
purchase still maybe what I want to do is in the third email send them a coupon code which gives them temp sent off or a
gift with purchase or free delivery or something to help them come back and buy
the goods right so my actions and my behaviors as a customer are determining
what is happening with those email sequences okay and these email sequences
are great because you can gradually build interest and trust with your customers as well as enticing them back
with things like abandoned carts you can do email sequences for example around your on ramps to help build that trust
so maybe someone comes to you and your or they come to your website and they're not ready to buy your main product but
they're happy to give you you their email to download some content which is
high-value content which is going to help them decide to decide whether or not to buy your product right you're on
ramping them you're sort of leading them in and you can do that with email sequences so day one you you know you
might well let's pick an example right so let's say we have a website selling
camera equipment let's camera equipment on the desk in front of me and you know we've got this really beautiful
expensive camera setup for those that want to do videos for their website okay
and it's about I know three grand and so if I come to that website and look at
On Ramp
that is three grand that's a lot of investment and I'm kind of thinking I don't want to invest regrind I don't know but what you've got on the course
as well is like you've got hey a course on there an online course or some on ramp some material which says listen
this is a free online course the twelve essential things you need to know in
setting up your own recording studio to create videos for your online store
right so you've got a title like that and so whilst I think all three guns a
lot of money that interests me because I want to know what that course has got to say what are the twelve key things that I know right
so maybe day one you sent me an email to saying hey listen the first thing you need to know is it doesn't have to be
crazy you can shoot all this with an iPhone and blah blah blah and you've given me some high value content but you
know there are reasons why people might want to spend more or invest more and we'll tell you more about that tomorrow
and then the next day you give me a case study of a customer who came to you and
you know you they went through a particular transformation they had really bad videos on their website and
now they've got really great videos because they bought this kit and this is
their story right demight be a video showing me how to connect all the equipment
together and how easy it is Dave just see what I mean and so you go through these sort of twelve days every day I
get an email and so that that on-ramp is a brilliant way to use email sequences
to engage customers to get them to a point where they're ready to buy okay so
Email Sequence
we've got things like abandoned carts we've got things like on ramping I think you can look at things like new
customers so when someone's a new customer if it's the first time they've purchased from you set up an email
sequence where you send out a series of emails over a week or two just saying
hey it's great to have you here's a bit about us here's our values maybe here's a charity we supports
here's how to use the product you've purchased from us here's what somebody has said about the products you've purchased from us and here's you know
ten tips on how to maximize the benefits of the product you purchase from us right so you you just want to get them
involved in you with you as a company and and buying into your your values your culture and and so on and so forth
right it's brilliant so you want to do that with new customers you you want to do with abandon carts you want to do it
with all kinds of on-ramps so another example Jersey we offer a try before you buy promotion so customers can pick from
a list of samples that we send them for free before they buy the main product
right we on ramp them by offering free samples and based on their choice of
samples we are going to send them a particular sequence to help them understand what it is they've got how it
works and what's best for them and we'll do that over series of five to seven emails using email sequences so email
sequences are very targeted they're based on your customers behavior and it's one email to one person okay and so
between email blasts and email sequences that's where most emarketing sort of
happens that's where most of your email marketing should be and you should think about it it's where a lot of the power
is but let me tell you there are three other types of emails that you need to add to your email marketing campaign
which I don't think many people take advantage of right and I don't understand why because they're just
brilliant the third type then where you can starts
do stuff a little bit different but guerrilla warfare if you like the third type are the transactional emails now a
transactional email is an email that is triggered again by the behavior of
somebody on your website but it is in response to them buying products from
you for example someone comes along they buy the $camera set up to the
video so think of the emails that happen automatically after that right and these
are emails that customers actually are waiting to receive and this is why
they're so powerful they are waiting to receive the order confirmation the the email which says I have received your
order it is getting processed you're in safe hands right they all own that email
the amount of calls that I you know been around companies all over the world when you listen to the customer service a lot
of those requests from customer service was did you actually get my order because I didn't get the email confirmation okay in other words this is
the one email your customers are actually waiting for they want it in
their inbox they are looking for it so you know if they're looking for you know
they're gonna open it you know they're gonna read it you've got their attention whereas with your marketing emails you
know you're doing really well if say ten or twenty percent of your customers read those emails but air
single one let me tell you reads that transactional email so you can make the most of it so the emails which has
thanks for your order the email which says you know what your order is on the way the email which even says your order
has now been delivered and the email which I think you can send us a transactional email is they're asking
for a review email so those four emails you may have more you may have less but
the bare bones of it those four transactional emails are a great opportunity let me tell you for some
well-thought-out upselling and cross-selling on your products on your brand remember the customer has already
got a level of trust because they have just bought from you right so they're more likely to click through to your
site they are looking for this email they're definitely gonna read that contents and make sure you've got some
upselling some cross selling that is relevant to the customer and adds value to their life okay super super essential
okay so do you make the most of your transactional emails the fourth essential email to your email marketing
again you know what's going to have the biggest impact your email blasts your segmented emails right the next one is
going to be your email sequences the next one is going to be your transactional emails and the one after that the the number four on my list
again oh let me tell you how many times these emails have been forgotten and neglected they are simply your customer
service emails okay now these emails are really important in helping you retain
your customers and build a loyal customer base these are emails that have
been written by customers to you because they want you to answer one of their questions okay so guess what just like
the transactional emails they are waiting for you to respond they're waiting for those customer service
emails to come through they are so not well how can I put this if you send emails to people who use
Google Mail and let's face it a lot of your customers are going to use Google Mail your email blasts guess where they
go in the promotions tab so they become harder to read for your customer right to grab their attention
customer service emails nine times out of ten always go straight to their inbox so not only is your customer waiting for
him but they're much more likely to be get it's get seen especially for Gmail users right so this is this is what we
call gold mined real-estate space right this is high-value real estate space now
you might not be sending many customer service emails out every day you may set a hundred of those emails versus a ten
thousand email blasts but this is why then number four in the list of not number one but they are super super
critical and you can do some really great stuff on those customer service emails in terms of cross-selling
upselling you can get personal you can you know they can understand who you are
as a company gets know your values I mean there's all kinds of things you can
do here and give them really targeted offers you know if someone sends a customer service email when you write
back you know jeans come in asked a question you go hey Jean listen I
noticed you've been on our site quite a bit you're a super value customer not only do I want to solve you know or
answer the question to which you've emailed in but I've just noticed you are such a great customer of ours really
want to appreciate you I am sending you a free gift in the post it's gonna come
out it's gonna get sent out today that's on me totally free of charge no problem
by the way because we're sending that out if you want us to add this to the box I know you've purchased it in the
past because I'm already sending it out anyway I'll pass the savings on to you on the shipping so you can get an extra
five bucks off all you've got to do is click here or before p.m. and users
code and I know it all gets sent out in the same box everyone's a winner right I mean it's a beautiful thing ok so that's
number four number five again I don't think this is as fruitful as number four
I don't think it's gonna be as fruitful as number three you get the point right there is an order to this but again it's one of the for me is it's one of these
opportunities do you just take advantage of because you never know where it leads it's your email footer and what
do I mean by that every time you send an email out to somebody right whether it's the supplier whether it's a perspective
supplier whether it's your on your uncle where whatever emails you send from your work address you normally have a
signature at the bottom of those emails your email signature put some marketing
material in those email signatures let me tell you I cannot well I've not tried
to add up and I probably should do at one point how many tens of thousands of pounds of business have come my way
based on what I wrote in those email signatures right it is genuinely amazing
real estate space everyone's opening up those emails everyone's reading it everyone's getting involved put
something in there which is of high value to the person that's open in it and not just you know a big fat sales
pitch but high value content you can put in seasonal offers linked to resources
on your website an event that you're hosting I mean the list is endless okay
but definitely use your email stationary so those are the five essential emails
Summary
that I think you need for your e-commerce email marketing campaign I guarantee you most people listening to
this podcast will be doing one of them some of you will be doing none of them you're the slap worthy people let me
tell you most of you will be doing one of them a few of you will be doing two of them which would be the blasts and
the sequences I don't think many of you be doing all five so I want you to take the ones which you're not doing when you
get to the office when you sat in front of your computer today spend minutes sketching out a strategy that you can
use in each of those five areas and get to work let me tell you because in this
digital age we have so many different forms modes of communication now with
whatsapp and email and social media we've got slack we've got I mean everything's going on right and there's
many different channels as we have email is still the most popular right targeted
email is still the most relevant and effect form of marketing because you're getting
straight to the consumer straight to the customer case so think about those five
Outro
areas make sure it is working for you plan your strategy and let me know how
you get on I would love to subscribe to your email list and see how you're getting on so do
and drop me a line and let me know let me know where I can subscribe and I will definitely sign up and maybe even give
you some feedback on what I think you could do to improve it so yeah just get in touch and if you want to know how to
get in touch with me I'm head on over to the website Matt Edmondson comm all my social media profiles on there include
an Instagram which I'm loving at the moment but you can connect with me on Facebook LinkedIn is also really good
you can connect with me on LinkedIn to search my Edmonson I will come up that
is for sure so I hope you've got something out of this I hope this is all clear to you clear as daylight like I
said there are notes on the website at madman Singh Kham you can check out those notes we'll put those on for you
but get working on those five essential emails let me know how you get on and if
your business goes up significantly as a result you can buy me a pint alright
thanks for listening I'll see you in the next show
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