Disclaimer: This is a long post but packed with š£ knowledge bombs & š„golden nuggets you can use in your business right now.
When I first started out in e-com I had no idea what the hell I was doing with email marketing. I mean, I knew I should be doing it, but I didnāt know what I should be doing or how to send emails that make people buy.
Iām sure you are probably in the same position today or at least you were at some point. Thatās about to change right now. Iām going to reveal my 3 best tips to skyrocket your e-com sales from email marketing.
At the moment, our email list is our second highest delivering channel after FB ads, and thatās with a much higher conversion rate and around 50X higher ROI. Our business generates 7 figures annually.
Hereās how to set up the 3 most profitable email automations your business needs. The best part? Just set them and forget them, itās all automated!
I call it the Plank Method. Like walking the plank on a Pirate ship. Yes Iām weird, but itās fun! š¤Ŗ
Plank goes like thisā¦
Prod, Persuade, Push!
The first thing we need to do is actually to capture our prospects email address as they navigate your site. If you donāt collect their email, then this sequence will be useless for you. We do that by having a pop up, email form or some other prompt ask the customers email address before they go to the checkout.
This can be custom coded into your checkout flow, or you can create a click pop that pops up a form once someone adds the product to the cart or initiates checkout. There are some good apps like Recart that add this functionality too.
What about content marketing?
Yes, that is a good backup to this but realistically you want to collect the email address of the person who was actually browsing your store and at least considering giving you some money.
People who read your blog have expressed less interest in buying from you so they will not be included in this automation, but you should definitely continue to generate leads via content if you already do so.
Now, back to the sequence.
Hereās the 3 steps to maximising your e-com sales via email.
#1 Abandoned cart – Prod
Your abandoned cart email is so simple and yet so many people are not doing it. This little reminder is basically an email that is sent to a customer within 3-6 hours of them abandoning the cart. This means they saw something they liked, went to the checkout and for some reason they didnāt actually buy, and they left.
This could be for a multitude of reasons, unexpected shipping costs, lack of trust in your website, or maybe they are just on the train and they almost missed their stop, or their wallet is upstairs, and the game is on. They will ādo it laterā they say to themselvesā¦
This is costing you money. If you failed to capture their email address, in all likelihood this prospect is gone forever and youāre leaving cash on the table. If you did get their email, good job! Now letās get to work.
So here you have to think about the buyerās journey. They got to your checkout before deciding to leave without buying. Why is that? Yes, they may have been distracted but not everyone will. There may be some reason or objection that is preventing them from pulling the trigger.
This is the most common mistake when you are writing an abandoned cart email, you donāt just say āhey you forgot this now go back and purchaseā. Yes, this will get the distracted group to go back and buy, but what if it was another objection?
What if it was a lack of trust, unsure about the product quality, not convinced the product is right for them? Find out the objectionās customers have about buying from you and block them right inside this email.
Of course, you leave the reminder at the start, but after that add in some other key elements:
- Add in some Social proof to block the lack of trust objection
- Mention your Guarantee to block quality objection
- Refer them to Customer service to block the suitability objection
Donāt go to town here, one line for each part is enough, this email is still mainly a reminder, so we donāt need a Jane Austen novel landing in someoneās inbox.
Now your abandoned cart email is the perfect little nudge to send them back over to your site with their fears allayed and credit card out ready to finalise the purchase.
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#2 Sideways retargeting – Persuade
So, theyāve opened your abandoned cart and still not bought. Time to give up and move on to the next prospect thenā¦ NO!
What we do here is after 24-48 hours of them leaving your website, we send them another email that dials up on the persuasion. The basic premise for this sequence is that we send an email every 1-2 days for the next 8-10 days.
The email has 2 parts, at the top we are stating the benefits of your product from as many angles as you can think of, and at the bottom we are blocking the most common objections that your customers have, only this time in more detail.
Move through your product benefits 1 by 1 from most obvious, to least obvious and prospects objections 1 by 1 from most common to less common.
Side note: 1) brainstorm yourself or email your customers a survey and ask them why they bought from you to get the benefit angles. And 2) email your leads after a month if they havenāt bought to find out why ā the most common reasons are your objections.
Every day or 2 you are persuading your customers to come back and make a purchase, using the reasons why your current customers buy from you. Every person has different reasons for buying the same product, itās your job to figure these out and relay them back to your prospects in this sequence to get them over the line.
Same with the objections, spend the time to learn why people are not buying and work through them in this sequence to leave them with no valid reason not to make the purchase.
Pro tip: Donāt forget social proof in these emails too, sprinkle in 5-star reviews, mentions in publications, TV appearances etc. Think of something!
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#3 Itās Urgent – Push
At this point you have done everything you can do to remind and convince someone to buy from you. There is not much more you can say and for this reason, this one email leverages a universal human emotional trigger, loss.
Basically, you tell your customer that the great offer you were running is about to go away, or at least change in some way. Steer clear of fake urgency and try to come up with some reason why they should buy today.
The price is going up, bonuses are expiring, stock is low, cart is closing etc. itās different for every business so think of something. If you have not been running a special offer, now is the time to offer one, and make it time sensitive. āHere is a special bonus you will get for purchasing today, but it expires at midnightā.
Basically, you want to tell them the train is leaving, and they better move now or be left behind. This is the kind of urgency you want to create because it is combined with FOMO and loss.
This human behaviour is universal, people will sit on the fence until the last possible moment they can, if you let that moment go on forever, then so will they. If they think they can come back at any time and buy, why buy now?
You put that deadline in front of them and entice them to act now. They have to get off the fence by THIS time or they lose out. One thing to consider here is a Free shipping coupon because shipping costs may have been why they didnāt buy in the first place. We didnāt offer this in the first email because it will hurt your margin and itās only a last resort.
If they finally donāt buy, after all of this sequence then itās time for the push! No hard feelings, they are simply shoved off your hot prospect email list and you sail along without them J You can keep them on another list for blast campaigns, but this is the end of the line for them in this automation.
By creating this automation you are closing up a big hole in your marketing and also by building your email list, you are constructing a valuable asset that your business critically needs to protect it from outside forces such as FB banning you or something else happening out of the blue.
So thatās it, guys! Put these email sequences to use and watch your sales increase, your ad spend is not affected, just a process you put in place and reap the benefits forever.
I hope this post as helpful if you use email marketing in your own business let me know, or if you have any questions, Iād be happy to help!