Finding an efficient way to encourage customers to buy products from your eCommerce platform can be challenging for multiple reasons. According to 99 Firms, successful implementation of email marketing in eCommerce accounts for 28.3% of all revenue gained in the industry. On the other hand, Smart Insights reported that the eCommerce industry accounts for a 15.66% open rate and only 2.07% click rate in email marketing, making smart content creation and customer triggers essential for success.
Thus, effective integration of trigger emails into your marketing strategy should become a norm that will facilitate better engagement and subsequent revenue generation for your eCommerce platform. With that said, let’s take a look at several types of trigger email centered on lead nurturing, as well as the reasons to use email verifier in your business model going into 2020.
Benefits of Using Trigger Emails for eCommerce Lead Nurture
Let’s touch on the benefits of implementing trigger emails into an email marketing strategy before we dive into the “how” of the matter. As its title might suggest, trigger emailing serves to “trigger” response with the customer and incite a certain action within them. Whether it’s additional eCommerce sales, a referral to their social circles, or another form of engagement with your content or products, trigger emails can serve as an effective way to nurture converted leads and stay in touch with them over long periods.
Think of them as purposeful “calls to action” where the CTA consists of the entire email sent to the mailing list in scheduled intervals. While their open rate won’t always be high, trigger emails can facilitate recurrent sales and revenue generation alongside your active content marketing campaign directed at converting additional leads. In short, the practical benefits of trigger emailing in eCommerce lead nurturing include:
- Higher brand loyalty and social circle advocacy
- Streamlined audience segmentation and retargeting
- Extended sales opportunities after the initial conversion
- Cost-effective nurturing channel with positive ROI
Types of Trigger Emails to Consider
1. Engagement Confirmation
When it comes to timing your email trigger, it’s best to establish such a practice as soon as the customer has converted to your subscription list or made the initial purchase. Engagement confirmation emails serve as both an effective initial trigger for customer loyalty as well as a simple confirmation of the customer’s identity and validity for future lead nurturing.
The wording of your engagement confirmation email should be professional, respectful, and most importantly allow the recipient a choice to unsubscribe if they wish to do so. This is a psychological sales method which ensures that the customer has a choice – however, they will not act on it if you are upfront and pro-consumer about your respect for their privacy.
2. Welcome & Introduction
Welcome emails should be reserved specifically for customers who have just made an account or an initial purchase via your eCommerce platform. These trigger emails serve as an introductory content marketing piece that will quickly introduce different aspects of your online storefront to the user.
For example, if a customer has purchased a gaming console through your eCommerce store, your welcome email should contain related products that the user might be interested in buying in addition to the first purchase. Think of it as a related product section featured on Amazon and its individual product pages. Make sure that new leads feel welcome on your platform by drafting a standardized welcome email with variable related products section and your open and engagement rates will reflect those efforts.
3. Limited-Time Event Offers
Fear-Of-Missing-Out (FOMO) is a strong sales incentive tactic that can be combined with an email trigger to further boost retention and sales with existing customers. You can introduce a rotating lineup of products that can be a part of a seasonal sale or simply invent your own sales events to incentivize customer engagement.
Diana Adjadj, a marketer and contributing writer at ClassyEssay says, “The book-centric eCommerce platform Book Depository utilizes time-limited sales effectively by constantly rotating its event lineup and reaching out to the mailing list with offers and discount coupons to augment the purchase incentive. The secret to cashing in on FOMO is to ensure that your sales events are time-limited or exclusive, to nudge the customers into purchasing them sooner rather than later.”
4. Abandoned Engagement Reminders
Whether it’s for time or monetary reasons, customers will often abandon their eCommerce platform engagement before the purchase is made. This can often manifest in the form of cart abandonment, leading to a decrease in revenue generation and subsequent abandonment of the platform as a whole.
To avoid this, you can reach out to customers whose emails you have in the lead database and remind them about the abandoned engagement. You can also sweeten the pot by adding a small discount coupon or an additional incentive to complete the purchase which will likely result in an effective email trigger and lead the customer back to your platform.
5. Surveys & Polls
One of the things that customers enjoy from brands and platforms they use is additional, non-sales engagement. Surveys and polls with the goal of gathering relevant feedback and opinions on your platform can be an effective email trigger to spark future engagement.
Make sure to treat this form of email outreach not only as a sales opportunity but also as a chance to gather useful information on how the public perceives your storefront. Online forms sent out as trigger emails can also reward the customer with post-engagement coupons or freebies as a thank-you for participating in the survey.
6. Personal Milestone Offers
Lastly, keeping track of individual customer’s milestones is a great way to ensure brand loyalty with your platform over longer periods. Personal milestones such as birthdays, dates of account creation or milestone purchase amounts can be used as an opportunity to send out a unique email trigger.
The email can serve as a personalized congratulation message to the individual and offer a unique purchase opportunity at a bargain price. A combination of personalized content and exclusive discount in an email dedicated just to them will undoubtedly spark a positive reaction with the customer and lead to a positive outcome for your lead nurturing efforts.
7. Trigger Email Mistakes to Avoid
Now that we have a better overview of which types of trigger emailing we can use to boost recurrent sales and lead nurturing, let’s briefly tackle the negatives. While extending an olive branch to existing leads in the form of additional purchase opportunities might seem positive on paper, overstaying your welcome or pushing too aggressively might have an opposite effect. As such, some of the mistakes you should avoid in your email trigger efforts include:
- Poorly Formatted or Repeated Content
While the main point of a trigger email is for it to contain an attractive purchase opportunity for the recipient, its content should still be formatted professionally. Using writing platforms such as TrustMyPaper and BestEssayEducation will allow you to proofread, spell check and format written sales content for more effective trigger emailing. Make sure to do so prior to sending trigger emails to avoid being automatically registered as spam by the recipients.
- Overreliance on Trigger Emailing
Speaking of spam, too many emails centered on sales will paint a negative image of your brand with the customers. While you should facilitate lucrative deals for loyal customers and ensure that they are taken care of in terms of lead nurturing, it’s also pivotal that you do not overstay your welcome. Space out your email trigger content and avoid daily emails or outreach every single time a customer visits your eCommerce platform.
- Reliance on Shock Content
Lastly, shock email content can be described as sales-centric content with capitalized subject lines, exclamation points, emojis and other forms of invasive calls to action. Trigger emails that rely on these types of engagement will often be reported as spam and result in poor future reception of your brand with the customer base. Be professional in your lead nurturing content and respect your customers as individuals – the rest will be up to them.
To Summarize
Once you settle into a routine of trigger emailing your mail list with lucrative purchase offers, it’s also important to keep track of it all via a reliable email marketing platform. Keep a constant eye on the ways in which you can improve your email trigger approach to strike a healthy balance of unique sales offers and non-intrusive outreach. Before you know it, your lead nurturing pipeline will become more efficient at retaining existing customers in addition to generating new leads to expand your eCommerce platform’s reach.