Click rates, opens and conversions, oh my!
As a retailer, your email list is one of the most valuable marketing channels at your disposal. You’ve sent out numerous email campaigns to your growing list of subscribers. You’re seeing some ROI for your team’s efforts, but would like to see better results.
The good news is that there are many areas within your email marketing program that you can analyze and improve. Having designed hundreds of retail email campaigns, I have discovered how to pinpoint and revamp content & design with great results.
I’ve put together this handy email checklist to measure where you’re at now and what things you could be trying next to improve your email program.
How to Score
For every “yes” give yourself one point.
Content Performance
Your subject line is arguably the most important line of copy you’ll create for your campaign. Is there room for improvement with your retail email program?
Checklist Questions:
- Have you run a/b tests on your subject lines?
- Do your subject lines appeal to your customer’s curiosity?
- Are your subject lines personable and friendly like they are coming from a friend?
What makes a successful subject line?
Curiosity, honesty and personality.
Appealing to your customer’s curiosity often leads to posing your subject lines as questions. They also encourage higher open rates. Here are a few examples…
- Did You See Our New Fall Colors?
- Our Tastiest Flavor Yet
- New Hole #18 Is Complete – Challenge Your Putt
Be honest with what you are stating. Don’t mislead your customers into thinking one thing and opening your email to find another. Nobody likes a bait and switch. Sneaky tactics lead to less click-throughs, low conversions and unhappy customers.
People connect with people. Not businesses. If you think of your business as a bunch of individuals your marketing will be better off. Be friendly, talk to your customers as if they were your best friend.
Adding personality to your subject lines can encourage opens.
Here are some examples…
- Hi [First Name] – Clean Up Your Room
- New Bold Styles in Your Size
- We Need Your Help Choosing (perfect for survey emails)
- Need Help Decorating For The Holidays?
Some other highly effective subject lines might appeal to urgency and social proof. Urgency focused subject lines may work well for sales limited to a few days or less.
Example: Don’t Miss Our One-Day Anniversary Sale!
Social proof is another way to encourage opens. If everyone else is buying it, you should too!
Writing Effective Retail Emails
The amount of time people have to dedicate to shopping is becoming smaller every day. For retailers, shorter is better.
“65% prefer emails that contain mostly images vs. 35% who prefer mostly text.” – HubSpot
Focus on the benefits of your products. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Write to them as if you were writing to your friend (are you seeing the trend here?).
Checklist Questions:
- Do your emails contain paragraphs shorter than 2 sentences?
- Can you read your email in less than 20 seconds?
- Does all of your content includes ways your customer will benefit from your products/services?
- Do you include large headings to break-up sections of your email?
- Does each section of your email have a single goal and one call to action?
- Are your emails written in the second person (includes: you, your, yours)?
The following email example from Starbucks excels in providing a clear call to action for each section. The content is short & concise and easily scannable. It is also written in the second person, as if they were talking with a friend.
How is your program stacking up so far?
Time…Is It On Your Side?
Best Times To Send
With the sheer volume of emails being sent by retailers each day, it’s no wonder the time it’s received can make or break it’s success rate.
Checklist Questions:
- Have you a/b tested sending a campaign at different times of the day?
- Do you send your emails after 7 pm?
- Do you send your emails between 3 and 6 am?
Past retail clients I have worked with have seen the best results between the hours of 3 and 6 am and after 7 pm. These hours are typically non-work hours for most traditional consumers.
Beyond those timeframes, the best advice I can give you is to run A/B tests on your own lists during different times of the day and compare the results. Every audience can perform differently so make sure to run your own tests for the best results.
How Often?
How much is too much?
Sending emails too often can cause a spike in unsubscribes and can cause your customers to think of your brand in a negative way. But, not taking full advantage of your email program could mean you’re missing out on more sales.
Checklist Questions:
- Do you send emails out weekly?
- Have you asked your subscribers how often they would like to receive your emails?
- Do you offer advanced email preferences that let your subscribers decide how often they want to receive your messages?
The hardest part about increasing email frequency is understanding and accepting that you will likely see a higher number of unsubscribes and potentially a few more spam reports. I’d like to share with you a few best practices around increasing your email frequency if you have yet to give it a try. Following these tips can help you decrease or prevent altogether receiving any spam complaints.
- Just ask. Send out a survey to your subscribers and ask them (in one question only) how often they would like to receive emails from you.
- Ask again. Once you’ve surveyed your list, ask again by incorporating email frequency to your email program’s preferences. Send out an email asking your list to update their preferences to make sure they are getting what they want from you. Make it about them to encourage action.
- Try it. Once you’ve gotten a response from your customers, try increasing your frequency for a month and analyze the results. If you are seeing a drop in opens and click-throughs you may want to consider sticking to your past frequency. If you are seeing more conversions from these additional emails keep it up!
Holidays & Special Events
Holidays and special events are one of the best times to consider testing out mailing a few extra promotions. They are also can be good themes for your campaigns. As we head into Winter, you might be starting to hit your busiest time of the year. From my personal experience, even planning 6+ months in advance for holiday marketing.
Don’t be caught in a whirlwind of piping hot pumpkin pie and mistletoe without a plan.
Checklist Questions:
- Have you planned out your holiday campaign schedule a few months in advance?
- If you’ll be running sales and special promotions do you also plan on sending reminder emails? (The holidays are a busy time of the year for your customers too!)
- Are you going to create a buzz and anticipation leading up to your big promotions? (Do this by sending out pre-campaign emails letting your customers know something big is on it’s way to build excitement and curiosity)
Put Your Emails On Cruise Control
We don’t all have a big team to accomplish all of our email marketing goals. A great way to save time is to put some of your emails on cruise control and automate!
Checklist Questions:
- Do your subscribers receive a welcome email after they sign-up?
- Bonus: Does your subscriber benefit from what you send them in your welcome email?
- Do you tried sending out a series of automated emails promoting the features and benefits of your top/core products?
- When your customer buys from you, do you ask them to leave a review?
- Can your customer easily share their purchase on social media after buying from you?
- Do you say “thank you” in your transactional emails?
- Can your customers opt-in for new product alerts on specific products or brands?
- Do you email your customers information on other complementary or related products after they purchased a specific item?
Say Hi
Welcome emails are essential to every email program. Providing immediate value to your customers will prove to them your list was worth signing up for. If you wait too long to send them their first email they might forget they signed up for your list and unsubscribe or report it as spam.
A welcome email is a great place to be personable. Say hi, mention again what you plan on sending them in future emails, offer a way for them to reach you or ask questions and consider providing them with a coupon or reward for signing up. A great way to encourage sign-ups is to mention what you’ll be giving your customer in the welcome email (and future emails) next to the sign-up field (website) or sign-up form (in-store). If you do this right you’ll your customer will get immediate value, know you stick to your word and possibly become a lifetime customer after making their first purchase with the coupon you sent them.
It’s all about the total experience and your welcome email is just one way to show them you care.
Transactional Emails
You’ve made a sale, congrats! Your customer has told you they love your products and services and has invested their hard-earned dollars into your business. You might think these emails are a good place for additional marketing and special offers but those tend to be wasted efforts.
Keep your transactional emails straight-forward and simple. You’ve already sold your customer on your products, no need to throw more marketing jargon at them. It is highly likely that they aren’t going to purchase from you immediately after just making a purchase so keep that in mind when crafting the content for transactional emails.
So what is worth doing?
First of all, say thank you. It can be as simple as including “Thank you!” at the top of their order confirmation email. You could also take it a step further and say something a little more personal such as, “Thank you so much for your purchase, we hope you enjoyed your experience shopping with us and your product.”
Want to really improve your customer’s experience? Try asking for a review following a purchase. Or encourage your customer to share what they just purchased on Facebook or Twitter. This shows you are confident in your products and your business and allows you to learn how to improve from someone more important than your most valuable employee; your customer.
More Ways to Automate Emails
Retailers have many opportunities to take advantage of aside from transactional and welcome emails. Here are a few examples…
New Product Alerts
Adding new products to your line-up? Consider setting up product alert emails that will alert your customer to their availability. You could also use this concept to build buzz and anticipation for a new product line. Release features and sneak peek emails until your product is available. These types of emails work well if you sell multiple brands and have new products available under each parent brand.
Related Products
After your customer purchases a specific product you could trigger an automated campaign that would feature similar or complementary accessories to the product they purchased. Timing is important on these. Make sure to allow time for them to receive their order first before pushing them to buy more immediately.
Abandoned Cart Email
Have your customers left something in their cart and not followed through to checkout? Send them a reminder email the day after they abandoned their shopping cart. Days are filled with interruptions and there is a good chance your customer was distracted and forget to go back and complete their purchase.
Time to Add Up Your Points
Add up your points from each section to see how well your email program is doing.
More Than 20 Points
Not too shabby! You’ve tried many of the suggestions provided but may be able to try a few more things to get even more reach. Congratulations! You are an email rockstar!
15 to 20 Points
You’re well on your way to building a wildly successful email program for your business. Try a few of the suggestions you couldn’t mark off to improve your business this year.
Less Than 15 Points
Start to focus your priorities on trying a few new things out with your email program. Start small and pick one or two of the suggestions that apply best to your particular business and go from there. You’ll be an email rockstar in no time!
Have a question about your email program? Have you tried something that worked well that you’d like to share?
