Email Marketing: Sales Automation for E-commerce

Segmenting your email list is one of the most powerful ways to command complete control of your list.

You can use it to increase the response rates of your subscribers and customers, boost sales and organise your contacts on a granular level.

The benefits of getting your list under control in this way, is so that you can send highly relevant emails based on specific criteria you have on your subscribers. Your campaigns can be laser targeted to get the best engagement possible. Most email systems allow for segmentation but not many people have this under control. 

Ok so now you should have several segments set up for your email list, we can now move on to tagging. Tagging subscribers can be a complete nightmare, but it doesn’t need to be if you organise it correctly.

When you’re tagging subscribers you’ll swear that there are tags that someone else put in there. You’ll create tags randomly and think to yourself “That’s simple, I won’t forget that one"

It’s not and you will. So let’s go over why tagging is necessary and how you can use it to your advantage.

Tagging subscribers is a quick and flexible way to bunch or group people with information that you have on them. They’re almost like digital labels that you attach to people that live within segments of your list.

So there are a bunch of different ways in which I tag subscribers.From behavioural stuff like people that click, people that open, downloaders, responders and so on. 

This is an ongoing debate that still hasn’t really been resolved and there’s some good reasons. When we look at typical email campaigns, people generally care most about open and clicks.

I personally look for more substantial figures, like revenue generated, but when people get fixated on opens and clicks, they start looking for new ways to boost engagement.

They start looking at subject lines, call to actions, images or animations. The main argument for Text vs HTML comes in when you look at deliverability.

An HTML email needs to have proper coding and a plain text version sent alongside it. With a properly coded template, HTML is less likely to go to the spam folder.

But SPAM is not the only issue for HTML. Email readers like Gmail have started moving HTML emails into separate folders for promotions or updates. This essentially hides your HTML email from the main inbox. 

Before we get into the 10 automated campaigns that you need to have set up, I want cover personalisation.

See, as humans, we all believe that somehow we’re special.

In some unique way we’re all different. I think it was Margaret Mead that said “Always remember that you’re absolutely unique….Just like everyone else."

When you send out "email blasts” like I mentioned earlier, they’re going to be much less effective than a personalised campaign. Again not quoting numbers, but Experian Marketing services did a study and concluded that personalised subject lines alone, are massively crucial to a successful campaign.

And that these personalisation factors contributed to massive performance compared to non personalised campaigns. In terms of personalisation, there’s more than one way to tackle this. 

Now this first automation will take you and your subscriber from strangers to acquaintances in no time.

Giving them a much needed introduction and a guide for what to expect from you in the coming months.

They’ll only receive this series once, so things to include would be;

Who are you, Why you're different as a business, What content to expect from you and how often, What they need to do next

A really useful little trick to trigger their immediate engagement with you is by...

This next automation is going appear counter productive to our need to make sales quickly.

However bear with me because it’s only going to strengthen your relationship with your subscribers.

This automation builds loyalty and primes them for additional sales in the future. We want give them a false sense of security which allows them to feel less pressure in the future.

This time we're going for a hard sell.

In this section we’re going to get your subscriber to take another step closer to making a purchase. By now your subscriber is fully up to date with who you are and knows that you’re a provider of value. Now we want them to buy.

A lot of companies tend to focus on generating more customers and neglect their current customers.

If you’ve read any type of book on marketing you’ll have read how much more it would cost you to acquire a new customer vs generating sales from past customers.

This is another benefit of automated email marketing. You can tap into your database of loyal customers that know like and trust you to generate more sales.

In this automation we’re going to be looking at what happens once someone has become a customer.

You’ve successfully moved them from being a subscriber that’s just hanging around to a first time customer.

So what next?

It’s a common struggle for online retailers and we’ve all been on both sides of the coin. We fill our basket with items online, get to the checkout and have a sudden change of heart.

There are multiple studies that quote hundreds of thousands can be recovered with abandoned cart emails.

In this automation you’re going to create a series of emails. If you’re already using a piece of software to send out cart abandonment emails, don’t simply rely on their default settings. 

When used correctly, segmentation allows you to send hyper targeted email campaigns for maximum results.

But with new subscribers it can be difficult to segment them without any data.

If your sign up form only has one field - “email” then you’re kinda stuck when it comes to segmentation.

This can be a problem later on, but I have a solution for you. You’re going to create an automated campaign that is going to make people segment themselves! They won’t even know it’s happened, but they’ll be setting themselves up to receive hyper targeted campaigns. 

On every email list you’re going to have subscribers that are just un-responsive. No matter what you send them, they won’t open or they won’t click your campaigns.

I’m going to walk you through some ideas on how to engage these zombies and see if we can’t get some action from them. There’s no point having them on your list if they aren’t going to take action.

Plus there’s a tonne of money that they could be spending if we can find the right type of bait for them.

Money aside, you’ll actually benefit from getting them to take action because unresponsive subscribers hurt your delivery rates. If people delete your emails without opening them, their email system learns that you could be a SPAM sender. 

So you already know that it costs a lot more to get new customers then it does to get money from your past customers.

And you’ll already know what your average cost per lead is. Whether you’re using Facebook ads or Google ads, it’s quite obvious that things can get expensive.

Once you’ve moved someone from being a subscriber to a customer, ideally you want to keep them there. Give them enough value in exchange for money for as long as possible.

Finding ways to add additional revenue streams to your business is beyond the scope of this programme and I cover it in another piece of training. But in this session we’ll be covering some no brainer ideas that will take your old customers and turn them into repeat buyers.

You want to maximise the revenue that you’re receiving from every email on your list.

Ok so for starters we’re going to look at the 80/20 principle that a lot of the “Gurus" talk about. 

These are typically the go to email campaign that most people use when they get started in email marketing. Every month you’ll think of something cool to send out just so they remember who you are.

This is probably the only time when a batch and blast could be ok to your whole list.

But, with all the segmentation you have set up so far - There are some unique ways that we can make this pay off long term for your all of your marketing in the future.

If you’ve ever witnessed a new couple that celebrate their 1 week anniversary and then their 2 week and then their 1 month. You can turn that concept into a light humoured email automation.

So one of the main problems that a lot of people came to me with before creating this programme was that they didn’t know what to write in their email campaigns.

I admit I used to struggle with this too until I came across a number of resources shared by great copywriters.

So the first one I want to share with you is the Got Do & Next Framework.

It’s a simple list of 3 questions, that if you flesh them out each time you need to write, you’ll always have something to say.

Before we dive in to the next writing framework I want to cover some ideas as to why people buy. This is not going to be an hour long seminar about copywriting - I’m not copywriter.

But I want to cover bullet point ideas that I’ve picked up from various sources. Taking these ideas into the content I create for clients has worked, and it’s worked well which is why i’m sharing it with you.

When we think about the reason people buy, we’re usually told to sell people what they need.

But somehow, as super intelligent creatures, we as humans are really bad at having the foresight to buy things that we actually need. Knowing this, we’re then taught to sell to people’s wants.

The feeling of Want is so much stronger than the feeling of Need. 

However, I want to do a little “Inception” on the feelings of want. If we dig a little deeper in to this, there are a couple of ways to make people want the things we have to sell. 

One topic that came up over and over while i was speaking to some of you was how to get subscribers to take action based on the campaigns that are being sent out.

Many famous copywriters know the principles that I’m going to share with you like the back of their hand.

I, however need to have them written down to remind myself each time I’m writing a piece of copy. I suggest you do the same with the frameworks in this programme.

Think over each one and try to imagine how you can use each of these in your email campaigns. Don’t forget that everything we cover in this programme is designed to be automated, so suffer with the hard brain ache once and once only.

Creating an endless amount of content in your campaigns is an issue that is faced by a lot of people. Wether your business is an online store or a service based business.

It can be tough to think of enough stuff to write to keep your subscriber engaged. The more content you have to send to your subscriber, the longer you can remain in front of them.

And as I’ve mentioned before, when you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. It’s super important to stay at the top of your subscriber’s mind when they are considering buying something in your industry.

If you’re in their inbox, at least once a week, every day of the year. Providing useful, helpful or engaging content, they’ll find it almost impossible to forget you. This is why you don’t want to continually send out sales emails and promotions.

If you skip the nurturing campaigns that we covered earlier, you’re only going to be left with sales and promos.