Episode 49 of eCommerce Uncensored outlines an email campaign the guys ran for a new client that produced revenue of over $13,000 in about 2 weeks.
If you’ve listened to last few podcasts, you know how important email campaigns are for your ecommerce business. Email is an extremely effective way to get your client results quickly and at a fairly low cost. Following the 5 Key Steps Cheat Sheet outlined in Episode 47 and available for free download here, the guys set up a very successful, profitable email sequence.
By no means does this mean that Facebook ad campaigns aren’t critical. But Facebook results take time, money, and patience. As detailed in Episode 46 the Facebook Pixel needs time to learn and optimize. It’s a little harder to keep a new client excited about a campaign when they don’t see immediate results. Email campaigns offer more of an instant gratification.
So for this new client the guys were starting a brand new email campaign, something the company had never done before. The company was able to provide a list of about 4,500 emails that they had accumulated through orders over the last two years, but there was no way to know how accurate, responsive or valid this list would be-which presented challenges from the start. The guys just knew the general age and demographic of the audience and using the 5 Keys Cheat Sheet they implemented an email sequence.
The initial email was a light welcome email introducing the recipients to the new email newsletter, in a non-salesy way. The email also gave readers the option to unsubscribe from the start. If someone really isn’t interested in your company, they are not going to buy, so there really isn’t any reason for them to remain on your list. It is much better for them to unsubscribe themselves than to mark your email as spam.
Keeping with Key #1 the subject lines of the emails were open-ended and created curiosity. This way people were inclined to open the email and see what was going on, rather than deciding, based on the subject line whether the email content was relevant. It was also important to follow Key #2 and keep the content of the email related to the statement in the subject line.
Key #3 is to always include a call to action. This can be something as simple as a “click here” button in the email to get the customer to the landing page. The importance of including a call to action was seen clearly when the guys DIDN’T. They noticed that one email in the sequence had a click through rate of 0.4%. As soon as they realized why, because there was no call to action, they fixed the problem in the next email. That email produced a click through rate of 11.4%.
Throughout the entire 2 week campaign, Key #4, Scarcity was emphasized, detailing when the sale would be ending, reminding customers of this, and actually ending when they said it would.
Key #5 Frequency, played an important role too. Don’t miss out on opportunities to connect with customers because you’re afraid of annoying them. Remember that people don’t see every email sent. Follow up with different versions of your emails.
Overall this email campaign for the new client revolved around one initial offer. The offer ran for two weeks and emails were sent out about every 3 days. They used logic within the email client to determine whether or not people opened the emails or purchased.
People who didn’t open an email got the same email a few days later with a different subject line. If the person opened the email but didn’t click they moved through the sequence and received different messages trying to drive traffic to the landing page.
All the emails in the sequence had an average open rate of 40%, a 6% click through rate, and a 3% conversion rate. For a company whose products range around $14-$20 the revenue produced from this email campaign grossed $13,213.88 with hundreds of units sold. The 5 Keys DO work-well.
Once the email campaign is run and your client sees the success, then you can move onto Facebook campaigns to build the list, leading you back to another email campaign, and so on.
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