It’s no secret that social media use has grown exponentially in the past five years. Automated social messaging options have become more widely used and accepted as communication channels for retailers selling online.
Brands that use social media as their primary marketing tool may think that they don’t need to include email marketing in the mix. Some may feel that it’s an outdated or redundant mode of communication.
However, relying only on social media marketing is a double-edged sword. Online attention spans are short, and once you’re out of sight, you’re also out of mind. Email marketing comes in handy to get and maintain customers’ attention when not using social media.
Email communications are still an essential part of the online marketing success formula. Adding automated email messaging is easy and affordable, requires minimal setup, and can be very effective.
It’s worth including automated email messaging because it can reach customers at the right time and lead to sales. By sending an automated “Welcome” message with a special discount to customers who join your email list, for example, you can improve your conversion rate by about 52%!
What Are Email Open Rates?
Email marketing is wildly popular because, when done correctly, it’s successful. You have the potential to earn $44 for every dollar spent on email marketing, making email marketing worth the investment.
A forecasted 333.2 billion emails will be sent globally in 2022, but audiences won’t open all of them. With such a high volume of emails delivered across the globe, there’s a silent war being waged for customer attention in every inbox since the open rate across several industry verticals is just under 21%.
When sending email campaigns, retailers should track how many people are opening their emails to understand the effectiveness of the messages because opening the email is a customer’s first step to taking an action. Thankfully, professional email marketing platforms offer detailed reporting tools that make it easy to find out how many messages were opened from each email campaign.
These can also provide other valuable information, like how many messages were undeliverable, which offer links from each message were clicked, and the sales generated from each email campaign. Proactive online sellers make a practice of checking their reporting tools after every email campaign so that they can refine their campaigns over time.
The “open rate” refers to the number of people who opened an email message. The open rate only considers the first time the recipient opens the email, also known as a “unique” open.
If your email campaign open rates exceed 21%, you’re already beating the industry average, but smart retailers are always working to improve campaigns because they know highly effective email marketing can significantly increase sales.
Paying attention to the open rate reveals key information:
- Whether you’re reaching the right audience.
- The effectiveness of your subject line and email content.
- Divide the number of unique opens into the total number of emails sent, then multiply by 100.
- You can also calculate the open rate by factoring in the number of emails that were undeliverable in a campaign, also known as the “bounce rate.”
To calculate the open rate and include the bounce rate, divide the total number of unique opens by the total number of email recipients minus the bounced emails, and multiply by 100.
Optimizing Conversion Rates
People may be opening your emails, but are they taking action? The percentage of people who take the desired action after reading your marketing messages is known as the “conversion rate.” For example, they may join a mailing list, complete an inquiry form, or buy products.
Tips for automating email marketing for better retention and conversion:
A formula for optimizing conversion rates is to Attract, Engage, and Convert your customers.
- Attract using personalized messages that are sent in recipients’ time zones with short, attention-getting subject lines that include numbers, use humor, or have emojis.
- Engage using interesting challenges and promotions that encourage interaction with your brand and products.
- Convert with targeted and compelling offers like free shipping, product bundles, discounts, or a free add-on with the order.
Though conversion optimization sounds easy, it can be time-consuming to draft messages to achieve it. Fortunately, CommentSold’s live-selling and e-commerce platform simplifies creating and managing email lists and sending automated marketing messages with these helpful features:
- Building an email list by allowing customers to opt-in at checkout
- Email list management
- Marketing automation.
CommentSold Takes the Guesswork Out of Email Automation
CommentSold’s Marketing Automations include five ready-to-use emails that online sellers can customize to attract, engage, and convert their customers. There are two categories: One-Time and Other Campaigns.
One-Time Campaigns
CommentSold’s platform enables retailers to send these one-time email marketing messages only once to new subscribers or customers.
- A Welcome email is sent to new subscribers who have just joined your email list. You can edit the default text that appears in the email to customize it to your business.
- The Thank You email is sent to customers when they have made their first purchase. It also has editable text that enables you to customize your message.
- First Purchase Discounts are messages with discount offers sent to potential customers who haven’t purchased within seven days of signing up to your email list. You can edit the message and the discount percentage.
You’ll be able to track how many one-time campaign emails were sent to customers, the conversion rates, and the sales revenue they have generated.
Other Campaigns
- Abandoned Cart Recovery emails are a two-email sequence sent to remind customers about products left in their shopping carts without checking out. The first email includes the product name and product photo to remind customers what they’ve added to their cart. The second email informs them that they have 24 hours to purchase the item before their shopping cart expires.
*CommentSold Pro-Tip: This automatically generated email campaign isn’t editable, but you can send yourself a test email and view the number of these emails sent to customers. You can also view the sales generated by this campaign.
- Win Back Inactive Customers is a campaign that offers a discount to make a purchase; it’s sent to customers that haven’t purchased anything within a pre-set number of days. The default is 30 days, but this setting is editable. The discount default is set to 20% and can also be modified.
*CommentSold Pro-Tip: A customer can receive this email several times. You can view the number of times this email was sent and the number of sales generated.
The Takeaway
Targeted email is a great way to keep customers engaged, even when you aren’t communicating with each individual directly. Automated emails help e-commerce businesses save time using a “set it and forget it” model. Automated messages contact customers at the right time with the right offer at every step of their purchasing journey.
Since customers receive many marketing emails from brands, it pays to send personalized messages with their names in the subject line and compelling offers, such as free shipping for purchases over a certain amount or buy one, get one free. It’s also a good idea to track the effectiveness of your messages to optimize open rates and conversion rates to optimize the efficacy of future campaigns.
