The engine under the hood of your car is a modern marvel that wouldn’t be possible without all of its individual components. Pistons, fuel injectors, timing belts, camshafts and a myriad of other essential pieces truly make an engine the sum of its parts. When everything is working together, all you need to do is press a pedal and watch your speedometer rise!
Your eCommerce email is no different—it’s the sum of many parts working together, and it’ll be as effective as those individual parts allow it to be. This is why it’s so important to focus on more than just the act of sending emails to your subscribers, but to instead focus on the building processes for facilitating sales.
Angle 1: Active revenue
Many eCommerce stores leverage email marketing to be an active source of revenue. They decide to offer a deal, they put the information into email form, they send out the email and they kick back and watch their sales figures for the next couple of days. And while this almost always invariably works, it’s hard to tell to what degree it’s actually being effective. Are you stealing sales from the future or are you supplementing current revenue with boosted sales?
Building an active revenue channel through email means focusing on timing. Prompting subscribers to act when they might otherwise not means catching them at a time when they’re willing and able to take advantage of your call to action—without sacrificing future sales! Here are two great examples:
Sending an email on the 14th or 15th of the month to boost your mid-month sales slump. Many people get paid bi-weekly, with checks coming in on the 15th. A well-timed email with a solid deal can inspire confident sales.
Sending anticipated emails—such as those on or before holidays—helps meet customer expectations for sales and validates their decision to shop.
Angle 2: Passive revenue
Building a passive revenue channel is much harder than building an active one. It can also be frustrating for eCommerce owners and managers because you’re not going to see immediate gratification (read: sales) from your efforts. This is the “long con” of email marketing and requires patience for success.
The secrets to building a passive revenue stream are brand identity and culture. Being able to exist beyond your sales pitch means getting customers to pay attention to you even when you’re not selling to them. This builds affinity for your brand and encourages loyalty. In the end, this creates stronger, more frequent sales, while also paying off in a hundred other ways. Take a look at two examples of a passive sales pitch:
Send an email for a contest, with the stipulation that people who have ordered in the last 30-60 days are eligible to win X. For added bonus, send to your “recently ordered” list segment.
Send an automated monthly newsletter that has information about your brand and products, as well as its involvement outside of sales-related topics.
Angle 3: Salvaged revenue
Salvaged revenue is lost but not forgotten! This is where your abandoned cart and inactive emails marketing campaigns come into play and where wish list analysis becomes important. Knowing where your customers would’ve, could’ve or should’ve spent money means knowing how to entice them back, and it gives you an opportunity to add figures to your revenue column that might not have ever made it there otherwise.
Salvaged revenue is different from active revenue in where it’s coming from. It exists in limbo—it’s not quite a brand new sale, but it’s also not a lost sale. Capitalizing on this gray area is where many eCommerce stores find success.
Tending all angles
Having all three angles of automated email marketing set up means building a revenue engine that works flawlessly and seamlessly. Knowing you can step on the gas and generate dollars through any one of these channels means being able to leverage email marketing directly into your eCommerce’s success.
See how Remarkety can help you build these channels quickly and efficiently, and continue to help you capitalize on subscriber trends. Get a free demo for Magento today!
