I’m a huge believer in making sure your email marketing flows are set up correctly, and strategically from day one. There are four parts to how I do this. 

Top of Funnel lead magnet

This can be, and in most instances is, really simple. I create a popup on the clients website highlighting a 10% off code for new customers, and build a two step flow highlighting the offer. This encourages an initial order, and brings new customers into our email marketing database. 

The key to success here is ensuring that you put the code in the email, not on the ‘success’ page of the popup. This way the customer is required to find, open, and click on the email to use their code, ultimately improving your deliverability (aka reducing the chances of landing in junk) for ALL emails. 

Abandoned Cart

I don’t know about you, but I HATE getting a ‘did you forget something?’ email from a brand. It’s creepy, and it doesn’t make me convert. The way I set up my abandoned cart emails is to start with an email that is filled with brand messaging, and time delayed by a whole day. It does have the contents of the customer’s cart at the bottom of the email, but the main content is thanking the customer for their support. The email is also segmented into returning customers and new customers, and the content is customised accordingly. There is no discount code in this email. I’m a firm believer that if you put a code in your first abandoned cart email, all you’re doing is training your customers to abandon their carts specifically so that they’re emailed a code. 

My flows are set up so that if a customer still hasn’t checked out three days after being sent the initial email, we go back with a stronger call to action. This email does contain a discount code (typically 10%), and again is segmented based on whether you’re speaking to a new or existing customer.

Typically I find that only a small percentage of the people that receive the second email actually purchase as a result of receiving the discount code. If they were ready to purchase, they almost always do after the first email. If they weren’t ready, it’s another few months until they convert based on a community nurturing EDM (more on that below).

Post Purchase

No email makes me more bored than receiving a standard Shopify order confirmation email. Your customers want to be thanked and to feel appreciated, and it’s not hard to do so!

I set up my client’s accounts so that 24 hours after they make a purchase, they receive an email that is again customised by whether or not they are a returning customer (are you seeing a theme here?). This email always uses a merge tag to bring in the customer’s name to make it feel even more personalised, and lets the receiver know how they can best share, and interact with the brand on social media, increasing the sharing of user generated content. 

Weekly Community Nurturing

Email marketing is still one of the highest converting forms of digital marketing, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. For my client’s accounts, I ideally send one community nurturing, brand building email every week. This helps to move customers along the path to purchase, keep your brand top of mind, and land in their inbox right when they’re in an active state, ready to purchase. This weekly email doesn’t have to be brand new content, often it’s repurposed from two or three organic social media posts

Phew! That was a lot to go over. There’s so, so, many other aspects to a successful email marketing strategy that I haven’t been able to cover here, but I hope that it gives you an insight into the four types of emails that you should have from day one.