Big companies (I’m talking 7-8 figure a year eCommerce businesses) have between 25% and 40% of their revenue coming from email.
Even today with all the Messenger bots and live chats and stuff, it still remains the #1 communication channel you have between you and your customer.
There are of course some alternatives to email:
- Paid traffic
- Messenger
- SMS
Out of that list, probably only the paid traffic is truly a viable sales channel for recommunication en-masse. You can tag people with a pixel and create ads that speak to them more closely.
Don’t get me wrong, Messenger and SMS and Whatsapp and co are great for communicating of course, but they are harder to access en-masse for an eCommerce business.
The size of your list doesn’t matter
Here’s a myth that a lot of people buy into:
“But my list isn’t big enough, I’ll wait till my list grows before I start doing email marketing”
BS!
Even if you only have 100 people on your list, you can still connect and engage with those people.
Remember the golden rule… every. single. email. on your email list is a PERSON.
So regardless of whether you have 10 people or 10,000 people on your list. Speak to them and they will speak to you.
Adjust your email style to your product style
For me with Wholesale Suite, we aren’t a very visual product.
Sure we have little 3D box mockups and we can add screenshots and videos screen captures and stuff, but as far as showing off our product in the hands of a customer or in the hands of a celebrity, it’s harder to do with digital products. Not impossible, but harder.
If you have a physical product, you should definitely be using imagery.
Show off that product at every chance you get, make it look AMAZING and desirable. Show it in use. Show it in the hands of customers.
Power Tip #1: Make GIFs
You can stitch together product images into a quick GIF to make it even more graphically interesting.
This goes really well in emails which are traditionally more static.
Stitch a bunch of images together using a tool like Giphy’s GIF maker. I encourage you to have some fun with it, show off your brand’s personality!
Making your emails more graphically interesting like this will increase your click-through rates.
Power Tip #2: Make graphics of reviews with an image of your product
Testimonials or reviews are the most powerful form of social proof you can acquire.
So if you haven’t got videos of your customers or famous bloggers or celebrities talking about your product, make an image consisting of an image of your product and a quote of your customer’s written review.
You can use these graphics in your emails, especially to cold audiences who haven’t bought from you before to spice up the social proof and enhance the believability.
Run a general sale campaign every month
If you have a decent product catalog – I’m talking if you’re selling more than just a single product – you should be running sales campaigns pretty often. If you want predictability, it should be on a regular cycle.
I’d recommend running a sale campaign each month.
Some people might say this is too often, but if you think about it, it only gives you 12 opportunities a year.
The simple fact is that sales get attention.
If your product catalog contains 100 different products, you can afford to have a decent sale on one of those products each month of the year.
You have 8 years worth of sale campaigns right there!
I’ll say it again: sales get attention.
And while you shouldn’t expect your conversion rates to be massive (automated personalized email can help you there), if you’re doing your campaigns consistently and sending emails to your list consistently, people will be open to it and you’ll get a burst of sales each time you send an email.
Email more than once about the same thing
Speaking of sales campaigns, if you’re just sending a one-shot email for your campaign and leaving it at that you’re leaving a huge amount of money on the table.
A sale campaign takes a significant amount of effort to put together, why would you waste your time and staff costs on a lackluster email campaign?
Here’s 7 emails you could be sending for each of your sales campaigns:
- Send your initial email notice about the campaign
- Re-send the initial email notice to those that didn’t open the first one (this tip alone can get up to 20% more people to see it)
- Send at least one reminder email a week in. It doesn’t have to say “reminder” the point is to make contact
- Re-send the reminder to the ones that don’t open
- Send a countdown timer email 72 hours out of when the main sale is almost finishing
- Send a 48-hour countdown email to those that didn’t open the 72 hour one
- Follow up the countdown timer with a “last chance” email 4-6 hours before it finishes
And that brings me to my next point…
Don’t worry about annoying people, most people won’t see every email
You’ll notice I suggest doing a lot of resends and reminders. Think you’re annoying people? Think again.
Most emails are lucky to get 30-40% of people to open them. That means most won’t see even them at all.
The resends catch the people who didn’t see the first one this means they’ve only ever seen the one email by definition. With resends, it can help to alter the subject line too so it gets more chance of being opened.
The reminders are just good practice to enhance the FOMO aspect (Fear Of Missing Out) of your campaign.
Send More Email
In summing up, I want to encourage you to send more email. Go a little bit out of your comfort zone.
You might think you’re being annoying but the numbers don’t lie, not every email gets opened and not every person thinks the same way you do.
Email is great for engaging because it’s a personal communication tool. If you want to build a lasting relationship with someone you need to communicate with them and email is one of the best ways to communicate.
Big brands send lots of emails, so if you want to grow up to be a big brand one day, you need to get comfortable with communicating en-masse.
