How We Grow Promo Campaigns Income by 44% in Five Months

KPI: sales and income
Email service: eSputnik

Adindex.biz is an agency specializing in integrated internet marketing. Recently a client turned to us and asked us to clean up their email marketing strategy. Up to this point they focused mostly on sending promo emails to the existing customer database. The performance was good and consistent, but this client wanted more. That’s why initially we decided to slightly adjust the promo email strategy, to redesign emails, and to prepare a number of new email templates for special occasions. We planned on focusing our strategy on automated emails to build trusting relationship with a client and to grow brand loyalty.

We created a trigger map, which included emails with product recommendations that complemented the previous purchase, notifications about discounts on products from ‘Favorite’ list, emails about new products from a favorite brand, and so on. We approved this map and were ready to implement it. However, then the client’s website went through spontaneous improvement. The programmers were busy revising the website and therefore weren’t able to participate in setting up the campaigns as quickly as needed.

However, we didn’t sit idly by while integration was on the go. We decided to review the promo campaigns and look for potential growth reserves.

Below, we offer a number of lifehacks that helped us grow email marketing’s income by 44,02% during the next five months.

This practice isn’t common in our country. However, European and American e-commerce businesses find it completely normal to send two, three, and sometimes even four emails reminding the customers about the current promo. In fact, it’s quite logical. The clients become more picky year after year. Nowadays only few of them will rush to buy your product after receiving one email that informs them about price reduction.

Our first experiment with recurring emails took place on the 8th of March. Shortly before that day we’ve sent the first email informing the subscribers about massive cosmetics sale. The discount were great and there were many of them, but despite that fact, the newsletter didn’t bring any results. The day before the promo ended we sent another email that resulted in eight sales. For instance: before there were only 1-3 sales on average made after clicking on emails’ links.

Later we used the recurring email strategy repeatedly and such emails always brought us better results than the first ones.

A small thing that worth noting: sending recurring emails doesn’t mean spamming the users’ inboxes with one and the same email. You have two options here: either segment the subscribers database (for instance, by removing the subscribers that already made a purchase from mailing list) or change the email’s content. Most of the time we used the second option. As our client’s customer database was relatively small and the customers didn’t order online very often, we’ve changed the promo products and brands, so that even those who made a purchase already would be interested in visiting a website once again.

Even if you cannot automate your email marketing strategies in the near future, you can still use the customer behavior data which you already have in order to optimize the promo campaigns. Let Google Analytics and newsletter statistics become your best friends. If you see that people read your emails willingly, that these emails have high CTR, that the customers spend more time on your website than usual and view more pages yet you still don’t get many sales, then it’s just about time to remind your audience about you.

Once again we have to note that if your database is big and sales still happen (just not as often as you wanted to), you should make sure that the customers that already made a purchase won’t receive another email with the same content as the previous one.

Furthermore, you don’t have to send emails with the same products or conditions. You can choose any appropriate occasion to remind your audience about you — even the Bastille Day if you want to. Usually any reminder is enough to turn your customers from passively interested into actively buying ones.

When your product is good and the price is nice as well, you might not find the presentation of this product important. However, it matters a lot, especially if you are offering something exclusive instead of essential. Keep in mind that selling exclusive products is all about selling the mood and the looks in the first place.

Modular grids, font and color selection, composition and general style aren’t just smart words. These things dictate how easy it would be for the customers to perceive the information you’re trying to deliver. When the customers find your emails aesthetically appealing, they open them more often. Naturally, this would increase their chances of making a purchase.

Of course, mastering the basics of design is not enough. You also need to remember about the novelty effect and the importance of the atmosphere. Edit your template from time to time, alternate long emails with short ones, change the color palette. Pay special attention to graphic elements. Beautiful photos and funny GIFs in emails work flawlessly, we checked 😉

The development of modern technologies allows the users to interact with content even in emails. Buttons that change color when you hover the cursor over them, the rollover effect that enables product demonstration from a different angle once you hover the cursor over the image — these small things matter, because they make an email more ‘alive’ and interesting for the customers.

Besides that (and that’s interesting!) we rarely receive emails with such interactive things, despite we subscribe to ton of newsletters. So, you can easily become one of the pioneers in this field 😉

It’s the never-aging classics. The countdown timers that clearly demonstrate how much time user has before the offer expires are especially effective. The important thing here is to avoid using them very often; otherwise, your customers might become immune to them.

We used a countdown timer in our newsletter no more than once a month and no earlier than a day before the promo ended. The effect was always impressive.

Let’s assume that you already heard or read about some (or all) of these methods. However, from our experience there’s usually a huge moat separating ‘knowing’ from ‘implementing into practice’. This moat is filled with crocodiles and piranhas called ‘sometime later’, ‘maybe next time’, and so on. Therefore, it never hurts to double check if you use all the available resources.

If email marketing is completely unfamiliar to you and seems too complex, but you still want to figure out how to make it work for the good of your business, please reach out to us. We’ll gladly help you figure everything out.