Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog

3 Email Campaigns to Generate Repeat Business

Written by Jimmy Rodriguez | Jul 3, 2018 3:00:00 PM

New customers are great.

You love to see your shop reach new people and expand your customer base. But those wonderful people are expensive – to make the most of your marketing efforts, you need to keep them around for the long haul.

About 65% of a healthy company’s business should come from your existing customers. That’s because repeat customers spend as much as 67% more down the line than in the first 6 months of your relationship.

The best way to build those long-term relationships and keep customers engaged? Email marketing, of course! In fact, 80% of retailers say email marketing drives the highest customer retention for them. You can tap into that loyalty with these 3 powerful retention campaigns.

Upsell & Cross-Sell

When a customer buys from you, you learn two important pieces of information. The first piece is that they trust you. Earning customer trust means you can change up your marketing messaging. You don’t have to focus on building trust, so you can focus more on being helpful and driving value.

The second thing you learn is what kind of products they’re interested in. For certain items, that information is crazy valuable. It opens a wealth of opportunities to upsell customers by promoting more products that go with their original order.

Upsell and cross-sell email campaigns leverage this new info to turn data into sales – it’s like magic. How? Using what you know about the customer, create super targeted product recommendations. The kind that yield sky high conversions.

In the screenshot, Amazon includes their effective product recommendations in the order confirmation.

A few tips:

  • Ensure recommendations are relevant. When you scale email marketing strategy, don’t let the quality of recommendations suffer. Create common product groupings to ensure you’re always providing relevant recommendations.
  • Get the timing right. If you’re promoting items frequently bought together, the order confirmation email is a good option. But take timing into account to upsell on replacement parts or other use-related items.
  • Don’t be pushy. Remember the ultimate goal of customer retention is to be helpful – don’t pressure customers to buy something they don’t want or don’t need right now. Offer your recommendations and let customers decide for themselves.

 

Replenishment

Replenishment emails serve as both marketing for your business and a service to the customer. They’re nothing more than a reminder you send to customers when it’s time to repurchase. They work for products that work on a regular buying cycle – like skincare or dog food.

When you identify the products customers buy on a regular schedule, you can hit their inbox at exactly the right time. And secure another sale, like clockwork. Customers are grateful for the reminder to buy again, and you avoid losing them to the lowest price or highest search result.

Replenishment email campaigns don’t work for every product or every online store. But when it makes sense, they can drive repeat business and secure huge revenue.

Okay, trash bags aren’t the most glamorous example but they showcase the type of product that’s a good candidate for replenishment campaigns.

A few tips:

  • Remind customers before it’s time to reorder. Not everyone will open an email as soon as it hits their inbox, and you need to allow for processing and shipping times. Get out ahead of the schedule and leave customers a nice little cushion.
  • Make checkout seamless. Making the customer’s life easier is the main goal of a replenishment campaign. Cut out as many time-consuming or clunky parts of the checkout process and make reordering easy as pumpkin pie.
  • No upsell here. Once again, the primary reason for this email is to remind customers about something they have to repurchase. Don’t funk with their trust and use a friendly reminder as a spammy way to squeeze more money out of them.

 

Re-engagement

Customers who buy from you all the time are amazing, but what happens when the good times stop? Re-engagement campaigns reenergize past customers and get them opening emails and browsing your online store again.

Customers fall off the engagement wagon for all kinds of reasons. They don’t need or want to shop for a while, they start to tune out your emails, or you hit the spam folder. Instead of letting those customers slip away, a smart re-engagement campaign gets them thinking about your shop again.

Once you’re top of mind, targeted offers and perks can haul them back onto the wagon and score more purchases for you.

A few tips:

  • Start with a reminder that you exist. Use a clear and to-the-point subject line to let lapsed customers know you’ve noticed them drifting and you miss them.
  • Give them a reason to get excited. Your goal is to make it irresistible to come back to your store. Craft an amazing offer that’s tailored for them and shows how much their loyalty means to you.
  • Don’t be afraid to cut the cord. Some customers just aren’t interested in your business anymore. After a certain amount of disengagement, don’t be afraid to pull them from the scroll – send a warning email and remind them what they’ll miss. Then unsubscribe anyone who’s still mum.

 

Tap Into Existing Customers With Email

Your existing customers are the lifeblood that keeps your business afloat. Email marketing is far and away the most powerful way to encourage customers to stick around. That means more sales and sustainable growth for your online shop – a win-win!