The consumers today are not only well informed, but also have a smart buying approach. Instead of putting their trust solely on brands, they actively research and make their buying decisions through extensive feedback, reviews and user-generated content. According to a study done by Google, in the past 2 years there has been an 80% increase in the ‘best’ search phrases on mobile devices. Hence, it becomes imperative for e-commerce businesses to understand the consumer behavior. So how do you make your business get noticed?
By targeting your customers through hyper-personalized email marketing.
You have heard about email marketing personalization, but what’s this hyper-personalization all about?
Personalization includes the basic personal information of the customer such as name, organization, purchase and transaction history etc. While hyper-personalization goes a little ahead and makes use of the buying behavior and real time data to create highly relevant content for the user.
So how to extract the best out of hyper-personalization? Do you know there are different types of e-commerce emails to help you do that? Let’s look at them in detail.
Welcome emails help you make a good first impression by greeting and thanking the customers for signing up while giving them an overview of your e-commerce business. It drives three times more revenue than any other mail campaign.
People love everything curated because it gives them the option to choose from the best. Additionally, as an e-commerce business it allows you to segment your customer based on their interests. Hence, sending curated mails of your best selling or popular products can certainly trigger your sales.
An average employee receives approximately 122 emails per day. Hence, in order to increase your visibility, it is important to draw the customer’s attention through relevant engagement emails. It can be done by incorporating tactics like free shipping, free product trials etc.
Source: Really Good Emails
If you wish to increase your leads, going the way of referral marketing is the key. In fact, a survey done by Ogilvy says that word-of-mouth promotion influences the purchasing decision of 74% of consumers. So go on, ask your customers to refer you. Do it in a fun way or even better, give your customers incentives for referring.
According to VWO, 72% of customers can be retargeted through discounts. However, make sure your revenues don’t suffer while doing the same. A pro tip here is to send discount emails to customers who are already interested and engaged with your promotional campaigns.
A survey by 3dcart says 74% of customers abandon their shopping carts. They get distracted or have second thoughts because of high pricing, complicated check out process etc. This is when cart abandonment emails come handy. An enticing subject line, images of the abandoned products and a powerful call-to-action – that’s all you need to ace your cart abandonment email.
Source: Really Good Emails
Now, since you know everything about the variety of e-commerce emails, you can include various hyper-personalization strategies to make these emails more attractive and alluring for your customers. Wondering why is it so important? Here's a quick sneak peek about it.
On the whole, hyper-personalization can give your sales a major boost. However, to maintain the relevancy of the personalized emails you send, segmenting your customer base is important. Here's an in-depth look at it.
The first criterion of email marketing segmentation is collecting demographical data during the sign-up process. A lot can be understood about the subscribers through their age, gender, company and income.
Geographical segmentation can be of great help for e-commerce businesses where location greatly influences the purchasing decisions. It can be done by sending time based emails, location focused content etc.
By keeping track of the purchasing history of a customer, you can segment and send personalized emails recommending items or products similar to their previous purchases.
The amount spent by a customer can tell a lot about their spending capacity. It would make you understand the buying power of customers, thereby helping you send targeted emails regarding products lying in the price range of each customer.
Analysing the sales funnel position of your customer and sending them targeted emails accordingly can be a great way of segmentation. For instance, a new subscriber can be sent a series of welcome emails which introduces them to your products and services. Further, if they have been in touch with you for a while, you can send them product recommendation emails based on what they are interested in.
By now you must have realised how proper segmenting can help you improve the effectiveness of your hyper-personalized emails. But, before we jump any further, do you know collecting customer data is a critical aspect of email personalization? Let's see exactly how this works.
Ask your subscribers to fill in certain specific details other than name and email address in the sign-up form. You can try adding criteria like gender, interests, job positions, birthdays etc.
Work towards integrating your email personalization tool with your various e-commerce platforms such as CRM, accounts etc. This would help you extract additional information regarding your customer’s location, past purchases, status, and amount spent etc.
Email preference centres allow the customers to set their preferences regarding the kind of promotional emails they want to receive and give you an insight about their genuine personal interests.
Another technique of understanding the preference and interests of customers is keeping a check on their e-commerce browsing history. You can easily collect these behavioural data through website tracking.
Third-party apps generally have a lot of customer data stored. You can leverage it by integrating your e-commerce website with these apps.
To sum up, implementing hyper-personalization in your email marketing campaign is the best way to create a long-lasting relationship with your e-commerce prospects. So, if you haven’t already taken this plunge, it’s high time you get started with it. Happy Emailing!