Chart of the Day: Transaction rates are higher among customers who receive multiple abandon cart emails

One of the first things you learn when you begin email marketing, is that email frequency is vital to your campaign. And abandon cart emails are no exception. Experian Marketing Services (EMS), analysed over half a million abandon cart emails sent by several brands in July 2016. EMS found that those customers who received multiple emails (4.6%) doubled their transaction rate. Compared with those who received the one email (1.9%). Transaction rates are defined as the overall percentage of transactions as related to delivered messages (transactions/received) over the time period. EMS also looked at the brands business rules and found that those subscribers who had a 24 hour suppression rule and who received two or more abandon cart emails within 7 days,…

Automated customer lifecycle marketing will be the future of email marketing

To look forward to the future of email marketing 2020 - a report I have contributed to from Litmus, I believe we need to look back to appreciate how little the support for marketers from email marketing platforms has evolved to deliver customised lifecycle messaging. Frankly, I have been amazed how few companies have adopted email as a strategic communications tool for personalised, behavioural based email across the years since I started training on email marketing in 2001.

Research on the adoption of email targeting still shows us a reality where the majority of email marketing involves either no segmentation at all or targeting of just 4 to 6 segments.

So, by mid 2017 I’d like…

What metrics are EMEA email marketers using to measure their campaign performance?

Following on from the  launch of the "Wowing with Contextual Email Marketing" - Email Personalisation report yesterday, I found it interesting how marketers measure the success of their email marketing activities. No matter what type of dynamic content, contextual personalization or segmentation used, the metrics used are largely the same. Most marketers use the basic metrics to measure success 78% of marketers are using Open Rates and Click-Through Rate 58% are using conversion rate 1 in 3 are using "sales value per 1000 emails" Every other metric is used by less than 29% of email marketers For more insight into the state of email personalisation in 2016, download your free copy of the report from our partners MovableInk. The report also includes: Which campaign types drive the most revenue. Welcome series, birthday promotions…? Which…

Just what are the barriers to embracing contextual personalisation in email marketing? Budget? Senior manager buy in? Lack of strategy?

Today we launched our report Wowing with Contextual Email Marketing with our partner Movable Ink: we wanted to share some interesting stats from the report.  We wanted to understand what stops EMEA marketers from using personalisation in their email marketing campaigns due to its potential. As can be seen in the chart above, budget, platforms not up to scratch and surprisingly, a lack of email communications strategy were the biggest barriers. For this question within the report we found that: Lack of strategy was the largest barrier with 45% of respondents indicating this, this suggests that EMEA marketers may be using email without a long term strategy Budget was also a major barrier for over 4 in…

Email marketing in action. A case study in using something more advanced than MailChimp

I've been a heavy user of MailChimp for many years. And as a tutor and examiner for the CIM's digital qualifications I can see that I am not alone. The majority of my students seem to have experience of the platform and only the very larger brands seem to regularly be using anything else like a fully integrated CRM system for email. MailChimp has some awesome features. And for companies with small mailing lists and limited resources or technical expertise, it's an excellent first choice for regular emailing. But it has some severe limitations. You can't really do much personalisation. Sure you can put a first name in and you can use Autoresponders to send specific emails in response to a trigger but they are complex to set up and lack the sophistication of a more specialised marketing automation…

Optimising your triggered messages - 7 common Mistakes to avoid

Sending triggered email messages or behavioural email marketing is a proven method for improving customer engagement and increasing sales for retailers. However, there is a lot of confusion as to what types of ‘on-site’ behaviours should trigger a message, how it should look and feel, as well as how best to measure the results. There is a big difference between doing the right things and doing things right, so here is a simple yet comprehensive overview that will help you to optimise your triggered messages.

Using the right triggers for your messages

Ask people what constitutes a trigger and the first and often only response will be a shopping cart abandonment. However, these people are missing a trick and limiting their reach by not embracing browse abandonment. This doesn’t…

Practical tips to optimise your 'welcome emails'

First impressions count, and for new subscribers, the welcome emails you send out after they opt-in are typically their first interaction with your company. And if used correctly, welcome emails can greatly out-perform other promotional emails. In fact, welcome emails have 320% more revenue per email than other promotional emails, in addition to an 86% lift in unique open rate, a 196% lift in unique click rate, and a 336% lift in transaction emails. As for how to use welcome emails correctly, I'd say you should start out by optimizing your subject line, the time you send it, who it’s 'from,' and the email copy can all increase the success of your welcome email. For example, using the word 'sale' in your subject line has been shown to increase open rates by 23.2%, while 'save' only increases open rates by 3.4%. 'News,'…

The value of transactional emails through dynamic content

Did you know that transactional emails are considered to be the most important by email recipients and they can boost revenue by 33%? Research by Email Monks and Avari shows how predictive dynamic content is increasing conversions in transactional email campaigns. Their Infographic and guide explains how to optimize your email campaigns, sharing practical information for planning and delivering your personalised content based on the activity of your email recipients.  Steps like embedding live social feeds in your emails or including cross- sell recommendations in your order confirmation emails can increase revenue. You can download their Dynamic Transactional Email E-Guide (registration is required).…

How you can you dramatically increase your ecommerce sales with transactional emails

Transactional emails are a fascinating and often overlooked part of the ecommerce marketing landscape. Many business owners not only don’t take advantage of them but also don’t even have a clear idea of what they are. This is a shame because if harnessed properly, 'transactionals' can offer some truly remarkable benefits to those who use them for increased conversions and sales. Now, we’re going to cover some effective marketing strategies and statistics for a select list of key transactional emails but before we do, a quick run-down of what transactional emails are.

So what are transactional emails?

In simple terms, transactional emails are the email messages you send to users of your site or application whenever they specifically, individually interact with either. Thus, when someone joins your site and gets a welcome email or loads up their shopping cart or makes an order…

A review comparing different technical solutions for Ecommerce integration with behavioural email marketing

Triggered messaging is a rapidly growing part of marketing with extremely good ROI. It's about delivering business messages that are personalized and near-real time, resulting in very good engagement. All email marketers should be doing this if they're not already! My previous post in this series explained when triggered messages were effective, for example for cart abandonment and onboarding sequences. This follow-up is a brief summary of the three main implementation strategies for triggered emails, using: 1. Just your E-commerce system. 2. Just your ESP. 3. A real-time marketing system (RTMS).

Using just your Ecommerce system

Many Ecommerce systems can send a few types of triggered messages, for example 'purchase complete' and 'cart abandonment, either natively or using third-party plug-ins. (There are lots of these, for example Abandon Carts Alert Pro for Magento and EDD Abandon…