How To Increase Ecommerce Sales through Email Follow Up.

Video Transcript

Are you doing this? If not, you really, really need to be; or if you know you’re not doing it as much as you could be, then you want to exploit it more. In my experience, this is one of the most overlooked things for ecommerce business owners. Ecommerce business owners very focused on the frontend. If you’re an ecommerce business owner – you are most likely very, very focused on traffic. “Let’s get as much traffic as we can.” But typically the backend marketing processes are underdeveloped or not as developed as much as they could be.

The most powerful thing that you have at your disposal is with e-mail. If you’re not doing this, then you want to make sure you get this in place first and foremost. I’m assuming that most of the business owners or project managers or business executives who are watching this video – that you are already capturing e-mail addresses on your website. When someone makes a product purchase, their e-mail address is going into an e-mail database or you’re allowing them to opt into receiving further updates for you – however you have that configured.

As a side note, in general if you want to do follow up marketing, it’s good that people actually opt into that or request to be a part of that, either through a follow up e-mail that they respond to or by just checking a box at the end of the sales process – which can be very efficient when you do that. And you can even set up multiple boxes and they can check what they want to receive. That’s a pretty common practice with ecommerce stores.

A side note is when you capture that information, you want to make sure that you’re working in conjunction with a professional e-mail service provider (ESP). So a third party e-mail service provider that is recording the electronic opt-in of customers to your e-mail list; you can then use later to send individual e-mails or bulk e-mails to your entire list. To successfully execute this e-mail marketing follow-up strategy, you want to make sure you’re working with a professional e-mail service provider. Examples of these would be Constant Contact, IContact, and AWeber. I don’t have any specific recommendations for you right now, but if you contact me I can give you some specific recommendations.

Back to the main point. The crucial thing about e-mail or the big opportunity with the e-mail is to further the relationship with your customers. There’s really nothing as potent and powerful as this, except for getting on the phone and talking to them; but of course if you have any size of business that’s just not realistic for you. So this is like an automated way for you turn one-time customers into repeat customers – which for most businesses is what’s going to give them long-term sustainability and separate them from their competitors? So if you’re struggling in your market or you feel like your competitors are passing you by, this may be the number one reason why – you’re not fully exploiting e-mail.

Through e-mail follow up you can develop a real depth of relationship with your customers. If someone’s already bought from you, the amount of work it takes to get them to buy from you again is much less than what it took as far as investment of resources to get them to buy from you the first time.

Depending on your market, you may want to have an e-mail marketing program on steroids; or it may be a little more low key. Certain markets really lend themselves to follow-up sales. For example if you sell dog products, you’re typically selling to dog owners. Most of them are pretty passionate about their animals. Some of them even treat them like children – in a really good way – and really want to care for these animals; and are constantly looking for the next product or item that they need for the dog. So there’s an opportunity to develop a relationship there; and you can see massive repeat sales.

If you’re in a market selling something that’s more high-end, say for example you’re selling high-end lighting products, the opportunities for repeat sales may not be as great. Someone may only be buying a lighting product once a year or once every two years. But there’s a certain segment of that population which may be buying more often. Perhaps you might have commercial buyers who you can use e-mail marketing to separate them out and develop a relationship with them.

In most markets there is a really good opportunity to further develop a relationship with your customers with the proper strategy. You just have to really take stock of who your customers are and how to target that towards them. Depending on what your market is, find the appropriate strategy.

Different types of e-mail strategies: The simple straight forward ones promote store sales. If you’re not doing that, you should be doing that. Run a sale once a month or once every couple of months. Sending out coupons – ideally you want to get your e-mail list segmented into your most active buyers; and further incentivize your most active buyers to buy more, again through coupons or special offers or loyalty clubs.

In certain markets, having value added information can be really, really helpful. For example, with the example of the website selling dog products, dog owners are constantly looking for information and needing information about what’s the best product for their dog; or what’s best to do with your dog for this training need or this medical need. So if you’re really sending your customers information that helps them understand how to better care for their dog – and the more specific it is to their dog – for example, if you can, within the sales process, have them self-identify what type of breed they’re buying for or the age of their dog or the specific needs of their dog, then you can follow up with real value added information that helps them better care for their dog. And that’s going to really bind them to you; and they’re going to really think of you for the next product that they need to buy for the dog. Also, it develops a trust-based relationship.

So if you are providing value through e-mail, they’re going to start to want to see your e-mails and want to read your e-mails. And then when you send a product offering down the pipe – you send a couple of value added e-mails about how to help your dog with this medical condition; how to train your dog to sit; and then a couple of weeks later you send the product e-mail, they’re going to be much more open to that; and they’re going to start to really live and breathe by your recommendations. If you say this product is good for this purpose and their dog has that need, they’re probably going to buy it – so again, using e-mail to develop relationships.

We touched briefly on segmenting your lists. Again that’s a pretty deep topic in and of itself, but the bottom line is the more you can get people to self-identify into their specific needs, the more potent your e-mail marketing is going to be.

So again, coming back to our dog example, which is a very potent example for e-mail marketing. If you were able to segment your list out into dog owners who have German Shepherds and dog owners who have Chihuahuas – there’s totally different types of information you can send to those two populations of dog owners. And when you start to send specific messages through e-mail to a Chihuahua owner or to a German Shepherd owner, they’re going to eat those up.

The way you can get them to self-identify is either in the sales process on the check-out page or by sending them a survey later through e-mail. Some people will voluntarily participate in surveys. Or send them value-added products and by the nature of those value added products they opt into a specific list – which then you know what their interest is. For example, you could send them an e-book about training tips or a guide to German Shepherd dog care. When you send those as a general list and you see which ones then opt into a specific list, now you have them on a specific segmented list where you can further market to them in a very specific way, which is going to better serve them and certainly better serve your business. That is a way where you can double to triple your gross revenue per year if done effectively. I guarantee it.