Email marketing. Either you're already doing it or you know you should be. But WHAT is it exactly that you should be doing? Here's some straight forward tips on where I suggest starting (but remember taking action is better than not taking action, so start with what you can do and build upon it as you go)!
Email Templates
First off, you want to personalize your templates (no matter whether you are using Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Marsello, Omnisend, the list goes on). Personalized, branded templates are not only more aesthetically pleasing, and more memorable - but they can also save you TONS of time. You should not be re-creating the wheel each time you go to send out an email. None of us bosses have time for that!
PS: Your Shopify auto-mails (all 23 of them) need some branding love too. We reccomend the Shopify app called 'Orderly Emails' for that!
Automations
- Changing that Welcome email to a 5-part series instead (here's a sample outline for you):
- Welcome (short with discount code)
- Introduction to you! (No hard sells or asks. Why should they follow you or care?
- Then what they can expect from the FB group and why to join.
- Why shop with your boutique? Fun, informative, reasons they should choose you.
- Push the sale/tell them to check out your latest new arrival
- Then a 3-Part Abandoned Checkout series (this could be AFTER the one that Shopify already sends out for you):
- Email 1: 24 hours after checkout abandone
- Email 2: 2 days after checkout abandoned
- Email 3: 4 days after checkout abandoned (possibly add an incentive here, the only issue is that it would be a one time use code so it would only work once so if someone abandons checkout again, they will get that same code - but you can mention in the email that they will only be able to use it once too)
- Then a 3-part 'Win Back' or 'Customer Activation Series:
- Email 1: It's been 90 days since they've made a purchase (offer a discount code)
- Email 2: 2 days later (remind of discount code)
- Email 3: 4 days later (last chance at discount code)
Ongoing Email Campaigns
How often you should be sending?
Welllll it depends on how much you are focusing on this as a marketing strategy. If you have been sending any at all thus far. And if you have, what your results have been. Many boutiques are able to send daily emails and this is a large source of revenue for them (obviously you have to have a decent list of subscribers already too, to get these results). If you have not been sending any, starting with 1-2 per week and building upon that as you strengthen your open rates (and revenue per email) is a great way to get started.
What should you be sending?
- Weekly New Arrivals emails - fo sho!
- Emails highlighting any sales/promotions you are running
- Emails letting your customers know you are about to go live in your Facebook group
- Themed emails:
- Mad about Plaid
- Everything Cozy
- We Heart Floral
- Meet the Team
- Outfit combinations you'll love
- This list could go on!
- A few other email ideas:
- Did you know we offer Sezzle?
- Have you downloaded our app yet? Use this code on your next app purchase!
- Are you using your loyalty points, girl?
One option to save time would be to plan this out ahead of time (I know, I know, it's not easy to find the time to do this, but it can save lots of time down the line if you are able to)! Even if the email is for another purpose, I'd always highlight at least a couple actual products in your emails as well.
Your Open Rates + Email Deliverability
Deliverability, industry wide open rates are much lower than any of us would like. But there are things you can work on over time to improve these. But I want to note there are two key ways to increase your open rates:
- Working on the details of what/when you are sending to optimize based on what is working for you. So this could include:
- day/time you are sending
- subject line
- email preview verbiage
- percentage of your email that is very promotional (graphics for example vs plain text)
- who you have the email set to say it's coming from (your boutique name, vs your name, etc.)
- PS: All of these above points are the same things to consider when you are looking at your click-through rates, and conversion rates as well. Always be working to optimize!
- Your actual deliverability. Meaning your emails ability to actually HIT your subscribers inbox instead of going straight to Spam. This one is a bit trickier and requires some elbow grease and patience. Basically there is an 'algorithm' of sorts that decides how safe emails coming from you are. This is based on things like unsubscribe rates, how often subscribers are marking your items as spam or deleting them unopened, whether subscribers are having positive interactions with your emails (engaging with you). Crazy, right? Sooo this is why it can help to do things like:
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- Making sure you are keeping it clean in terms of adding folks to your list. This is up to you, and it's just what's legal, but you should never be adding folks to your list without their permission.
- Cleaning your list up every quarter - remove those that have been inactive with you the entire quarter prior. You're increased open-rate once you do this will help the 'email algorithm gods' to deem your emails safer, thus hopefully bypassing some of those spam filters.
- Segmenting - you may have better luck with overall open-rates and engagement on your emails if you really try to cater emails to specific segments so no one is getting something that doesn't apply to them or they just aren't interested in. Some ideas here:
- If you have a storefront, having a local segment so that you aren't bombarding out of town/out of state folks with irrelevant information to them.
- If you have some folks that are very very active with your emails, you could segment them as such (Very Active) and email them more often, vs a (Rarely Active) that may be better to only send for very important matters or just not as often (emailing them too much may cause them to just unsubscribe.
- There are sooooo many other ways to segment, depending on your email platforms capability! You can segment by past purchases, typical size they wear, etc.
