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You’ve got mail. Email is, without doubt, a crucial tool for online retailers. It’s by far and away the preferred mode of direct communication with customers, regardless of whether you’re B2B or B2C, and it’s able to power promotions that ultimately drive merchants’ sales. In this week’s mishmash, we’ll cover a less-respected method of collecting subscribers, how to make the most of your subscriber lists, and ways to keep them engaged.
Get Those Email Lists Popping
Actually acquiring email subscribers is pretty important if you want to do any email marketing. There’s a plethora of ways to do so, like giveaways, contests, or through sales alone, but an often underestimated tactic is pop-ups. According to study data by Listrak, pop-up implementation, especially those with deals like percentage off of a product, can drive subscriber growth up by nearly 50% year-over-year. Pop-ups are also more effective around lunchtime, with a conversion rate of around 3%.
Divide and Conquer
Once those lists are nice and juicy, it’s important that you start chopping them up. Segment your email subscribers, and personalize emails to maximize your email marketing’s effectiveness and engagement. ConversionXL has a beginner’s guide to accomplishing both of those processes, and it’s worth giving a look. Along with describing the importance of segmentation and personalization, they map out ways to segment and personalize lists through top email marketing tools, like Mailchimp.
Keeping Subscribers Subscribed
It’s one thing to get subscribers, and another to keep them. Any number of triggers can cause an unsubscribe, from a clogged inbox, to waning interest in your products. A customer could just be having a bad day – the possibilities are endless. But some of the common causes, like lack of relevance or overbearing frequency, can all be prevented. For more info, Econsultancy has 10 ways to reduce email unsubscribes.
A Second Helping of Sales
Seducing that recent subscriber-turned-customer into buying more is something all merchants should consider. Practical Ecommerce has 6 after-order emails sure to do the trick. Thank the customer for their purchase, ask them to review the product and experience, request some feedback on what they’d like to see, and keep them connected with your brand in a positive way that’s sure to boost their value.
Keep the Clicks Coming
Where are customer clicking? It’s nice to have email subscribers, nicer to create emails for them, but pointless if they don’t click them. Consumer behavior is constantly changing, with mobile having a larger and larger factor. Ever increasingly, click share is slimming down on desktops as email subscribers use their mobile phones to check email. This makes email marketing that much more important, prompting email marketers to create emails that (hopefully) translate into a mobile purchase, which currently has a not-so-hot conversion rate compared to traffic.
Image: twitter.com/mattwi1s0n, Flickr
