Improving your ROM: How to strategically merge marketing automation and email marketing

Editor's Notes

1. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits all email campaign. Gone are the days of batch & blast, spray & pray. Every type of contact is different, so don’t treat them as if they are all the same. In this presentation we’ll discuss how to use email marketing and automation to build relationships and increase sales, by optimizing the customer journey. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Email is neither the first nor the last touchpoint between a customer and your brand in the path to purchase.
3. Your relationship with your customer has a lifecycle, and how you control that journey will determine how successful that relationship will be.
4. One of the problems with email campaigns is that they often treat all customers the same, regardless of their interest level and position in the sales cycle. But your contacts should be separated into distinct categories (leads, prospects, customers, active, lapsed). Each of these categories represents a different level of engagement and requires a different email marketing approach.
5. The customer journey is the entire process of customer interaction with your brand. At Flexmail, we often use the RACE model when helping clients with customer interaction and their email marketing strategy. You can apply this to every process in your business, whether you’re promoting your business, a new launch or an event, or when trying to reactive dormant contacts. It starts when a person comes into contact with your product or business for the first time, then goes through the phase of collecting information about it, choosing the right model or version, and making a purchase – ‘til as delighted customer they recommend your product to the people around them. I’m going to share with you how you can implement email marketing and marketing automation throughout the entire funnel in order to improve your processes and results.
6. Contacts are often reluctant to contact sales when they are just collecting information about a specific product or service. In this first step you want to get the right content in front of your ideal customer. It’s your job to get your message across, and collect those interested contacts. Subscribing should be as irresistible as possible. Make sure you add forms and subscription options to every place a visitor can be compelled to sign up.
7. So once you’re going to send those new subscribers email campaigns, don’t just spray and pray. You should be able to identify exactly how many leads each piece of content is creating, or which pieces of content are most successful for each target group, depending on your goals. Depending on their needs, and the piece of content they read when signing up, you should offer a personal experience. Adding interest tags to your contacts allows you to send the lead follow-up information and resources that align perfectly with what they want. By keeping an eye on the number of leads with these tags you’ll also be able to get a feel for what topics are best for attracting leads.
8. Imagine if you’re standing in a big room filled with all of your customers and subscribers. All of a sudden the door opens and a brand new subscriber walks in. That can be quite threatening. You don’t expect him to immediately join the conversation without getting an introduction from you, do you? Now let’s translate that to our situation. If the very first email a contact gets from you is a general newsletter, that isn’t very welcoming, is it? If you are going to automate just one single element in your marketing, make sure it is either a welcome message or a welcome series. You should take the time to personally welcome your contact, and present him with the information and content he needs to get introduced to your general campaigns that will follow. Depending on the contacts that you’re targeting, and the piece of content he read when signing up, you should offer him a personalized experience. By adding interest groups or interest tags to the different links in your first email campaigns, you are able to quickly get to know a lot about the needs and questions of your contacts. And what you’re sending them should be adapted accordingly.
9. Examples: Starbucks: Welcome message to new subscribers. Lingo, experience. Dorothy Perkins: Welcome message to new subscribers. Address book, discount to encourage buying, mobile site, USP’s, social. Confirmation after event sign up: reminder, program, exclusive, new speaker, why you shouldn’t miss it. Strava: test version signup confirmation. How to get started. No reply
10. Now that you’re gathering the most interesting contacts and keeping track of their interests, you’re work is only starting. Just because they entered their email address, doesn’t mean they are ready to make a purchase.
11. Act is short for interact. You should have a content hub in place that is relevant, inspiration, useful and creates leads. The emails and content that you’re sending should guide your contact throughout the sales cycle.
12. The goal in this second phase is to persuade our different leads to take the next step, the next action on their journey. It may mean finding out more about a company or its products, searching to find a product or reading a blog post. You should define these actions as top-level goals of the funnel in analytics. Goals can include "Viewed product", "Added to Basket", "Registered as member" or "clicked on a link” or “added to an interest group”. Act is also about encouraging participation. The specific goals depend on your individual business.
13. To get them engaged, it’s crucial that you send the right information at the right time. It's about engaging the audience through relevant, compelling content and clear pathways.
14. And the only way to do that, is to know what drives them. Get to know your contacts even better by analyzing their clicking behavior in your emails. Or use a preference center to actually ask them about their interests. By also implementing web tracking, you can track which pages your contacts visit on your website, and use that information in your marketing automation. So make sure you get the leads in your different target groups on the right customer journey. Create a profile of the needs of your contacts, and optimize your content accordingly. Create an outreach plan and set up the best follow-up for each target group.
15. If you want to take that one step further, you can use dynamic content. That way specific content is only visible when a contact meets specific criteria. That way you can personalize content, topics, products or even just the sales rep signature at the bottom of the email. It allows you to create more targeted messages, while not increasing workload. Case Sofim
16. Dynamic Content: Different type of leads. Email salutation depending on rep. Specific products based on recent behavior. More targeted messages, while not increasing workload.
17. So, The act phase is all about getting your contact to take a desired action. Examples: Email Conversion Course to drive you in. Free 14 day course. Gives you plenty of opportunities to educate them and to get them to convert to paying customers. Tea: Give you a feel of the athmosphere, they share a transformation. Makes you feel part of the club. Recipes which are linked to their product. Functional links as well. Extra CTA. Social. J.Crew: Like it? We had a hunch  They don’t make it a secret that they know what you’ve been doing. 3 CTA. Waitrose: How to place your first order. Customer favourites, free delivery, benefits. Clear steps.
18. Get them to take that vital next step.
19. In the third phase we try to capitalize on our marketing investment as much as possible. This is the phase of conversion to sale. It involves getting your audience to take that vital next step which turns them into paying customers, whether the payment is taken through online Ecommerce transactions, or offline channels. That means that you should have offered them enough contextual relevance to drive conversion. I’m going to show you lots of different examples from different sectors. Keep an open mind and try to apply the general ideas to your business.
20. Are your leads ready to be passed off to sales? Make sure you have the right automation scenarios in place to automatically notify sales when a lead is ready to be contacted by a sales rep. Can your customers make their purchase on their own? Great! It doesn’t matter how they became a customer, you still need to make sure you have the right follow-up in place to properly inform them about their purchase, and to get your existing customers to make repeat purchases!
21. The first thing you need to set up is a scenario of transactional messages. Make sure your customer is properly informed after his purchase. Optimize order and shipping confirmation emails, and don’t forget to put a review email in place. It gives you a great opportunity to gather feedback that you can present to potential new customers (great social proof!). And it also allows you to pull back your customer to your website, where you can seduce him to make new purchases. Examples: Solestruck: Great lingo, structure, but no other information. Teespring: Great feeling, Great text in banner, Thank you message Sephora: In the technical sense a very strong message (preheader, functional links). Great slogan, asking for a review. Harry’s: sends a how-to message once the item has been delivered, great extra service. As you can see, these aren’t boring emails. Transactional emails are the messages that get the highest conversion rates in your entire email marketing: they are highly relevant and targeted, and are anticipated by your customer: you’re letting him know that his order has been processed successfully, and you’re doing everything in your power to get it to him as soon as possible. So please don’t waste this great opportunity and let your service and unique personality shine through.
22. You shouldn’t stop there. Your satisfied existing customers are a great source to find contacts who are ready to make a new purchase to increase revenue per customer. Definitely use email marketing for those goals too. We call these types of emails Retargeting Emails. Again, we’re looking for contextual relevance to tie in a new email. They tie in with transactional emails as well.
23. Cart abandonment email This mostly applies to online shopping. A customer has shown interest in one or more of your products, but hasn’t made a purchase. Using a cart abandonment email, you can seduce them to make that purchase after all. Examples: Shoemint: You didn’t put it in your basket, but favorited it. Very easy email, no dynamic content, only the url is personalized. Urgency Asos: the item that you almost bought is presented in the email, together with 2 urging USP’s. Nike: Another approach. No items in the email, but how can we help? With a link to the product, but also to support, together with USP’s. Difference between product and service related approaches.
24. Association emails Revenue increasing email (hotel) In the association emails we try to have recent customer buy another one of our products. Here we are directly trying to increase the revenue per customer in short-term. Examples: Coolblue: The perfect accessories for your phone J.Crew: these are the perfect accessories for your dress
25. Upgrade email Now that we know what our customers like, we can offer them items that are similar to what they bought. Like association emails, we are also trying to increase the revenue per customer. Examples: Hotel: These types of emails are very popular with hotels, and rightly so. They can’t order new rooms when they go out of stock. So once you’ve sold all your rooms for that period, you better try to make the most money out of these guests. In this email they try to sell you concert tickets and cab rides, but they are also being used by hotels to sell restaurant or spa reservations, breakfasts and trips. Dollar Shave club 1: You’ll notice on the next slides that I have found my new favourite company. Of course I don’t have a beard, I mean marketing wise. You can buy subscription boxes with shaving equipment. These are standard boxes, but just before your box will be shipped, they ask you if you want to toss anything else in. You can compare this to the little racks you can find at the checkout in super markets. They are trying to seduce impulse buyers, and in a very original way. Dollar Shave Club 2: As you can see, these guys have great branding. Here you have created an account in the clubhouse, but haven’t ordered the subscription. You are almost there, so they introduce the boxes once more.
26. Replenishment email: If you’re very lucky, you have a product that gets loyal customers. Try to benefit from this as much as possible by sending replenishment emails. Examples Purina: Replenishment notification. On the website you’ve created your pet’s favourite bland, and they notify you that you’re almost running out. They make it very easy for you to make a repeat purchase. Personalization of the name of the dog. Other: Here you don’t receive a notification, but they ask you to sign up for your favourite products.
27. Survey email Dollar Shave Club stands to learn a ton about their customers from this email. They’ll find out, for example, who’s really interested in their company based on who opened the email. As they gather more responses, they’ll learn more about product-market fit and get some insight on what products could be useful in the future. This data will also help them segment users into groups when it comes time to let people know about future products. If, for example, someone responds with “None of the above,” then they know not to dilute that person’s inbox with more information on the topic. Dollar Shave Club automatically sends a free sample to each customer depending on which link they clicked. Dollar Shave Club then automates an email to go out after the product has been delivered to customer, asking if they would like to buy the product.
28. Thrilled customers. We’re trying to generate happy customers and find advocates for our brand. So we’re both trying to build a relationship with our customers, as well as get them to buy more.
29. Besides making sure that you gather new leads and customers, you should also focus on long-term engagement with your existing customers, and developing a long-term relationship with first-time buyers to build customer loyalty as repeat purchases using communications on your site, social presence, email and direct interactions to boost customer lifetime value.
30. Set up a customer engagement plan for every new customer, and for every target group of existing customers. Thrilled customers are key. Engage them through social proof by asking for recommendations, try to get repeat sales or send referral campaigns. Try to improve customer satisfaction by offering the best service, and by sending surveys. We’re trying to generate happy customers in this phase, to find advocates for our brand.
31. Updates, blog & newsletters Starbucks: news and updates, question to see which new flavour is more popular. Helpscout: one blog post per message Smitsonian: invitation for a talk, extra service to subscribers.
32. Birthday & milestone emails Examples: Nastygirl: Birthday discount, normal birthday email West Elm: they don’t have your birthday, they promise a surprise if you give them your date of birth. Happy Anniversary groen: message when you’ve been a customer for a year instead of your birthday +discount. Evernote: milestone, you’ve used a new feature for the first time. Runkeeper: you’ve broken your own record. Flexmail: you’ve sent your first campaign. Email 1 of 3, educational series.
33. Feedback email Levi’s: Asks about the opinion of its subscribers, show they care. Nasty Gal: Makes it a special experience, you get to win something Office: It looks like a survey, but they actually ask you to update your preferences. They know if you’re male or female just from the click: you can then appoint interest groups to every link. Even if they don’t complete the survey after the click, Office still gained valuable new information.
34. Besides generating engagement, you should also try to increase sales with existing customers. Building a relationship with your existing customers is essential, but there are also a number of email campaigns and automated messages you could send to increase sales as well.
35. Referral email Flexmail: We activate brand advocates for Flexmail by sending our tell a friend email now and then. Our clients can receive free credits if they can refer Flexmail to someone in their network. Gilt: This is a practice that’s very popular in retail of course. Gilt offers existing customers and new leads 25 dollar for the first purchase of that lead. Kate Spade Saturday: this is the email they send to the new lead that has been referred to them.
36. Feedback email to non-buyers: If you are selling a product, and one of your prospects doesn’t become a customer, always make sure you close the conversation by reaching out one last time and asking for feedback. Beegit asks you to fill out a couple of questions, Feedly pro asks you to answer just one quick question. It allows these companies to gather feedback why someone didn’t buy, and can help them to start a conversation to turn those readers into buyers after all. Maybe your contact didn’t have the time to check out your product, or has some question that you need to get to the bottom of. Tijd over: situatie Flexmail (demo verlengen en formulier).
37. Reactivation emails To be honest, I don’t like the “We hate goodbyes” or “Where have you been” e-mails. You’re telling them they they didn’t visit you anymore, almost as if you’re trying to make them feel guilty. I think that businesses should come up with more clever ways to reactivate their subscribers. Runkeeper: Re-Engage Free Trial Users. Did someone not upgrade to a paid account? Instead of telling them to upgrade, use the re-engagement email to tell them to use a specific feature of your platform – one that requires upgrading to a paid account. If you can sell the free trial user on one great feature, you’ll get the upgrade. Evernote: The “Did You Know?” Email: It’s as practical as it could possibly be. Notice that it doesn’t ask users to upgrade to a paid account and it avoids the flashy subject lines. It’s simple, clear, personalized and actionable … the perfect Small Win Email. Hellofresh: Normally great emails, like the one on the left. They show their members that they get exclusive deals, just because they have a subscription. The email on the right however is sent to contacts who subscribed to the newsletter, but didn’t sign up for a box yet. They offer you a 20% discount if you order a box now. This email is sent to people who subscribed to HelloFresh, but didn’t order a box yet. I still receive these emails, but I now know that every few months I get this email, which diminishes the value a little bit. Be careful. Target (very bad example) is fishing for a few extra dollars at the risk of annoying their customers.
38. The RACE framework is a great tool to start your strategy. Stop with only sending batch & blast campaign, and come up with a strategy that helps you to convert leads into customers, and build a relationship with them. Set up a personalized engagement plan for every single target group. This allows you to easily evaluate and optimize your different scenarios, which will help you get the best conversions for your email marketing.