How often do you see a full grocery cart abandoned in Walmart? That’s an Instagram moment.
Why?
Well, because it doesn’t happen all that often.
Abandoned carts are not all that common in the physical world—though some exceptionally rude people do abandon their empty carts mid-parking lot. (I’m looking at you, Karen!) While you likely won’t find a lonely cart full of groceries just sitting mid-aisle, the e-commerce world is utterly littered with abandoned carts. Are these carts abandoned because the items within are no longer wanted? Probably not.
So, what is the reason behind these abandoned carts?
Sometimes it’s second-guessing.
Sometimes it’s a lack of customer engagement.
Sometimes, it’s just plain distraction.
Whatever the reason for this—and several other problems e-commerce sites face—an effective email marketing campaign can help get your consumers engaging with your content again.
One: Abandoned Cart Followup
One of the most effective forms of email marketing is following up on those abandoned carts. A good 90% of the time, the cart was abandoned not because of lack of purchasing desire, but because of cold feet. Automating an email campaign to target your consumers with full carts is the perfect way to help them re-engage. Your marketing team can work out the timing, but a good rule of thumb is to send an automated message to your consumer, reminding them about the items in their cart one time a week. If, after the first email, they still have not purchased, incentivizing with a coupon or a free gift is a great way to help them take the plunge.
Two: Customer Engagement
Automated email marketing is also fantastic for improving customer engagement. Most consumers will just flip through social media, giving your content a perfunctory glance before moving on to the latest puppy video. While email marketing gets only a few more seconds of someone’s attention, those seconds can make all the difference in improving your customer engagement.
First of all, when your consumer takes the time to actually click open your email out of their 100s of daily emails, that speaks volumes of interest. Your job then is to engage them from the get-go. Get them connected to deals, social media, events, or even to make reviews—and offer a small reward for doing so.
Setting this automated email campaign up is simple—especially if you do it in conjunction with your abandoned cart campaign. This way, you already have a targeted idea of what your demographic is looking for—and you can target your engagement platform to those specific niches.
Three: Employee Productivity
An automated email campaign is incredible for boosting your employee and marketing productivity. Once you have worked out your season’s schedule, you can put your marketing team to work creating 4-5 types of automated emails to each niche group. You can offer one deal, one survey, one social media event, and one newsletter update per week as they apply to your niche market. Your marketing team can then make 2 or 3 variations of each daily email and connect the email content to either website or social media content.
Overall, using email marketing to reach out to customers is a tried and true method that has proven useful time and again for engaging consumers. Whether you use it to reduce cart abandonment or to promote your latest products, a well-executed automated email marketing campaign will swiftly tighten up your customer engagement and productivity margins.