Q and As from the Online Retail Strategy Webinar

Q. How would you address sending emails to non frequent purchasers?

A. Segment all the non purchasers from your list and send them a re-target email asking them which products they would be interested in hearing about. Use whatever data you have to personalise this email and select as relevant a selection for them to choose from as you can.

Remember to use some trust earning text at the top of the email to remind your customer who you are and why you are emailing them – this is especially important for the non purchasers who may have forgotten giving you their email address.

For the less frequent purchasers, look at the products they bought previously and offer them some related products/services. If it’s not been too long since their last purchase, you could send a follow up email asking them to review their purchase and offer a selection of additional items they may be interested in. Similar to the well known Amazon method of ‘others who bought X product also bought...’’

As discussed in the webinar, the date of purchase can be used to automate these follow up emails so you’d only need to set this up once for your whole contact database.

Q. How do you put the social links on your emails, click to Facebook, Twitter etc...

A. As part of our email marketing software we offer social share Html blocks which just need to be pasted in to the html of your email. Most other Email Service providers should provide you with the correct code to use through their platform.

When someone clicks on the social share icon within your email, they will be taken to their own Twitter or Facebook (or any other social network) page with a pre-loaded status update containing a web view link to your email. The great thing is that all the clicks will be recorded on your campaign reports.

If you’re not using an email marketing platform, there’s lots of information on the internet of how to insert these links into different mediums – some info here

Q. Why do you not recommend purchased lists?

A. With a purchased list, the email recipients have no direct relationship with the organisation that holds their email address, so open rates will naturally be lower.

Although you may receive a list of ‘opted in’ email addresses, they have not opted in to receive YOUR emails.

The addresses are quite often collected via third party websites, we’ve all seen those hidden tick boxes on registration forms ‘Un-tick this box if you don’t want to receive information from partner companies...’’

Emailing lists of contacts that don’t know who you are, or aren’t your target audience, will almost always result in a large number of spam complaints. These complaints can be generated anytime a recipient marks your email as spam, or emails a complaint to an ISP or your ESP.

The best contact lists are those which are grown organically. This guide to B2B marketing strategies highlights some great ways to grow your database.

If you are going to purchase your lists, make sure you check the following: (Taken from the B2B guide detailed above)

• How are the subscribers opted in?
• How often is the email data updated?
• Are they individual contact emails or generic business ones? What is the split?
• What is your policy on refunds/replacements for gone aways or incorrect addresses?
• Could I have a test list to check the quality of data before purchasing?
• Is the list purchase for a one off usage or multiple?
• If multiple usage, will I get an update to it and when?

Q: As a service rather than a product based supplier, should we go about our email marketing strategy in a different way to that demonstrated here this afternoon

A. As a service provider, your communications are going to rely more on sending service related content – so think about what educational/useful information you might be able to follow up with. For example, success stories of how other clients have best utilised your service and got great results.

Masterclasses in using unique features can also add value to your service.

Aside from that, you can still use a lot of the same techniques of retargeting campaigns and welcome campaigns – it is merely the messaging that would change.

Q: What if you're not actually selling anything, but just providing people with information. How do you maintain their interest?

A. Simply by asking them what they want.

Hopefully you have some indication of their areas of interest from the initial sign up, so in the first email send the content that you think will be relevant to them, then within the email include a link to a preference centre where recipients can select from a provided list of content which they would most like to hear about, and how often.

You can then segment your lists to capture these different areas of interest and send out your campaigns accordingly.

Viewing the click throughs on your campaign reports should also help you to pinpoint exactly what’s catching their attention so you can send more of the same.

Another way to gage interest from within your email is here

Q: Do you find that with email marketing it works well to encourage new visitors to expand your profile or does it work more for returning customers?

A: Email Marketing can work successfully for both, depending how you tailor your campaigns.

With returning customers, you don’t need to promote your brand, you just need to keep adding value to your service and maintaining your relationship with them by sending relevant product related info, newsletters etc.

For those that don’t know you so well, the most important thing is to build up trust from the start. Let them know who you are, what you can offer them and why you are emailing them with an option to opt out from the start.

Q. What Is The Typical Open Rate for Eshots:

A. Disregarding sectors, the overall averages according to Econsultancy are:

• Open rate: 22.5%
• Click-through rate: 4.8%

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