Email Marketing Projects Management
Project Highlights
Inconsistent Email Marketing
In the summer of 2010 when Colin Chase first came on board with BrothersAllNatural.com as the Director of eCommerce, his role was in regard to the overall direction for the eCommerce Division of Brothers-All-Natural as well as the hands-on implementation of the day-to-day tasks. The staff under Chase's control were mainly clerical for him to use on a part-time basis as they had other responsibilities outside of eCommerce. Additionally he had access to one of the company's graphic artists, but this employee was "officially" directed by the Art Department's Director and Chase could only receive a few hours of graphic art assistance per week.
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By the summer of 2011 Chase had gained approval to upgrade to a more robust Email Service Provider (ESP), but his budget was still very modest for the systems that had interested him. Chase was able to negotiate a very favorable deal with Listrak after having spent time with this vendor at IRCE 2011 in San Diego. Listrak was a little cumbersome to use in its current version, however there was a promise of a new version being released soon (which Chase believes was launched in August 2012 shortly after his leaving Brothers-All-Natural).
The Listrak system provided a lot of robust functionality, making it much easier to re-send an email within a set number of days to everyone on the list who had not opened the email yet. This was usually done 2 to 3 days after the initial weekly email was sent on Thursday afternoons. This simple "re-send to non-openers" function allowed for a 67% increase in overall Open Rates per email, going from an average of 15% to around 25% each week. The Click-through Rates (CTR) however fluctuated depending upon the deal and the current state of the email list. These CTR's started around 10% at the start as Chase was still learning to better understand his target audience at the beginning of 2011, and then ended up averaging around 18% by the beginning of 2012.
Targeted Landing Pages for the Marketing Emails
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So Chase started with Open Rates around 15%, Click-Through Rates around 10%, but right from the start the Conversion Rates from the Landing Page ranged around 20%! The Conversion Rates coming from the Landing Pages were further improved to averaging around 25%, but have spiked as high as 48% (for some of the exclusive very-limited-time sales, such as 14-hour sales). In 2012 the statistics have been in the 25% range for overall Opens, the 18% range for Click-throughs, and the staggering 25% range for Conversions off the Landing Pages! This means an overall Conversion Rate from the original Email Marketing List of 1.125%, which is an excellent rate by any standard and for most industries. Thus for every 10,000 susbcribers each email would produce around 125 orders.
Timely Enhancements to the Email Marketing
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Shopping Cart Abandonment Emailing is a hot topic in 2012, and Chase moved to initiate this Email Marketing technique in late spring. Shopping Cart Abandonment Emailing works like this: The customer shows interest in specific products by adding them to his or her Shopping Cart within the eCommerce system (in this instance BigCommerce was the eCommerce system). If the visitor leaves without making a purchase of the items in their Shopping Cart, then an email is generated a few hours later reminding them that they put these items into their Shopping Cart and gently reminds them of this. If the customer does not make the purchase after this reminder, then 2 days after this initial email a second email is sent reminding them once again. This time however, the email may include a special offer to save 10% off their order or receive free shipping. If the customer still does not make the purchase after the 2nd reminder, then after an additional 2 days a third and final reminder email is sent informing them yet again about the items in their Shopping Cart. This last email may include a 15% off coupon plus free shipping.
Each of the coupons offered via the Shopping Cart Abandonment Emailing is for a limited-time-only for the purpose of creating a sense of urgency. However since the emails are gentle reminders, informing the customer as if they have simply forgotten their intent and (potentially) providing discounts on the order, such Email Marketing does not typically create hostility in the customer.
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Product-targeted emails are sent to a group of customers who have shown a particular interest in a specific product or line of products. In regard to Brothers-All-Natural Chase would periodically poll the Order Database to find all the customers who had ordered a specific item which may be a new item, such as the Mandarin Orange Fruit Crisps or the Disney Toy Story line of products. These customers would then be sent an email regarding the product, knowing full well that the person had an interest in the item at one point in the recent past, and then offers some sort of special deal on the item. This technique was also very successful and very useful when the company needed to push a specific item that had stalled in sales or maybe for which a large shipment of new inventory was arriving in the warehouse (i.e., to move out the old inventory).
Constraints and Limited Resources
While at Leisure Living (PoolSupplies.com) Chase enacted major changes to the Email Marketing in 2009 and saw an increase in Email Marketing revenues to the tune of 49% in one year, which equated to millions of dollars in increased revenues from the Email Marketing Channel. (Click here for more information regarding the changes that Chase enacted for PoolSupplies.com's Email Marketing in 2009.) However, in 2009 the one additional change that Chase sought, but didn't always have the resources (i.e., staff time) to implement, was the creation of targeted Landing Pages for every weekly email. Rather than sending the customer to a generic page on the website such as the home page or a category page, Chase wanted to have a targeted Landing Page for each weekly email. This was a change that Chase believed would have generated an even more significant increase in gross revenue from the marketing emails for PoolSupplies.com.
In 2011 Chase enacted major changes to the Email Marketing at Brothers-All-Natural and again saw huge improvements in the results and corresponding sales, yet these changes did include a targeted Landing Page for every email. However, while with Brothers-All-Natural in 2012 Chase desired to initiate two additional improvements to the Email Marketing that he regrettably never had the resources to enact. The one change was for better, more enhanced and more engaging graphics as this required more time from the graphic artist tasked with assisting Chase. The second additional change was for user-enacted or event-triggered emails based upon user interactions on the website. Several Product Recommendation Services are available to make this a reality, and many of the ESP's now offer this as an add-on capability, but Chase was never provided the resources to initiate this concept.
By better targeting the Email Subscribers and Existing Customers with products for which they have expressed a distinct interest, your Email Marketing can reach the next level and realize vast improvements in revenue from the Email Marketing Channel. However, an adequate amount of resources (i.e., staff time and/or the proper budget) need to be allocated for these techniques to become a reality. It is crucial to garner buy-in from the top management and to do so by continuing to communicate the Best Practices of Email Marketing. However, as displayed on this page, much can be done even when more is desired.