There are many benefits to email marketing that should be implemented at the beginning of your direct to consumer, e-commerce journey. Engaging with subscribers, loyal customers and providing insight into your company lifestyle, launches and community is something that can be done in a creative and effective way.
We sat down (virtually, of course) with Mason Interactive’s Director of Email Marketing, Brian Poole to gather insight into email best practices, the benefits of using platforms like Klaviyo and what brands can do during this time make the most of their email marketing channel.
Open rates are going up right now
“Right now I feel like it’s a really good time for people to work on their deliverability,” Brian says. We know that open rates are going up. People are opening emails because they’re spending more time in front of their phone or computer. “It’s a good time to see who’s worthwhile – if they’re not opening now, and they haven’t in 6 months, they’re not going to,” Brian adds. Now is a good time to parse down your list and focus on getting the most out of it.
Many brands are laser focused on sending emails to the highest number of people possible. However, we should be focusing less on how big the list is and more on how many people are buying from it. “We can send a million emails, if no one’s buying, what difference does it make?” Brian says. “If you send 5 emails and one person buys, that one person is more valuable than a million. If we email everyone, it doesn’t work as well.”
Best ways to capture new emails
The simple answer is incentive. “Offer something like a first order discount or promo code to get people to sign up – keep it clean – use a pop up or some sort of collection front and center,” Brian suggests. “People might think it’s annoying but realistically, they are there to shop, browse and sign up for more information and promos.”
We also understand that some brands are unable to incentivize anything – they can’t offer discounts – so they need to be more creative. Signing up for updates on certain products, being notified about pre-order opportunities, or joining a community is something that brands can offer through their email marketing strategy.
Whether you’re gathering news emails or engaging with your community, it really comes down to getting better traffic to your site, or getting the right people to find your site. “That is more likely to get the right people to sign up and then convert,” Brian says. “For some brands, it requires a cross channel approach – You need to be spending money across different channels in order to drive the right people to your website.”
Do you ever wonder how emails end up in your spam folder?
Spam tracking specifically relates to brands with large lists who are sending emails on a more consistent basis. If someone in your database receives emails from you, Gmail will flag email addresses that haven’t opened an email in a long time and return that data to you. At the same time, they are assigning you a role as a spam trap. “If you continue to email that name, Gmail will deem your domain and emails as spam,” Brian adds. Inactive names can be randomly assigned as spam, so you need to keep lists smaller, and more tailored.
While many brands are constantly trying to engage with their entire list, the data shows that it doesn’t actually result in more opens. When you send to a carefully segmented group that signed up in the past two months or opened in the last six months, you have a better chance of maintaining a quality list and score. “Because the list of inactive emails is constantly being ping’d by Gmail, you’re likely to get more emails going directly to spam,” Brian adds.
Paid Media and Email working hand in hand
Like the chicken and the egg logic, people see an ad, they come to your site, and most of the time they will leave. This is where you serve them a retargeted ad, which will bring them back to your site, and then they will get emails based off of abandoned carts or products that they viewed, and then more ads. It goes around and around. “People who utilize everything tend to do the best,” Brian says.
The reality is that you can’t just focus solely on Search Engine Optimization, for example. Although we can help improve your organic search results and presence, it won’t be as successful as distributing the content across every channel. “Maybe someone found you via SEO, but what if they don’t buy today? They came to your website and left. What do you do now?” Brian asks.
“In a perfect scenario, you would follow them around with an ad, send them an email tomorrow, and then an Instagram ad later that day, and a Facebook ad the next.”
The benefits of using Klaviyo as you r email platform
One of the main benefits of using Klaviyo as an email marketing platform are the integration components available. “The integrations with Shopify, and other cart platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, are pretty straightforward and really great,” Brian says.
If you are moving away from a platform like MailChimp, Klaviyo is really good at transitioning you over. “A lot of people upgrade from MailChimp, and Klaviyo has an integration with MailChimp so that you don’t need to export your lists and move anything over,” Brian adds. Klaviyo gives you the ability to see who opened emails six months ago in Mailchimp, and not just the data that you are seeing in the new platform.
Personally, Brian finds that the ease of use of the platform makes it the most user friendly and controllable, especially compared to some of the more complicated tools like Bronto. They offer a lot of features that other platforms don’t or they are just not as easy to use, like the email builder and predictive analytics.
“Instead of predicting by list, Klaviyo predicts by looking at behaviour, and assigns a value based on how likely a list member is likely to purchase, or go dormant, or buy more, based on their actions.”
Additionally, Klaviyo Integrates really well with Facebook and here at Mason Interactive, we use the data in real-time to create high quality Facebook audiences.
3 things you need to do to get set up
Set Up Collection and Welcome
Collection forms that you know are working, followed with a welcome series email
Set up Abandoned Cart
If someone is in the process of checking out and abandons their cart, you can automatically send them an email reminder
Set up Browse Abandonment
Create action items on what you’re sending out from an email standpoint
Need help getting your email marketing strategy set up?