Increasing sales with email marketing
The webinar (Understanding the eCommerce Customer Journey) starts off with Komal Helyer quickly introducing Pure360. The speaker on the webinar itself is Kate Barrett who is the founder of eFocus Marketing. As a tourism student one of the companies she has worked with stood out, which was Tui.
The main topics of the webinar:
- what the customers want or need
- how to advertise and collect data through email
- 5 stages of customer journey
- how often to send emails
The biggest part of the whole webinar was the importance of using email as a company and how it can increase company’s sales. The webinar ends with a questions and answers section between Helyer and Barrett.
Personalization
At the start of Barrett’s webinars she makes a point how important personalization is, but also how ”we don’t want to be creepy” (Barrett 2020). As I don’t have my own company or even a job right now, the main perspective I viewed the whole webinar from, was as a customer. Not being creepy was a really important point of view in my opinion. With the whole collecting data side of things, it can really freak out a customer. Sometimes it surprises me how much information our devices collect from us and it makes me uncomfortable.
Email sign up
About half way through the webinar Barrett talks about the importance of encouraging people to sign up for emails. She mentions studies about contact permission pop ups and how the way they are prechecked affects the customers choice. ”Test 5 when neither the yes or the no was pre checked, and of course with GDPR we need things to be non checked, so 88.5% gave a positive permission” (Barrett 2020). The overall importance of using email really blew my mind as someone who absolutely hates email advertisements with passion. The only times I ever sign up for email letters is if I get a discount code or if I need an alert for when item is back in stock. When it comes to ever checking the emails I get from companies, I never do. They annoy me more than anything and I would like to say that, with younger people, social media is definitely the biggest platform to make people interested in your products.
Increase in sales
Barrett talks about using data to make personalized campains. She also mentions how according to Luke1977.com there was a 60% increase in revenue from cart abandonment recovery, which to me was interesting. Once again a thing that makes me annoyed but apparently really works according to studies. This also made me think from the customers point of view. I wonder if I could use this as a way to get personalized sales, just by looking at things I want to purchase and putting them in my basket.
How many is too much?
Towards the end of the webinar Barrett talks about how to use data to determine what kind of emails to send and how many. Personalized emails are key, new and already existing customers don’t need the same kind of emails. She also mentions how COVID-19 has made an effect in people’s purchasing behavior and how it should be noted in marketing. She also made a point about how advertising traveling isn’t the best move right now. (Barrett 2020)
Right now we have to take into account that people most often shop from multiple companies and there for have possibly signed up for many email letters. This really affects the amount of emails it is appropriate to send. You have to stood out, whether that is with the content or the amount of emails. I would prefer it to be the content. If I get 5 emails a day from one company, they might stood out from the rest. But if the others are also thinking about vicibility and sending 5 emails a day, it would completely fill my inbox. That would make me feel overwhelmed and I would probably not open any of them.
In conclusion
I would consider myself a very visual person, that is why I prefer seeing adds on social media rather than having to go to email and opening up the add myself. Getting a hundred different emails a day from companies begging me to buy what is in my basket has only annoyed me so far. However who am I to disagree with studies made by professionals. The impact email has on sales really amazed me and I would definitely use it if I ever work with marketing in the future.
– Roosa –
References
Barrett, 2020, Understanding the eCommerce Customer Journey, Pure360 Viitattu 8.2.2022 https://www.pure360.com/webinar/understanding-the-ecommerce-customer-journey/