Driving sales with lifecycle emails

Chris Lema
So with that, let’s get started. We’re just two minutes after the hour. We got a group here. I just mentioned we are recording this, so if you’re on and you end up getting to a point where you realize I gotta bounce out, I gotta take the kids somewhere. I gotta pick something, or my power went out.

Chris Lema
We are recording this and you will get an email before the end of day tomorrow. To see everything is here. And that’s critical because today we have Beka Rice, Head of Product over at Jilt. And we’re talking about lifecycle emails. Emails that help you win more and sell more in terms of the ecommerce context.

Chris Lema
I know you’re going to love this. Beka is one of the smartest people I know in ecommerce, and that’s not because she’s a naturally brilliant person, though she is. But it’s also because beyond just chill, her and her team have been building software products for ecommerce for years, and that means that they have touched all different kinds of stores.

Chris Lema
They have worked with all different kinds of customers. They have built all different kinds of features for online stores, so you cannot get around that level of experience, right? A lot of people build one little product. They do one little thing and they do it over and over. They become an expert in that one thing. Beka and her team have been building a variety of features, right?

Chris Lema
They have more plugins than most companies on the WooCommerce store. They have a ton of different products and features. They built, and they’ve done it for tons of different customers, and they ran it. They run a blog that is dedicated to selling with WordPress. And so there are very few people that I trust as much as I trust Beka to talk about just about anything ecommerce, and have a background that can justify having the conversation and the insights she has.

Chris Lema
So I’m excited to have her here today. Beka, take it away. Let’s kick off with our slides.

Beka Rice
Thank you. That’s some kind words. So, as Chris mentioned, we wanted to talk a little bit about lifecycle emails today and why they matter for a store — whether those of you attending are running a store for someone else or running your own store.

Beka Rice
Working with clients, hopefully it helps you set up effective marketing plans for your clients. Because if they’re making more money with you, they’re happy. So we wanted to step into first what lifecycle emails are and give you a little bit of background just so we’re all on the same page. So when we say lifecycle email, it’s a term that some people are not quite sure about.

Beka Rice
We’re really focused on emails that are in response to customer behavior. So things that are going to engage customers throughout the journey with your store or your client store. These emails are geared toward making sure that people have the experience that you want them to have with your brand or with your client’s brand. So, the best way to do these emails is usually in an automated way, but also a personalized way.

Beka Rice
You want to make sure that these emails are giving customers touchpoints with the store in a timely way, and in a way that’s highly relevant for them as they’re shopping. So the first thing is, there is a benefit to these emails for your customers. And a lot of people are, I think, sort of shy, especially in like a post GDPR world of reaching out to customers and communicating with them.

Beka Rice
And the best thing about lifecycle emails is when they’re done right, they’re done in a way that helps your customers. They’re not done in a way that is seen as like direct marketing or is seen as an inconvenience, right? So for customers, lifecycle emails should be timely. They should provide information or assistance with purchasing. So if someone’s before the purchase with your store, these emails should be giving them information about how to complete the purchase, trying to uncover issues they might have had.

Beka Rice
If it’s post-purchase, it should be giving them information about products, asking them questions. How can we improve? So timeliness and information is a key component of this. And they should help you engage buyers and gather feedback. So as a store owner or someone working with a store, I need to make sure that every customer has an optimal experience.

Beka Rice
And to do that, you need to talk to these people and lifecycle emails. When done correctly, give you perfect opportunities to do that. So it gives you touch points throughout that lifecycle. But they’re also really important for your store. And so as a store owner or as someone who’s administrating a store and managing a store, you should know what emails are going to be most important for you.

Beka Rice
And they have the highest engagement, conversion rates, and average order value of marketing channels you’re going to use, especially compared to social media. They also offer far more scalable personalization. And, you can use customer segmentation and behavioral triggers to improve your customer relationship. So what I mean by that is, let’s say that I’ve purchased from Chris’s headphone store, which we all know he’s got about a million headphones.

Beka Rice
And so let’s say, you know, I’ve purchased Sony Bluetooth headphones, right. Or by purchasing that and also by my behavior on site Chris knows a lot about me, right. He knows that I’m looking for moderately priced headphones. I’m not trying to go super high end, but I’m also really caring about things like Bluetooth connectivity and audio quality.

Beka Rice
But those aren’t the most important things to me, right? A balance between that and prices if I’ve purchased those headphones. So based on that, he can kind of make some inferences about me and send me automated emails to say, okay, you bought these headphones, here’s some things you’re probably interested in. I’m going to also send you some educational troubleshooting tips about your headphones.

Beka Rice
And, I’m going to make sure that you’re happy with this purchase. So like a month from now, I’m going to ask you about your feedback because you’re using them for a little while. You should know now, do you like them? Do they keep good connectivity with whatever device you’re using? And I want to make sure I know this about products I carry, too, so that I can improve my product descriptions and improve on the information I give people upfront about these items.

Beka Rice
So, the best part about that is when you send these kinds of emails, you’ll notice, based on this slide, that those emails have much higher average order values than traffic that’s driven from search or social media. They also have much higher conversion rates. So your conversion rate and average order value are going to be vital to your store, especially as you’re starting out and sending timely emails with a lot of information for customers is a way that you can improve your margins as a business.

Beka Rice
So that’s a background overview. Before we move on to what kinds of emails, I’m curious, Chris, if there’s other things there that you would add into, based on your experience running with running stores?

Chris Lema
Well, I think it’s absolutely right. I got to tell you, the best stores that I’ve bought from in the last year are doing things in email that previously we just wouldn’t have thought of and yet are so simple. So I just bought a watch. I bought two watches the other day. And I don’t know of anyone who reads the manual on the watch.

Chris Lema
Right. You just grab a watch, you know, like, well, instinctively I should know how this works. And so you throw the box away, you throw the little pieces of paper that way. And so the watch vendor, two days after it was delivered, sent me instructions on how to set the watch, how to use the stopwatch, etc. And it was stupidly simple, right?

Chris Lema
Because you’re like, oh, I would have been, you know, figuring it out. But if I had a bad experience trying to figure it out and I hadn’t spent a lot of money, I just put the watch on the side and move on in life. Right. So knowing, okay, the product was delivered there is a configuration or setup associated with it and sending an email two days after it’s delivered, just to make sure that you haven’t had any issues is a simple dynamic, right?

Chris Lema
But it takes away the need for me having to go back and search, find the site, find the product, find the user manual and read it there. Right. It removes all that for me by just saying, oh, given the and this is what your time out in terms of life cycle, there’s an event. I know, I know that I can trigger something off that event, and I can give it to you in your inbox so that you don’t have to go looking at it, all right?

Chris Lema
And then, of course, my natural inclination is to be like, these guys are really great. I wonder what other watches they have.

Beka Rice
They’re right. Exactly right. It builds that relationship and encourages loyalty, which is huge for especially small stores. Right. And niche stores. Yeah. Customer loyalty that you can rely on for repeat sales is crucial to developing business. And, you know, getting referrals and like when I get an email and I tell other people about that store.

Chris Lema
Yep.

Beka Rice
That kind of feedback, you know, is actually one of the ones on our list today. So we’ll start with a kind of pre-purchase, just because the, you know, kind of going sequentially in the life cycle. And so one of the ones that we started with very early in July were abandonment recovery emails. And so this is an email sent to people before they purchase from your store.

Beka Rice
And we’ve all seen that same statistic, I think, probably too many times now, about 68 percent of carts being abandoned. Right. And it holds true. Our stats certainly support that. We see somewhere between 65 percent and 70 percent depending on industry. But a lot of the time, abandonment is not just random, right? It’s not just people putting something in the cart and leaving.

Beka Rice
They leave. And a lot of the time they might count on purchasing issues. Issues with checkout such as load times. Not if they’re hosted on the web, obviously, but potentially with other places. And then they also might uncover unexpected costs. And so sending emails to people when they left something behind their cart helps you to, as a store owner, improve that process.

Beka Rice
So if someone says, well, I wasn’t sure about your return policy, that’s an indicator to me that I should be making that return policy a lot more transparent. Or if they’re saying, well, you know, I wasn’t crazy about shipping costs, right? This is an important way to gather feedback. And then we found that you can also recover tons of those carts.

Beka Rice
So our average recovery rate is 15 percent. So if we frame that a little bit for a store, let’s say $10,000 a month in revenue, if they recover 15 percent of their carts. Remember that there have been abandoned carts for every cart they’ve actually had a purchase completed for. That’s typically a $1000 to $3000 increase in revenue per month just by implementing this kind of email.

Beka Rice
So we recommend focusing on customer service, focusing on encouraging the purchase, sending a series where you focus on the buyer journey first and then later focus on things, other sources of abandonment, like potentially offering a free shipping discount. I actually recently got this service Chris recommended about wine. And so, we had been talking recently about a wine subscription, and I’m a terrible shopper.

Beka Rice
First of all, I’m the worst person to have in your store, so please don’t share any of your links. Because I abandoned every cart just to see what happens. Having come from a company that builds emails like this, they did a great job. First of all, they asked me five questions. And so the first thing I got was to focus on that.

Beka Rice
I wish they would have waited a little longer because I would have come back and purchased later on anyway. But then a few hours later, they sent me another email. I said, hey, you’re not sure about this? I’m going to discount your first order by 50 percent since you’ll love this subscription, which was great. I was very happy with it.

Beka Rice
Had they waited a little longer, they wouldn’t have had to do that. But they did get me as a customer because I was like, well, I was going to buy anyway. I didn’t have questions, but now that I got 50 percent off, I’m going to come back. And so, having a sense of timeliness as well as addressing problems in these emails is a great way for you to generate sales, and also improve your store browsing process and the buyer journey with your store before they get to purchase.

Beka Rice
So welcoming. Those are also a favorite of mine. And I think that this is something I’ve seen a lot of brands do really poorly, where the first time you would think that it’s something that you would do, but the first time you walk into a retail store, like what happens? And this happens, every time, like you’re buying watches or something.

Beka Rice
What’s the first thing that happens to you?

Chris Lema
Yeah, the guy walks out and goes, hey, do you need help? Right? How can I help you? Welcome. Whatever. Right. And you’re like, great, but what I don’t want is for them to walk up when I’m casually browsing and be like, hi, how’s it going? What are you looking at? What do you like? What do you normally wear?

Chris Lema
What do you want? And you’re like, oh dear God. Right. So yeah, there’s a dance. Right. You want to make sure you want to make sure that you get that first interaction done well, but that it’s not too pushy. There’s not too many of them, you know, it. The crazy part is when I get the welcome emails after I’ve made a purchase.

Chris Lema
Right. So I make the purchase and then here’s the receipt, and then here’s the welcome email. And also here’s the email from the CEO. And I get all three emails within one minute of each other. And then I’m like, somebody heard it on a webinar somewhere, you should do this. And then they were like, do it any way you want.

Chris Lema
I don’t care how you do it. Right. So I get three emails at once. I’m like, no, that’s not how I want it. And that’s not how you build a relationship.

Beka Rice
Exactly. You read my mind. There’s a lot of brands that do exactly that. Either they are too pushy with their initial welcome, you know, or it’s so close to other emails that it just feels like it’s unnatural. It’s the way I always feel about it. So you should be thanking customers, right? You should thank them for their first purchase or joining your email newsletter or whatever they’ve done that you’re welcoming them for.

Beka Rice
But really think about it in terms of if you were in person, like, how would you want it to feel? They’re important to me because they set expectations, right? So if I go into a store and someone comes up to me and says, oh, let me know if you have questions, it feels like a little bit of a brush off.

Beka Rice
But if someone says, hi, thanks for coming in today. Is there anything I can help you out with? I feel differently about that interaction and so you should be conscious about that with welcome emails — whether it’s a first purchase or signing up for your email list, or something else that they’ve done, maybe it’s signing up for an account or forum or whatnot, and try to imagine that you’re talking to that person face to face.

Beka Rice
And now gear your welcome email around that messaging. Because when you send these emails, they make your subsequent emails more likely to be read because it establishes like a timeline in a relationship. So if I get a welcome email that says, hey, I noticed that three days ago you made your first purchase for their store. First of all, thank you so much.

Beka Rice
We really appreciate you choosing us over other alternatives. And, now we’re going to send you a few emails about things that you might be interested in, and you can have that at any time. But then also make sure that you establish what you want them to do next. And so like a welcome email is already sent because of a commitment, your customer has done something.

Beka Rice
You’ve got them to commit to something, whether it was a purchase or some sort of action that’s going to trigger this. So now try to get them to make another commitment. Have them take the next step, whether that’s logging in, whether that’s looking at your best sellers, whether that’s updating their profile. Have a single ask, because those welcome emails have absurdly high transaction rates.

Beka Rice
The transaction rate refers to whatever the task you ask them to do is, and it’s much higher than any other email. So think about that journey and that concept of walking into a store.

Chris Lema
And the thing I would add to that is that one of the easiest things you can do in that welcome email is ask a question. I buy a lot of high end stuff. I go into a lot of boutique high end stores. And so whether it’s shoes or headphones or watches or pens or whatever, you go into these stores where they are highly trained salespeople, not the casual person who’s just looking for a summer job, but highly trained salespeople who work off commission and know their business. So when you walk into a place like that, one of the first questions they ask you is how’s it going? And they look at your watch. What are you wearing right now? And they’re trying to figure it out. But let’s say you’re like, let’s say you’re smart, and you take your watch off.

Chris Lema
Right? I don’t want to give any hints. Right. And what happens is a person walks over, says, oh, I see you’re looking at the Moonwalker. That’s a great one, Skywalker. I see this right here, okay? And then goes, what do you normally wear, right? It’s a simple question. Right? But take that out of the realm of high end boutiques and watch stores.

Chris Lema
Right. And imagine that you’re just selling software, right? Imagine that you’re just selling backpacks. Imagine you’re saying something simple by saying thank you to that first purchase and then asking the question, hey, what do you normally use if you’re coming to us from another product? What have you been used to? Is this the first time you’re buying with us?

Chris Lema
Or if this isn’t the first backpack you’ve ever owned, what’s your favorite one? First of all, it’s really easy to engage because you’re not selling me anything, right? You’re welcome. Email is starting a conversation which again builds a relationship, builds trust, creates a proxy effect that allows me to decide, yeah, I like this person. I want to buy more from them.

Chris Lema
But more importantly, they’ll collect some information that if you’re this, if you’re the store owner, you’ll collect some data that could change all the rest of your emails, right? Because if someone says to me, oh, you know what? My favorite bag, right, is a $400 bag, Ding ding. Put them in the VIP. You know, tag them with VIP, tag them with high buyers, you know, high end products, etc. If someone says, well, I’ve used this Jansport for the last 20 years and they haven’t changed, you’re like, okay, they’re a loyal customer.

Chris Lema
Like, there’s nothing wrong with knowing this stuff, but once you do, right, you don’t have to be like, oh, well, that’s a better customer than that. It’s all great data because once you understand it and once someone’s given it to you, you can tag that customer and it will change or could change the rest of the emails in that interaction.

Chris Lema
When I walk into that watch store and I say, well, I have one of these already and I own these guys and these guys, the guys immediately reclassify me into a different kind of buyer, and then they’re like, okay, well, you know what? Now let’s show you these others in the back room, right? And you’re like, no, no, no, I’m not ready to mortgage my house.

Beka Rice
Yeah, I love that. Backpacks actually are a great example. Walking into a backpack store, they’re like, oh, you’re wearing this. And, now I’m going to change what I’m showing you. So the concept of getting that micro commitment of saying, where did you find us or what were you using for this previously is a great way to just start the ball rolling.

Beka Rice
And once people engage with you once, they’re far more likely to engage with you again.

Chris Lema
Yep.

Beka Rice
Awesome. So welcome emails are one of my favorites, obviously, just because they’re usually done so badly and there’s no reason for it. But one that I think is also underutilized a lot are order confirmations. And so, anytime you buy something, nine times out of ten people open the confirmation email for whatever they purchased. Right.

Beka Rice
There’s almost never a situation in which you order something and you don’t want to open the confirmation and make sure everything’s right. So an order confirmation email has s tremendous open rate. And the thing is, these usually are opened more than once, too, right. Often I’ll go back and say, hey, I got that email from this store I just bought from.

Beka Rice
Let me go back and open that again, because I want to, you know, look at the delivery estimate or whatever was in that email. Right. So because they have such high open and click through rates, they’re a great way to offer some sort of engagement point. So you should provide order information. But depending on what kind of products you sell, you can also invite some other engagement point.

Beka Rice
So that might be upsells or sales. Right. So if we go to the example of backpacks, maybe you want something like a case for a laptop or other accessories for a backpack. Right. Like, one thing I use a lot are hooks inside of my backpack. I have little things like flashlights and all sorts of stuff.

Beka Rice
Because I keep a go bag, apparently. And so I buy those little things. Right. But you can also think about other touch points if you’re not selling something that has complementary products. So it might be a feedback survey. Right. Or it might be creating an account, even. Doing something that offers another engagement point in these emails is a great way not to waste that opportunity because people are going to open the email, especially if they’ve just done something with your store or they’ve just had some sort of transaction, which is a huge step.

Beka Rice
You’ve overcome every objection at that point. They’re far more receptive to do something else. And it’s similar to the bulk of email that’s just trying to get them to do something else that brings them a little closer to your store, and maybe even gives them a little bit more information. What I saw recently that I really loved was, I got a confirmation email and it said, thanks so much for purchasing.

Beka Rice
We really appreciate it. Here’s what you had. We love to send people birthday promotions. So would you update your profile and let us know when your birthday is so we can send you something? And so not only was that great because they can now directly market to me around my birthday, and I’m going to welcome it, I’m not going to feel like it’s out of the blue. But if I go to update my profile for my birthday, what else am I going to do?

Beka Rice
I’m probably going to update other things like my interest groups and things like that. So it was brilliant because it got me to click through and be like, oh yeah, here’s my birthday month. They didn’t ask me for the date, which is great too, because it didn’t feel like it was over reaching. So I was like, yeah, here’s my birthday month.

Beka Rice
And yes, I want to receive these emails and this is the frequency I want. And now we’ve gotten all this data about me. That was a very easy commitment for me to make in a way that felt really natural. So I love these emails. I love to utilize them for more than giving people order information and saying, okay, let’s engage further.

Beka Rice
And then to your point previously about welcome emails, Chris, it’s an easy thing, right? It’s something that helps you qualify people a little bit further than you would have been able to otherwise.

Chris Lema
So, yeah. And you can put coupons in there. Right. Like you can literally put a hey, I’m going to give you 12 months access to our VIP program and here’s a coupon to join it, and you’ll be a VIP which will give you monthly discounts, for free. You don’t have to panic because you bought one of our nicer products.

Chris Lema
I just want to thank you so much for that. You can put that whole thing right in, and you just make it a banner, you make it a different color, and it stands out. And people read it and they go, oh, but because it’s, you know, it’s in a document, in an email they’re going to read. That’s the best time. They click a link and they’re right in. Right, which is very different than sending them another email saying, thank you so much for buying it. You know, for buying this product, you’re a VIP. I want to give you this gift. Not that those don’t work, but it’s even more effective on an email they open, right.

Chris Lema
So connect to that order confirmation because it is a place where people can click.

Beka Rice
Yep, I like to do that, especially if you have like a membership component or something like that. If you have like physical products that you can offer a coupon for, shipping confirmation is also really great for that. So it’s just a little bit detached in that they’re not like, oh, I could have used this discount five minutes ago.

Beka Rice
So you can kind of play with that too, depending on what you sell. But they’re amazing emails and people usually waste them a little bit, which is unfortunate because they’re a huge opportunity. So moving right along, the next thing is to talk about feedback. And so, kind of tied in also I see these often tied to educational emails like you were talking about earlier with your watch example.

Beka Rice
Make sure that you improve the customer experience. You can also use their feedback to improve your product experience. And then also gather social proof or product reviews. And so, I think a lot of Amazon sellers do this really poorly, right? Where like, you buy something on Amazon and then seven days later you get like a please leave a review on Amazon email.

Beka Rice
And I’m like, I don’t know what your brand was. So, this feels a little bit out of the blue. If they had done a welcome, you know, first maybe I would feel a little bit differently about it. Say, hey, you got something on Amazon? I just want you to know who this came from. This is our brand.

Beka Rice
This is who we are. And thanks for choosing our product on Amazon. So make sure that there’s context, right? If you’re running your own store, that’s far less of a problem. But then ask people hey, did you love it? If you didn’t, tell me. Reply to this email and I will make it right. If you loved it, you know, would you mind telling me what you love about it?

Beka Rice
And even if you don’t accept this as a product review on your site, just get that feedback and then you can use it as a testimonial elsewhere, even in future emails. It’s a great way to use that social proof. Ask people for that feedback. There’s one thing that I hated about a store I was just browsing recently, which was I couldn’t filter their products, and I felt like it was something that was the kind of product you should be able to filter.

Beka Rice
And I got that feedback email, and I was like, you know what? I am going to tell you that I hate that. And then the next time with that site, I could filter products that I wanted to. And so that’s great for me as a shopper, because I feel like they value my feedback and I feel like they’re going to listen.

Beka Rice
And I’m much more likely now to engage with that business again, because they listened to me and they asked me.

Chris Lema
Now, here’s the way to make it even better, right? If you’re sending a feedback request and you get feedback that you decide to use, follow it up with another email telling the person that you implemented it right. So instead of Beka having to find out on her own when she went back to the store and go, oh, look, they implemented it, you should email back and go, Beka, we’ve put it on a roadmap.

Chris Lema
That’s another touchpoint. Then Beka, we started working on that feature for you, right? Third, Beka, it’s released in public. Thank you so much. You can go check it out. Oh, my God, if Beka doesn’t decide. Okay. Yep. You guys are amazing. I’m going to tell everybody this story right. And that’s word of mouth. But you can’t get any other way.

Chris Lema
So if you’re asking for feedback and you listen and maybe you get feedback from someone and you’re like, this is the fourth time we’ve heard it and we’re already going to do it, they don’t know that. So follow back up with them and be like, oh, thank you so much, Chris. That was really great feedback. We’re putting it on the plan.

Chris Lema
I’m going to send you another note when it’s public. Right. And then, hey Chris, it’s finally done. Thank you so much. People will feel like, oh my gosh. Like they listen to me over there. Right? So make sure you don’t just ask for data and do nothing with it. Make sure you don’t just ask for data and then go off and execute on it without connecting the dots.

Chris Lema
Circle back and make sure people feel like, oh, I really was this heard?

Beka Rice
Yeah. And the great thing about that too, is that it can kind of feel overwhelming to people to think about all of these touchpoints, but response rates for these emails are going to be low, right? It’s really impactful for people to have responded to you. And then the more touchpoints you have, the more likely every subsequent email is to be read, to be clicked on, for customers to engage with you.

Beka Rice
And so, it might feel like it doesn’t scale, but it’s pretty hard to get to a point where those kind of touch points don’t scale. And if you’ve gotten to that point, you should be hiring people to do it for you anyway.

Chris Lema
Yeah.

Beka Rice
So, the last of the ones that I think every store should be sending, we do have a few more that we’ll kind of talk about a little bit, but I think you should also always be trying to win back your inactive customers. And this goes back to the concept of segmenting people. So even if I’ve purchased from a store one time, it’s not unreasonable that I would purchase from them again.

Beka Rice
Right. And a lot of people feel like, oh, well, we have a lot of customers there. Once I’m done. And that’s okay. How do you know? Like if I’ve purchased something from your store, you’ve already got me to overcome all of the biggest hurdles, right? I trusted you enough to give you my money. I trusted you enough to get my order to me on time.

Beka Rice
Whatever it was. I trusted you with my personal information. Like my name and address and email and all that stuff. Right? So if I had some sort of interaction with you, you’ve overcome a lot of hurdles already. And while you might think, you know, it’s a product that you don’t buy very often, like let’s say a backpack, right?

Beka Rice
The last time I bought a backpack was nine years ago. I don’t necessarily collect them like some people, right? I have one that I love to use.

Chris Lema
Don’t judge.

Beka Rice
I appreciate that. I could ask you for a recommendation when I’m on my next one, but even if I bought one backpack in like the past decade, I’ll buy other things for that backpack. Like, one thing I love is, the backpack I have has a cache system where, like, I can put my laptop in a, you know, a little cache and then that cache slides in and out of the backpack.

Beka Rice
And so that way it also like doesn’t sit at the bottom of my backpack. It sits like in the middle of my back. And that’s sort of a silly thing. But like once I bought one I was like, oh, this makes it way nicer to carry around. And then next time I get a laptop, I’m going to get a new cache for it.

Beka Rice
So even if you have a long lifecycle for your products, you should win back people and reengage them. And so, sending those emails to me is welcome because I’m like, yeah, you know what I did? I did get a new laptop and I’ve been rolling around without a cache. And it’s sort of frustrating.

Beka Rice
You just offer me a 10 percent discount. Now I’m going to go buy it. And these emails typically have a 10 percent re-engagement rate, which are sales you would have totally lost out on otherwise. They also help you make sure your email list is engaged, and you don’t want to be paying for people on an email list that aren’t engaged with your brand.

Beka Rice
And so if you send a win back email and someone doesn’t open it, doesn’t engage with it, prune them from your list. Right? They’ll be paying for people that are never going to come back and buy, but try to reengage them. And so a lot of times I’ll see people do this where they’re like, hey, we’ve released some new products since your last purchase.

Beka Rice
Here’s some things that you might be interested in, but I know that you like these things, so I’m going to show you these other products. And also, since you haven’t purchased in a while, is there a reason why not? Here’s a discount. There’s a lot of ways you could approach this email, and try to, you know, reengage your customers and sort of bring them back to your brand.

Chris Lema
One of my favorites is when you can connect some dots between winning someone that’s inactive while also getting them to evangelize your product. Right. If you can do that, that’s a two for one. Right? So, I worked with a client where we sent them an email after. So first of all, that particular store had a fall off rate of about nine months.

Chris Lema
So if you hadn’t made a purchase in nine months, they just kind of knew, this client has now gone inactive, right? So at the eight month mark, they would send this email, right? And it was something that said, hey, Beka, we know that you know, first of all, we thank you for being such a great customer.

Chris Lema
Right? We love that you bought that backpack from us. It wasn’t a backpack store, but we love that you bought the backpack from us. Well and it wouldn’t be a backpack because you wouldn’t replace it in nine months, but let’s say it was something else right where you buy regular stuff.

Chris Lema
Right. So anyway, they said, you know, we want to thank you so much for your purchase. Right. And, this is great. We’re doing a promotion right now. Right. So if you want to replace your next, let’s say it’s vacuum cleaner bags, right. If you want to replace your next stack, we’re going to do this discount for you.

Chris Lema
Right. But we’re adding another coupon. That can’t be used by you but can be used for a friend. And you can send this to a friend and it’s 75 percent off. Right. And so what happens is the person goes, oh, you know what? I should buy some more, right? But also I’m going to take this code and send it to someone else, right?

Chris Lema
In this case, the company was a jewelry company. And so it was awesome because not only did someone say, okay, I’m gonna buy another set of earrings, but they literally went, this is what I’m going to go tell my friends, right, that they should go get their first order from you.

Chris Lema
And so, in that dynamic, you didn’t just win back an inactive customer. You also got them to evangelize to people that weren’t in your network. And you won another customer, right? A brand new first time customer. And so you can be really creative with win back emails, in such a way that you’re like, look, they’re right at the edge there.

Chris Lema
I might as well see if I can bring them back in, and if I can do anything else to drive more revenue from unexpected resources. Right. And even better.

Beka Rice
Right. I love that especially, people love to, you know, give other people stuff. Right. And so if I can give one of my friends a huge discount on something, I’m absolutely into it. If I think they’ll love it or they’re into it, that’s a great way for me to build a closer friendship with those people.

Beka Rice
So giving people a way to give away something else to other people is a really cool idea like that. So, those five kinds of emails, I think they apply to almost every brand selling online. Right? There’s no reason for any store to not be sending these. So if it’s your store or you’re working with clients, these are all things that you should absolutely be doing.

Beka Rice
But there are multiple emails that you’d be sending outside of these for the customer lifecycle. And so it depends entirely now, on what kind of store you have. But some of my favorites that I see really great engagement with and really great sales from, are a few of these emails. And so one of them, which is really cool, you can do this pretty easily with Liquid Web actually, using glue, is having a segment generated for your VIP customers, right?

Beka Rice
Your top tier people, you can take that list of people and just say, like, I want to contact these people. Like, here’s the ones that are really going to drive sales for me. Reward those people, encourage their loyalty. Say, you know, you’ve spent this much money with us or you’ve placed this many orders.

Beka Rice
That depends kind of on your store. If you have a lot of high ticket items, an order account is usually a great thing. Like, if you’ve bought something expensive and you’ve returned. I should thank you for that. If you have a store that sells, like, lower ticket items, you might want to base it on, you know, just total spend.

Beka Rice
Like, once you reach $500 and say, you know, I appreciate you, I want to give you that discount that you can share with friends, or I want to give you special access, like a free membership or discount or something like that for your VIPs, but also tied to that tell people when they’re almost VIPs. And so not only do you want to reward your VIP, but say, okay, now, this is my VIP segment.

Beka Rice
It’s people that have spent above $1,500 with my store. Right. Okay, cool. Now we contact those people, make sure that they feel appreciated and make sure that they get, like a special treatment. Right. But now let’s take all my people that have spent $1000 to $1500 who are not quite yet VIP. Let me give them a look through the window, right, and look at the other side and say, hey, we really love VIPs here, and we want to give you all this exclusive stuff like a membership to get discounts and stuff you can share with your friends.

Beka Rice
And we know that you’re close to that. So here’s a discount for your next purchase. Or here’s some stuff you might be interested in, and try to bump people up to those tiers as well, and create this system of loyalty and this system of when you come to my store, I value you, and I’m going to show you that I value you and do that for people who need that, but also let people who don’t quite need that know that that’s a thing and encourage them to come back to you.

Beka Rice
That’s one that I think a lot of people sort of do, but they don’t do it in a way that’s scalable and automated and that’s completely possible. Automate it, and do so as soon as someone reaches that threshold. It’s not quite a VIP, you know. Schedule an email to them, say, okay, in like 21 days, tell this person like you’re almost a VIP or whatever your typical purchasing lifecycle is, and build that sort of loyalty with your brand new people.

Beka Rice
Yeah, I want to be part of that club. I want to get those member discounts. I want to get those things that I can share with friends, because that’s going to give me better relationships. And that’s pretty cool that this brand is just going to give that away to me. So that’s a fun one. Replenishment emails is one that is a little bit more difficult.

Beka Rice
But think about this. If you sell coffee or anything that gets used and people order it again, my coffee is just a really easy example. Tell people that they’ve probably run out of it. I forget everything. And so, when I buy something, I run out and I’m like, oh yeah, I should get that. And I’ll wait a little while and I’m like, oh yeah, I might get that, I can get it.

Beka Rice
And then like three weeks go by, I’m like, okay, like I’ve gone to Starbucks every day. This is because I have no coffee in my house. Why didn’t I just order coffee? Right? Or, the one with me is like, haircuts. Like, I schedule them in advance, usually, but like, when I forget, my salon, they do an amazing job of this, because, like, if I go, like, two weeks past when I should have scheduled it, they’re like, hey, we know this.

Beka Rice
You haven’t come in a while. Did you forget to make an appointment? Here’s like, you know, click this link and you can make one with your previous stylist. It’s brilliant because I’m like, yes, I did forget about postponing it. Let me just do that now. So any kind of cycle where something happens again and again with your customers, remind them.

Beka Rice
Because a lot of times they are busy and they just totally forget. And they would welcome saying, oh yeah, you know, I didn’t know I needed to order some more coffee or I need to order some for friends. Or, you know, share that with other people. Thanks for the reminder. And I do that. And even if it goes past like your typical lifespan, you say, hey, do you not like this coffee anymore?

Beka Rice
Why not? Or you know what? What would bring it back? If they give you feedback, adjust the time cycle. Right. So, you know, you can tag customers with, okay, these people typically take longer, you know, to purchase than most people do, but still send them those reminders on a different schedule. And so reminders or something that’s totally crazy to me that most brands who sell a product or who have a service that is used multiple times, they don’t do it for food, like everything.

Beka Rice
I mean, it’s just such an easy win.

Beka Rice
So the final one that, again, depends on your brand. If people come back to you a lot, make sure you thank them and make sure you cross-sell to them. So, I kind of gave the example of those accessories earlier. I’m looking at that kind of like everyone else can see it. But when you have accessories for something, or something that people purchase multiple times, thank them for doing it and make sure they have a reason to continue to do it.

Beka Rice
And so let’s say that I’ve purchased, you know, laptop caches three times now, right? Make sure that you tell me thank you for doing that, that you appreciate my loyalty. Make sure I’m tagged as a loyal customer so that you know this about me, and then make sure that maybe I get first access. Or if you’re looking for people to say like, hey, we developed this new system, it’s a little bit different.

Beka Rice
We would love some feedback. Would you be willing to give us some feedback if we send you, you know, a free sample and those people then become brand evangelists when you thank them for their loyalty and when you give them something that’s different from other people. It can even be, you know, free, simple stuff like free samples or, you know, coupons to other stores, even if you want to do some co-marketing, which is a great way to start to build that customer network as well.

Beka Rice
If I’ve partnered with a store that sells something, that’s a related product. And even to my people who are repeat customers, I might say, hey, we appreciate you buying this stuff. We know that you like, bought, like three pack orders for, you know, your backpack cache. I’m going to give you some coupons for zebra pens because you might be wanting pens to fill these caches with and engage them in a way that gives them something they need.

Beka Rice
And they can maybe also give you some co-marketing opportunities with ancillary products or services as well.

Chris Lema
Exactly. Right on.

Beka Rice
So with that said, a lot of this is all about empathy right? And that’s kind of what I always circle back to with people who are like, okay, what other kinds of emails can I be sending? How else can I be communicating with my customers? I think about your customer journey and really care deeply about what people are doing with your store.

Beka Rice
Like, why do they visit you in the first place? What is it like to go through the shopping experience with your store, even if you don’t want to play with things on your live site, like set up a staging site and treat yourself like a customer, go through the whole thing, make sure you’ve experienced every touchpoint with your store, and try to make it wonderful like so.

Beka Rice
If I leave something behind, tell me. Ask me what is wrong. If I purchase something, make sure I’m happy with it, right? Ask me for feedback. Re-engage me if I haven’t been with you in a little while. Make sure that you say, hey, you know, welcome back. It’s all about having empathy and trying to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and doing as much customer development as you can to really improve that buyer journey with you.

Beka Rice
And that’s what the greatest brands that have a loyal following are doing there. Make sure that people love the experience with them, even more so if you have great products. But people have to love the experience of shopping with you and if they’re frustrated with that experience where they feel like it’s disconnected, they’re not going to come back to you.

Beka Rice
And building that through email or through customer communication is a vital way to do that when you’re selling online. So with that said, we’ve kind of gone through everything there. I’m curious, are there any brands you feel like you’ve seen do this really well?

Chris Lema
It’s a great question. So I have seen several companies that do several ones of these as well in different realms. But I’ll be honest. Right. It’s because I end up buying some high end stuff. Right. So then people in that realm really focus on it. Right? So if you’re buying stuff from Mont Blanc, pens, wallets, watches, they’re pretty good at it.

Chris Lema
There are some, if you’re staying at the Ritz Carlton, they’re phenomenal at this. Right. And they do things like, we know you’ve stayed at these two properties, we think you’d really like this promotion. We’re doing it at this third property. Because they’re thinking about lifetime value, right.

Chris Lema
And they want to just keep bringing me back. So there are some companies that do that really well, of course, you know, not everyone wants to spend the kind of money to experience an email from those players. So, I just bought this watch, which you can’t see because of the glare.

Chris Lema
Right. But, these guys did a great welcome, a great follow up. And I think the watch was like $100 or something. Right. So I think there’s, I think, you know, companies like this are super awesome at doing this kind of stuff. Let me get you the name of these guys just so that I spell it right, because it’s vincerocollective.com.

Chris Lema
And those guys seem to be doing some pretty good stuff when it comes to the lifecycle emails.

Beka Rice
Yeah. I would say that for me, when I look for inspiration, I agree that it’s really hard to find a brand that does a lot of it really well. So one thing I would do is go to reallygoodemails.com. And when we have merchants who are looking for inspiration, we send a lot of them here and like work with them to say, okay, which kinds of these things do you like which sort of represent your brand?

Beka Rice
Let’s try and build something else that looks similar, because what you can do is filter by email type, and it’s a really cool resource to say, okay, I want to send some welcome emails, show me some examples of welcome emails, and you’ll have like a couple hundred to look through and get some ideas. And then what I do usually is if I see a brand that I think has a cool email, I might check out their products I especially like.

Beka Rice
I’ll check out their abandoned cart or welcome emails, like sign up for an email list, or something like that, just to see what they do and try to learn from what other people are doing. So, really good emails is one that I think is super helpful to just even get ideas for your own lifecycle emails and how they present things.

Beka Rice
And. Yeah.

Chris Lema
Yeah. And not that I want to encourage more people to abandon carts, but, it’s amazing. We start time out bright sellers in the beginning of this piece. Right. And we were talking about this wine subscription service that Beka had joined. And she said they sent me an email and then they sent me within a couple of hours a discount code.

Chris Lema
Right. Not everybody does that. But a lot of people do. And so if you are thinking of buying anything, right, stick it in your cart and then close your browser, right. It doesn’t matter what you’re buying. Right. And you’ll see what happens. So Wayfair does this thing right where Wayfair when you’re buying furniture, Wayfair will send you an email that says, hey, did you forget about this?

Chris Lema
Hey, I want to let you know it’s still here. Right? And so they’re following up to let you know. And you’re like, oh, this was you know, this is really good. Of course Wayfair doesn’t send you a discount. Right.

Beka Rice
Oh, maybe they send you a welcome email, which I did. Yeah.

Chris Lema
Yeah. But if you just stick it in your cart and you close it, right, they send you reminders, but they don’t. But there are other stores which I don’t want to name that you put something in and you close your browser and then like clockwork tomorrow morning I’m going to have the coupon code. Right. I’m like this is awesome right now.

Chris Lema
I will give you this one little tip that you’re giving some other people if you’re going to send those abandoned cart emails, right. That is the whole hey, and I want to give a coupon. You may want to get super strategic about it, right? Instead of sending the coupon for the actual product they put in their cart, put a coupon in there, you know, give them a coupon for an adjacent product, right.

Chris Lema
So if someone was looking at toothpaste, say hey, I saw that you’re looking at toothpaste. Just want to give this 50 percent off for toothbrushes right now. You get the toothpaste that you were going to get before at full price, and you get them to buy another product at half off, right? Which is better than sending the coupon for the toothpaste.

Chris Lema
Right? Because now you only make half the money that you’re going to make. So you can be intelligent about how you send these out. And it becomes even more valuable. Right?

Beka Rice
So don’t do the discount right away.

Chris Lema
Yeah. Or don’t send the discount right away, but I now learned that trick from a friend of mine who was like, just put him in the cart and walk away. I’m like, no, I like instant gratification. I want the feeling of buying it. And they’re like, you’re damn right. Just put it in and walk away.

Chris Lema
You’ll get a coupon and then you’ll buy it for a discount, like, all right. If they send it to me within one day, I’m willing to wait one day. Right. But I’m not going to wait a week to get the email right. And so it can be fun.

Beka Rice
At Jilt, we have people set up multiple abandonment campaigns. And what’s been really cool is merchants who like, let’s say your average order value is $50, right? Any cart that’s under $50 for the discount in your email series tells people when they get a discount so they can add more things to the cart.

Beka Rice
And then if their cart value is over $50, now include the discount code. And that’s been kind of cool to see too. It’s sort of like a different wrinkle in the, you know, don’t always send the discount or send it for those things. Try to force higher average order values too, similar to like how a lot of people do like free shipping for orders over X dollars.

Chris Lema
Yep, yep, that’s exactly right.

Beka Rice
It’s cool. So I think we got a few minutes left.

Chris Lema
Yeah. And we got a couple of questions.

Beka Rice
Yeah. You’re only one of us.

Chris Lema
Yeah. So one of the questions is, hey, how are websites capturing your email prior to a sale? And, that’s a great question, Joseph. Most aren’t. So a lot of times one of the first triggers or events is someone making a purchase. But you might be having an ecommerce store on a site that has content.

Chris Lema
Right. And so you might get comments from people, you might have forms that are inquiries about the product, like you might show a product page with a, hey, ask us a question, and you might get inquiries. So depending on how you design your site, you may be in a place where you are getting some people’s emails beforehand, right?

Chris Lema
And then of course you can use products and I’ll let Becky talk about Jilt. Right. But sometimes you can say, hey, I’m interested in this product. Right. And you put it in their cart, but they’ve also given you an email. They may have subscribed to the store itself, and then they haven’t finished. Right.

Chris Lema
And so then you can obviously do a follow up because people chose to give you their email in advance. And you’re helping them by saying, did you forget what was going on?

Beka Rice
Yeah, exactly. What we’ve found really successful is we have pop ups that when someone adds something to the cart, it says, hey, do you want to reserve this item? And, you know, enter your email and we’ll save it for you. And then, you know, people can put their email address in as they add the item to the cart, which makes more carts recoverable for you.

Beka Rice
So that whole concept of like a recoverable versus an unrecoverable cart, or if I have an email or I don’t, you know, certainly you have a lot of unrecoverable carts, but if you can collect an email in some way, especially if it’s part of that person’s experience, like asking for it on the product page or even making some customizations on the cart page, those are cool ways to try and increase the number of recoverable parts you have.

Chris Lema
Yeah. And then we have another question from Charlotte. How do you feel about sign up forms?

Chris Lema
A great question. I don’t really know what kind of forms you’re talking about. Like, sign up for the store, sign up for a newsletter. What kind of sign up forms are you talking about, Charlotte?

Beka Rice
So I feel like I can speak to how they’re implemented, which I have strong feelings on, but in general, like asking people to sign up for something is a great commitment. If you do it when they first visit your site, I get very upset. So, we probably all landed on a site, and you have like, a splash page immediately.

Beka Rice
It’s like, sign up for the email newsletter. I’m like, whoa, whoa, I just got here. Like, that’s like walking in the door and like saying, can I get your email address? It’s like, you know, like maybe ask me out to dinner first, you know? And so a lot of sites that do this really aggressively, and I think it can be off-putting for some people.

Beka Rice
So try and do it in a way that’s contextual.

Chris Lema
And then let’s see confirmation when someone signs up for an email subscription.

Beka Rice
Got it.

Chris Lema
Right.

Beka Rice
So I would group that in the welcome emails.

Chris Lema
Yeah. And I think she’s talking about in general sign up forms as it relates to subscriptions, emails, newsletters, etc.. Right. And I think to the biggest point, I don’t have any problem putting a form in front of someone that says, would you like to get more information, click here. I find that they’re more valuable if you target the forms in the product spaces so that you can be more specific, like do you want more information about backpacks?

Chris Lema
You’re looking at a backpack, and I’m going to put a subscription for the category of product because then people are like, yes, it’s backpacks. I don’t want your information from your whole store because I’m not buying these other things. Right. And so putting subscription forms in category places and making it more specific is very helpful. But notice I’m telling you, it’s after I know something about you.

Chris Lema
Like, I know that you went into a backpack product and you’re looking at it. And then I show it there. That’s contextual and intelligent. When you land on my website and I pop it up in front of you, and I know nothing about you, right? That’s extreme. And crazy. Pop ups work, but they work best when they know something about you, when they’re contextual.

Chris Lema
Right? My friends over at OptinMonster do really smart stuff where depending on what you’ve been browsing, they can go, oh, okay. Now if you’ve browsed through these pieces and you’re leaving from this page, the pop up offer as you leave will be one offer. And if you were browsing through other pages and left off a different page, the pop up is something different.

Chris Lema
And the offer in each is different, right? And so then you’re like, oh my gosh, if I was looking at a backpack and it said, hey, learn the, you know, the five tricks to carry dirty, sweaty clothes without making your backpack stink. Give me your email to click this one and you go, that’s brilliant. Of course, you would never put that on when I’m looking at buying watches.

Chris Lema
Right. And so in the watches it would be like, hey, did you know that, you know, almost every watch needs to be wound. And in certain cases, wine automatically ages better than others. Check out our buying guide. Right. And you’re like, yeah. Okay. Let me put in my email. Right. So there’s nothing wrong with asking for someone’s email.

Chris Lema
Make sure that the value exchange makes a lot of sense. Make sure that it’s contextual based on what you know from the customer so that you’re actually delivering something that they’re like, yeah, this is good. This is useful because popping up, hey, you know, I’ll give you 5 percent off if you give me your email and you’re like, I don’t even know what you have here.

Chris Lema
How would I know if I want 5 percent off? Right. And, you know, and by the way, right. If we have a store where the average product price is under $2, right, do you think that you need 5 percent off, what is that $0.02?

Chris Lema
Right. You’re like, no, I don’t need that. I’m not giving you my email for $0.02. Right. So you want to be super smart. As we wrap this up, I should highlight one last thing, right? Liquid Web offers a managed WooCommerce platform, and some of you are like, okay, what is managed WooCommerce? What’s the whole point of managed WooCommerce?

Chris Lema
Well, let me give you the quick rundown, right? Our product has features in it. Right? So like, image compression, lazy loading on images, dynamic segmentation. Right. So there are things that are for, you know, integration, right? We integrate with you so you don’t have to go buy a subscription so that you can do all these emails.

Chris Lema
That’s part of the product. Then the platform has stuff, right? Dynamic scaling, the ability to change how you process orders so you have higher concurrency if you’re doing a lot of orders, and then we have expertise. Right? We have people who will look and say, today, just today, we have a customer who for the last week and a half, we did an analysis of their plugin for the marketplace.

Chris Lema
We analyze, analyze their code, discover there was a better product, help them with the migration. Literally. Our staff is doing work for them. Right. And then today they launched with a new platform right. The new plugin. We have WooCommerce experts who can help you render your store better. So, Liquid Web is happy to host this webinar. Liquid Web is happy to tell you about managed WooCommerce and our offering.

Chris Lema
And we’re especially happy to tell you that Jilt is one of our premier partners, someone we trust, someone we know brings a huge value to the system. And frankly, I’ll be honest with you, we don’t think you should run a WooCommerce store, or any ecommerce store without Jilt or any kind of product line that does all of these things.

Chris Lema
And some of you were going to say, yeah, but I can find a plugin, right, for $20, and then I can configure all the emails to my heart’s content. And if you do that right, I want you to write my email down so that you have someone to write to later when your store falls apart.

Chris Lema
Because when you’re asking your store to be an email service provider instead of just being a transactional store, right when you say, oh, I want to do carts, but I also want to do analysis, I want to do queries, I want to do joins, and I want to send out emails, and I want all that to go perfectly right.

Chris Lema
When you realize that that’s a bad call and that you need a staff or an external, you know, external system to send emails, then you’re going to write me back and go, okay, what were you talking about again? You know, right. We believe that every WooCommerce store should use Jilt and every WooCommerce store should make sure that they’re not sending emails from their store server.

Chris Lema
So, we’re a big fan of Jilt so much that it’s in our product line. Right? So, if you are looking for that, but if you’re not hosting with us and there’s lots of people that aren’t right, you still want to go check out Jilt. Because all of these kinds of emails that she’s talking about are part of their product line and things you can do very easily.

Beka Rice
And so if you’re not hosting with Liquid Web, you should reconsider your choices. Having worked with over 80,000 WooCommerce stores directly, at SkyBridge, which is the company that owns Jilt, I can say that there’s there’s a lot of problems that are solved with great hosting. And so we’ve been migrating a lot of partner sites to Liquid Web and we’re having great success doing it.

Chris Lema
Yeah. Thank you so much. So I will end by telling you that we did record this webinar. We did. We will make sure that it gets out to you. Wait for that email. Right. Don’t contact us. I promise it’s coming to you, but it’ll be the end of tomorrow rather than two minutes from now. So, look for that recording and I hope that you’ve had a really great time today.

Chris Lema
Thank you so much, Beka. This was awesome. We will schedule another one and do something else soon together.

Beka Rice
Yes. Thanks a lot. Cheers.

Chris Lema
Y’all take care.