6 Marketing Automation Tips for E‑commerce

So, how can you reconnect with potential customers?

The answer lies with an online strategy that’s been used for decades and shows no sign of slowing down: email. More specifically, email with marketing automation.

But before we dig into marketing automation, let’s take a closer look at how online sales work.

For this, I’m going to refer to "conversion funnels"—also known as "sales funnels” or "marketing funnels.” Essentially, funnels are the steps with which we guide a person from the moment they encounter your store to their first purchase and beyond. They have 3 fundamental components:

• Web traffic
• Landing or conversion pages
• Automated emails

To give you a clearer idea, here’s what a conversion funnel might look like for your e-commerce business:

1. A visitor arrives at your online store (web traffic).
2. They provide their email address and subscribe to your newsletter. In turn, you give that visitor a discount code they can use on their first purchase (landing page).
3. In the coming days, you send them several emails containing useful content and reminding them of the discount code you’ve provided (automated emails).
4. As they learn more about your brand and the products you offer, they feel more comfortable making their first purchase from your store.

Now that you’re more familiar with conversion funnels, let’s narrow our focus to 2 of its common components: landing pages and email automation.

In this post, we’ll highlight 6 ways you can automate your marketing and turn visitors into loyal customers—without constantly selling. These methods can help you achieve a higher return on investment (ROI) for your online advertising campaigns.

1: Landing pages

It’s important to make it easy for website visitors to subscribe to your mailing list, and landing pages can help. Landing pages have a single objective, guiding the visitor to perform a single action.

• Subscription pages: These pages often include a newsletter subscription box and an incentive of some kind, like a discount coupon or a PDF download, for example. Its objective is to encourage the visitor to submit their email address, so there’s usually a lot of emphasis on the benefits of subscribing.
• Thank you pages: These are the most transactional type of pages. They show your appreciation to the visitor for taking an action, like making a purchase, subscribing, or downloading a file. You can also use these pages to provide any additional instructions the visitor might need or reveal another offer that might interest them.
• Confirm subscription page: This type of page is optional as it’s typically only used when you have double opt-in enabled. It serves to inform subscribers they’ll need to take another step to confirm their email subscription.

At LIN3S, we’re committed to a minimalist design where the most important message is visible on the first part of the page without having to scroll. We also recognize the importance of tracking key metrics in order to optimize strategy and ensure that it has a conversion rate of at least 30% of visits to subscribers.

Tip: Be very precise about the incentives you are going to offer to new subscribers. It will be one of the key elements of your entire email automation strategy.

2: Welcome email

Email marketing is not just about sending a newsletter, promoting your latest blog post, or announcing the launch of a new product in your online store. If you’re currently working on your e-commerce business with only these ideas in mind, you’re neglecting a complementary and very important aspect: email automation.

The automated welcome email is the email that people receive as soon as they sign up through the subscription landing page of your store. Since this email will go out automatically, it can save you valuable time without sacrificing any opportunities to build a relationship with your new subscribers. Welcome emails typically have high open and click-through rates, too, so it can be a good idea to use them to highlight the most important elements of your brand or your most popular products.

Here are some things to remember to include in the welcome email:

• Deliver the promised gift or incentive to the subscriber (coupon, ebook download, etc.)
• Explain what the subscriber can expect from your newsletter
• Remind them how they can contact you if they have a question or problem

Just as with the subscription pages, at LIN3S, we usually give this type of email a minimalist structure in order to prioritize content and focus on getting the user to perform the actions we want. All of this is customized for each project.

Tip: Don’t overwhelm your subscribers. You may need to provide them with a lot of information, but try to present it in a straightforward, digestible way.

3: Subscriber onboarding sequence

When a new subscriber joins your newsletter through a landing page, they’ll instantly receive the welcome email. And, subsequently, the sequence of onboarding emails for new subscribers will be triggered automatically.

Onboarding emails allow you to make an impression on the subscriber during the first few days after encountering your brand by providing them with content of value. These emails are a good opportunity to anticipate (and alleviate) your audience’s potential worries and help facilitate the purchasing process.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with your onboarding emails:

• Create a connection with your subscriber: Tell your story, share your brand’s history, and explain what sets your products apart.
• Show that you know what you're talking about: Help subscribers see that you’re an expert in your field. Discuss any rookie mistakes you’ve made (and how you overcame them), describe your methodology, and share your favorite blog posts and success stories.
• Anticipate their objections: Answer any frequently asked questions, and provide details about your shipping and return policies.
• Present your products and offers: Show the benefits of your products, provide warranty information, and share reviews from satisfied customers.

At LIN3S, we usually include at least 5 emails in this onboarding sequence to break down customer objections and build trust. Depending on the project, we'll adjust the frequency of sending and spacing according to the emails in the sequence.

Tip: The ideal sending frequency can vary by audience. Some businesses have success with sending 1 email per day; others prefer sending 1 email per week. Whatever you choose, make sure that this automation does not coincide with your regular newsletter sends.

4: Abandoned cart

An effective way to recover customers is to focus on those who have left a product in their cart. These are people who have not completed the purchase for various reasons—like technical issues, doubts about the item, or comparing prices with other retailers, to name a few—and you have to help make it easier for them to place their order.

To do this, you can use abandoned cart automation. Here’s an example of how a 3-email series might work.

1. Email 1 sends 1 hour after abandoning the cart. It reminds the customer about the product they’ve left behind.
2. Email 2 sends 1 day after abandoning the cart. It’s intended to answer any potential doubts of the customer.
3. Email 3 sends 3 days after abandoning the cart. It’s the last reminder that customers will receive and restates the benefits of the product.

Curious about the effectiveness of this abandoned cart strategy? Here are a few facts that you may find useful.

• According to a Blueknow study, 74.57% of customers who complete their purchase after receiving an abandoned cart email do so within the first hour. 15.3% of sales occur in the second hour, and 10.1% of sales occur in the subsequent 22 hours.
• Abandoned cart campaigns achieve an average recovery rate of 5.94%, with an average abandonment rate of almost 75%. (Source: Blueknow study)
• According to Experian, when you send multiple emails to retrieve abandoned carts, you’re 2.4 times more likely to complete those purchases.

Tip: It may seem like an intense strategy, but at LIN3S, we always test the automation of these 3 emails for a few weeks. Then, we decide whether to make adjustments or leave it as-is. In any case, the contacts you have in Mailchimp as "non-subscribers"—those who can only receive transactional emails—will only receive the first email.

5: Customer tracking sequence

When a customer has trusted you and your e-commerce store enough to make a purchase, it’s important that they know you’ll be there if they need you. To do this, consider creating an automation series to follow up with first-time customers, build loyalty, and encourage them to make another purchase in the future.

I propose that you send an email every 4 or 5 days (you can adjust the frequency as desired), keeping in mind that you have to leave a margin of time for the customer to receive and test the product. Here’s how that series might look.

1. Email 1: This will be a post-sale follow-up email encouraging customers to respond to your email if they have any issues with or questions about their purchase.
2. Email 2: This email will contain a link to a Mailchimp survey so customers can review the product and the purchase experience.
3. Email 3: This email will aim to build customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases. It will contain a product recommendation content block.

At LIN3S, this last email is usually spaced out at different intervals, depending on the recurrence of purchase, the seasonality of the product, and other similar factors.

In our experience, this sequence usually has higher than average open and click-through rates—with some reaching up to 75% for opens and 35% for clicks—so don’t miss this opportunity to build customer loyalty.

Tip: With Mailchimp's automations, a subscriber can only go through this sequence once. So don't forget to continue sending your regular newsletter along with any customer-centric targeted content. You could even target your most engaged customers with an email that contains a discount or other special offer to show people how much you appreciate their business.

6: Satisfaction surveys

Do you really know what your customers think of your product or their experience with your online store in general?

Many online store owners act on intuition or by what they personally think of their products and store. But don’t be fooled; it’s your customers who should have the last word about how you’re doing. Therefore, their feedback is worth its weight in gold—and it can help you improve your sales, too.

To collect that feedback, consider sending a survey in the second email of the customer follow-up sequence. Here are some of the questions you can ask customers in the post-sales survey.

1. How would you rate your overall experience with this store?
2. How satisfied are you with the product?
3. How satisfied are you with the purchasing process?
4. How satisfied are you with the packaging or delivery process?
5. Would you recommend this store to a friend?
6. Could you explain a little more about the reasons for your answers?

It can also be useful to survey your entire customer database a few times a year in order to learn if their interests have changed and find out what—if anything—you can do to improve their experience.

At LIN3S, we usually create surveys that contain just a few concrete questions where the answer is based on a score from 0 to 10, since users in Spain more easily associate this rating scale with the grades of exams. Then we give a final open question so that the customer can explain their experience and feedback with the online store in their own words.

Keep in mind that, once you have a representative sample of responses in your survey, you can begin to draw conclusions and start making adjustments to the product, customer service experience, shipping practices, or whatever else is necessary. Of course, you don’t need to make every change customers propose. But, if you receive a lot of comments about a certain area of your business, it might be a good idea to take a closer look and figure out how you can improve.

Tip: A good way to encourage customers to fill out your survey is to offer them an incentive, like a coupon, downloadable item, and anything else you can think of!

Bonus: Traffic

As noted earlier in this article, a conversion funnel is composed of landing pages, emails, and traffic. Many e-commerce owners are tempted to think about traffic at the beginning—without first addressing the other areas of the funnel. But you can’t capitalize on the traffic if your website isn’t ready to convert those visitors into paying customers. Therefore, while you definitely don’t want to neglect this aspect of the funnel, it should be left for the end.

If visitors only visit your subscription landing page sporadically, your system will not work. So it’s important to boost your store’s visibility once you’ve set up all of the other elements; otherwise, it’s a waste of your time, money, and energy.

So, how can you drive traffic to your website and feed your funnel? Here are a few common options.

• Uncontrolled traffic (organic): These are visitors that can arrive at any time, from anywhere, to your website. You have no control over when they will arrive or their interest level in your brand or products. Sources of uncontrolled traffic include SEO, blogging, social media, and YouTube.
• Controlled traffic (paid): You pay for ads, on Facebook or Google, for example, that will drive their users to your website. Here, you control when you send traffic and what kind of people will arrive. Sources of controlled traffic include Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, display, influencers, and affiliate partnerships.
• Your own traffic (the best): These are contacts that have already subscribed to your mailing list or made a purchase from your store. You can activate them as many times as you want without making another financial investment. No one can take this traffic away from you.

Ultimately, your goal should be to transform controlled and uncontrolled traffic into traffic that you can re-engage through email any time you’d like. And to do that, you must be proactive.

In conclusion

An online store is not just a showcase; it’s a magnet for future customers. Therefore, you must spend time preparing a good automation strategy before starting your visibility strategy.

Remember to have a subscription landing page with a good incentive, create the email automations that are essential for building subscriber and customer loyalty and, in the last step, nurture your conversion funnel by bringing in qualified traffic.

Once you have everything up and running, monitor the results to make sure things are working as expected—but be prepared to make adjustments on the fly if necessary.

Written by Elsa López for Mailchimp. Elsa is the Email Marketing Project Manager at LIN3S agency.