Hello, and welcome to Whiteboard Sessions with me Andrew Maff. I'm the founder and CEO of BlueTuskr. We're a full-service digital marketing company for e-commerce sellers and today I'm going to go through my top 10 automated emails that I suggest setting up for e-commerce sellers.
Now, here's the caveat with this, none of these are going to be your transactional stuff. So I'm not talking A/Bout shipping confirmation or order confirmation or billing stuff or your login or your password change, like none of that stuff, like all that stuff needs to be covered.
Top 10 E-commerce Automated Email
If you're in Shopify, there's a really easy place that you need to go you know, basically, customize all those if you're in Klaviyo you're using something like that. You can obviously take the template and do those that way, the transactional stuff is not what I'm getting into today, what I want to get into are the campaigns that you need to be setting up optimizing testing, A/B testing as much as you can. But these are the main guys right, we're gonna go through the top 10.
Welcome Series
So first one, right, we have the obvious that everyone knows is coming first, which is my Welcome Series. I'm not going to get into each of these. So I guess what I'm not going to talk about today is how many of these you should have, you need to A/B test these. So the Welcome Series is a perfect example of that.
Assuming that you maybe are doing a typical pop-up on your website where you get 10% off for new customers and great new sign up. Then the first email in your welcome series. It's like Welcome to our newsletter, and here's your 10% off code. But then, like how many other emails after that do you send and what's going to be on them, that's going to be completely up to you, you're going to A/B test out if you see your welcome series.
Open rates start to teeter off after like three or four of them, then maybe you stop, or maybe if you see that they're holding strong, then maybe you do more, you want to make sure that you're consistently emailing as much as necessary without annoying. So you're welcome series, maybe your first one is a discount, then maybe it's got like your social then maybe it's got like your new products or your seasonal stuff or other stuff that people can set up for. Like there's a lot of other things that someone can do, but for the welcome series, it's definitely one that I highly recommend.
Abandoned Cart
Number two, another typical one you have your Abandoned Cart is going to get better towards the end, I'll bet some of you guys don't know. So Ben Carr is pretty obvious, right? This is okay, I have you know, someone has added a product to the cart, they decided not to purchase. So I send them an email to remind them.
Again, depends on how many of these you want to set up. Typically, I suggest at least doing two, sometimes you might want to do more than that. Your first one, let's say goes out an hour later, then your next one goes out maybe 24 hours later, and then maybe another one that's 48 hours later or something along those lines. But again, definitely, something you have to set up.
Abandoned cart capturing is so crucial. It's insane people who don't have Abandoned cart emails or even Abandoned cart-like ad campaigns drive me insane because you got them right to the end like they're ready to purchase. They're like, Let's buy this thing. And then something made them say no, to you need to either remind them that maybe Hey, don't forget that you left this in here and you didn't finish or be maybe you let them know, like, Hey, I can give you a little extra discount, we'll wrap it up kind of thing. So I highly recommend Abandoned Cart
Browser Abandonment
Then you have your browser abandonment. So some of these I know a band that's been in the 70s, I know, actually have like not all software's have this functionality. So basically, this is someone who came to your site and maybe, viewed a specific product or something along those lines and then didn't, then there's a left and they did nothing. So this email goes out however long after they've left the site and didn't add to cart or didn't obviously purchase.
Now, in both of these cases, I always get the common question of like, well, how can I email them? If I don't have their email? That one's pretty obvious. So obviously, you need to focus on what you can do to capture an email whether they purchase with you or not. That's where your discount comes in, or you have some kind of awesome gated content or something along those lines to entice someone to give you their email. But once you have that email, then you can send them an abandoned cart reminder or browser abandonment of like, Hey, we saw you checking this out. Are there any questions we can answer for you?
Something along those lines, they came to your site for a reason. Find out what that reason is and if you already have their email, chances are they already know who you are. So then obviously you're going to want to follow up and be like, hey, do you have any questions? You already know who we are, so maybe you weren't just window shopping. So that's where you want to send those.
New Customer
So this one's great. This one does really well. This one is basically what you want to do is right after someone's first duties are the very first time they get this email, which is "Thank you for shopping with us". You know, getting that customer to shop with you for the first time is one of the hardest things to do, getting them to come back is a little bit easier, especially over time as they've been getting comfortable with you and they've gotten to know you they know your customer services, like they know what to expect.
In this case, they don't know what to expect. So they kind of you know took a leap of faith and started to work with you. So obviously you want to thank them. So in a lot of cases, what we'll do with these types of emails is we'll make them really personalized, maybe they come from the founder themselves and has a picture of the founder of their dog, or maybe it's you know, like almost like a handwritten email or something along those lines.
So something that really is a little more personalized, a little more touching of thanking them for really taking that leap. Knowing that you really appreciate them working with you, I don't care how big your company is, this shit works.
Repeat Customer
This is something I only do for the second time. I don't do this for that customer. So this is something that I do only the second time after someone purchases your new customer to shop with you for the first time repeat customers when they shop with you for the second time. The reason I don't do it more than that is that it gets kind of annoying after they're like okay, I get it, you appreciate that I shop with you.
This one is kind of like you shopped with us last time you enjoyed it enough to come back and shop with us again and we really appreciate that. So maybe for coming back, you want to give them a little something, or maybe you know, just a discount, or maybe you just give them like, Hey, we're going to give you specifically this you know towel for free with our logo on or something like that anything to just kind of show your appreciation for the fact that they did in fact come back and decide to shop with you yet again, after that.
Even if you've given them like a little gift here or something along those lines, you're actually really starting to show your appreciation, you don't need to nag them all the time. And you don't have to send them free stuff every time at this point, you've pretty much got it.
Best Customer
So the Best Customer is somebody you're going to set up where basically you're going to put a threshold on it of like let's say they've shopped with you 10 times, or they've spent X amount with you or they've shopped with you X amount of time to and spent X amount with you. Or maybe they've shopped with you a few times, but over the course of several years. So it's going to be really dependent on your product and the sales cycle and how often someone purchases and how much it costs and all that fun stuff.
You got to figure out your best customer, you want to send them a big thank you for being like in the top tier of people that shopped with you. Because these people are enthusiasts, these people are your biggest fans, you could probably get them to do anything that you want.
The best customer email, a lot of times what we'll do is one, maybe send a second email that maybe gives them a little something for being so awesome or we start to ask them for things of like, hey, we'll give you X percent off if you send us a testimonial video. And then you could just throw that video everywhere you could use it for ads, you can use it in other emails, there are so many different scenarios you can use it in.
This is basically your enthusiasts, these are like your biggest guy, biggest people like they're your biggest fans, you have to basically reach out and thank them. And then also kind of understand that as they love working with you, they are your best customers, you need to treat them, like they are the best thing to ever happen to you in your life. But you can also kind of think about like, maybe we can get something else out of them.
Since they're such a big fan, they might be willing to go that extra mile just to get 10% off or whatever. And it doesn't always have to be a discount. I know that's kind of what I favorite a lot here. But you can also just be like, hey, send us a testimonial. And we'll send you a free t-shirt or something along those lines.
Customer Winback
So then you have the opposite of your best customer, do you have your customer win-back. So your customer winback is basically sending an email to someone who hasn't shopped with you in a long time. So in this case, maybe the shop to do a lot. In this case, they were just about to shop with you in this case, they at least went to your site. They haven't seen you or talked to you or done anything with you in a long time. So this is where you kind of have to figure out like what your sales cycle or how long does it take for someone to typically purchases, how long should they have purchased, again, things like that.
It's going to come down to how often you want this one to trigger. But this is basically "Hey, I don't know if you remember us but we would love for you to come work with us again." You know, we know that you tried this and now you might like this. And this first email could really just be a simple reminder like hey, I don't know if you remember who we are, but we're here. Or it could also be like a Hey, we haven't worked with you in a really long time. Here's 10% off for you to come back and try us again.
Maybe you didn't enjoy it last time we've worked really hard to change a few things. So here's a discount for you to give us another shot or something along those lines. So the customer winback and work really well.
Welcome series are obviously usually going to be your biggest revenue driver because it's a discount Abandoned cart is going to be pretty much your next biggest revenue driver, just because it's obviously event rescuing sales that you were basically about to get.
Browser Abandonment is really good for customer service and can bring in a decent amount of revenue. But sometimes people just didn't see the answer that they were looking for on a product page or something like that, so you're reaching, you're actively reaching out and asking them, in some cases too.
By the way, this browser abandonment, depending on your company and what your brand is like you could actually set this email to look similar to like a personalized email. So it almost sounds like it came from customer service like hey, I saw you on our site, any questions I can answer for you, as opposed to doing like some big branded thing.
New Customer email is typically not the biggest revenue driver because they just purchased. However, if you're putting upsells or anything like that on there, then that's a different story.
Repeat Customer Email really solidifies that customer working with you. Again, this one really solidifies that customer who again, again, can bring in some decent revenue, depending on if you have upsells, or cross-sells, or anything like that.
Best Customer, again, depends on how you're leveraging it. So this one can obviously bring in a little bit of revenue, especially if there's one of your top ones. And then this one can actually bring in a really good amount of people who just completely forgot that they worked with you. Depending on what your product line is, it might just not be something that they need to purchase a lot very often. So they may not know.
Replenishment Email
The other one is a replenishment. So this one doesn't always work for everyone. So the replenishment emails, those are basically sending a reminder like, Hey, you purchased X, you know, 30 days ago and you may be running low. So do you want to buy more?
So what happens really here is it works well with consumables, it works well with replacement products, like if you're doing like vacuum filters, or air filters or something like that. Or really, if it's good, yeah, obviously consumables.
Maybe you can even do like printer paper or computer ink where you're kind of like, you know, chances are on average someone repurchases with us after X amount of time. So you can automatically trigger these to go out. So let's say printer and bright. So okay, we know that the average person comes to repurchase every two and a half months, so every 60 to 75 days, then you automatically have an email go out, and then maybe you wait like another two weeks and send another replenishment reminder. Like, hey, you might be running low on your ink, do you want to repurchase.
Worst case scenario, they say no, just don't nag them in case they don't want to replenish. Because basically what will happen is that they don't replenish after a while, the customer winback will trigger so you don't have to panic about it.
Customer Event
So I just call this Customer Event. Because this could be anything. So this is if you can get enough information, especially like in a welcome series. But as time goes on, if you can get it through sending them preferences, or sending them a form, or anything like that. birthdays, anniversaries, Father's Day, Mother's Day, like anything that you want to get a reminder about, that's specific to them.
So it's Father's Day, Mother's Day when work, but like graduation date or something like that, it really kind of obviously depends on what it is. But like for example, we've worked with companies to do collegiate apparel. So we ask them, like, what month they graduated. So every month, we set up an automated email to go out to that customer customized to them based on their college, if they went to saying like, hey, it's your college or graduation anniversary, or you have a loved one's anniversary that you can send out to or you have their birthday where you send them a discount.
Something where you're reminding them of an event that's coming up and you're giving them something to entice them to come shop with you. So this could really be anything. We even did some companies with Pet Supplies so we would ask them when their pets birthday was and we would send them an event of like hey, so and so's birthday is coming up. Do you want to get them a new toy or something like that? So any extra data you can get from your customer around dates should really be leveraged around here.
Post-purchase Email
Post-purchase email so they've purchased with you, Yes, In theory, if your new customers post-purchase your repeat customers post-purchase. Depending on what triggers you set up you might have the best customers post-purchase. But what I'm referring to here is essentially several things over right so this could be you know thank you for shopping with us. Don't forget to join us on social or thank you for shopping with us. Don't forget to sign up for this or we have this awesome piece of good content. So obviously we don't need your email anymore. So just here it is.
So anything along those lines where you can basically just kind of stay in front of them, because basically what you want to do is as you start to see here, there's a ton of these right? Like we have 10 of them. And then if we set up like maybe two or three emails for each of them, all of a sudden you're at like 2030 automated emails. So really what it comes down to is at this point, you have so much automation going triggering at different times, that the newsletters that you send out really don't need to be that common or that really out often at all.
Just because you've already had it so automated, that you can kind of just let it run itself. And then every now and then you A/B test different subject lines and different creative and things like that, that's a different story. It's a different video. But these post-purchase ones are really great for just kind of staying in the front stand, keeping your brand in front of them.
So hey, don't forget to join us on Instagram and tag us In which case, maybe we'll feature your picture. Or don't forget to you know, download this piece of gated content I mentioned like so there's a ton of different ways that you can do but post-purchase is obvious. Post-purchase all will also fall into the line of like review requests.
So we do a lot with YotPo and Trustpilot and all those guys. So basically, what will happen is after someone purchases, a post-purchase automated email that says like, Hey, don't forget to review us is something that can happen or anything along those lines. So there's a lot of different options here. This could be many things and it could be one thing or you could just not do it and not listen to me at all. It doesn't matter.
Bonus
So a couple of extra ones, right? So I actually have two that are kind of like bonuses, and the only reason I kept these separate is that these don't always work for everyone.
Educational
One of them's educational. So let's say you have a complicated product, right? So give me an example we have someone we work with that sells like cleaning supplies and there's kind of sometimes certain ways that you should do it or certain things you should use it on and certain things you shouldn't use it on. So we'll do educational automated emails after each purchase.
Regardless of video if they purchase this specific product, what we'll do is we'll send them an email that's automated with articles we've written or just within the email copy itself of like, here are directions of how to use it, here's how to do this, don't forget to try this. Or it could be something a little different where. Okay, we have a certain product that is sold for this reason and we market it for this reason. However, what you don't know is you could actually use it for this as well.
Now your educational actually becomes like don't forget you could also try their product this way or like this way, but maybe that's just not the way you did it. As another example, we work with a couple of companies that do concrete grinding. These massive concrete grinders and stuff come with a ton of different tools. Well, most people purchase it for concrete grinding when they don't know that he can also do it for standing decks and things like that and it works on wood floors.
What we do is we send educational emails behind other products other tools that they could purchase with that machine so that they can basically use it for other applications. So there's a ton of like kind of like upsell opportunities, but there's really also a matter of just like sending them blog posts and stuff that you've written before to give them more insight behind the product.
Upsell
The last one is pretty obvious but the reason I left this one out is that if you set these upright you don't really need an upsell email because these should all have some kind of upsell opportunity within them right so you're welcome series here's your 10% off you know and then here's like our top products and then here is your abandoned cart we saw that you had this to your cart maybe add this to your cart as well and we'll give you an extra 10% off of your entire order your browser abandonment we saw you looking at this you might like this instead of new customer we love that you purchased this you might also like this instead.
Repeat customers same concept best customer you bought a lot of this maybe you like these like every single one of these works I can keep going but so the reason I kind of get this one separately just because like, in theory, you probably should have it in within all of these but if not then you want to have a separate upsell one okay you purchase this product. Now you may want to add this one to your cart or you might want to cross-sell them in some certain way.
This one's a little bit why I kind of kept these two separate is they're not always in the right area but we could have called this the top 12 and never would have done that but I liked number 10 so I didn't. 10 but I'm sure there are a lot more other automated emails out there that you guys may think about.
So if there's something I'm missing, feel free to comment below I'd be happy to redo the video for you. But comment below let me know if you see any automated emails I missed if not comment let me know what you thought of the video or a video that you would like me to cover. However, the typical rate reviews subscribe these come out I think like on a weekly basis at this point. So make sure to tune in, but if not, I will see you all next time.
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