When Tucker Schreiber built a T-shirt business – in just three weeks – and documented his journey for the Shopify community to see, even he saw it.
Rather than make vague observations about his sales, he documented each of them. Schreiber noticed that some of his first-time buyers actually resembled previous buyers, including people who had abandoned their cart or come in through his email campaign.
If reaching out to those previously interested in your site was enough to make sales in three weeks, how much more effective might similar emails be for your next Shopify campaign? Here are four types of emails to bring customers (and almost-customers) back into the fold:
When someone creates a profile with your store, buys, and places another item in their wishlist, you can then email them when that item’s gone on sale. Wishlist Plus is a great app from Shopify you can use to add that feature to your store and provides rich insights on site engagement.
There are 2 key things you want to focus on with your wishlist email:
Use a visual reference. Showing the item that’s on the wishlist is essential, because it ties the customer back to that memory of clicking “Add to Wishlist.” A few lines of text just isn’t going to have the same emotional impact.
Create a clear call to action. Only one call to action at the bottom. That’s all you need. No need to reinvent the wheel here. The simpler the email is, the better.
If you’re looking for a good resource on templates for these types of emails, Hubspot has a great areticle on how to do this.
Ramit Sethi, bestselling author and founder of I Will Teach You To Be Rich often likes to send out casual “check-in” emails. In fact, he’ll even do this for personal emails as a quick follow-up.
The basic idea is simple: you want to check in on someone after they failed to take action, just to give them a friendly “what’s up?” This should feel like a friend sending a gentle reminder, rather than an overt sales pitch. This type of email is more likely to be accepted if you provide them something of value, such as an exlusive peak at new products you’ll soon be launching. The point is istead of letting your leads sitting there getting colder with each week, keep in touch and continue to build a relationship that establishes trust.
Sometimes your leads just need a little bit of an incentive to complete an order. That’s why segementing your leads is so important. If groups of users visited a specific collection or product item, you can run a promotion for that item and send a well-designed email to capture their attention. It takes something the customer is already interested in and offers the simple nudge they may need.
You can do more than just provide great visuals. You can offer coupon codes for those who sign up to your newsletter. Not only will this make it worth it to sign up to your newsletter, but it will ensure that you get more of those “return” customers and increase your conversion rates.
When someone cares enough about your product to click “add to cart,” but don’t actually follow through, you know you have a solid lead. 67.45% of online shopping carts are abandoned before the customer completes a sale. That implies that your sales numbers may only be one third of what they could potentially be.
Now it may not be possible to persuade all cart-abandoners to go through checkout and triple your sales. Some customers may have never had the intention to purchase in the first place. But it’s worth putting in the effort to resolve as many lingering hesitations as you can, because a significant percentage of them are persuadable. Remember to:
Keep it casual. This is a customer who’s already halfway through a sale. If you come on too strong, you might scare them away. Send a friendly reminder that the cart is still there and send them a simple link directly back to checkout.
Keep it brief. No one wants homework. A simple reminder that a shopping cart was abandoned shouldn’t require 10 minutes to read. Instead, keep it brief: anything that forces them to think too must is probably going to cause you to lose them for good.
When the accessory brand Radley London incorporated these emails, it led to a recouping of 7.9% of lost sales!
Reaching previous buyers is an essential way to promote stability at your business and ensure that you’re providing the quality that keeps them coming back. But you need the tools and apps in place to make that happen. Here are a few suggestions:
CartStack is specifically aimed at helping reduce the lost sales from abandoned carts.
Shopify Customer Reports helps keep you in the loop, which means you’ll know when it’s time to seek out old customers.
GetFeedback helps you understand why customers aren’t buying a second time, which can help you address the underlying issues that may cause abandoned carts and low amounts of repeat business.
Tucker Schreiber built a business in 3 weeks, and even he realized the importance to reaching out to “warm” leads.
There’s no warmer lead than someone who wanted to or already bought from you. That’s why it’s so important to reach out to them in a genuine and value-providing way. Not only will you gain more sales, but you’ll find out exactly what it is that makes your shop so appealing in the first place.
