Email automation is a great tool in retail and it still surprises me how many businesses I come across that do not not utilise the power of their CRM platforms and continue to send out blanket email campaigns and offers to their full database. By not digging down into the data and understanding their customer profiles and customer needs, companies really are in danger of missing out incremental revenue.

Consider the revenue in the table below. This shows the revenue generated from both promotional email campaigns and automated email campaigns. In the month reported, £45k was generated from 15 promotional campaigns in the month but in addition to this, £11k was also generated by setting up email automation  – driving an extra 20% in revenue.

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As you can see the send volumes are not high – however the emails which we did set up were all very relevant to that consumer at that time – this is the key to setting up a successful automated email campaign.

To achieve this level of performance, you need to consider your product sector and understand typical purchase patterns – is your product bought frequently or more a one off luxury purchase? If the former, when are the repeat purchases (eg every 3 weeks)? When you understand these, set up trigger emails to remind. If luxury purchases, what are the typical products cross sold?

In addition, map out the typical touchpoints for your consumer and set these up as trigger emails – not forgetting for example anniversaries or birthdays. Are there any bolt ons to your product which customers might need? If so what are they and how can you set these up automatically?

Example – The art of the customer win back campaign

I set up around 20 automated emails for my client above which drove the incremental 20% in revenue each month however this was a market with very loyal customers who purchased regularly (eg conversion rate was around 15%!). I worked with OMETRIA  who provided guidance and help on setting these up – have a look at this helpful guide

Email automation is an extremely useful tool to drive incremental sales and ensure you keep as many of your existing customers as possible without losing them to competition.

If you would like health setting up your automation campaigns then get in touch.