As marketers, we’re used to navigating budget cuts and operating with reduced resources. But we’re still accountable to hitting revenue targets. 

In many organizations, revenue growth is synonymous with new customer acquisition strategies. Sure, acquiring new customers is an important nut to crack – but it isn’t the only way to grow revenue. As a growth marketing agency, we’ve collaborated with several businesses that need to strike a balance between attracting new customers within their target market and re-engaging with leads they previously acquired but failed to convert.

When budgets are tight and you’re looking for ways to make the resources you do have go further, your leaky funnel and dormant leads should be the first place you look. 

In this blog, we’ll dig into ways we’ve partnered with brands as their growth marketing agency to identify ways to generate revenue from leads they’ve acquired in previous campaigns. 

Table of Contents

• Metrics and data you need to see if you have a leaky funnel
• Conducting a comprehensive analysis of your customer database
• Segmenting your customer database based on intent and dormancy
• Exploring effective methods for re-engaging dormant leads

Start by finding the leaks in your funnel

If a qualified MQL or SQL didn’t actually convert, you can oftentimes point to a leaky funnel. If you’re building strategies to re-engage dormant leads, it’s important to fix your funnel first. 

Otherwise, you’ll just have this perpetual bucket of folks who are primed and ready to buy, but didn’t because aspects of the buyer journey are still broken, counter intuitive, or just plain confusing. 

You can’t fix your leaky funnel without thinking about optimizing conversion on your website with CRO testing. If you split your funnel in half, there are technically two areas you can focus on: 

• Reducing friction on your site so more of your traffic becomes a lead (AKA Conversion Rate Optimization)
• Reducing friction in your sales funnel so more leads become customers (AKA Sales & Marketing Ops)

In this post, we’re focused on the latter. But you can check out how we approach conversion rate optimization here.

Analyze your tech stack

As an agency partner that’s been in nearly every marketing tech stack combo you can imagine, this is often one of the first places we look to identify low hanging fruit. If we’re recommending that you scale spend, we want to make sure our systems are poised to convert as much of that traffic as possible. 

We see so many complicated tech stacks powered by automations and API integrations that connect multiple tools. Not only does this cause attribution nightmares (that we won’t get into in this post), but it also can cause a breakdown in how marketing qualified leads are added to your CRM. 

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve found that speed to lead is slow, or leads just aren’t being routed to an SDR, because of a small technical error with how these tools are integrated. 

This is when you put on your marketing operations hat to document the entire lead journey process, from form fill to closed won. Eight out of 10 times, we find the most success in simplifying the amount of tools in your tech stack.

Leading with the right value props

For most products and services, if a user enters your funnel they’re probably also vetting your competitors. Value props are often a product of brand marketing – which means that it’s common for value prop decisions to be rooted in subjective opinion rather than backed by solid data. 

Are your tactics leading with the right value props to drive action and set you apart from competitors? Even the best-in-class brands can find ways to do a better job of this. 

At Tuff, we use a message testing framework in our performance creative process to identify which value props resonate the most. This is only one of hundreds of ways you can figure out which value props you should be leading with, and at what stages of the funnel.

Oftentimes, we lean on customer interviews and focus groups to get feedback on which value props are stickiest. We’ll also work closely with SDRs – who get the most feedback in real-time from potential customers – to workshop messaging and content ideas at all stages of the buyer journey. 

Tactically, that looks like a 45 minute working session with a Figma file whiteboard that helps facilitate a productive conversion with sales and CS, who have the most facetime with customers.

Reduce friction in the handoff to sales

Speed to lead is a buzzword in our industry, but so so important to closing deals. We’ve worked with sales ops to reduce the speed that sales reaches out to a qualified lead from 45 minutes to 15 minutes. The chances of conversion grew by over 88%. 

How many touch points are too many touchpoints? 

Sales and marketing can butt heads sometimes, and it’s often because they aren’t pointed toward the same goal – increasing revenue. When you adopt a growth marketing mindset, your marketing goals are revenue targets, just like sales. 

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. And that’s when we see organizations building a customer journey that has way too many touch points before a user is warm enough to actually buy. 

When marketing is held accountable to lead volume (instead of a revenue target), we build a strategy around getting as many leads as possible – through content downloads, events, white papers, and e-books. 

But a user who downloads a whitepaper probably isn’t ready to talk to a sales rep just yet. They might fit your MQL criteria, but you’ll end up annoying the user and wasting your sales team’s time if you pass along a lead before they’re ready to buy.

This is why we’re huge proponents of un-gating your content. This ultimately improves the user experience, helps with SEO, and makes sure that only leads that show the highest intent (like requesting a demo) are routed to sales. 

How to approach re-engaging cold leads

Step 1: Analyze your current customer database 

We live in a world where we have an overwhelming amount of data at our fingertips. With CRMs and other analytics tools, you can look at data from all kinds of angles to identify patterns, segments, and trends that can help shape your re-engagement campaign strategies.

Qualitative feedback reigns supreme

Identify MQLs that didn’t convert, and reach out to ask why. This kind of feedback loop is critical to improving all parts of your business – from marketing to sales and customer success. But it can be tricky to navigate. While simple in theory, it’s much easier to ask a brand evangelist to spend time giving you actionable feedback compared to a customer that didn’t convert. 

That’s when an offer of some kind can be really useful. We’ve worked with teams who offer Amazon or DoorDash gift cards to lost MQLs who agreed to a quick 15 minute interview or fill out a survey. We focus on why they didn’t purchase our product or service or why they went with a competitor. 

Splice and dice the data

Start by cutting the data in every way you can imagine. This part can be overwhelming, but with a little time and a few Excel pivot tables, you can clean really interesting insights that will strengthen and shape how you plan to tackle a winback campaign.

Here are a few ways we start organizing data to build customer insights: 

• Which touchpoints have the highest drop off rates?
• Which channels require the most nurturing?
• Are there patterns when you cut the data by certain audience subsets (like age, location, job title, company size, etc.)? 
• Is there any seasonality that should be considered? 
• If you use content downloads for lead gen → are there patterns in the types of content that are most likely to convert? 

Ultimately, this data analysis should guide how you plan to segment your list of dormant leads so you can craft messaging strategies that are unique to each user journey.

Step 2: Segmenting based on intent / dormancy

We see better results when we tailor our channels, tactics and messaging strategies based on level of intent. This is where all that data analysis you just did in Step 1 comes into play. Not only did you glean insights that shaped your overarching winback campaign strategy, but you also walked away with a thoughtful way to approach lead segmentation. 

Depending on your brand and how many existing funnel entry points you have, you can approach list segmentation in a variety of ways. We’ve seen the most success segmenting lists by: 

• Channel source at time of lead (Meta leads often need more nurturing than Google leads)
• Types of content downloaded
• Attended 3+ events vs. attended 1-2 events
• Leads that came from accounts within our TAM, but were the wrong job role or position

Step 3: Building a strategy unique to each segment

Once you’ve identified your segments, it’s important to build a messaging strategy that’s specific to each user. While the channels and tactics might be similar – email, push notification, SMS, retargeting, sales outreach – the messaging should be unique.

We worked with Dumpling – a grocery delivery app – to re-engage customers that had used their app in some capacity, but never became evangelical users. The three segments we identified were: 

• Users who had ordered once, but never reordered
• Users that had placed 1-3 orders and hadn’t reordered in 2+ months
• Users that had signed up, but never placed an order

We worked with their team to identify value props, messages, and offers that might resonate the best with each segment, and crafted specific email and push notifications around it. 

Step 4: Identify re-engagement campaign strategies and tactics

There’s a fine line between annoying a dormant lead and trying to re-engage them. When you segment your lists, you have to make sure you’re bringing value to their inbox. And you’re not just another spammy email headed to the trash. 

There are a few ways to make sure your outreach is relevant. You should customize the details and exact language to each segment, but we typically bucket our messaging strategies into a few groups.

Build offers and discounts

It’s simple, and it works. If you’re trying to re-engage dormant leads, hit them with an offer or a discount. Here are a few ideas we’ve seen work well:

• Offer a free trial. 
• If the math works out, offer a gift card if they book a demo.
• Build a unique discount code
• Offer free hand-on onboarding to implement the tool
• Offer a free analysis or consultation call (that helps prove why they need your product or service)

Sell new features

If your business sells a product, your product marketing team is likely rolling out new features all the time. As that happens, take a second to build an email campaign to send to leads that fell out of your pipeline. 

A great example of this is some of the work with did with XXX

Sync up with event marketing

If your content team hosts virtual events, an easy way to re-engage dormant leads is to invite them to webinars, podcasts, and other conferences. Try to make sure that the events you send to each segment are hyper relevant. You don’t want to waste time – yours and your potential customers – promoting events that don’t fit. 

Debunk fears and myths

Sometimes, especially in the B2B world, a lead doesn’t become a paying customer because they don’t have time to. Whether it’s a service or a product, it can take a significant amount of time to setup a new tool or system, and then train the rest of their team on how to use it. 

In those instances, the dormant lead might need whatever solution your brand offers, but the obstacle preventing the transaction 

We saw this with brightwheel, an app that helps early education childcare centers communicate with parents. Childcare directors are BUSY, and the thought of onboarding a new tools was overwhelming to them. Not because they didn’t need it – they desperately need an app to move their antiquated paper-based processes into the digital world. But because they couldn’t find the time in their day-to-day to implement it. 

This was one of our top performing retargeting messages. We found that by leading with messages about how quick the tool is to set up, we were more likely to push leads from events and content downloads to demo requests and paying subscribers.

Channels for re-engagement campaigns

Once you’ve identified the right segments and built your messaging strategy, you have to decide on the right channels for re-engagement campaigns. Email’s the no-brainer, but we often see agencies focus on retargeting campaigns. That’s not wrong by any means – and it can be an effective additional touch point. But when a retargeting budget doesn’t fit within your CAC guardrails – we recommend starting first with owned channels.

Depending on your business model and tech stack, we’ve seen these channels be particularly effective for winback campaigns:

• Email
• SMS
• Push Notifications
• Sales Outreach
• Retargeting (when it makes sense – we’re not trying to spend a ton of ad dollars)

Ready to collaborate on how you can grow revenue within your existing pipeline? Schedule a consultation call with us! 

Kristin Dick

Kristin is a senior growth marketer and COO at Tuff. After working in a variety of agency landscapes, Kristin found her way to Tuff to work with teams who make make marketing decisions rooted in data and tied to revenue growth. When she’s not building growth strategies or working with the Tuff team to improve our processes, you’ll find her chasing her two kiddos around the house or playing fetch with her dogs.

The post Unlocking Hidden Revenue: Strategies for Maximizing Your Existing Pipeline appeared first on Tuff.

If you’ve been following Tuff for truly any amount of time, you know that we have a history of taking a hard stance on email marketing. Hyperboles aside, email is a channel that truly pulls its weight in a full-funnel marketing strategy. What’s more, your customers (and/or clients, leads, prospects) WANT to hear from you. Need some proof?

Did you know that 72% of customers prefer email as their main channel for business communication? Did you further know that 60% of consumers say they’ve made a purchase as the result of a marketing email they’ve received? (Source)

The short story: an opt-in is a sure sign from your customer that they want to hear you. When you honor that with timely, actionable, and relevant communication in their inbox, you energize your on-the-fence customers and engage your best ones. In other words: you create a real, scalable path to growth. 

The catch: between e-blasts, marketing emails, transaction emails, list segmentation, and automation it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve got your back. 

Disclaimer! As a growth marketing agency, we’re constantly preaching about prioritization; how to identify your highest-impact/lightest-lift activities so you can quickly implement, optimize, test, and use your findings to build more detailed, impactful strategies on other channels. Email is no different. This article digs deep into drip campaigns: in our opinion, one of the best ways to drive revenue using email. But! That’s not to say that e-blasts or automated flows might make the greater impact for you. Not quite sure where to start? Let’s talk.

The Vocab: Email Marketing 101

A solid email strategy starts with a clear understanding of your options. An important note: depending on where you’re getting your information, the following terminology may vary (or be used a bit differently).

E-Blast vs. Drip Campaign vs. Automated Flow

There are a number of different methods for emailing your customers that have opted into hearing from you. The first, and typically the most common is e-blasts. This is where most founders or marketers start: this is a one-off or a consistently sent email meant to keep your customers up to date on new content, product launches, and/or events. These are manual and hands-on—the content will change each time you send. 

A drip campaign, meanwhile, is static, predetermined, and scheduled content based on pre-defined triggers. For example, a series of email that sends to someone who’s just created an account, abandoned their cart, or downloaded a white paper. The content of the series is catered specifically to the action that the user has taken. And while particularities of the content (like dynamic product content blocks based on the actual items in the user’s abandoned cart), the series itself is a fixed number of emails that eventually ends. 

Finally, an automated flow is a series of emails that dynamically changes based on a user’s behavior (the distinction between a drip campaign and an automated flow is relatively subtle). For example, if a customer has indicated through a series of behaviors that they’re a top user of your app, you can program an automated email to encourage them to upgrade their subscription, leave a review, refer a friend, or take another higher-value action. Then, if that user ends up taking that action, the automation will either drop them out of the flow or put them into a new one. 

While each type pulls its weight in a holistic email marketing strategy, above, they’re ordered from the simplest to the most complex. We recommend starting with e-blasts and maintaining a steady cadence while you build out drip campaigns. Once you’ve had an opportunity to really hone in on list segmentation, get super specific with user behavior patterns, and collect data on your open, click through, and unsubscribe rates, then (in our opinion) it’s time to dig into automated flows. 

How to Build an Effective Email Drip Campaign

Drip campaigns are communications that meet a customer when they’re most engaged: right after they’ve taken a notable action. Before you write one subject line or begin to map out your campaign, it’s super important to get specific with your triggers. 

Step 1: List Every Possible Trigger

No matter what kind of business you run (SaaS, B2B, B2C) your customer journey is stacked with actions for your potential customers to take. From the very first time they discover you, all the way through to conversion, they’ll (likely…ideally!) be seeing and clicking on your ads, finding new ways to learn about you, engaging with ways to save, and ultimately, buying. Here are just a handful of examples:

• Placing an order
• Attending an event at your store
• Signing up for a webcast
• Registering for a report or white paper
• Abandoning a shopping cart
• Engaging with customer service

This is also the step during which you’ll do the heavy lifting when it comes to segmentation.

We could (and probably will!) write a full extra article on segmentation but the short story: if your lists aren’t thoughtfully and properly segmented, the rest of your strategy will have a hard time getting off the ground.

Step 2: Determine Where Each Trigger Fits in Your Marketing Funnel

Where these leads sit in your funnel helps dictate how you message them and what actions you call them to take. Here are the above examples organized by where they fit in the funnel:

Top of Funnel → signing up for a webcast, registering for a report or white paper

Middle of Funnel → attending an event at your store, engaging with customer service

Bottom of Funnel → abandoning a shopping cart

Step 3: Decide How Often to Send

Quick tip: you can send more emails than you think you should. Customers WANT to hear from you. Our tactical recommendations differ depending on industry (eCommerce companies can get away with sending at a higher cadence while B2B or SAAS companies should resist sending more than five emails a month).

Lay out your email cadence depending on how long your sales/conversion process usually takes and/or how long it will take to tell a complete story about why they should purchase or subscribe based on where they are in the funnel.

A quick blueprint to help you find your starting line:

• Plan to include 5 – 10 emails in your campaign
• Send 4 days apart if you’re B2C, 7 if you’re B2B

Step 4: Create Your Email Content

An email drip (as well as an automated flow) is a story — how do you tell a full story from end to end? Again, this messaging will vary greatly depending on where your user is in the funnel. 

Users in the top of your marketing funnel will resonate best with heavy education (how does your product/service make their life better), a word from experts, general tips for how easy it is to integrate your product/service into their life. Consider crafting all emails with the primary CTA of “Learn More.”

Users in the middle of your marketing funnel are in the consideration phase. Core messaging here should be focused on how your product or service tactically works, insights or experiences from real users, and press mentions. The primary CTA here is get in touch with customer service or start shopping.

Users in the bottom of your marketing funnel are nearing conversion and actively looking to buy from you or a competitor. Core messaging here should center on your brand story—why they should believe in your company and how you outpace the competition. Here, we’ve found that personal notes from founders, explaining why and how they’ve built the company in all its particularities can make an impact. The primary CTA here is to place an order, subscribe, or whatever your ultimate conversion action is. 

Step 5: Launch, Check In. Optimize. Rinse & Repeat.

No matter which email strategy you adopt and implement, it’s critical to continuously check in on your drip campaigns to increase performance and, overtime, drive more revenue. Here’s a quick cheat sheet outlining the best metrics to scrutinize and what to try to elevate their performance:

Deliverability Rate

• What it is: The number of emails accepted by the recipient’s server. 
• Why it might be underperforming: You bought a list of emails (BIG no no), you don’t have a clear unsubscribe rate, or you’re using spammy/overly-salesy language.
• How to improve it: Continuously clean your lists, delete any addresses that bounce or are invalid, and ensure the unsubscribe button is clearly visible.

Open Rate

• What it is: The percentage of recipients that open your email. 
• Why it might be underperforming: Your email has landed in the spam folder, it’s hard to tell who you (the sender) is, or your subject line is uninspiring.
• How to improve it: Use simple A/B subject line tests to see what kind of language your audience resonates with.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

• What it is: The percentage of people that open your email and also click through to a link. 
• Why it might be underperforming: Your CTA buttons are too far down the email, it isn’t clear to your recipients what kind of action you want them to take, or the link isn’t compelling enough.
• How to improve it: Test different text lengths, button styles, and actionable copy to encourage a click.

Conversion Rate (CVR)

• What it is: The percentage of people that click through to your site and also make a purchase. 
• Why it might be underperforming: The experience of your email doesn’t match the experience a user has when they hit the site.
• How to improve it: Ensure a smooth/consistent experience from your email to your site.

There’s truly no gilded road to email success—the best strategies start with the questions, “what’s going to be the most impactful for my business and my customer/prospect?” Sometimes, this can feel a bit daunting. The good news: we’ve got your back! Ready to fire up some effective drop campaigns? Let’s talk!

The post They WANT to Hear From You: How to Use Email Drip Campaigns to Engage Your Best Customers appeared first on Tuff.

At its simplest, Dumpling is a grocery delivery app. But dig a bit further and you’ll see that Dumpling is taking a service that has historically capitalized on the gig economy and flipping it. 

Dumpling’s competitors like Instacart automatically match you with a shopper. Which keeps things simple, no doubt, but you get no extra communication with the person picking out your produce. So when you’ve put “cabbage” on your list and your shopper shows up with a purple cabbage instead of a napa cabbage, you’re either changing your dinner plans or you’re running to the store. 

Dumpling was founded on the idea that both shoppers and customers could benefit from open, transparent communication and an actual relationship with the people on the other end of the line. So, when you download the Dumpling app and drop in your zip code, Dumpling lists personal shoppers (a.k.a. business owners) that you can connect with through the app. Then, once you send them your list and they hit the store, they can communicate with you in real-time when they walk up to grab a cabbage and aren’t sure which one. 

The best part: you can order with your personal shopper again and again, so eventually, they won’t even have to ask, they just know you want that napa cabbage. 

Dumpling reached out to Tuff looking for a growth marketing agency that could help them attract and keep more engaged users. Here’s a look at what we worked on together.

Goal 1: Drive App Installs

Dumpling reached out in search of a team to help them supercharge their acquisition efforts and smooth their new users’ path to conversion. 

We knew we wanted to drive some quick wins (and the sophisticated Dumpling team had already established a number of paid acquisition campaigns). So we started with robust Facebook and Google Search strategies to drive users to download the Dumpling app. 

Goal 2: Turn New Users Into Power Users

Next, we turned our attention to the large number of users that had taken three key actions:

1. Downloaded the app 
2. Created a profile
3. Connected to a shopper

From there, we identified three subgroups of users that signified a huge potential:

1. Users that have ordered once and never reordered
2. Users that have placed 1-3 orders but haven’t reordered in 2+ months
3. Users that have never placed an order

As part of the signup flow, users shared their email addresses with us, so our reengagement strategy centered around email. 

Using Value Props to Drive Conversions

In order to entice users to come back and order again, or order for the first time, we created email flows that were super specific to each of the three different types of unengaged users. 

To start, we organized the value props that were most relevant to each user at their particular moments in their journeys. For example, the first email we sent to the segment that had downloaded the app delivered two important messages: first, that connecting to a personal shopper will make their life easier (a tangible benefit) and second, that when you order through Dumpling, you’re supporting your neighborhood. Here’s what that copy looks like in action:

Hi there [name],

We created Dumpling for two main reasons:

• To make your life easier! Grocery shopping isn’t at the top of anyone’s list when it comes to the best ways to spend time (catch that pun? 😏)
• To make it easier for people in your neighborhood to be awesome personal shoppers. 

So, our magical equation…

You + Personal Shopper = ✨

Using Offers to Drive Conversions

After we organized our value props and created separate flows catered to each of the three segments, we layered on discounts and special offers. 

The discount that the Dumpling team had found most impactful after testing several offers against each other in their email newsletters and on social media was a 15% discount with an order of $50 or more. So, we ran with it! We sent this offer to most of our segments, but we drove it home hardest with the users that had connected with a personal shopper but had never placed an order. Here’s what that offer looks like in action:

Hi there [name],

It’s simple. When you shop with a Personal Shopper on Dumpling (like bizOwner_name!​) you…

✔️ get what’s on your list

👋 support a local small business

🛒 and you save yourself a trip to the store 

Plus, Dumpling doesn’t mark up your groceries like the other guys. And if you needed just one more reason to place your first order, use code WELCOME15 to save $15 when you spend $50 or more. 

So what are you waiting for? Make your grocery list today.

The Dumpling Team

And, although every email we sent to this particular segment included the offer, we set up some A/B subject line tests to see if including the offer in the subject line would impact overall conversion rate. Surprisingly, the CVR wasn’t significantly different between the emails that included the offer in the subject line and those that didn’t.

The Results

Simply, the results we saw after we implemented these email flows were incredibly impactful and made a significant difference in the overall business health for Dumpling. Here’s what that looks like broken down:

Segment: Users That Have Ordered Once and Never Reordered

• Of the 2,084 users in this segment, 352 placed an order (17%)

Segment: Users That Have Placed 1-3 Orders and Haven’t Reordered in 2+ Months

• Of the 2,035 users in this segment, 556 placed an order (27%)

Segment: Users That Have Never Placed an Order

• Of the 3,455 users in this segment, 480 placed an order (14%)

Are you currently segmenting your email lists and creating dedicated flows? Think that automation can save you time and drive revenue? (Hint, you’re right about that one).

Get in touch!

The post Wait! Come Back! How Our Email Winback Strategy Converted at 27% For Dumpling appeared first on Tuff.

Email marketing is a crucial way of keeping your audience engaged. Full stop. No matter if you’re an eCommerce or SaaS, B2B or B2C, email is an incredibly powerful tool that can move users through the funnel and help them pick up steam on the way towards conversion.

That’s why the way we think about email needs to change.

If your strongest association with email involves things like newsletters and announcements, you’re definitely not alone. But if we accomplish anything with this article, it will be helping you shift your perspective so you think of email as a powerful tool for conversion rate optimization (CRO). Since email is an intimate way of communicating with your customers, it is the perfect way to drive conversions.

Whether someone signs up for your email list at a conference, exchanges it for gated content, enters a giveaway, or joins your list after making a purchase, they are already familiar with your brand. That’s what positions it on a pedestal high above discovery-based channels like social media (although of course, social plays a different but equally important role).

Let’s talk about how to do some marketing alchemy and turn that familiarity into conversions. 

A note on newsletters

Before diving deeper into how email can be used as a CRO tool, it’s important to note that newsletters (while, true, we might have talked some smack above) are also a super important part of your overall strategies. 

Once you add someone to your email list, maintaining regular communication with them is essential. Doing so “trains” your audience to look for updates and keeps your brand top of mind.

Newsletter emails are also a great way to optimize your calls-to-action (CTA) by tracking how customers interact with them.  

In an attempt to avoid confusion for the intent of this article:

• There is a CRO component to newsletters (button type, subject lines, actionable copy, etc) but that’s NOT what we’re talking about here.
• Thinking about super targeted emails that communicate with your customer as a touchpoint in their bigger-picture path towards conversion IS what where talking about here. 

Step #1: Map Out the Customer Journey

The first step to turning email into a powerful CRO tool is by putting yourself in your audiences’ shoes. 

While email acquisition is its whole separate strategic beast (we could—and will!—write a fully separate post on this topic) it’s important to think about the different ways people jump onto your email list. 

So, on that note, before you think about creating CRO-focused email flows, put your heads together with your marketing team to dig in and map out what your customer journeys look like. This includes answering questions like: 

• What are the myriad ways someone might give us their email address?
• How long does it take cold traffic to convert? 
• Is there a seasonality to buying? 
• How is our sales team involved and how can we avoid duplicate messaging?

Once do the legwork here and get these down on paper (or mapped out on a white board) it will make segmentation much, much easier.

Step #2: Segment

In email marketing, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s critical to clearly define your customers and create a personalized email strategy. To get the best results, segmentation is an important piece of the puzzle. That way we can target recipients based on factors like behavior and attributes and make email feel like a real part of a conversation as opposed to an impersonal blast.

Every business is different. (Stating the obvious, much?) Which means there’s no one blueprint to follow for segmentation. Hopefully once you’ve mapped out your user journeys, getting in and segmenting your users feels like a natural next step. 

Here are the two most common ways to go about it:  

Behavior

Behavior segmentation is a good way to target your audience based on how they will react to your emails. A few examples of behavior segmentation would be:

• When someone downloads your app but doesn’t create an account 
• When someone downloads a white paper 
• When someone abandons their cart 

Analyzing how your customers behave on your website gives you valuable insight to help increase conversion rate optimization. 

Attribute

Another way to segment your audience is by their attributes. This involves collecting user information either when they give you their email (the MUCH easier way to go about it) or in retrospect through surveys or other tactics (a good approach if you already have a large list of emails but don’t have much associated information). 

Pro tip: Only ask for the most important information when collecting a user’s email address. 

Tips for Segmenting Your Audience 

Collect the least amount of/most relevant information as possible 

As we mentioned earlier, people don’t want to take the time to give out more information than they need to. It takes more time for them to sign up and users don’t want to give out information if they are not absolutely sure about the value they’ll receive in return. Only ask for the most important data that will benefit the end user and help you segment.

Think about the fewest number of ways you can segment 

Deciding the best way to segment your audience in order to drive maximum conversions can be the trickiest and most time-consuming piece of this equation. Our tip: don’t do it in a vacuum!

Segmenting your audience into fewer categories allows you to efficiently learn user behavior, run tests, and optimize your email strategy. Too many segments will waste resources and leave your approach scattered.

Just like customer journey mapping, segmenting your audience is a difficult undertaking, but doing it well makes the rest of the CRO process much easier.

Step #3: Get Detailed With Your Email Flows

The short story: the better your messaging speaks to your user that’s considerate of where they are in their customer journey, the more likely they will be to take the action you’d like them to take. 

Based are where your segmented audiences are in their customer journey helps you decide how to set your goal for your email flow. Do you want a user to sign up for a premium plan? Buy a product? Continue to a landing page? 

Guiding users to take action necessitates engagement and continuous reasons to stay subscribed (read: offers, awesome content, etc.). One of the most common (and worst) mistakes companies make is emailing too often or sending irrelevant emails without purpose. The last thing you want is the reader asking themselves “what’s the point of this email?”  

For instance, an email to remind someone about an abandoned cart will look nothing like an email sent to someone that signed up for a coupon after seeing an ad.

While designing your flows, keep in mind that you’ll want to have a plan for what to do once a user reaches a goal. This might mean moving them into a new flow or putting them back on a general newsletter. 

Pro tip: this is where it’s super easy to get overwhelmed by the number of possible flows you can create. We recommend starting with an email flow that targets a segment that’s most likely to buy (abandoned cart, quiz takers, and people that have recently joined your list) then refine, measure success, and scale from there. 

Also, stay organized! We map out our users’ journeys in a spreadsheet, like this one. 

Step #4: Create Really Great Emails

No matter how targeted your flow is, poorly designed emails won’t lead to conversions. The key to conversion rate optimization is creating really good emails.  

Before you create an email, you should be able to answer these questions: 

• What critical benefits do you want your user to know and in what order? 
• What are the biggest blockers between your user and conversion? 
• How can you meet them where they’re at and deliver a targeted, rock-solid message.  

The hierarchy of messaging can make or break your flow. Your users not only need to receive the right information, they need to receive it in the right order. 

Next, consider the obstacles between your audience and conversions. When designing your emails, think of ways to help users overcome these hurdles. (Think social proof, user testimonials, press mentions, or even “personalized” messages from your founder).

Finally, be sure to keep CTAs in mind. Every email should include a clear action for your audience to interact with. Even if users aren’t ready to make a purchase or subscribe to your service, peripheral CTAs can keep them engaged along the way.

Step #6: Analyze, Optimize, Rinse & Repeat

Once you have emails sending and your strategy in motion, the work isn’t quite done. The way your users interact with your emails can give you super valuable insights. 

Consistently analyzing data like which links are most clicked, which subject lines drive the most opens, and which sends trigger the most unsubscribes should be leveraged on a monthly basis to drive design, copy, and flow. 

Ultimately, odds are, your first email strategy won’t be as effective as you want and that’s okay. The important part is to trust the process, analyze the results, and optimize your strategy until you get the results you want. 

In short, winning companies think about email as a CRO tool. By doing so, you can better optimize your communication strategy and generate more conversions compared to competitors that only see email as a way to talk to your audience. 

Looking to supercharge your email strategy to drive conversions? Let’s chat about it!

The post A Hill We’ll Die On: Email is Critical to Your CRO appeared first on Tuff.

If you sell products online, you have a lot of options when it comes to marketing tactics. From influencers to ppc, it’s less about what you can do, and more about what you should do.  

Whether your limits are resource-related or budgetary, you will typically want to prioritize the marketing tactics that are likely to have the highest impact on your revenue.  In terms of reliability and ease of implementation, you can’t do much better than email marketing. 

Getting your ecommerce email strategy right, however, can prove a challenge. You only get one chance to grab a potential customer’s attention, after all, and you don’t want to lose sales once you have someone in your funnel. 

Keep reading for tips on how to build your list, the most popular email triggers, and inspiration from some of the greats! 

Building your list

In order for any type of marketing to work you need an audience. To pursue email marketing, this requires, of course, email addresses. There are several ways you can go about collecting these. The easiest is to simply acquire emails at your point of sale. This is a natural part of eCommerce, and customers who do not want targeted marketing can always opt out. Of course, this only allows you to target people who already buy from you.

One popular method to grow your customer base is to institute a “pop-up” that entices website visitors to submit email addresses for a coupon. Keep in mind that you do not need to directly ask for the email address. Instead, simply offer the coupon. If the customer bites and you gain a sale, you will collect the email naturally. 

Another strategy involves giving away free content. For example, you could provide “how-to’s” related to your industry, such as recipes if you sell cookware. These are called “lead magnets”, because they lure potential customers to your website through the voluntary submission of contact details. If you have a popular blog, you can request emails for access to a newsletter with exclusive content. 

Picking your triggers

Since online consumers get bombarded with marketing, a straight-forward email-based solicitation likely won’t get you many buyers. Because of this, you’ll need a trigger, or a purpose for your email. Some of the most effective triggers you can utilize include emails for abandoned carts, up-sells and cross-sells, promotional offers, and special promotions for customer loyalty and re-engagement.

Abandoned Cart Emails

We’ve all seen them in brick-and-mortars: the abandoned shopping cart, left idle like flotsam amidst the swift-running current of commerce. The e-commerce equivalent of this happens all the time. Any number of reasons can drive us to click away from our shopping carts before we complete a transaction. A sudden caller may arrive at the door, for example, or the phone rings, the baby cries, or we get diverted through a particularly salient social media post.

Believe it or not, nearly 70 percent of all online carts get abandoned before submission of payment. Shipping fees provide the number one reason for this, as customers get turned off by what they perceive as an “extra cost”. A simple way to transform this loss into a win is to send an abandoned cart email that offers free shipping. If you can’t take this hit to your margins, you can alternately send an email survey to learn the reason for the abandoned cart.

Up-Sell Emails

Up-selling occurs when you invite a customer to purchase a more expensive item in order to increase the overall value of their order. Cross-selling, a similar practice, happens when you recommend a similar or complementary product. Since customers with a three-year relationship spend 67 percent more than new customers, it makes sense that these tactics regularly target preexisting business. One way to capitalize on this tendency is to simply send an order follow-up email with related items. 

Promotional Emails

The promotional email offers a one-time discount or coupon, or announces a sale. These are among the most popular types of email marketing for sellers and consumers alike. Seasonal sales provide shoppers the opportunity for discounts, and give sellers the ability to clear out unsold stock. Coupons can help drive a burst of immediate sales, and can provide shoppers discount on bundles, or one-time savings that convince them to finally buy that expensive new toy. 

A special type of promotional email is that which seeks to reel back in an old customer. If someone has purchased from you once, chances are they will do it again if given the right incentive. A customer loyalty or re-engagement email can provide just this kind of incentive, through promotions like those mentioned above. What makes these different than straight-forward promotional emails is that they feel exclusive. For example, the discount could only apply for customers who have made a purchase in the last year, or those who made purchases from a specific category.

Creating your emails

Having seen a ton of great emails pass my way, I’d love to share a short list of some of the emails that have stood out to me. 

Uber

Like all of Uber’s brand-related communications, the email was streamlined, clever, and well designed. These qualities help identify their brand, and therefore make Uber’s marketing efforts all the more successful.

Poncho

Some of the most effective communication weds brevity with humor. I like how the customizable weather forecast tool Poncho regularly utilizes this strategy through colorful, short marketing emails punctuated with witty copy. For example, the email below used a bright gif to communicate a forecast of high temperatures, and paired it with a statement about slathering on sunscreen to impress the dermatologist you’re crushing on.

Pit Viper

These emails have character. Pit Viper sells sunglasses online and their brand has a voice unique. Here’s one of my absolutely favorite emails from them that came after I ordered a pair of their sunglasses. This sticks out to me because it’s a simple confirmation email. They already had my money but instead of it being the same boring “thanks for your order” they took the opportunity to leave a lasting impression with their customers. 

Warby Parker

Lastly, Warby Parker, which could probably offer a PhD in emailmarketing, sent me a feedback email a couple of weeks after I bought a pair of glasses. I like this one because it’s short to the point and honest. And the subject line “Three cheers for feedback” is human and inviting. 

Bottom line, all eCommerce sites should get into the practice of email marketing as soon as possible. The benefits are simply too broad, and the expenditure so low, that it makes email marketing a no-brainer. Once you have your list of recipients, you can experiment with which types of emails work the best for your business. Get started soon, and each sympathetic recipient will not only grow your list of subscribers, but also your business’s bottom line.

Ellen Jantsch

Ellen is the founder at Tuff and one of the team’s core growth marketers. She is a versatile marketer with expertise in multiple channels – from ppc to seo to email to others – responsible for the experiments and testing.  She is happiest when she’s on the ski hill or outside pointing her mountain bike downhill.

The post A Crash Course in Email Marketing for Your eCommerce Store appeared first on Tuff.