THE ULTIMATE GOLDEN-NUGGET-FILLED GUIDE
Beyond The Cart Abandonment Sequence & Email Blasts...
How To Profitably Scale A Consumable Product eCommerce Business With Email Marketing
Written By Matias Peña
CEO & Senior Retention Strategist
We at Email Engineers love brands that sell consumable products.
And it's not just because I’m a huge fan of snacks and supplements, but because email is the perfect medium to grow consumable product businesses profitably.
You see, consumables actually require two sales to be made. The first one is getting people to date you – that is – trying your products for the first time. Then, you want them to marry you – that is – becoming a loyal customer for life. And email will help us do just that – as I'll show you later.
This guide is for businesses that sell snacks, supplements, cosmetics, replenishable supplies, refillable supplies and any other product with an in-built consumption of some sort. This means your customers have to come back to you for more once they run out.
What can you expect from this guide?
- The 4 flows you must implement for a Consumable Product Brand and why they work: Includes KPIs, guidelines and insider insights
- What a 1926 book can teach us about email marketing
- What products you should be selling in your cross-sell emails (and anywhere)
- A simple business formula to scale a successful 7 and 8-figure business
- Resources to help you write your next email (or any ad for that matter)
- 6 From Theory To Practice sections (so you can easily apply what we're showing you into your own business)
- A mini segmentation guide with 5 criteria to create your own profitable segments (with suggestions and examples)
- How pros "get their money's worth" from Klaviyo
- New to Klaviyo? We'll show you how we decide whether to start off with email campaigns or flows first
- 4 Strategy Sections with bonus nuggets of wisdom
- A copy-paste email campaigns plan (7 high-level strategies that will save you years of experimentation and make you thousands of dollars you'd otherwise leave on the table)
- The 9 data-driven questions you should ask yourself before building an eCommerce marketing strategy (not just for email)
- The solution if you're afraid of being "too-salesy" in your emails
- How small actions in the right places can grow your business by 51% (and much more)
- Team Flows or Team Campaigns? See which one you are – and why you're missing out on half your potential revenue by not being part of Team WREPFMPBS
- How to not feel overwhelmed by your content calendar and how to turn that it into a strategic advantage
- The 80-20 approach to segmentation and how to use EESs to focus your team's efforts on creating emails worth sending
- 8+ prompts to come up with dozens of content ideas for your campaigns
- How to make sure your emails don't land on spam using the C.S.I. Framework (Horatio would be proud)
- Loading your emails with images or not? (5 criteria we use)
- Why even unsegmented "blast" emails can work
- The REV Check to ensure your emails are worth opening (and creating)
- How to ensure good email deliverability from day 1
Fair Warning
This guide won't get into the tactical, the "hacks" or the "what's working now". I.e. we won't show you how to write catchy subject lines.
What you'll learn is high-level frameworks and strategies. It's a collection of our lessons learned from taking 7-figure clients to over 40% of email-attributed revenue.
What you'll learn here will work 1 week from now as well as 10 years from now. Learn and profit from it.
Why Email Marketing?
- Over 4 billion people use it. For over twenty years it has been the go-to method for communicating via the internet. And it's not just us older folks who rely on it. Over 90% of Gen Z uses it (USA) and will continue to. The external pressures make it impossible not to have an email. School, work, services, people we care about, brands we like, etc, all rely on email. And it is so embedded into everything that we can expect it to be around for decades to come.
- Whether we like it or not, we spend hours every day in our inboxes. See above.
- You own your list and are not at the mercy of the Zuckerbergs' or Googles' Thanos snaps. You can wake up one day and see your Ad accounts banned for no reason. It happens every day. Or you could see your organic search ranking disappear from one day to another with a simple update in Google’s algorithm. But your email list? It’s yours forever.
- It has a 36x-42x average ROI. Need we say more?
Okay, those were some cool stats, but what do they mean for your business?
You can use the calculator below to see the real impact that email marketing can have on your business.
Email Marketing Revenue Calculator
Understanding What Drives Your Business
Sure, email is a powerful tool. But before we get even close to the nitty-gritty of email, first you have to be aware of the underlying drivers of growth for your business. Only then we’ll show you how to use this tool to create change in the right places.
For this, we'll use a very simple formula consisting of only 3 levers that explain your revenue.
Revenue ($$$)
=
# Of Customers x Purchase Frequency x AOV
In simple words, you can grow your brand by acquiring new customers, having them place more orders, increasing how much they spend on each order (average order value) or ideally a combination of the 3.
Let's analyze all the 3 levers.
Lever 1: Number of New Customers
In the online world, the most common methods for acquiring new customers are paid advertising, SEO, organic traffic, influencer marketing, word of mouth and email marketing.
This guide focuses on the last one.
The first step is to convert site visitors into buyers. There's a whole discipline called CRO (conversion rate optimization) that as the name implies focuses just on that.
CRO email marketing begins by collecting visitors' emails using optimized pop-ups and later reaching them via email and turning these subscribers into your buyers. We'll talk about that later.
Lever 2: Purchasing Frequency
The second way you can grow your business is by having current customers come back and buy again from you. This means getting them to buy more frequently & retaining them for longer.
As your consumable products have in-built consumption by nature, you could expect buyers to come back organically for more.
But, as you know, that’s not always the case.
They will need a little nudge, and here’s where email shines. The cost to reach a single person through this channel is virtually zero.
Director's Cut #1
Does that mean you should just blast everyone on your list?
Absolutely not.
That’s what we call “burning" a list down. And it leads to high unsubscribes, low engagement and eventually landing on the spam folder.
We’ll show you the right approach later.
To improve purchase frequency you have to leverage automated behavioral sequences ( also known as email flows) & segmentation as much as possible.
If built correctly, these emails are super relevant & specific and hit customers when they're "hotter" and most likely to buy from you again.
You must use different styles of messaging across these emails: educational, engaging content, brand-building, USPs, storytelling, promotions, subscription pushes, community-building and more. We'll cover this in more detail later.
Lever 3: Average Order Value
The third way to grow your business is by having your current customers spend more each time they buy from you.
The great thing is that after organic traffic, email marketing is usually the 2nd highest AOV channel.
If you use it right, you can specifically reach people who know your brand and are eager to spend more with you.
Now, there are many ways to improve your AOV:
- Upsells: selling a better version of the product they bought
- Cross-Sells: selling a complimentary product to the one they bought
- Bundles: selling them a combination of products they might have not tried otherwise
- AI Product Recommendations: leverage artificial intelligence for product recommendation ideas
- Tiered Offers: pushing customers to spend over a certain threshold to unlock something (a free bonus, free shipping, etc)
- And many more! (to be covered in another article)
Now, let's put all the above into action with an example so you can see the impact of moving these levers.
You’ll see how small improvements can lead to massive results!
From Theory To Practice #1
Our fictional brand Spam-Free Kombucha gets 1000 new customers a month, who on average will shop 1.3 times with us within 30 days, with an AOV of $35.
Ignoring past customers, that'd mean our revenue is $45.500/month (1000*1.3*$35)
Now, let's say that by improving our email list growth strategy we're adding 15% more customers per month.
Then, thanks to our smartly-timed & segmente emails they're shopping on average 1.5 times per month – a 15% increase again.
Finally, through targeted cross-sells and recommendations the new AOV is now 15% higher: $40.
So, what's the new revenue?
You may say, since we improved each lever by 15%, it must be 15% higher, right?
Nope.
Our new monthly revenue is $69.000 – A 51% INCREASE.
(1150*1.5*$40)
See how small changes in the right places can lead to massive growth?
Strategy Talk #1
In which order should we aim to improve these levers?
Ideally you'd want to have solid systems to improve AOV and Purchasing Frequency before you acquire new customers.
You want to have a solid foundation in place so that each new customer you acquire is worth more in the long and short term.
(People always wished they started thinking long-term 5 years ago)
This takes us to the next point.
What we've done above is improve our Customer Lifetime Value – particularly by moving the AOV and Purchase Frequency levers. Meaning you now can spend extra cash on customer acquisition and still break even in the long run.
"So what?" I hear you mumbling.
This means you can outbid your competitors on the advertising auction and still remain profitable!
Remember that the ads platforms (Facebook, Google, etc) put your message in front of the best potential customers based on how much you're willing to spend (bid) for each impression.
So by being able to spend more to acquire a customer you'll be able to siphon all the attention to YOUR brand and become the market leader.
That's how long-term-thinking brands win.
Ready To Grow Your Business With Email?
Book a 15-minute Discovery Call and let's find the ways we'll be able to help you scale.
Understanding Your Numbers
Now that you know the importance of moving the right levers for scaling your business, let's look at the ways you can gain another edge over your competitors by understanding your data.
This step is critical yet often overlooked in eCommerce businesses that have reached a certain scale.
It’s as if NASA tried to put a man on the moon by using the wet-finger-in-the-air technique. It will work to win a paper airplane competition (or help you get past the validation stage of your brand) – but it won’t work to make it to the big leagues.
Fingers. Good for typing profitable emails – not so good for counting past ten
You'll want to crunch your numbers to get answers to questions like:
- Which products have the highest CLV (customer lifetime value)? It could be the case that those who first try our Kombucha Flavor Samples end up spending more money with us in the long term.
- How can we promote these high CLV products with email?
- Which product combinations are proven to work? So we can create bundles, cross-sell flows, offers and campaigns that boost CLV.
- How much time should we wait to trigger an automated sequence?
- Are our customers really going through their 30-days supply of products in 30 days? (most likely not)
Now, all of the above is important, but we also want to know:
- What’s the behavior of our best customers?
- What makes them different?
- How can we model them?
- How can we lead all customers toward that behavior?
In other words, how can we create a Loyalizer Machine that will turn an average customer into a loyal one?
We'll use email as our Loyalizer Machine
Did you notice we haven't even reached the email part yet?
That's because you can't build a solid email marketing strategy on just guesses.
However, we must be ready to create some emails for your ecommerce business, right?
Wrongo, my impatient friend.
There's a few more things you should be aware of before getting started.
Understanding Your Customers
By now you have a framework to categorize your business activities into 3 big levers of growth and you've done some data analysis to know how to move them.
Now, it's time to dive deep into understanding your customers’ motivations to buy.
Skip this step and your emails will fall on deaf ears.
Here you should research your market, and by the end know:
- What do they want to achieve with your product?
- What makes them buy?
- What’s preventing them from buying?
- What unexpected factor is convincing them to buy?
- Why should they prefer you over someone else?
- What are the main features they’re looking for?
- What are the underlying benefits?
- And more… (to be covered in another article)
Strategy Talk #2
How do you get the answers to the research questions above?
Do you need to call every single customer on your database?
Should you lurk the internet for hours while filling a never-ending document?
Will a simple survey just do? Or should you go stalk your buyers’ houses and trash cans?
We always begin with the lowest friction method and move upwards as needed: Online Research (Google, Own Reviews, Competitor’s Reviews, Reddit, Forums, Facebook Comments, Instagram Comments, etc) > Customer Surveys > Customer Calls.
The highest level of knowledge comes when you’re part of your audience/market. That’s why some “scratch-your-own-itch” product brands do so well, as the founders are part of the group of people they’re trying to sell to, and their messaging has a higher chance of being on-point and resonating.
From Theory To Practice #2
Back to our Spam-Free Kombucha.
It could be the case that some kombucha drinkers are simply looking for a refreshing tasty fizzy drink and not so much worried about the health benefits. In which case we would use that angle in our messaging.
Again, this part is critical.
You shouldn't even write a single line of copy before understanding your market's desires, hopes, fears and dreams. Some brands need to rely more on one than another though.
But there's one last ingredient in the deliciously profitable eCommerce email marketing & customer retention success recipe.
Understanding Their Journey
The email marketing strategy should support your customer’s natural journey as much as possible.
As the late great copywriter Robert Collier said in his famous advertising book (Robert Collier Letter Book): “Always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind”.
How does this apply to email?
It goes beyond sending content related to current events. Your emails should be relevant and anticipate what's going on inside your customer's heads. That’s why you should map out your customer’s journey to clearly understand:
- Where are they coming from?
- What action do we want them to make?
- What piece of information do they need to take that step?
- What will happen after they take that step? How can we make it easier for them?
- How can we push the 3 Levers of Growth at this stage?
- Are they an email subscriber, a buyer or a customer*? (repeat the questions above for each group)
*buyer= placed only 1 order
customer= placed 2 or more orders
Now, consumable products have a straightforward consumption cycle and therefore a simple customer journey (but don't skip the Understanding Your Numbers part covered above).
From Theory To Practice #3
Let's continue sipping down our kombucha.
We'd want to educate our new subscribers on the benefits of kombucha, how ours is different, how our brand is different, etc. Always based on what we know will motivate them to buy.
Then, we'd want to be on top of our customer's minds before they're about to finish our delicious 12 Spam-Free Kombucha Sample Case. We'd make it easy for them to re-order with optimized emails and introduce them to new products in our line.
We want to automate as many of these emails along their journey.
Behavioral-triggered emails have on average 11x higher revenue per recipient than campaign emails. Why? Because they’re relevant & specific. And observed behavior is a good way to guess what's going on inside their minds. We'll talk about this later.
With this, we finally reach what you’ve been looking for this whole time.
But hopefully you’re now convinced that if you want to make email account for a huge chunk of your revenue, you can’t take it lightly.
Yes, you’ll have to invest quite some hours, but you’ll be building a foundation for all your marketing and advertising efforts in the future.
Ready To Grow Your Business With Email?
Book a 15-minute Discovery Call and let's find the ways we'll be able to help you scale.
Email Marketing Automations (Flows) vs. Campaigns
By now you should know that:
- The goal of email is to move the 3 Levers of Growth by 1) Acquiring new customers 2) Improving The Purchase Frequency and 3) Improving The Average Order Value
- You must study and analyze buying behavior to know which products to prioritize and how
- You must understand your customer's motivations to buy to make the communication effective
- You must understand your customer's journey and use targeted emails to communicate all along the way, improve their experience and sell more of your products
But we can't continue yet.
Based on my experience, you're most likely a part of either one of 2 groups.
Each has its limiting beliefs that are costing them potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars each year – and we can't move forward unless you're aware of it.
And they are:
- Team Email Flows (Automations)
- Team Email Campaigns
But unlike Morpheus from The Matrix, I'm giving you a third option below.
First, let's see the traits of each group.
Team Email Flows/Automations
#TeamFlows' dream morning routine
Limiting Beliefs
- "Automations are all I need for my business"
Truth: By the time you decide to send an email campaign your subscribers won't even remember who you are
- "Email campaigns are tedious and expensive to create"
Truth: It is costing you more money to not send campaigns than to send them
- "Campaigns might hurt my email deliverability"
Truth: Your deliverability will be fine – we’ll show you how to keep it healthy below.
How to spot them
- Has a Tesla and (ab)uses the Autopilot function
- Uses bots for trading crypto and stocks
- Has a robot vacuum
- Tried sending one campaign and left them drained for weeks
Pros: Recognizes the power of email automation
Cons: Leaving half of their email revenue on the table by not sending email campaigns
Team Email Campaigns
#TeamCampaignsThings
Limiting Beliefs
- Email campaigns are all I need for my business
Truth: Unless you're manually creating segments for each step of your customer's journey, crafting the appropriate emails and manually sending them daily, you’re leaving money on the table. But that'd be so time-consuming it wouldn't even be worth it!
- Automations are very hard to implement
Truth: Not all of them. Some automations require high technical knowledge to implement correctly (& profitably). But with the high potential payoff, it shouldn't stop you from setting time apart or finding someone with experience to do them for you
- I will need so much time to set up flows
Truth: You can send one less campaign a week and dedicate that time to building one email in your sequences – as if they were assets and you were investing in your brand's future (which you are)
How to spot them
- Doesn't trust microwaves
- Still refers to campaigns as EDMs
- Only uses the Abandoned Cart automation
- Travels by horse
- Has no time to implement flows because they're focused on creating today's campaign
Pros: Recognizes the power of email campaigns
Cons: Leaving half of their email revenue on the table by not implementing email flows
As you see, both teams have their merits. My goal is that by the end of this guide you can leave either side you’re in and join Team Well-Rounded Email Program For Maximum Profits And Business Sanity – or WREPFMPBS for short (gotta work on the name).
Now, what you've been all waiting for: how to put more money into your pockets on autopilot by serving your customers better.
Email Flows For Consumable Products Brands (Automated Behavioral Sequences)
We've been teasing flows all through this guide, but hopefully you didn't jump right to this part.
If so, you've missed the core fundamentals that make the difference between an 'ok' email marketing program and a money-printing one.
Your Klaviyo account if you didn’t jump right to this section.
Now, let's look at some of the critical automations that will move the 3 Levers of Growth for your business (which were #1 getting new customers, #2 making them buy more frequently and #3 making them spend more money on each purchase).
We’ll cover the 4 most important ones. These will give you the most bang for the buck, especially if you hate building automations.
Welcome Sequence Flow
This is usually the first point of contact you have with your potential customers. Anything you say here will influence how they respond, react and engage with you in the future – a great email series can improve the result of all your other emails (and any other form of communication).
At this point you have a blank canvas to create your own picture in their minds – so make it worth it.
🤖 Trigger
A site visitor signs up through one of your pop-ups or footer forms
⭐️ Goal
Introduce subscribers to your (best) products, your USPs, your brand philosophy, build trust and make them like you & care about what you do and sell
🌟 Ultimate Goal
Drive the 1st purchase
🔧 Growth Levers Moved
Number of new customers. Average Order Value.
🧠 Why it Works
These subscribers might have reached your website organically or through any form of advertising. At this stage they are aware of your brand and somewhat of your products, but might not be completely sold. You need to smartly move them towards their first purchase by reinforcing your messaging
📚 Possible themes
Deliver the promised offer, your brand's story, your story, products' story, social proof, education, USPs
📏 Length
At least 5 emails. Depends on how many ideas you need to convey
🎯 KPIs
For the main 3 sequences below, we follow the 30-3-3 rule for the 1st email. You'll want to see open rates over 30% (and it's not uncommon to see ~70% open rates). Click rates and placed order rate should be over 3%
Welcome Email 1 for client A
Welcome Email 1 for client B
👨🔬 Notes
You'll see performance drop on the 2nd email and beyond – which is normal. But depending on the sequence structure (e.g. through discount ladders, etc) you might see KPIs go up and down. Just remember, this flow sets the tone for what you customers can expect from you in the future – so don’t take shortcuts. Just like all flows, this one is an asset for your business.
Checkout Abandonment Flow
It's estimated that eCommerce brands lose approximately $18 Billion in potential revenue each year due to abandoned carts. Ouch!
Plus, this sequence can also be the first point of contact with your customers – so the same principles as the Welcome Sequence apply. It’s just that now we can get a little more aggressive, since they’ve already shown interest.
🤖 Trigger
A visitor arrives at checkout, inputs their info and then leaves
⭐️ Goal
Recover an otherwise lost order and create likeness for your brand
🔧 Growth Levers Moved
Number of new customers.
Average Order Value (if done correctly).
Purchasing Frequency (for returning customers)
🧠 Why it Works
At this stage customers have already shown interest in your products and are ready to buy, but for one reason or another they decided to leave. While we can't read customer's mind yet, your second-best choice is to anticipate possible objections and provide guidance to move them towards completing their order. Plus, for some, these will be the first email they receive from you, so you must also inject your brand’s personality into these emails
📚 Possible themes
Address objections, remind about benefits, highlight social proof, reinforce buying decisions, provide incentives, paint the positive experience they will have with your products
📏 Length
At least 5 emails
👥 Segmentation
1) By cart value:
- For bigger carts you can send a bigger incentive to move people to pull their credit card and take the first leap of trust – often the hardest
- If they're over the free-shipping threshold you can remind them about it. Great conversion improver!
2) By customers vs. non-customers: treat repeat customers differently – they're your most important ones.
3) By products in the cart:
- If one of your products makes up more than 80% of your revenue then it's worth creating a dedicated sequence with a messaging tailored to this product's features, benefits and what you know will move people to buy it (understanding your customers)
- If the cart is for a subscription product, then you can afford to send a better incentive for their first order, knowing that these customers have a higher LTV (analyze your data first)
🎯 KPIs
Same as above, we'll follow the 30-3-3 rule.
Checkout Email 1 for client C
Checkout Email 1 for client D
🚀 10x Tip
Again, if you have a best-seller, create a dedicated sequence for it and you’ll see the results dramatically improve. Make sure you exclude that product from your main sequence.
First-Time Post-Purchase Sequence Flow
The post-purchase sequence is way more than sending a simple thank-you email. Think of it as a welcome sequence for the most important people in the world: those who’ve shown interest in your brand by actually reaching out for their credit cards and buying from you.
Even more. This can also be the first point of contact with your brand, so the principles for the Welcome Sequence also apply here.
🤖 Trigger
A customer places their first order with you
⭐️ Goal
Get them "hooked" on your products – in a good way
🌟 Ultimate Goal
Change in behavior. Make your products a habit in their life
🔧 Growth Levers Moved
Average Order Value
Purchasing Frequency
🧠 Why it Works
Your customer might have bought your products, but are they "sold" on using them for their lifetime?
Remember, the biggest chunk of your profits will come from repeat purchasers (the Purchasing Frequency Lever). That's why you want to give your 1st-time buyers a red-carpet welcome to your products & and your brand. Your customers will be more likely to buy from you again if they've had an amazing experience
📚 Possible themes
Introduce your brand, educate (on ingredients, benefits, manufacturing, the team behind, etc), strengthen their buying decision, introduce a subscription program, anything that helps them like your brand
📏 Length
At least 5 emails. Depends on the number of education points needed to be covered
🎯 KPIs
The goal for this flow is to improve customer’s buying frequence / repurchase rate / retention rate over time. This is highly individual to your brand.
Note down your current number and track its progress over time – assuming all else stays equal. Use cohorts.
Replenishment Sequence Flow
With this sequence you'll be sending emails right when your customers are about to run off of your products. These kind of emails will be super valuable (both for them and for us). If they’ve been enjoying what you sell then they will appreciate a nice few reminders.
We want to make it super easy for them to repurchase. That’s why we leverage Klaviyo’s advanced features to give them the chance to do so with just one click!
🤖 Trigger
A customer hasn't placed an order in X days. Where X is the average replenishment time (based on data and not assumptions!)
⭐️ Goal
Get them to come back for your products
🔧 Growth Levers Moved
1: Purchasing Frequency
🧠 Why it Works
We use this flow to give customers an easy way to repeat their last order or create a new one – all within a single email. As usual, decreasing friction at the moment of purchase increases the conversion rate
📚 Possible themes
Simple nudge, remind about your product's benefits. Remember to add in your brand's personality
📏 Length
At least 3 emails
👥 Segmentation
By purchased products
🎯 KPIs
Follow the 30-3-3 rule here as well
Replenishment Email 1 for client E
Replenishment Email 1 for client F
Bonus: Cross-Sell Emails
What Products You Should And Should NOT Promote To Maximize LTV
You can (and should) add cross-sell emails to introduce your customers to new products across the two flows above.
But not just any new product.
To grow your business, the biggest boost in Customer Lifetime Value will come from getting customers buying and using complementary products
I.e. products whose consumption doesn't compromise the consumption of their original purchased product – and can even increase it.
That's a sure way to boost Average Order Value.
Supplements make a good example.
Customers who are buying your gym pre-workout powder can buy your protein powder without reducing their consumption of the pre-workout.
But it works for non-consumable product brands too.
Getting a customer to try one of your jeans after they’ve been buying only tees will unlock a new branch of profit for your business. Plus it will protect you in case they decide to stop buying a product line from you (how many new tees can I need in a single year after all?).
If you don’t have complementary products then this is your sign to start designing one. It will take your eCom business to the next level. To make it easy, just make sure it solves a problem your audience already has or is something they’re already using but could be improved.
From Theory To Practice #4: Boosting Customer's LTV The Right Way
Back to our Spam-Free Kombucha example. Let's say the average CLV for our Original Kombucha is $400. I.e., customers who buy it end up spending $400 worth of Original Kombucha over their lifetime, on average.
Now, we introduce a new product to the line, Spam-Free Sauerkraut, and observe that customers love it and the average CLV for this product is $320. Again, this implies customers who buy it end up spending $320 worth of Spam-Free Sauerkraut over their lifetime, on average.
Just like that, by getting customers using these 2 items, we can expect CLVs to combine and add up to $720*.
Or put in another way, if CLV was the amount of water in a pool, and we wanted to maximize it, we’ve just upgraded our kiddie pool to a backyard swimming pool that will let us accumulate more water (i.e. have a higher CLV) by giving customers more options to buy.
*Yes, we're keeping it simple here. Of course there are multiple reasons that might make this number lower – but it could also be higher. One could expect that by adopting the use of these two healthy products, the likelihood that they will continue using both as a part of their new lifestyle (and identity) is higher.
Ready To Grow Your Business With Email?
Book a 15-minute Discovery Call and let's find the ways we'll be able to help you scale.
Email Campaigns For Consumable Products Brands (Newsletters / EDMs / Blasts)
If you’re part of Team Flows then pay special attention to this part.
We’ll lay out a set of strategies and principles to make the most out of your campaigns. We won’t cover tactics or ninja-hacks here (we reserve them for our paying clients) – but the pillars out of which you can create your own profitable broadcast (and narrowcast) emails week after week and month after month.
High-Level eCommerce Email Marketing Campaign Plan
1- One To Three Campaigns Per Week
The minimum we send for our clients is 3 campaigns per week, and adjust based on the results.
At this point you’re either in camp “I don’t want to annoy my subscribers so I’m sending just one campaign a month” or “I’m paying an arm and a leg for Klaviyo so let's send 7 emails a week to the entire list”.
If you’re in the former group. Just be aware that your subscribers are receiving dozens if not hundreds of emails a day. They won’t care you’re sending them frequent emails as long as they’re relevant.
Take a look at your industry standard – which will be around 2-5 emails per week – and you'll see why your competition is making out like a bandit.
Plus, by sending just sporadic emails, you’re not only doing yourself a revenue disservice but also contributing towards your subscribers forgetting about you. And guess what they do when they receive an email from a brand they don’t remember being subscribed to.
The exact moment when a subscriber who hasn't heard from you in month receives one of your emails.
Always. Stay. Top. Of. Mind.
If you’re in the ‘lets get my money’s worth’ group, good job!
At least you’re aware of the importance of email. Now, let’s segment those emails a little bit. You’ll make more money AND improve your email deliverability (which we cover in the last section).
2- Limit Discounts & Sales And Have A Compelling Reason To Send One
If you do send discounts, segment those emails to avoid cannibalizing your profits.
Plus, having a reason to send offers and discounts make them more believable and improve the conversion rates. You can only have so many “flash sales” before your subscribers turn unresponsive to them.
3- Give And Take
Most people are afraid of frequent emails because they think they'll come off as being too-salesy. And they're right. If your campaigns add zero value to your subscribers' lives then by all means go ahead and stop sending them. You'll just "burn down" your list.
BUT, "Value" can have thousands of meanings depending on the kind of product you sell.
A Fashion brand can get away with sending 100% product-focused emails because the "value" is given in the way that the products make buyers feel, i.e. a transfer of status or belonging. This is the game plan behind all luxury brands (think about the TV commercial for perfumes).
We’ve seen it first hand. We've worked with 7-figure luxury brands where 100% product-focused campaigns accounted for over 50% of their entire store revenue.
Just remember to tap into your customer's deep motivations (the Understanding Your Customers section) – which is where having a skilled copywriter helps.
Director's Cut #2
For those coming from the internet marketing industry: do not get trapped in the digital marketing "guru" definition of value – i.e giving valuable content away.
That's their weapon.
But you have heavy artillery: If you believe wholeheartedly in your products, then the greatest value-add will come by promoting and getting them to try them and potentially change their lives.
That's value-by-consumption, and it doesn't get any better than that.
4- Campaigns Or Automations First?
If you’re just starting or switching to a new email platform (e.g. Klaviyo), you should always start by implementing automations.
There’s a technical reason for this, which we’ll cover in the next section (Email Deliverability).
But there’s also a foundational reason for it. As you saw earlier, flows have the highest ROI. It makes sense to start building a profitable series of email journeys that will become the backbone of your business – by getting you new customers, repeat buyers, more reviews and user-generated content, referrals and so on.
Now, if there’s a big sales event coming up, then you might as well send a few campaigns – as long as you’re using an engaged segment (also covered below).
But if you’re preparing to scale and invest thousands of dollars in paid advertising or influencer campaigns, set up your flows first so that each dollar invested is worth more in the long run.
5- Schedule In Advance
We like to be 1 month ahead of schedule and so should you. This gives all parties enough time to make changes, revisions, and avoid the stress of having to pull off an email to be sent the next day. Trust us, we’ve been there.
This also gives you a good buffer for whenever you got more on the plate that you can handle. Even if you do nothing for two weeks you’ll still have your emails ready and be able to easily get back on track.
Another benefit: It forces you to think long-term.
By using this method you’ll have to have in mind your Quarterly goals and overall strategy and move away from the “how can I make a quick buck with the next email” approach that leads to short-term feast and long-term famine.
Ok, sounds good but how do you do it?
If there are no big events in the short term, simply start by ideating and creating campaigns 3-4 weeks in advance. If there are, then create these first but then skip a few weeks to get back to being 3-4 weeks ahead.
6- Segment Your Campaigns
If it was the 1990s and there were no penalties for blasting email campaigns to your entire database, half of this section wouldn't be necessary.
But unfortunately, it is not and so you have to take some precautions before sending an email to your entire email list.
Now email providers – like Gmail, AOL and so on – judge your email’s engagement (as in clicks, opens, replies and unsubscribes) to evaluate where your emails shall land. Meaning that if you keep sending emails to that person who hasn’t interacted in 8 months with any of your emails you’ll get a bad reputation that will badly affect your deliverability. We’ll cover more of that in the final section.
But besides ensuring email delivery, we want to segment our emails to improve the effectiveness of the message itself. When you speak to a group of customers who all share the same characteristic and you tailor your message to them, you will see better results, conversion rates and engagement.
Segmentation Criteria
Now, there are many criteria you can use for segmentation:
- Geographic: Country, City, etc
- (Predicted) Gender
- Behavior: Purchased products, first landing page, viewed products, AOV, first purchased products, order frequency, etc
- Engagement: Opened emails, clicked emails, actions taken, etc
- Recency: For the two criteria above, how long has it been since it happened? E.g. they purchased at least once in the last 30 days.
- Zero-party data (data gathered during sign-up or post-purchase): motivations to buy, interests, etc. E.g. Looking for male clothing, drinking Kombucha to improve digestion.
Should you do all of the above?
In a world where you had unlimited money and time, yes. You’d have a worker assigned for each subscriber whose only job would be to send them super-targeted tailored emails. Which incidentally is exactly why behavioral-triggered automations are so powerful.
In the real world, however, that doesn’t work.
We have to do an 80-20 analysis – focus on the vital few and ignore the trivial many – and create what we call EESs: Effective & Efficient Segments.
Effective & Efficient Segments: Bringing Back Sanity Into Segmentation
Effective: Ask yourself, by tailoring my message to this group, can I expect them to respond better?
Efficient: Ask yourself, will it be worth spending my team's efforts on this? Yes, you could hyper-narrow and come up with a 10-person segment and create a super personalized message just for them. But you’re using several hours of resources for that. Will the return be worth it? If you sell low-to-mid-ticket products chances are not. What you want instead is to find the biggest segments that you can still tailor a compelling message to.
Note for the advanced: you can combine the EES approach with RFM for the ultimate 80-20 effect.
From Theory To Practice #5: EES In Action
Creating Effective Efficient Segments
Back to our Spam-Free Kombucha example.
Let’s say we’re evaluating creating a new sales campaign and we’re considering 4 segments:
- 1) Subscribers with a Gmail address who joined our list last year between March 27th and 28th.
- 2) Women buyers of our Sample Pack who haven’t purchased in 3 months, lives in Los Angeles and discovered us by our Instagram Ad #6 (demographics)
- 3) Subscribers who’ve opened or clicked our emails in the last 3 months (behavior segmentation)
- 4) Women customers who’ve opened or clicked our emails in the last 3 months (demographics + behavior segmentation)
Let’s see how they perform under the EES test.
1) Subscribers with a Gmail address who joined our list last year between March 27th and 28th
Effective: Not
There’s no reason to believe that subscribers who have a Gmail address will respond better to our sales message. Ditto with the data range. Lastly, we don’t even know whether this segment has been engaging with our emails or not – so we can’t expect any results.
Efficient: Not
Most likely this segment will be a small one – compared to our whole list. Plus, we don’t have any reason to believe that it will be effective, so we better skip this one.
Obviously this was just an extreme example to get the point across
2) Women buyers of our Sample Pack who haven’t purchased in 3 months, live in Los Angeles and discovered us by our Instagram Ad #6 (demographics)
Effective: Yes
With these conditions, we have a way to laser-target a message which can resonate very well with the segment.
We can talk about how Kombucha helps with digestion and keeping a healthy bowel movement, or about using it as part of a skincare routine. Or incentivizing the purchase of their favorite flavor of the pack. Then talk about how our Kombucha will quench their thirst during sunny LA’s days. Finally, we know they saw our Instagram Ad #6 where we partnered with Influencer Y – so we can relate to how she used our product daily.
All in all, we could create a very compelling email, right?
But there’s one big problem.
Efficient: Not so much
We’d need a big database which would make the size of this segment worthy enough to place our entire team’s focus on (mind you, this could be a very profitable email). But, by removing one of the conditions in the segment (such as the LA one) we’ll end up with a bigger group while still keeping relevancy high. Unless we’re out of ideas and got extra resources to burn, we’ll skip this one.
Note: There are always exceptions. We’re focusing on the big picture here. Yes, we could be organizing an event for which this segment could be useful, but we’re focused on the 80-20 for now.
3) Subscribers who’ve opened or clicked our emails in the last 3 months (behavior segmentation)
Effective: Could be
By limiting our segment to those who’re engaging with our emails we’re at least ensuring the campaign will get engagement. Will that lead to sales? It will depend on the nature of the content we send.
Efficient: Yes
Engagement is at the top of the conversion funnel, which goes like this:Opens > Clicks > Views Products > Adds To Cart > Checkout > Buys
Meaning, this will be a very big segment - and within that group there will be those who’re further down the funnel too. The only negative is that the message will be broad, so we will have to compensate for that by crafting an appealing email.
Overall, if you have a list of 5k or fewer subscribers, this is a worthy segment to begin sending your emails to.
4) Women customers who’ve opened or clicked our emails in the last 3 months (demographics + behavior segmentation)
Effective: Yes
Now we’re adding 2 extra criteria to the segment above. Most importantly, we can predict that by tailoring our message to this group we will get a better response.
First, we know that our email will be read by women only – so we can tailor our message accordingly.
Second, we know that they’ve already shown interest in our product by pulling out their credit card and buying from us. Since they trust us already, they might be interested in trying out new products from us, or simply buying more of the same.
Efficient: Yes
Most likely, this segment will be wide enough to justify the creation of the campaign. You can expand the engagement timeframe a little if your list is not big enough, as long as your metrics are healthy.
All in all, this is one worth trying and one worth a full brainstorming session to come up with content ideas.
Takeaway
Always remember: effective AND efficient segments.
Director's Cut #3
Make It Worth The Effort
All of the above assumes that what we're selling in our emails is also worth the effort.
We wouldn't waste time promoting our $1 Spam-Free Coasters. Always focus on high AOV and CLV products!
7- Generating Content Ideas
The hardest part of sending campaigns is coming up with ideas week after week – it feels like a full-time job (maybe because it is?).
But if you didn’t skip the "Understanding the Customer" and "Understanding the Customer Journey" sections then you should have a fair amount of ideas noted down.
Each of the following questions can trigger dozens of content ideas:
- What will move customers closer to a sale (what do they need to know / what do they should know but most likely don’t / what they don’t know but should know / what is the competition wrongfully telling them)?
- What are the main pains or enemies they have? How can you eliminate them?
- What are the main blessings or allies they have? (it should be you)
- What are their dreams? How can you encourage them?
- What can you show that will get them to like & trust your brand? Show proof.
- What can they do with my products & what does the future look like? Create the mental picture.
- What do they need to buy more of?
- What haven’t they bought yet that they should?
- What news are in the business that might interest them? (most will if you’re entertaining)
After you have at least 20 ideas, start off by marking down the holidays and national sales events in your calendar and then complement that with ideas from the list you just created.
Or –in our completely biased opinion– follow the easy way and outsource this to a team of experts.
Strategy Talk #3: A Secret Side-Benefit Of Campaigns
Just think about one time you opened an email and ended up buying something completely unrelated to what was being advertised.
Good emails can do that.
They help your brand stay top of mind multiple times a week. So even if they’re not interested in what you happened to be selling that day the emails still remind them about your brand.
We're simply offering them the opportunity to continue enjoying your amazing line of products. Plus, they're just one click away from your store – what a convenient way to get a quick dopamine boost. Shop Now? Yes please!
Now that you know the big-picture strategies to make email campaigns and flows work, let’s move to the last piece of the puzzle.
The one that ensures that all the efforts above are worth it...
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Email Deliverability: Making Sure Your Emails Don’t Land In Spam
The C.S.I. Framework For Unshakable Deliverability & Profitable Emails
The REV Check: Creating Emails Your Subscribers Look Forward To
From Theory To Practice #6: REV Email Examples
Strategy Talk #4: Pro-Tip For Warming Up Your Sending Reputation
You’ve researched your market to know your customer’s true motivations to buy.
You understand the role of email to grow your business and know which levers you have to pull and how.
You’ve designed beautiful emails for campaigns and flows that follow your customer’s journey.
At this point you’re like Leonardo da Vinci – and you’ve painted your Mona Lisa.
You’re ready to show it to the world.
Except.. wait! Here comes an art collector, ready to take it from your hands and store it in his private collection, where it will never be seen again.
Sucks, right?
Same thing happens with email, but it is not the collectors you have to watch out for if you want your work to be seen, but Email Providers such as Google, AOL, Outlook, Yahoo and the rest.
They are the ultimate guardians of your email profits.
And that's where the C.S.I. Framework comes to rescue.
The C.S.I. Framework For Unshakable Deliverability & Profitability
If you want to have great email deliverability (i.e. the percentage of your emails that make it to the inbox vs. the spam folder), you must build up your reputation in the eyes of Email Providers. For this, here we use what we call the “C.S.I.” Framework: Content, Signals and Infrastructure.
Frank, you better put this section into action, or spam will be the only thing on your business’ plate.
YEEEEAAAAH 🎶
Pillar #1: Content
Content Element 1: Images or no images?
Some say you shouldn’t send image-only emails as they can trigger spam filters. We’ve worked with brands doing 50% of their email revenue through image-only emails.
What’s the true answer?
You can’t look at the world through a straw and claim image-only emails are the devil.
Yes, when possible leave as much text in HTML and outside the images. But there are other elements that affect your sending reputation.
As always the answer comes down to testing and what your priorities are.
Who should lean more towards image-only emails?
- Those who’ve built a solid sending reputation through the years (confirmed by KPIs)
- Those who’re getting good engagement metrics from their emails
- Those who’re more worried about branding than getting sales
- Those who sell highly-visual products (e.g. fashion, luxury & premium-positioned products)
- Those who have a highly talented in-house design team with a lot of free time in their hands
Our recommendation? Start off with a balanced mix between image-only, image & text and text-only emails and then follow the guidelines above to see where you should lean more towards.
Content Element 2: Links
The majority of the links within a mail should lead to your website and not external ones. The occasional Youtube link is fine though.
Content Element 3: Make Them Worthwhile
Are your emails even worth opening?
Before opening your email, can I expect to get some value out of it? This is of course based on my previous interactions with your brand’s emails.
Director's Cut #4
Again, “value” comes in many shapes and forms.
It could be learning something new or getting entertained through a story or your email graphics.
Yes, even an unsegmented “blast” email could work if we make it entertaining in some form. I.e. if it triggers even a small dopamine release in your subscribers’ brains .
Which is why novelty and staying away from using the same templates over and over in your emails helps a ton with engagement.
To create emails worth opening, we use a test we called the REV Check (Relevancy, Entertaining, Valuable).
The REV Check
Creating Emails Your Subscribers Look Forward To
Your emails must have at least one of the 3 components: Relevancy, Entertainment, Value.
If they have none you can send them straight to trash@internet.com and take the day off while you get inspired with better content ideas.
If they have two, you will get your subscribers hooked on opening your emails.
Nailing all 3 is hard – but that’s the surest way to make email marketing account for half your store revenue.
From Theory To Practice #6: REV Email Examples
To get a clearer idea of what each attribute means, let’s go back to our Spam-Free Kombucha store.
Relevant Email
- Any transactional email
- Post-purchase email asking for feedback, offering something in return
- Piggybacking of a recent media report on how good Kombucha is
- Emails based on a specific action they took. E.g. "Can we help you decide?" when they've been browsing our products
- The release of our new kombucha flavors (they’re already in our list so we can assume they care about our products to some degree at least)
- And any kind of content tailored to what your subscribers care about (it’s always about them – refer back to the Understanding Your Customer Section)
Entertaining Email
- Telling a story on how we discovered our secret ingredient
- A creative email design that gets subscribers’ attention (and hopefully makes them thirsty) – fun photo shoots
- Telling the founder's backstory
- What goes into the production of each bottle
- How the team comes up with new flavor ideas
Valuable
- Any educational content (ideally it should also be entertaining – as “hard teaching” easily bore people off. Shout out to my Thermodynamics teacher)
- Inspiration, in the form of stories or testimonials. E.g. about how one customer improved their gut health thanks to our kombucha
Making sure people are looking forward and opening your emails helps us with the next pillar.
Pillar #2: Signals
Back to the second pillar of the C.S.I. Framework for email deliverability: signals.
Email Providers are like a bouncer at a nightclub. They’re screening you. Judging you. Weighing whether you’re worth it for the club environment before letting you in. And if you’re good-looking you already got a foot in the door.
Don't be like Homer...
Similar to that, what Gmail and the like are doing is evaluating whether your email will be valuable to the receiver. And we want to get past the door by being Scarlett Johansson in their eyes.
We do this by showing the right signals – unfortunately $100 handshakes won’t work as well here.
- Are your emails getting opened by the receiver?
- Are they getting clicked?
- Are they reporting them as spam?
- Are they marking them as important?
Be like Krusty instead.
A subscriber who engages with your emails will have a higher chance of seeing them in the future, as Inbox Providers recognize your emails are important to them.
KPIs: One way to ensure good signals is to monitor your campaign and flows engagement metrics and segment accordingly – aiming for at least 20% open rates for campaigns and 30% for flows.
Pillar #3: Infrastructure
The last pillar for ensuring good email deliverability is what’s called the sending infrastructure. We could get very technical here but luckily we don’t have to.
Major email platforms such as Klaviyo place you on their shared sending infrastructure, and as long as you’re following the best practices when starting out you’ll be good.
Plus, it’s in their best interest to have their users (i.e. you) maintain a healthy email reputation, since it is shared across all users in the shared sending domain.
And in case you screw up and get consistently poor engagement they will let you know – and eventually kick you out.
This is why it's critical having someone on your side who understand the technical side.
Strategy Talk #4: Pro-Tip For Warming Up Your Sending Reputation
When setting up your email platform (such as Klaviyo) for the first time, switching to a new IP address or setting up a new domain, you always have to warm up your sending infrastructure.
The safest way to do this is by enabling high engagement flows first, such as the Welcome Flow or the Abandoned Cart Flow.
These flows have the highest open rates and click rates, and will show Inbox Providers that you’re a trustworthy guest for the club and reduce the time needed to build a good sender reputation.
Next Steps
So there you have it.
You’re now armed with the knowledge needed to create an email program that will let you profitably scale your ecommerce business to the next stage – so that more people can enjoy your amazing consumable products.
But beware.
If you nail your retention marketing, you’ll be on your way to dominating your competition, the entire market and becoming your industry leader. They won’t know what hit them when they start seeing your ads all over the place – while you’ll be relaxed, knowing that you’re making most of your profits on the back end.
Now, if you need a team of experts to give you some consulting, craft a personalized strategy, or simply take all the weight off your shoulders and manage your entire Klaviyo account, follow the link below to schedule a discovery call with Email Engineers.
If you’re just interested in learning more about customer retention & email marketing for eCommerce, follow me on Twitter @EmailEngineers.
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