One might think that making revenue during the 4th of July shopping season is the easiest thing in the world. After all, everyone is in the mood to shop, right?
No! In fact, it’s one of the trickiest periods for eCommerce marketing. When everyone’s offering unbelievable deals, how do you steal the show? And what can you be doing now in April and May to make a big difference for July?
The answer to the second question, research and planning, will help us answer the first. For research and planning, let’s take a look at how we made an extra $28K on one Independence Day campaign this past year. It wasn’t easy due to a number of challenges that seemed to stack the deck against us…
The Challenges:
- Every inbox gets flooded with the 4th of July promos each year. It can be difficult to stand out from the crowd.
- The heavy use of ‘salesy’ words can affect deliverability. How can you ensure optimal open rates and CTR’s?
- Clients often have great expectations from Independence Day campaigns, given that it’s the biggest Summer holiday.
- Our highest holiday revenue in the past was from offering deep discounts as a thankyou to focused segments of our best return-buyers (VIPs). However, the type of product to promote this time is long-lasting and not conducive to repeat purchases. We therefore couldn’t rely on VIPs which numbered merely a thousand prospects on our list.
The Strategy:
But we’ve found that, regardless of the hand you’re dealt, segmentation can often be your ace in the hole. So we got to work by segmenting the overall subscriber list based on factors such as customer traits, buying patterns and levels of engagement. Using Klaviyo’s advanced segmentation and customization capabilities, we were able to design flows and campaigns that delivered a personalized brand experience to customers through email.
? [Part 1] The Segmentation: We Created 3 Segments Based on Behavior
#1 The Extra Engaged Segment:
– One thing we’re doing well with this store is engaging the subscribers in our nurturing newsletters. We give them good content specifically targeted to their interests. So we decided to focus our energy at those engaged people.
– We created a special segment of Extra Engaged People. Now, those are not just your typical readers; those are the people who opened and clicked multiple emails, multiple times in recent weeks.
#2 The Regular Engaged Segment:
– People who opened, clicked or engaged with the store at least once in the last 60 days, as it’s a proven formula. They get the lower discount offer than our Extra Engaged Segment and our VIPs, but we still expect good revenue from this segment due to its large size.
#3 The VIPs:
– The return buyers that need to get a good deal as well, but we didn’t expect much out of them due to the typically single-purchase nature of the product.
? [Part 2] The Email Strategy: We Made 3 Automated Email Sequences
– We created 3 Promotional Flows (temporary automated email sequences) – 1 for each segment.
The Logic remained the same for each flow:
- Email #1 Offer + Re-Send a Day After
- Email #2 Follow-up + Re-Send a Day After
- Email #3 Follow-up + Re-Send a Day After
- Plus a Thankyou Email For Buyers After Each Email
a) This is the flow logic. You can see the offer email and the re-send to non-buyers after 1 day.
b) This GIF shows the whole flow, where that offer + re-send system repeats times. You can also see the “Thank you” emails that the buyers get, after which they exit the flow.
Here’s Why…
– Holiday Sales get busy and your emails can easily get buried inside a pile of promotional offers in inboxes. The frequency of your sends therefore needs to be higher than normal. Otherwise, no one will even see your emails.
– The problem with that is if you send big blasts to your whole list, don’t segment people by engagement and don’t follow the rules of big email services (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) your general open rates will drop below 10%.
– With carefully designed segments and subtle changes to re-sent emails, we’re able to re-send the emails and still retain our good deliverability, avoiding spam filters.
c) As an example, you can see email #1 of the Extra Engaged segment, which had 42% open rates and made $5.8K from 14k recipients, because they were much more engaged and interested than the regular segment.
d) And the re-send that had 23% open rates and made $1.6k from about 10k people. This is why we use re-sends, they just work in the correct context.
BONUS NUGGET:
– The emails for our main, Extra Engaged Segment needed to make those people feel appreciated and give them the best exclusive deal that nobody else gets in gratitude for their engagement.
e) This is a part of the email for our Extra Engaged Segment. Explained above.
? [Part 3] The Results: $28K in 6 Days
– The Extra Engaged Segment made $16K
– The Regular Engaged Segment made $11.5K
– The VIP Segment made under $1K
Conclusion:
The magic of email marketing is real. It is alive, breathing and making immense revenue for those who wield the wand expertly. The results are there for you to see in numbers and these techniques can be successfully replicated for the holiday season just ahead.
Start now by reviewing your segments, planning offers and outlining your promotional flows. With adequate research, efficient segmentation, creative copy, and pleasing design, you can create revenue-guzzling flows for Holiday Seasons, and Fourth of July isn’t far off…. $28,000 later you’ll be glad you did!
Thank you for reading and comment below with any questions you might have!
Stanislav Miljanović and the team – Kunal Salvi, Lorenz Mac, Aljaz Kocevar, Stefan Atanasov and Thomas McClintock
Hustler Marketing
