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A/B Testing

Email Marketing Strategies That Will Increase Your Ecommerce Sales

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As a fellow marketer, I bet we both can agree that it seems like we can never get caught up with emails. Our inbox is flooded with random people or businesses trying to gain our attention. As we skim past every subject line and choose which emails to open, which ones to actually read, and which ones to simply delete, we quickly determine the ones worth our time. If we do it, your consumers do, too. Your email marketing efforts need to be focused on what’s going to attract your consumers to open, click, and buy your products.

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Connect your Ecommerce Store

To do this, integrating your Ecommerce store to your email marketing platform correctly is the first step. The data you need to increase your sales will then automatically populate. You’ll begin capturing their purchase history, following their path to your website, and learning more about the people they are such as their demographics, geographic location, and interests. Before you start seeing an impact on your ROI, you need to learn what to actually do with the information you now have.

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Segment Your Email Lists

Sending emails to your potential or current customers is a great way to continue the communication between the two of you, but it doesn’t mean they are interested in what you have to say. By segmenting your lists, you can distribute emails directed towards that particular customer.

Types of Customer Segments:

  1. Potential Customers – Those who’ve shown interest, but never purchased should get an email to ensure you both stay connected.
  2. Recent Customers – If they recently purchased an item, you now have an idea of what they like. Send them a follow-up email with other similar products.
  3. First-time Customers – These new customers might enjoy a “thank you” email to feel more welcomed and appreciated.
  4. Repeat Customers – They have purchased more than once already. Make sure they stay your repeat customers by sending them a special offer or coupon.
  5. Lapsed Customers – Lapsed customers haven’t purchased anything in months. Become top-of-mind again by sending them a deal on the last product they purchased.
  6. Seasonal Customers – Say some customers only buy during certain months of the year. When this month rolls around, be the first name they see. Send them an email with images of what they usually buy.
This segmentation can get you started with sending out the right emails, but there many other ways to segment your lists, also.

Test your Content

Simply because you sent out an email, doesn’t mean you will actually get every customer to open it– We know this. Find out what makes them more inclined to open and interact with your email. A/B testing is the perfect way to do so. This is when you change one variable of an email and see which one performs better. You can test the sender’s name, subject line, send time, copy inside the email, and imagery (videos, gifs, etc.). Does a more blunt, factual approach work for your customers or do they enjoy more humor? Whichever email generates the most sales is your winner!

Click Here for A/B Testing Ideas

Rely on Automated Emails

In a study completed by eMarketer, it was found that B2C marketers who leverage automation have seen conversion rates as high as 50%. Automated emails are reminders and follow-ups of a recent consumer interaction. One of the most important automated emails is an abandoned shopping cart reminder. eMarketer also reports that an email notification about an abandoned shopping cart receives a 40.5% open rate. You know they’re interested, so tell them they need it and don’t let them forget.

Track What You’ve Earned

Whether you’re sending an individual email or an entire email campaign, it’s important to analyze the results. How do the open rates and click percentages compare to industry averages? How many unsubscribed from receiving your emails? How many sales did it generate? What was its average dollar sale compared to your other emails? Find out why a certain email performed better (or worse) than another. Constant analysis allows for constant improvement.

Perfect your email marketing now so you can start the New Year with just one more way to improve your ROI.

What challenges do you face with your email marketing efforts? Comment below, or contact us today to learn more about email marketing opportunities.

Top 5 Financial Services Marketing Tips

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We do a lot of work with banks and credit unions because of previous relationship within these markets. The financial services marketing landscape has really changed over the past decade and it’s about to get a mobile face lift and whole lot more in 2013. Below are my top five recommendations for bank & credit union marketers:

Go Mobile

Invest in mobile banking and measure the effectiveness of mobile to generate leads as well as increase sales. According to a report by Adology, Mobile banking is having the biggest impact on routine banking activities: 64% of mobile banking users in the U.S. say that the future ability to use their smartphones or tablets to check account balances would be highly valued. This move has the potential to increase liability and risk for financial services institutions, so make sure it delivers value to your customers.

Incorporate Measurement

Measure all of your marketing campaigns and implement tag management solutions. With all of the marketing tactics that financial services use as well as third party application processing, tag management will help to simplify tagging and limit data collection challenges. Tag management boils down to this–one tag on your site for numerous solutions, such as affiliates, third party application, media buys, etc.

Test, Test, Test!

Test your marketing tactics, PLEASE! The cost of many tests can be justified and can help improve your institution’s online sales process. If you’re not testing, you might as well dump a portion of you marketing budget into the trash and set it on fire.

Tag Management for Financial Services Marketing

The best place to test is within the conversion process. Invest the time, money, and resources into conversion optimization. It will require you to bring your partners (third party vendors) to the table for discussions. Tag management solutions can also streamline required vulnerability testing within the application process.

Predictive Modeling for Applications & Quotes

Now that measuring all of your marketing tactics is on the agenda, you should consider attribution and predictive modeling. Attribution modeling will help you give credit to marketing tactics that most impact the conversion process, and predictive modeling will help you to forecast future sales and revenue.

Have your own financial services marketing tips to add? Let us hear them in the comments below!

A/B Testing (Split Testing) to Convert More Online Customers

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What is A/B testing (split testing)?

A/B testing, or split testing, is a marketing testing method by which one baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response or conversion rates. An example would be to test two different subject lines of an email campaign. A/B testing has been implemented for direct mail and within the interactive space to test tactics such as banner ads, emails, landing pages, or even entire websites to improve performance. You can also extend A/B testing to PPC advertising copy, alternative keywords, or PPC keyword match types.

How can my business or marketing department apply A/B testing?

You should always be testing ways to improve the sales process to reduce your cost per acquisition and to improve your customers’ experiences. I would recommend that you start with the “low hanging fruit” that could have the greatest impact on revenue or the customer experience. For example, an A/B test could be a simple as testing the color of the calls-to-action to improve the click-through-rate.

A/B testing can be applied to marketing tactics to improve sales or lead generation at a lower cost. In general, it’s easier to implement A/B testing with digital advertising because of the ability to make changes quickly and optimize the process. The findings from digital advertising can also be carried over to traditional advertising.

A/B Testing Best Practices

If you’re new to A/B/ split testing, here are a few best practices:

  • Define your goals. Clearly state what you hope to accomplish.

  • Determine how you plan to accomplish your goals. Keep it Simple!

  • What are you testing & why?

  • What is the variation you are testing (color, position, ad copy, etc.)?

  • Define the control and your variation for testing.

  • What are your expected results & reasoning?

  • Measure & Analyze the results through the sales or conversion process.

How do you apply A/B Testing to Internet Marketing Strategy?

You can leverage A/B testing based on geography, psychographics, customer lifecycles, etc. You want to develop realistic goals based on your target audiences. At first, I would recommend being targeted with your approach and limiting the test to a single market. It’s important to identify the greatest impact on the conversion process or sales process by modifying the internet marketing strategy slightly. Be sure to focus on all the results from the beginning of the process to completion and to communicate the results. Think about the effect the testing will have on saving time, money, and creating efficiencies.

Conclusion

If you haven’t started A/B testing, you’re wasting time, money, and missing opportunities. As marketers, we should always be testing to maximize performance and to reduce costs. Testing goes beyond just a subject line or ad copy. It requires focus, consistency, and planning. In addition, you must think about usability, branding, layouts, the purchase process, etc. There are numerous tools such as Web Optimizer, Visual Website Optimizer, or Test &Target to get started.