3 Workflows That Revolutionized Our Ecommerce Email Marketing Strategy

Every business wants to be able to personally interact with and track their users’ and customers’ actions on their website. Unfortunately, a lack of resources, scheduling, monitoring and flexibility can make it seem close to impossible!

At Juil we wanted our customers to find a lifestyle brand, and to do that we knew we needed to engage them, offer them what they were looking for, and measure the response. It was our goal to turn our customers into our greatest brand ambassadors through inbound marketing.

We started with workflow automation to communicate with our consumers and keep them engaged with the brand, through personalization, segmentation, and timing. The three workflows we implemented were a welcome series, shopping cart abandonment, and post purchase.

Welcome Series

After a site visitor first subscribes and becomes a lead, we want to make sure they’re served a tailored series of emails. This is our first opportunity to educate the consumer and pique their interest, but not so much as to “ask them to marry us on the first date.” We’ve seen a 5% conversion rate on all general subscribers through this workflow. We take this opportunity to slowly bring the customer into our sales funnel, using automated emails to introduce them to our brand, the concept behind our product, and opportunities to connect. We also use the end of this workflow to introduce leads to our “Insider” community, allowing us build upon the lead profile and properties. We’ve seen a 41% submission rate for this “Insider” offer. If a lead purchases at any point throughout this cycle and enters our customer goal list, then they’ll enter the post purchase workflow mentioned below.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

There’s nothing worse than a lost customer. As a result of our shopping cart abandonment workflows, we’ve seen a 70% shopping cart recovery rate. Once a customer abandons their cart, we have an extremely high urgency and short window of opportunity to reach out, remind them, and convert the sale. If not done soon enough, that sale is lost. Using our integrated shopping cart and cart abandonment smart list, we’re able to automate personalized emails to those customers who have abandoned their cart. Over the course of 3 days, until the customer converts to our customers goal list, we reach out with customized emails reminding the user of their product selection, offering a small discount as an incentive and providing an easy link back to their shopping cart through integrated forms.

Post Purchase Workflow

We want to make sure that our customers are engaged after their purchase. After spending significant time in our marketing and sales funnel, we want to maintain a connection with this new customer (but not so much as to make them feel annoyed). Over the course of a month post-purchase, a customer will receive a few automated, scheduled emails from us offering some engagement opportunities outside of the sales funnel. For example, we’ll request a review, offer relevant content and ebook downloads and provide social media links for them to check out. A few weeks after the purchase, to connect personally, our social media director receives an automated email from HubSpot that includes the customer’s Twitter handle. He’ll use that to tweet at them and just check in to see how their Juils are treating them. We’ve been pleasantly surprised to see an incredibly positive and active response on the Twitter side. 

Analytics are key to the success of these workflows. We’re able to measure which particular touch points are resonating the most with leads and customers, allowing us to optimize based on these metrics. We also use the email click map to see which creative and offerings most resonate with recipients, thereby allowing us to constantly improve our email marketing content. Overall, these workflows are a critical part of our strategy to become more than just another shoe to our customers. By implementing these three workflows together, we are improving the customer experience starting from before they become a customer, through to their purchase and beyond.