Have you updated your email campaigns and website recently? If you’re using the same messaging as every year before, you may find that customers are getting used to seeing the same content. If you don’t stand out – from your old content and from the rest of the eCommerce crowd – your brand’s emails and website are likely less impactful than they could be. Not only that, but repeating the same emails risks them going into your customers’ spam. Simple things like color, layout and messaging changes can help mix things up and keep your brand at the forefront of customers’ minds.
Below are some examples of updates that you could implement and test.
Triggered emails refresh
One of the first things you can refresh is the timing for triggered emails such as cart and browse abandonment. When has a customer truly abandoned their cart or browse session? In some instances with clients, we’ve seen that a shorter wait time actually increases conversions and sales uplift. So replicating your trigger programs and then adjusting the wait times to test against one another will really help you find the sweet spot for your email cadences.
> Test Stage 1 wait time: 20mins vs. 30mins or 30mins vs. 60mins
> Test Stage 2 wait time: 24hrs vs. 36hrs or 24hrs vs. 48hrs
You can also test the number of stages of each email campaign, as some shoppers occasionally want to sleep on a purchase, especially if it’s an expensive or one-off buy. Many simply get distracted or are still shopping around when that first abandonment email arrives. We’ve seen sales uplift of 21% on average by adding multiple stages.
> Test number of stages: 1 email vs. 2 emails or 2 emails vs. 3 emails
> Test coupon/discount at different stages: Stage 1, Stage 2 or Stage 3
A good example of an effective multi-stage email campaign is by Getting Personal, who have seen a 54% sales uplift with their multi-stage browse abandonment email campaign.
Testing the content of your triggered emails can also make a huge difference. Mixing up your subject lines, layout, putting CTAs in different positions, or changing CTA colors can help draw in the customer’s attention, especially if they’ve seen the same or similar emails from you over a period of time.
> Test subject line: Short and snappy vs. including name or product personalization
> Test content: Browsed/carted products only vs. including recommendations or informative brand content
Herring Shoes noted a positive difference when they A/B tested the product recommendations in their cart abandonment emails, seeing a 111% increase in click-through rates. Similarly, Tap Warehouse did an A/B test to see whether dynamically displaying their free delivery offer on orders over £250 in the pre-header and body of their cart abandonment emails would help, and saw a 43% conversion rate uplift.
Optimizing web content and messaging
Make sure your CTAs are still on-brand, both with the colors and messaging, to ensure that customers are more likely to click through.
Any hero images and banners on your website can be personalized to the customer, for example based on weather and location, or on categories browsed and purchased from. Make sure to test what hero images and banners work best for each customer, and whether a static image or carousel works better.
Make sure your product recommendations on your site are optimized. You can test what works best for new visitors and returning customers. For example, new site visitors could see products that will likely be within their budget using our Price Affinity Predictor. Returning customers could see products based on their observed category and brand affinity. A good example of this being effective is by Cooksongold, who saw a 112% year on year sales uplift with personalized product recommendations on their site. LSE Retail, for example, saw a 3% increase in revenue when using product recommendation carousels.
You can use data capture pop-overs to increase email subscriptions. If you are already using them on your website, you can change the messaging, incentive and behavior of the popover, testing these factors to ensure it’s fully optimized. Vapouriz makes use of these, and have increased their average monthly subscription rate by an average of over 600%.
Our Testing & Optimization tool
With Fresh Relevance’s Testing & Optimization tool, you can continually test and optimize your email and web content to find out which updates work best for you and your business.
Our tool empowers you to:
- Automatically optimize individual pieces of content, as well as the entire cross-channel experience
- Automatically end tests on a set date or number of impressions and display the variant that generated the most revenue
- Analyze your personalization campaigns in Google Analytics
- Determine the influence of the tested variable with control groups
Not sure where to start? Our Customer Success team works with Fresh Relevance clients to create a personalized testing plan with optimizations that we believe will help you improve your programs and learn more about what works for your customers. Our clients can sign-up to the initiative here.
Request a demo with us today to find out how we can help you refresh your email campaigns and website this new year.
