Automated Email Marketing

Statistic:  According to a recent report by Salisfy, 82% of potential customers expect to see at least 3 reviews on a product before purchasing.  What if you don’t have any reviews?  How can you get them? Many online shopping carts are making use of Automated Emails together with Personalization (or Contextual Marketing) to boost sales.   An example is:  Mary logs on to your site and puts an item in her cart.  However, she notices that the shipping will be more than she was expecting to pay.  She abandons that cart.  However, your shopping cart, working together with your email system sends her an email the next day, showing her the item she had in her cart, and offering a discount coupon for shipping, and possibly some additional items to go with what she purchased. Chances are, Mary will go back and place her order using that coupon.  A week after the item arrives at her house, your automated system sends her a “don’t forget to review” email. Another example: John seems to be watching a new product you have on your website.  He’s gone to that same page 3 times in the last week.  Why not send John automatic updates on that product whenever the price changes? These high-end shopping cart features are actually addons that can be added to almost any cart, thanks to the new APIs provided by many of the Email Marketing providers, like MailChimp and Constant Contact.  For less than $100 setup and a small monthly fee (based on the number of subscribers in your list) you can add this functionality to your ecommerce site and begin leveraging it through a combination of analytics, web hooks and the API to create an automated system that makes your customers feel important, frees up your time for other things, and boost your sales by up to 15 %. Want to learn more?  Here’s an article listing features on MailChimp.com http://mailchimp.com/features/automation/