Email is a key channel for winning new customers and turning them into loyal, long-term shoppers. In fact, customer acquisition via email has quadrupled over the last four years, according to research from Custora.
SmartFurniture.com, an online-only furniture company, leverages a series of targeted emails to connect with customers throughout their unique browsing and buying journeys, acquire customers and drive incremental sales. As of June 2013, the email series was accounting for approximately 8% of overall monthly revenue, according to T.J. Gentle, CEO of SmartFurniture.com.
Advertisement
Customization And Personalization Become Engagement Necessities
Message personalization is playing a key role in the email cart abandonment and welcome programs. When shoppers who sign up for this email program abandon an online purchase, they receive reminder emails featuring detailed information about the items left in their carts.
“The majority of the visitors converted with just a simple reminder that they had browsed the site previously and left items in their carts,” Gentle explained. In fact, the anti-abandonment campaign is where SmartFurniture.com sees “the quickest lift in sales and engagement. We’re able to recapture our visitors’ attention, and get them back into the purchasing mindset.”
A welcome series created to engage new mailing list subscribers also helps drive ongoing engagement and incremental sales. Once consumers enter their email addresses, they receive a follow-up message inviting them to provide their email content preferences, Gentle noted. “From there, we can see what interests consumers then send more targeted and relevant messages.”
Focusing On Valuable Experiences
Small incentives are included in email messages sent to consumers in the latter stages of browsing and buying, according Gentle. But overall, SmartFurniture.com focuses on promoting unique product attributes and business strategies to stand out via email.
For instance, SmartFurniture.com promotes the Design-on-Demand visual customization tool via email by showing the variety of product configurations, Gentle said. “A message may state: ‘Product A is available in 5,000 different styles — customize yours today!”
To convert site visitors into customers at a faster rate, SmartFurniture.com recently implemented a post-purchase and loyalty email campaign. Together, Gentle explained, these programs help drive both future sales and long-term engagement.
