Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) don’t signal the end of this year’s frantic eCommerce holiday sales season. There is a second wave of end-of-the-year holidays looming, and a holiday email marketing flow is your best chance to generate your eCommerce store’s own Christmas bonus revenue.
If you’re reading this, there’s still time to end 2020 with a bang. You can use some key seasonal email best practices, like a field-tested holiday email framework, to maximize your conversions.
Flow Optimization
First, flow optimization is usually the lowest-hanging fruit.
Once you’ve got your holiday flows set up and ready for the year-end holiday blitz, your eCommerce store should start seeing record-breaking sales in a few weeks, if not days.
But the thing about a holiday email marketing flow is that it’s unique for every store. If you’re experiencing low traffic levels, for example, Cart Recovery or Browse Abandonment flows may not have much of an impact.
If it’s an impact you’re looking for, these targeted post-purchase holiday flows are designed to move the needle for eCommerce brands.
The Post-Purchase Holiday Email Marketing Flow That Works
Let’s say a customer just made a purchase from your store.
Now what?
The customer journey doesn’t end when customers make a purchase. In fact, this is a critical touchpoint for your email marketing strategy, because it’s where your holiday post-purchase flow kicks in.
The post-purchase holiday email marketing flow is one of the most lucrative email campaigns you can run. It generates high open rates, high visibility, and establishes a path to more revenue through repeat buyers.
Flow Email #1) Thank Your Customers for their Recent Purchase
The next best thing a customer can get from your store (aside from their order, of course) is an acknowledgment that choosing your product or your store mattered.
Post-purchase flows start with emails to customers right after a purchase. This is a very crucial step for nurturing customers and keeping them engaged through their product’s journey from your virtual shelf to their doorstep.
This is a Thank You email included in one of ForChics’ post-purchase flows:
Why is the post-purchase flow important? There are a lot of reasons, but mainly because it aims to:
- Build excitement in your customer base for their incoming order
- Remove buyer’s remorse for the order they just paid
- Reduce refund rates
- Immediately strengthen your customer-to-brand relationship
- As we mentioned, it creates a new channel to generate revenue through repeat buyers
Get your customers excited about their order’s arrival! It’s best to encourage positive emotions by reminding them they didn’t just make a purchase — they gave themselves a treat by buying from your eCommerce store.
Also, if customers start to second-guess their purchases, they might cancel their orders, file for a refund, or not order from you again. This can happen in the days between order and fulfillment. But you can reduce buyer’s remorse by keeping them excited and engaged.
The second email in your flow does even more to stave off buyer’s remorse.
Flow Email #2) Remind Your Customers They Made the Right Choice with UGC
User-Generated Content (UGC) is like word-of-mouth. Your best customers act as your brand’s advocates, spreading the word that your brand and your products are legitimately life-changing.
Did you know that 76% of customers are more likely to trust content shared by other consumers than content from brands? And you can capitalize on this sentiment with UGC in your post-purchase holiday email marketing flow.
In other words, the best way to reduce buyer’s remorse and encourage excitement among your customers is by letting your best customers be your brand’s advocates.
And you don’t have to restrict your UGC to reviews. There are a lot of different types of UGC, such as:
- Customer Feedback
- Product Rating
- Customer Testimonials
- Product Review/Demo Videos
The specific objective of UGC is to communicate user benefits to your customers. It should answer their questions of “What’s in it for me?” Hearing the experiences from other consumers like themselves with your products helps make the value your brand offers feel more genuine.
Here’s another great example from ForChics highlighting their customer reviews:
You can also use UGC to create a sense of fear of missing out (FOMO). Humans are inherently social creatures, and FOMO touches on that trait by getting consumers to buy things just because everyone else has it or is benefitting from it. You want to make them feel that they have to have that product, and they’re missing out on something big if they don’t buy it.
Flow Email #3) Take Your Holiday Email Marketing Flow Up a Notch by Cross-Selling
Why should your customers stop at one purchase? Prime your customers to make another purchase by showing them that your brand is the gift that keeps on giving this holiday season.
Cross-selling is all about recommending relevant products to the ones your customers already purchased.
Your best product choices for cross-selling are typically your top sellers or newly launched products. Open your customers up to the rest of your catalog and they might find more things to purchase.
Pair your cross-selling with more UGC to make your recommendations feel more enticing. Emphasize the value of the highlighted products.
Adding a cross-selling sequence to your post-purchase emails is simple but very effective. In fact, it’s one of the main strategies we use for eCommerce brands. We set up a cross-selling flow that recommends products that are popular, newly launched, or relevant to what they just bought.
That said, cross-selling isn’t about generating more sales on your star products. We usually use a product that could be second in your bestseller list or a new product that was just launched. This opens up your product inventory to the people who are most interested in purchasing based on their interests.
Other post-purchase emails you can use for your holiday email marketing flow include transactional emails, which top off the customer experience by maintaining close contact with customers who just made a purchase.
2020 is Wrapping Up — Start Preparing for 2021
Like the warm sun after a snowstorm, 2020 is coming to an end. But your eCommerce story doesn’t end when the calendar flips. Especially because other online stores are already preparing for 2021.
If you want to start next year with a competitive edge, read the 8 best practices for killer newsletters for 2021 that you can apply right now.
If you’re going to end this year with a bang, then why not explode into the new year with a great start for your email strategies?
Are you having trouble optimizing your post-purchase holiday email marketing flow? Get a strategy call with one of our email marketing experts by answering a few quick questions.
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