Email remarketing—sending targeted emails to customers based on their online behavior or actions—is a hot trend for online retailers in 2015. To help you do remarketing right, we’ve gathered some email remarketing tactics used by top online retailers. Internet Retailer recently published the results of a study of the email remarketing campaigns of North America’s Top 500 online retailers, and here’s what they found.
- Get personal. Personalized emails are on the rise; nearly one-fourth of Top 500 retailers sent more personalized emails in 2014 than in 2013.
- Make recommendations. Product recommendations based on past browsing or buying behavior are a great way to drive additional sales to existing customers. In 2014, the number of Top 500 retailers who recommended products in email remarketing campaigns rose by 85 percent compared to 2013.
- Don’t rely on discounts. In 2014 the number of remarketing messages offering a discount dropped by 45 percent from 2013. As the economy improves, online retailers are relying on other methods to make the sale.
- Share ratings and reviews. Nearly 80 percent of Top 500 online retailers promote ratings and reviews on their websites, but far fewer use them in emails. Last year, the number of Top 500 retailers who used ratings and reviews in their emails grew by 70 percent—but it’s still just 5.8 percent of retailers, so making this move could make your remarketing emails stand out.
- Don’t let abandoned shopping carts be forgotten. Two-thirds of Top 500 retailers send remarketing emails within 24 hours to customers with abandoned online shopping carts; 76 percent sent one within 48 hours. The faster you nudge customers about abandoned carts, the less likely they are to find a lower price elsewhere.
- Reminders are often enough. You don’t need to sweeten the pot with a discount when you send a reminder email; consumers have gotten wise to this technique, with some leaving merchandise in their carts in expectation of a discount. Now, retailers are wising up, too; just 18.1 percent of Top 500 retailers will send a discount offer in the first reminder email, down 39.3 percent from 2013.
- Sign ‘em up. Of course, in order to do remarketing campaigns, you need email addresses. You might be surprised to learn that even among top retailers, the average retailer only has email addresses for 29 percent of its website visitors. To boost those numbers, top retailers are using pop-up windows to ask website visitors to sign up for emails.
- Go mobile. One area where even top retailers are falling short is in creating remarketing emails that function properly on smartphones and tablets. Only about 16 percent of Top 500 retailers use responsive design in their websites and only about 6 percent have emails that are easily readable on a small smartphone screen. Using responsive design has been proven to increase both open and click-through rates, so why not get ahead of the big guys by taking steps to develop a responsive-design website and emails?
