
Email marketing for e-commerce - charlieirish
https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/email-marketing-ecommerce
======
SteveGerencser
I work with several clients that between them send roughly 1 million emails
per day, every day, and we are small compared to others I know. They fully
understand that there are people like most people here that hate email
marketing of any kind. But the response rate to those emails is significant.

On an average day they get a 15% open rate. Click rates and purchase rates
step down at each stage depending on the purpose of the email, the offer, etc.
But that is 150,000 people every day opening at least one email from one of
these businesses.

While the 91% stat is probably pure fantasy, the number is far higher than
anyone would want to believe. eMail simply works. It is a large and vital part
of many businesses.

All of our lists are double opt-in so there is NO WAY you got on it by
accident. We also aggressively clean our lists. Don't open an email in 30
days? You get automatically moved to a different funnel. Don't open an email
in 90 days? Yet another funnel. 6 months? Off the list entirely. There is an
entire process behind this.

We don't want to send emails to people that don't want them any more than you
want to get them. Bad lists create delivery issues and get you sent into
automated spam filters by providers like GMail. They aren't sent to harass
you, they are sent because they work.

~~~
paxy
How do you know whether users have opened an email or not? Or do you mean
interacted with the email (i.e. clicked a link)?

~~~
snowwrestler
Unless they're base64-encoded, images in emails must load off a web server. By
customizing the image URLs per recipient, the system serving those images can
tell who saw the email.

It's not perfect because:

\- Some preview functions load images, even if the email was not actually
opened, and

\- Some email clients block images from loading by default, so it's possible
for the user to open and read the text of the email without triggering an
"open" signal.

Clicks are much more reliable signals of intent, but there's far fewer of
them.

------
chadash
> 91% of customers want to hear from the companies they do business with. It’s
> unavoidable in the modern e-commerce marketing world.

The quote is referring to email marketing. This seems pretty misleading. I can
believe that 91% of people want to hear from _some_ companies. But I'd bet
that most people are not interested in hearing from _most_ of the companies
they do business with.

There's a simple solution to this. It's called opt-in, and it's not uncommon
(although I wish it were ubiquitous). If I check a box (that is by default
unchecked) saying I want marketing and promotional emails, by all means send
them my way. But I abhor being automatically signed up for emails just by
nature of the fact that I made an online purchase.

~~~
ams6110
Yeah, that's how I feel too. When I get an email such as:

> Hey {{ first_name }},

"Hey" isn't a salutation I want as a customer. We aren't friends.

> We miss you.

Bullshit. This is an auto-generated email. Computers don't "miss" people.

> It's been a while since we've seen you. We know you get busy ...

Yes, and now you're interrupting my busy day

> ... but we'd love to see you again soon. In fact, come back and visit us in
> the next 5 days and take 15% off your order.

If you did a good job with my last purchase, I'll come back when I need
something.

50/50 chance at this point that I hit the spam flag.

~~~
jaccarmac
Most places are pretty good about sending unsubscribe links these days.
However, I ran into a truly awful exception late last year with TaskEasy. For
those who don't know, TaskEasy coordinates lawn care and similar services
using independent contractors. I was happy with the service I received, and
didn't even have to sign up for an account to order it. Then marketing emails
started showing up. The unsubscribe link takes you to a login page, but since
I never registered this means I have to create an account purely to opt out of
spam emails. It's a really dark UI pattern and I'm disappointed in TaskEasy
for implementing it.

~~~
awalton
> Most places are pretty good about sending unsubscribe links these days.

Yeah, but unfortunately companies are also really, really, really good at
putting you on mailing lists/ADLs that you _never_ , _ever_ would have signed
up for on your own.

I went to a coffee shop in Palo Alto, bought a coffee, paid by Square, found I
was now on one of their Square Marketing ADLs. Never asked for it, never would
have asked for it, would have said "Hell no" if I were asked. Flagged it as
Spam. Seriously considering never visiting that coffee shop again, but have at
the very least switched to paying by cash...

Seriously, cut the bullshit. I don't want to be signed up to your list just
because I bought something. _Ask_ me if you want me on your list - if it's
something I care enough about, I'd actually be okay with it.

~~~
jaccarmac
Oh yes, the Square thing is horrible as well. Sign up to get an email receipt
once and now everyone you pay with that card can send you spam.

------
dandare
As an aspiring SaaS founder, I was surprised how hard email marketing (EM) is.

My questions so far: 1/ ROI - how much of a difference can good EM make as
opposed to bad EM or no EM? Should I not rather focus on improving my product?
2/ What is the low hanging fruit? 3/ What are some of the tools I should be
using? If my payment management is in Strip, how do I integrate it with the
CRM? [answer: [https://stripe.com/works-
with/categories/crm](https://stripe.com/works-with/categories/crm)]

~~~
DanHulton
1) Really dependant on the product/industry, but a bunch of numbers I've seen
(and I've been looking into it a lot lately), have claimed from 10-40% trial
to paid conversion increase by improving your onboarding emails. (Though the
high end has come from also offering things like concierge onboarding to
certain amenable customers.)

Improving your product's important, but you have keep in mind that the product
is not the business, and a 10% improvement to your product likely won't have
anywhere near the effect that a 10% improvement in your marketing will.

2) Sending a single welcome email with first steps that can be used as a
reference, sending "trial ending" emails to remind people that their trial as
running out (and offering an extension, usually), and 30-90 days after expiry
emails offering a trial extension in case they got busy (happens very
frequently) or asking for info why they didn't decide to go with your product.
Anything above that, you want to start getting into tracking user lifecycle
events and customizing your onboarding to that, and in fact, once you start
doing that, you can start improving those low-hanging fruit emails as well.

3) You can use something as simple as Mailchimp to something as powerful as
Salesforce. It really depends on what part of your funnel you want to focus
on.

One thing people don't tend to get about email marketing before diving in is
that there's no "one thing" that's email marketing. There's newsletter
marketing, where you capture prospects, there's onboarding, there's "regular
update" emails, there's winback emails, there's retention emails. Email's just
a tool, really, and it's applicable and nearly all levels of marketing.

I've really gotten into this kind of stuff over the past few years, and if you
still have questions, I'd be happy to chat with you about it. Email's in my
profile.

------
lvoudour
_It 's been a while since we've seen you. We know you get busy but we'd love
to see you again soon_

And I absolutely love spending an hour deleting a flood of auto-genetated
e-mails from my inbox every month or hunting for that tiny low saturation
"unsubscribe" link (which sometimes doesn't work/exist at all).

The worst offenders are the airlines and travel agencies IMO. I mean I
understand getting monthly e-mails from places like amazon where there's a
multitude of unrelated things to buy, but how many airplane tickets can I
realistically buy?

~~~
DanHulton
I think that example is generalized to the point of uselessness.

A really good re-engagement email would hone in on the relationship between
you and this company, and offer help in some way. Did you buy a consumable
good? Well, maybe you're running out and would like to restock. Did you sign
up for a SaaS trial and the trial's nearly over? Here's a step it looks like
you had difficulty with, our support number, and maybe a trial extension, so
you can really evaluate.

But because the author is trying to write a super general-case email, it
actually turns into something you _don 't_ want to see in your inbox.

~~~
lvoudour
I don't mind getting offers every now and then, but every week or every month
is just too much. I understand that companies are flooding their customers in
the hopes they get that 1 hit every x e-mails (since sending an e-mail is
virtually costless) but it's irritating and it's not worth (for me) the
trouble of sieving through the endless stream of useless junk.

If they want me to seriously consider their offer as an existing customer they
could send me a personal discount and make me feel I'm worth something. But I
rarely get discounts besides the generic ones that apply to everyone (which
you can get just by visiting their website even if you've never purchased
anything from them before). And the auto-generated "relaxed & casual" language
just puts me off, it reeks of kitsch and disrespect.

"generalized to the point of uselessness" is a very apt description

------
philfrasty
Read the domain + title, thought Stripe is launching Mailchimp competitor
(...10/10 would sign up...)

~~~
BMFX
Yeah.... Mailchimp isn't the best play for e-commerce email marketing for
sure. There are better alternatives but I would argue there's a ton of room
for improvements as an e-commerce developer...

------
AndrewKemendo
Honestly the most surprising thing to me was the study that is cited out of
the gate:

 _According to our latest research, however, conventional wisdom is wrong. A
vast majority of Americans (91%) do in fact want to receive promo emails._

 _While 86% would like to receive promo emails at least monthly, 15% would
like to receive promotional emails every day._

Is my personal experience of not wanting any email promotions just way off
here?

[1] [https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/how-
customers-...](https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/how-customers-
want-promo-emails)

~~~
vorpalhex
I'm in the same boat as you. I use a unique email alias for every single sign-
up, so I know who sells my email address or sends me marketing cruft
accidentally. I'm very aggressive in reporting bad actors to their mail
provider if they don't honor or don't have unsubscribe links.

But I think I'm the exception, not the rule, in this case.

~~~
freeflight
Not using aliases I've become very skeptical of unsubscribe links in general,
even if they are in emails of "reputable" and established brands, as scammers
are now spoofing regular marketing emails like that in the same way they've
been doing with PayPal/Battle.net/Banks for years.

Tbh often it does not feel like it's worth the effort, due to the sheer amount
of spam you end up getting the older an email address gets, it feels like
trying to shovel all the water out of the ocean with a spoon.

Are there any good resources out there as to where and how to report such
actors? Does this actually help/change anything? I can't imagine there being
much of a shortage of shady mail providers.

~~~
vorpalhex
The vast, vast majority of spam that I get is from otherwise perfectly
reasonable companies who don't understand the law.

To that end, my steps are:

1\. Try their unsubscribe, give them a few days for it to "take effect" (which
is nonsense, but, so it goes)

2\. Send a polite, but direct email to `postmaster@`, and usually cc
`webmaster@` - it usually goes to somebody.

3\. If none of the above works, pull the full email headers and `dig` around
some to find their MX provider, and file a claim with `abuse@` on the
provider.

That being said, again usually it's an ignorance problem. I have a friend who
helps run a company that does escape rooms, and I had only provided my email
on a release form. However a few months later, I started getting marketing
spam from them to that email - oops. A lot of small companies don't understand
the regs around marketing emails and treat them the same as all other emails.

------
louisswiss
>> Once your customer has made that purchase (and you've actually delivered
the product) it's time to ask for a review. Of course, you don't want to be
the waiter who asks how the food tastes when the diners haven't dug in yet so
you'll want to wait until they've had time to use your product.

Pretty useful overview. Have to disagree with the above quote though - if
you're running an ecommerce company and have shipped your customer a product,
you absolutely _don 't_ want to wait before reaching out with a short,
friendly, aftersales email asking for feedback and/or a review.

The main reason being that you want to catch any potential problems/unhappy
customers early and funnel them into a private feedback channel where you can
sort out their problem in private. If you wait three days to ask for feedback
from an unhappy customer, that's three days where the customer is potentially
writing negative reviews, sharing negative feedback on social media and just
telling their friends that your company sucks.

A secondary reason is that people are nearly always most excited by their new
purchase when they've just received the package. That's why you're almost 2x
as likely to get someone to leave a review/share with friends if you email
them on the same day the order arrives vs. a week later.

Lastly, if you're running an ecommerce brand selling physical products, here's
a shameless plug for my new tool - www.postperk.com

PostPerk is an aftersales tool for ecommerce to help brands reach more
customers. Referral and loyalty programs don't work well for upmarket consumer
brands, so we built a tool just for these companies - nudging customers to
post on Instagram with tailored rewards. Our first customers are seeing
results 2-10x better than comparable tools - increased revenue and repeat
customers, fewer negative reviews, and a data-driven community of a brand's
most engaged and valuable customers/brand ambassadors.

Happy to chat with anyone thinking about how to improve their aftersales
marketing game :)

~~~
jeromegv
Love the idea! My only concern would be to ask them in 2 separate emails to
post on IG and then post a review for our website, but overall its a great
idea. Unfortunately we are still too small to afford that (my website is
Cambio & Co.) but hopefully we can one day!

------
tabeth
Re: "Email marketing"

I wish it was opt-in as opposed to opt-out. The amount of email spam and
physical spam received is absolutely ridiculous. I shudder to wonder how much
electricity is wasted sending unwanted mail and delivering unwanted emails.

Sounds like it'd be a win for everyone based on this guide. Those who want it
would opt in, and the company could focus their campaigns for those who want
it more. Meanwhile those who don't can be left alone.

~~~
zaarn
It's usually opt-in (if it isn't, a lot of jurisdictions allow you to sue or
do other nasty things) but it's ticked by default and somewhat hidden above
and below the ToS/EULA.

~~~
Nadya
Checked-by-default means, by definition, it is opt-out as you are opted-in by
default. It just has to be _possible_ to opt-out and, if opted-in, unsubscribe
at a later date (usually a small, hard to notice link in the legalese of the
spam email).

~~~
zaarn
I think it was a bit of a miscommunication, but yes, it's opt-out then.

------
orliesaurus
Email marketing is a rabbit hole, I remember this one particular instance
where using a discount to re-engage abandoned carts would trigger a purchase,
marking the campaign as a success..only to find out the customers had learned
that they could get away with it and abuse this system to get discounts every
time. Now that's great, they re buying..but we were in practice losing money
on every transaction. That's when we started building better software to block
this from happening. Analyzing customer behavior, understanding if a promo was
really needed, or if the customers were just waiting for the bait. Email
marketing is hard man, you could always do something more..and drag so many
other resources into it!

~~~
dazc
Only times I ever use a discount code is for stuff I have every intention of
buying anyway.

The amount of profit some companies throw away because of some half-assed
split-testing experiment is unbelievable.

~~~
orliesaurus
See - I put stuff in my basket - then keep shopping around, because I need
this one thing - but I don't know if I am bothered to receive the item during
the week rather than the weekend, or for a million other lazy-me reasons -
also I convince myself I get a better deal somewhere else?.. that's why my
e-commerce baskets look like abandoned - and then I get hit with discounts and
reminders, sometimes you can profit by waiting a day instead of impulse buying
things - unless you're running out of toilet-paper or food that is :)

------
byproxy
I know this isn't specific to this particular domain, but the thought of
psychology being used in a way to essentially herd cattle to consume leaves me
feeling a bit cold.

------
fiatjaf
Imagine you have a list of emails from users of your app. You want to send a
one-time notification to them. For example, saying that you'll start charging
for the app in two months (just an example). How do you proceed? I wish there
was an app that would take a list of emails and a Mailgun/etc. API token and
send that one-time email to these people.

~~~
mars4rp
Please forgive my ignorance but how hard is it to write a for loop and send
email to each? Even Mailgun should have a method for bulk send!

~~~
fiatjaf
Well, not hard, I've done that many times, but still, there are thousands of
apps out there for making lists and other stupid stuff, and you're not saying
this on their threads.

------
theuncommon
"91% of customers want to hear from the companies they do business with."
sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, but I agree - email marketing is still a
powerful tool for engaging audiences. Looking forward to seeing how it evolves
in the next couple of years.

------
zizee
Shameless self plug: if you are interested in more email marketing articles,
perhaps you'd be interesting in my "Email Marketing Weekly" newsletter.

[http://emailmarketing.ezinews.com](http://emailmarketing.ezinews.com)

------
Thomaschaaf
What technical solution is there to writing it yourself that is on-premise and
if possible open source and extensible?

I have found mautic but not much else.

------
aogl
"Email marketing lists naturally degrade by about 22.5% every year".

I would have thought that it would have been much higher than this!

------
jacquesm
91% of all statistics in marketing documents are pulled from posteriors. I
_definitely_ do not want to 'hear' from the companies I do business with
unless I specifically ask for it. No better way to lose me as a customer to
pester me with 'opportunities' and 'ways to improve my business' that in fact
mean more sales for you.

