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Email is a powerful medium for marketers because it's personalized, high-ROI, and preferred by customers.
In fact, 60% of US consumers prefer email for receiving updates and promotions from brands, according to Marketing Sherpa. And 79% of marketers say email directly generates ROI.
So what does stellar email look like in practice — and how can it be used for every stage of the customer lifecycle, beyond the basics of newsletters and transaction confirmations?
At Connections 2016 in Atlanta, Joel Book of Salesforce and Chad White of Litmus delivered a session on lifecycle marketing powered by email. Check out their full deck for the complete insights.
Here, I've included 11 examples of email for lifecycle marketing from their presentation.
Scotts Lawns Products uses email to provide "turf tips" to lawn-abiding customers. Scotts creates 355 unique versions of that email across the US, delivering it to more than two million subscribers.
Scotts links subscribers to lawn care and product information specific to their zip code, so the information is personalized and localized — a great way to move customers from awareness into product consideration.
Volvo Construction Equipment has a smart B2B email strategy. It uses a remarketing email to generate leads among dealers who may be looking to sell pre-owned equipment. Volvo sends an email containing product info to dealers, and in turn, tracks all leads in its CRM.
Jewelry purveyor Blue Nile sends a shopping cart abandonment series of three emails over one week. The first email is a traditional "you left this in your cart" message. The second suggests additional products, informed by what was abandoned. The third is a combination of both, thus completing what Chad calls a "cart abandonment sandwich."
Asian diner Pei Wei, whose parent company is P.F. Chang's, offers a buy-one-get-one entree deal if a keyword and email address are texted to the company. In two weeks, Pei Wei generated 18,000 new email subscribers and coupon redemption rates of 20% with this promotion.
These subscribers are now opted in to Pei Wei's emails for future offers — so it was worthwhile for Pei Wei to give a little to get a lot.
Clothing, toys, and home products merchant Zulily runs a successful progressive profiling campaign on its website to send customers targeted emails. "Click the hearts to be notified when these brands are on Zulily," says the message — and customers can "heart" what they're most interested in.
Zulily then uses that data to send alerts about limited-quantity deals for that brand, so customers always receive email alerts for what they care about most.
This month-long welcome series from Playstation 4 meets the goal of getting customers engaged and playing. With links to supporting gear like headsets and extra controls, content suggestions of must-have titles, and introductions to the Sony Rewards program, it's a clear win for onboarding new customers via perfectly timed emails.
Sports fans are a loyal bunch. Subscribers of the Barcelona soccer team receive plenty of digital reasons to stay loyal to the team's email list. After they subscribe, they receive a "Welcome Pack" that includes a free download of digital wallpaper and an online store discount.
Fans are global and definitely not solely based in Spain, so the team goes one step further by using the subscriber's geolocation to segment that region's favorite player and content.
Luggage company eBags sends a highly successful win-back campaign to lapsed customers. It offers $10 off a future purchase with a personalized subject line and preheader text. The discount code is unique to each subscriber.
For eBags, the email is not just about driving another purchase; it stresses creating a favorites list (fodder for future content) so eBags can find the perfect bag for that subscriber.
Mini Cooper sends a reengagement campaign to its inactive subscribers to get them back on the road to engagement and possibly repurchase. The goals: Get subscribers to click, demonstrating that the email address is still active, and reconfirm opt-in permission.
Mini Cooper uses unique messaging to make the click opportunity more fun: "Are you out there? ... Click here to show a sign of life (and visit miniusa.com)".
Dreamfields uses email to stay connected to consumers and healthcare professionals. With a consumer email base of 650K+ and a healthcare base of 50K+, both of these audiences are worth inspiring with the advocacy message.
Dreamfields ran a "Pastapalooza" campaign, asking food bloggers to submit recipes for pasta challenges. This drove over 34,000 pageviews of the program's webpage and more than 20,000 votes cast by customers. This content was perfect for advocacy emails because it showed existing subscribers new recipes made with Dreamfields products and encouraged them to take action and vote.
Email testing and analytics platform Litmus used email to promote its Email Design Conference and drive ticket sales, as well as awareness of the new #LitmusLive hashtag.
Its audience consists of email marketing geeks, so Litmus hid five "Golden Tickets" in its promotional email. How did it hide the tickets? An external CSS stylesheet, which subscribers needed to screenshot and tweet with #LitmusLive. The end result: impressing hardcore email marketing fans and inspiring greater advocacy (and many more ticket sales).
See more insights about email in Chad and Joel's complete SlideShare. And be sure to check out the third annual State of Marketing research report for current data about the state of email.
