2. Guide to Online Retail Email Marketing Strategy
Welcome to our latest guide – this one focuses on email marketing strategies and advice for
Online Retail Marketers.
In this guide email marketing expert and trainer Maria Khoury will take you through three of the most
successful strategies that you can implement, without trouble, to improve your email marketing
activities.
Implementing a welcome programme
Managing expectations
So many great online retailers fall down on their email marketing by not managing their recipient’s
expectations correctly from the moment they hand over their details.
It is vital that a recipient feels that they are experiencing a seamless brand process from the web sign
up to the welcome email as this will form the basis of their belief in you from now on.
I mean – you wouldn’t employ someone who didn’t match up to their CV and you wouldn’t date
someone who claimed that they were god’s gift yet were actually pretty useless and unreliable.
Not just a welcome message
Your welcome programme is not just a welcome message – it’s the first impressions that a potential
buyer will have of how you deal with your communications and in turn, them. It’s a reflection of your
brand and everything it stands for – you meet your other halves parent’s for the first time and you
don’t wear joggers and smell like the great unwashed. Your welcome programme shouldn’t either.
Almost perfect
I’ll take you through an example of an online retailer getting so close to a good experience but just
falling short. Figleaves have a great site and their email sign up is nice and prominent on their
homepage which is perfect.
The sign up page is great – very clear, on brand and tells me exactly what I’ll be getting by handing
over my email address. It has a clear call to action and doesn’t ask me for lots of details.
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3. Guide to Online Retail Email Marketing Strategy
And then I receive a very bland and
text heavy welcome email. No sign of
the fresh website here – no
personalisation, just a lot of dull
information that has no human
element of connection to it.
There are no clear calls to action just
a lot of links.
This is such a shame after setting my
expectations so high.
Potential welcome programmes
Now we’ll run through a couple of welcome programmes that you could implement yourselves
(keeping those expectations fulfilled of course).
The product specific programme
Why?
To capture people in the process of researching potential products
The sign up:
 The sign up for this programme should feature wherever you have product information on your
site.
 Keep it relevant – If they click on a delivery page then would they like to receive information on
delivery times for their area? If it is a specific product page then would they like to be kept up to
date with availability or price changes? If they are on a page with an out of stock product, would
they like info on alternatives?
 Keep it simple and just ask for an email address – you can always ask for more information later.
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The welcome emails:
1 Time is of the essence with this first email and make sure that if your product areas differ in looks
dependent on their category, you reflect which category they signed up from with their email
design. At the very least make sure that the general look of the site is used, you’d be amazed
how many brands fail to do this. Reinforce why they are receiving the email
2 After the initial email, the next one must be providing them with exactly the information that they
asked for – no more and no less, you want to build this relationship by trust.
3 The third email can dig a little further by telling them that you’d love to offer them a % discount off
their next purchase once they’ve answered some simple questions such as name, products of
interest, shopping habits. Try to limit this to just 5 questions or you could even offer 2% per
question answered and see how far that gets you.
4 In the fourth email ask them if they’d like to join your ‘club’ and become members – this leads on
nicely to the next programme which should take you through to sale...
The membership programme
Why?
You want to keep potential buyers engaged with your brand and products until they purchase
The sign up:
 Offer members special promotions, previews of the latest products, access only areas of content
such as fashion tips for a fashion retailer or recipes for a food & drink retailer.
 Make them feel like they’d be part of an exclusive group by registering their details (and most
importantly always deliver on your promises).
 This page needs to reflect the exclusivity and added value, so show them an example of what
they would be receiving in their email inbox and offer them a sneak preview of the content they
could receive.
The welcome emails:
1 It is vital that the first email is immediate and continues to reflect the exclusive nature of the
membership. Reinforce what they can expect to receive as part of this membership and
personalise the email to them with a first name.
2 At this point you can introduce a preference centre to continue with the ‘all about you’ theme and
ask them what products or areas they’re interested in. How frequently would they like to receive
their information?
3 A week later send them their first promotional discount code and here you can ask them some
more questions about their shopping habits, so you start to build a very personal profile about
them and their buying behaviour – before they’ve even purchased a product.
4 The next week send an email offering two content subjects and ask their opinion on which they’d
prefer to hear about on the website – this makes them feel that their opinion is valued and better
connected with your brand – in return you’ll have greater insight into the popularity of topics.
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5 Finally in the fourth week you can send them a product related email which is totally tailored to
their own preferences and you know it’s relevant to them as they’ve told you over the past few
weeks.
NB. Don’t forget to find out about significant dates to them and don’t just stick to their birthday – if
they’re a Mrs or Mr when is their anniversary? Got kids – when are their birthdays/graduations?
Building a profile of your customers/potential customers
Getting to know you
We’ve actually covered in the welcome programme section how you can start to collect information
about your recipients. As marketers you know the importance of this kind of insight and how it can
make your activities more targeted and connected to your end audience, so I won’t wax lyrical about
it.
Another way you can collect this data is by using online surveys and polls, they’re simple to set up
and easy for gathering little titbits of personal data that could be otherwise a bit tricky to gather.
Online survey vs polls
An online survey is asking more than one question which means a larger investment of time from the
user. You will also find that users today are slightly more cynical as to what their answers will be used
for so it’s imperative that you have their trust already or can convincingly gain it. On the upside you
can ask as many questions as you like and start to build a fuller picture of them than when using
polls. You can also offer them a copy of the completed survey when the information has been collated
– so they feel they’re getting a bigger value in return for their efforts.
Polls are great to gather opinion-based information for a more targeted area such as opinions on
perceived quality between two product brands or whether they’d go for price or quality when
purchasing a product. You can dig down to some gritty detail with a poll as users aren’t as suspecting
as to what will happen to their answer as it’s just the one question – they can also see immediately
how their response stacked up against the masses, which is appealing to their self esteem.
Survey & Poll Tips
1. Make sure it’s easy to access the survey/poll, use your other marketing touch-points such as
email signatures, website homepage, thank you pages for sign up forms and email welcome
messages to link to it.
2. Make it social – link to the survey/poll from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and make sure once
someone has filled it in, they are offered the chance to share it themselves amongst their
social networks.
3. Incentivise your survey/poll – this could be from a free copy of the completed survey report to
the latest gadget or money off a next purchase. You could use a prize draw but the prize
would need to be very appealing as they know their chances are reduced. Instant gratification
is always the most attractive.
4. Test the number of questions – every brand will hold a different level of trust with their users
so some would be happy to answer 5 questions whereas some would only get away with a
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few. Test out the different numbers (you could use two different webpages and A/B split test
them using two email lists) and see what works best for your brand.
5. Bear in mind any legal implications – if you’re unsure of what T&Cs to use for giveaways then
you could always look at what a few other sites use and select elements from each that work
for you.
6. State your intentions – how are you planning to use the information they’re giving you? Make it
clear from the start and offer an opt out from receiving future email communications from it.
You may lose some numbers now but in the future it’ll save you from the junk folder or getting
reported as spam.
7. Know what you want – be clear in your mind what you are trying to achieve from the start,
what is the minimum information are you trying to get from them? Don’t lose sight of this.
8. Always say thank you – and in the thank you message why not ask them if they’d like to sign
up for your newsletter or add your latest sales promotion.
Phrasing your questions
1. Use plain English and avoid jargon and acronyms
2. Try to use short sentences wherever possible. Long questions tend to cause respondents
discomfort and they may abandon the survey.
3. Ask one question at a time- avoid confusing the respondent with a question like 'Do you like
football and tennis?'
4. Don’t influence the answer – questions loaded with ‘should’ can have an influence on this
5. Allow them to answer the question – make sure that the answer format used allows the
respondent to answer the question being asked, as a last resort you could add a ‘not sure’ or
‘don’t know’.
6. Be aware of using yes/no questions – these can be good to spot trends but don’t work for
deeper insightful knowledge
7. KISS – Keep it simple stupid! They won’t want to spend more than 5 mins completing the
survey
8. Softly softly catchy monkey – Leave demographic questions until last so you don’t scare them
off, by then they should be in a good flow.
Don’t forget the happy ever after
Now you’ve done the survey or poll you want to make sure that you can analyse it properly and use it
to have an impact on your future email marketing.
Here’s a checklist of making the happy every after:
 Make sure your survey tool has the ability to collect the data you want and can present it in a
clear way for you to do your analysis
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 Once you’ve collated your responses and done your report then send a copy to the recipients
with a thank you note, and make it prompt
 Make a plan of exactly how you’re going to use the data to impact your email marketing – what
campaigns will you do off the back of it?
 Stick to it!
Retarget your existing database
Retargeting your existing database is a really easy way to keep your email marketing costs down and
turning dead contacts into ones that are active.
Split your database into the following categories and then send a targeting email to each, for
example:
 The opens – entice them to click with a special promotion
 The non opens – change up your subject lines and test different days/times to get that click
through
 The clicks – you know they’re interested but perhaps the price is putting them off or the product
isn’t quite suitable? ‘We saw you looking at x and thought we’d offer you some alternatives’ or
‘Today only – an extra % off x’
 The converted – these guys are prime for either post purchase feedback (if you have product
reviews on your site then link to that and ask them to leave one) or an upsell with connected
product ‘You’ve bought a laptop – these accessories may be of interest to you’.
When you’re retargeting, think about what information you already hold about them and use it to
personalise the subject lines. Even if you don’t have their name you can still use information you do
know such as the products they were looking at or the last time they responded to an email.
Re-engaging with your database works especially well when you are more personalised with them
and show you know what they want, so make sure you’ve armed yourself with insight as we talked
about in the previous two sections.
Truprint case study
In this example one of our customers Truprint wanted to increase the numbers of purchases they had
during an Easter promotion.
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 They sent an email to previous non-purchasers, which was designed to drive them to purchase.
 They then analysed the results and sent a second email to the ‘non-openers’ or ‘non-clickers’
offering them a further discount
 They found that by retargeting their current database they turned a vast number of their non
actives into actives who continue to engage with their email marketing campaigns. They also saw
an increase in their purchases, so much so that they are now looking at new ways to segment
and target their distribution list.
Want to know more?
Author of this guide, Maria Khoury, is one of the many talented and experienced people who make up
the team at Pure360.
Founded in 2001, Pure360 is one of Europe’s top email marketing companies.
Recently listed as the fastest growing email service provider in Europe by GP Bullhound, the
multilingual email platform PureResponse is used by 2000 marketers in over 50 countries.
Pure360 provides brands and agencies, regardless of size, the technology, know-how and support to
run effective email marketing campaigns that have a measurable and positive impact on their
business.
With a simple online interface and in-depth reporting tools, the PureResponse email platform was
created by marketers for marketers to make email marketing easy and enjoyable.
Brighton-based Pure360 has a portfolio of customers that includes Innocent Drinks, LA Fitness,
Rightmove, Seatwave and media giant The FT Group. The platform can also be available as a
whitelabel service for agencies.
If you’d like to talk to one of us then call 0844 660 7873 or email us at contact@pure360.co.uk
We’re also on Twitter (@pure360) or sign up for our newsletter online www.pure360.com
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