“What on earth are they doing with their eCommerce email marketing that I’m not? What’s their formula for success?” These are questions that would plague your mind when thinking of how to reach, or even surpass, the level of success that 8-9 figure eCommerce stores have achieved.
When it boils down to hitting that 8-9 figure benchmark most stores are vying for, we’ve seen a pattern on how they do things differently and we’ve summarized this in THREE major points:
- 8-9 figure eCommerce stores trained their minds to adopt a different mindset
- They have optimized and fine-tuned content.
- And finally, they think on a wider perspective
So let’s crack open these 3 major points and see what makes these 8-9 figure stores tick.
8-9 Figure Store Owners Adopt a Different Mindset
The first major component of the 8-9 figure eCommerce success formula—breaking the mold of conventional mindsets. They understand the distinction between email marketing to their eCommerce brand as a “nice to have” and a “must-have” for their business.
In fact, for the 8-9 figure stores we’ve worked with, email marketing was one of their main strategies for hitting those figures.
Here are 3 things they’re doing differently when setting their mindset to email marketing:
- 8-9 figure eCommerce stores jumped onto supercharged advanced strategies while still not foregoing the basics.
- They lay down a solid foundation, and they are way past the“set-it-and-forget-it” mindset of yesteryear.
- Last, but not the least, they make use of intuitive email providers and look into the right data to seek out the “gaps” in their email marketing strategy.
Email marketing platforms, like Klaviyo, allow eCommerce businesses and dropshippers to take a deep dive into the lifetime value data of your customers or CLTV.
8-9 Figure Store Owners Optimize and Fine-Tune Their Content
As for the second major component of the eCommerce success formula—continuous optimization of content. Here are 3 rapid-fire techniques 8-9 figure eCommerce stores are implementing in their success formulas that you can and should too:
1. Listen to Data—be fearless when A/B testing
Accurate strategizing means data-driven decision making. Numbers don’t lie, so pay close attention to the results of your marketing efforts.
A great example of this was during last year’s BFCM. We listened to the numbers which helped us narrow down on the best strategies to use during the 7-day sale.
Based on a year of A/B Testing, we poured everything we got into those 7 days and earned $831,000 for our clients in 424 campaigns.
Overall, we contributed an average of 23% across all clients during the sales craze.
Using the 6-Step Email Marketing Sequence, we incorporated our data-driven decisions into the holiday flows we set up for our clients for those 7 days.
THE RESULTS—our flow revenue attributed to 56% ($469.7k) of total email revenue. And again, that was generated in 7 days!
Here are the specifics of what we test when A/B testing emails:
- CTA
- Sending Time
- Product Blocks
- Email Layout
- Subject Lines
So how do you run a solid A/B test?
As long as you have a clear test framework and you have time, you can run as many A/B tests concurrently as you’d like to answer your hypotheses.
The key here is manipulating only a single element at a time to draw a firm conclusion in your final results.
Plus, it’s important to always look at the correct metrics for each AB Test. For example, if you plan to test open rates, you would test elements like send time or subject line, and not the CTA button.
You’ll be surprised that A/B testing and conversion optimization are not one in the same. What’s the difference? Read on about it here.
Remember— how 8-9 figure eCommerce stores are able to unlock the full potency of their success formulas is through brutal A/B testing.
2. Segment and Personalize
Engaging with your customers should go beyond just including their first name in your emails. It’s way more than that. Dive deeper into your customers’ demographics. Analyze their buying behavior, and preferences then incorporate those into your emails. This is one of the most important spices in the eCommerce success formula, as it helps with your content relevance and accuracy.
Based on that data, organize them into the appropriate lists. This makes your email marketing more accurate and relevant to your target customers. Give your customers a more personalized experience for higher engagement with your brand.
Segmented campaigns, when done right, can boost your email revenue by up to 760%, fetch you an up to 14.06% increase in open rates, and 54.79% higher click rates.
Try these 4 Advanced Segmentation practices 8-9 figure businesses are currently using:
A. Product Interest
What products are your customers interested in? Study and group together customers with similar interests.
B. Frequency of Purchase and Last Purchase
Base your emails on what your customers bought last or frequently. Doing so helps you come up with product highlights relevant to those particular products.
This is a great way for up-selling and cross-selling your other products. Especially products that don’t receive as much attention but might be something your customers would consider buying.
C. Price Sensitivity
Create a segment for your customers who are sensitive to prices. These customers are most likely waiting for a special discount or sale. They would be the best targets for emails notifying them of upcoming sales.
This way, you can get customers who are both okay with making full-price purchases AND discounted purchases to buy from you.
D. Exclusion Segments
You can’t have them all, and that’s okay. Learning which customers are simply not interested in your store can help you avoid sending emails that can potentially damage your brand’s reputation.
And like in the point above, this can help you allocate your resources to the right customers.
3. Optimize Flows and Deliverability
What’s the common email marketing mistake that most eCommerce businesses make?
They set it—then forget it!
Treating your email marketing like it’s a turkey dinner in an oven will only backfire. And much like ending up with a burnt turkey and an empty stomach, your business will be left burnt out from inefficient email strategies and deprived of proper ROI.
Setting up a series of emails aimed to nurture your customers towards a specific action can go a long way. For example, according to the Baymard Institute, 69.23% of shopping carts are abandoned.
Not optimizing your cart recovery flows would have you literally leaving money on the table.
But there’s hope! 54% of shoppers would return to their carts and complete their purchases, especially if those products were offered at a lower price. All they need is a gentle push.
Email Marketing Automation for Efficient Optimization
Automated emails are the best for giving that small push. Having 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than other marketing messages, these emails are designed to remind your customers about their abandoned carts.
In most cases, that’s more than enough to get your customers to finally get their carts all the way through checkout. So it’s no surprise that 8-9 figure eCommerce stores would have automation mixed in their success formula.
Optimizing the deliverability of your emails means you’re pumping out great content which usually gets you better quality conversions. And better quality conversions play a big role in helping you reach those 8-9 figures.
Yes, great content and impressive, eye-catching email design is important. However, it’ll be all for naught if your emails don’t get delivered in the first place.
So aside from creating precise segments, 8-9 figure stores also invest in a lot of AB Testing to further fine-tune and optimize the already personal approach.
How are you faring against the competition? We detail the 6 tell-tale email marketing benchmarks of 2020 here based on industry. You’ll be able to pinpoint which areas you’ll need to focus on whether it’s landing in the right inboxes or enticing them to buy more after their last purchase.
Exercise: How to Segment Based on Interest and A/B Test
Product — Ladies’ corporate handbags
Segment — Customers who have viewed a certain product category at least once or twice over the last month
Email — Remind the customer that there’s something in this category that they LIKE. You can also throw in a few product recommendations of similar products that are lower in price.
A/B Testing idea — Since you already know that they are interested, you can tweak other elements in the email that will help guide the customers to the end goal you want: PURCHASE.
A/B testing never ends, guys. Here’s a quick actionable you can try: Try comparing animated CTA buttons and plain ones.
Most of the time, the smallest tweaks can surprise even the most veteran of marketers.
8-9 Figure Store Owners Think on a Wider Perspective
Finally, the third major component of the eCommerce success formula is a broader perspective. 8-9 figure store owners track unconventional data that not all stores have even begun to look at!
They go beyond tracking monthly revenue and the percentage that comes from email marketing and other channels. Again, while these are important, the data is not very farsighted.
Looking at the revenue you reap per month is important, but it can be limiting.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Knowing your CLTV means you can focus on the active customers and study which customers have the highest growth potential.
This way, you can confidently allocate your resources towards genuine and organic customers in your lists. Avoiding inactive contacts makes your efforts more efficient and sustainable.
8-9 figure store owners KNOW that the higher your CLTV is, the more you can put into advertising/paid strategies to scale up faster using your cold traffic.
This means that the faster you can increase your CLTV, the faster you can scale. And when you use email marketing to increase your LTV, the profit margins are extremely high.
If you’re not focusing on your LTV yet, you are definitely leaving money on the table. That’s why most stores are not yet at the 8-9 figure mark.
The bottom line is that if you’re not yet tracking your CLTV, you’ve been missing out on some huge potential income.
It’s about doing everything in parallel to ensure that you meet your goals: higher conversion rates, higher CLTV—until you scale to 8-9 figures!
Remember, growing your business into one of those 8-9 figure juggernauts means focusing more on data-driven decision-making and strategizing. To do so, pay closer attention to your customers, their behaviors, and preferences.
And finally, optimize your flows and deliverability based on customer data. This then ties all the way back to making data-driven actions.
Email marketing can be crucial in making this formula for eCommerce success work. Kick up your email game by filling out our form (it’ll only take 5 minutes) and scheduling a strategy call with our LTV and email experts!
Resources:
Campaign Monitor – Guide to Segmentation in Email Marketing for the Evolving Marketer
Campaign Monitor – 4 Advanced Tools to Track and Improve the ROI of Email Marketing
