Email campaigns are an effective way of engaging with customers on a regular basis. All online businesses today are using emails to maintain healthy relationships with their customers. The emails they send are not just sales promotions, but are simply “hello” or “how you doing?” emails. These personalized emails are proving to be very effective in driving traffic back to websites. Here are a few examples of the sort of effective email campaigns that online businesses are using today.

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Welcome Emails

A welcome email is the first email that your brand or business sends to a person after they have just joined your mailing list. You can also send out welcome emails to customers who have just purchased a product from your store for the first time. Statistics show that welcome emails are known to have a massive open rate of 45% when compared to an open rate of 18% for promotional emails.

People who join a mailing list are new subscribers while people who buy your product for the first time are new customers. The purpose of a welcome email should be to thank these people for joining your mailing list or for joining your customer base.

Welcome emails also serve as a means to formally introduce your brand to these people who have shown considerable interest in it so far. Because welcome emails have such great open rates and are somewhat expected from new clients, many brands are now using this opportunity to slip in a clear and valuable call to action that brings the customer back to the website.

It’s also a good idea to send follow up emails to your welcome email. An example would be an email requesting a product review. This is great for a few reasons. Not only will you possibly get more repeat traffic by bringing the customer back to your website, but their review can help recommend your products to other customers.

Abandoned Cart Emails

Research has shown that more than 80% of online shopping carts are abandoned. This means that there is an enormous amount of potential sales being missed due to customers losing interest in products at the very last moment.

Optimizing the website and the entire checkout process to ensure that customers make their purchase isn’t enough to stop cart abandonment. There are plenty of other reasons (some unrelated) why people may abandon their carts. It’s best to formulate a cart abandonment strategy that can be used to win back customers and increase website traffic.

It is estimated that websites that take an interest in their abandoned carts can recover about 63% of the revenue lost due to cart abandonment. Abandoned cart emails are as simple as kindly reminded customers of the goods that they may have left behind in their shopping cart.

Lead Nurturing Emails

Every online store or business must have a proper sales process (also known as sales funnel/cycle) in place on their website. The sales process must be relevant and effective in regards to converting traffic into sales. Directing targeted traffic to the start of a sales process means that a percentage of that traffic will turn into sales.

Lead nurturing is meant for customers that are not moving through the sales process as effectively as planned. Yes, the sales process has all the steps available and ready to convert leads into sales. However, some leads need to be guided through the sales process. An excellent way to achieve this is by email.

Only a small percentage (as low as 10%) of website visitors will buy your product. For the rest of the visitors, you will have to produce a series of nurture emails to entice them further to purchase your products or services. Here are a few types of emails that you can send to customers.

According to Ecango, emails allow your customers the opportunity to get to know your brand. Educate customers by recommending blog posts they may like or merely share useful knowledge related to your products.

Continue to tell a story of your brand and how it is currently helping people. Examples being a product that assists people to lose weight or get fit.

Repeat Customer Emails

All businesses should work just as hard to keep their customers as they did when finding them. Reports have shown that repeat customers are responsible for around a quarter of revenue. You might find it easier to maintain and strengthen relationships with current customers through email campaigns than instead of acquiring new customers.

One of the best ways to keep the business relationship going on between you and your customer is to check in continually. Send an email a few days after the product has arrived. Find out if the delivery went well and if they are happy with the product. If it is a simple product, then maybe request a review.

The good thing about repeat customers is that you already know their preferences. Their purchase history could help you personalize your recommendations. For example, If they did purchase a specific smartphone, then recommend compatible cases, chargers, power banks, and Bluetooth accessories.

Re-Engagement Emails

Your subscribers and customers may wander off into the abyss and not respond to any of the emails above. This could be for a few reasons, but the point of email marketing is to continue to grow a healthy business relationship between the customer and the store.

Such a healthy relationship cannot exist if the customer does not respond at all to any type of email from you. The idea is to spark some sort of engagement and action from your customer. Re-engagement emails give you the opportunity to ignite that spark.

To re-engage, its best to remind them of your store and the relationship you guys have. Making them aware of the fact that you miss them may help bring them back. If there is no response, then offer a discount on their next purchase. The discount can be seen as a small sacrifice in getting back an old customer.

Still no response? Inform customers that you are in the process of unsubscribing them from your email list. They may respond due to not wanting to have to subscribe at a later stage. If they don’t get back to you, then they are considered as inactive and should be removed from your mailing list.

There is plenty of research and time put into active mailing lists. It’s best to continue to keep a healthy and engaging list going. It’s also important to remember that the best time to begin a re-engagement campaign is after about 60 days if inactivity.

When designing effective automated emails, it’s best to continue testing different font, subject line, picture, and media combinations. People react differently to emails, that’s why it is best to find emails best suited for your niche of customers. It is also important to note that your emails must always be optimized for mobile. Most people today would rather quickly view their email inbox on their mobile smartphone instead of booting up their PC.