Do you find the idea of email automation daunting? Well, you shouldn't! Because the right email campaigns can help you get awesome results in your business. This week on the podcast we chatted to Chelsea Martinus from Black Girl Boss Collective, who shared the best cart abandonment emails and tips to help you retarget your audience and increase your sales.

Ready to find out Chelsea's best-kept secrets?

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

(3:46) Does Chelsea really watch the same three movies every New Year's Eve?

(7:45) What is email automation?

(9:46) Email marketing isn't something you do TO your subscribers.

(11:35) What is a retargeting sequence?

(13:20) What can an abandoned cart email sequence do for your and your subscribers?

(16:18) Why timeliness is important in abandoned cart emails.

(17:22) Why you need to personalise your email campaigns.

(18:35) Why you want to 'nudge' your subscribers.

(19:50) How to create the best cart abandonment emails for each of your products.

(23:05) Subject line of the week with Chelsea Martinus.

What is email automation?

For Chelsea, automation is the key to a seamless client journey. When you're looking to connect with people who are a great fit for your community, you're not just sending them emails to convince them to buy, right? (Right?)

Email marketing is a way of creating a connection with your audience. And the easiest way to do that is through automation.

Why?

Because email automation helps you foster a relationship with your subscribers and connect with them in a way that's authentic. It also helps you produce high-quality content that will get them to reach their goals.

In other words, email automation allows you to build relationships that surpass a transaction and the exchange of money for services and goods. You can use email automation to let your community know they're not alone. This is you showing them they have someone in their corner they can turn to when they don’t know what to do in a particular area of their business or life.

Have we convinced you about the benefits yet?

Email marketing isn't something you do TO your subscribers

Unfortunately, a lot of people think of email marketing as a thing they do TO their subscribers. But it's not like that at all! It's about the subscribers’ journey and their path through your email system - that's the big difference. Creating automated campaigns allows you to take all your customers on the same journey. Isn't that amazing?

And the key to achieve this is to make your emails so good that your subscribers will want to be on our list because they're genuinely looking forward to our emails, rather than being there because they downloaded a cool lead magnet once.

What is a retargeting sequence?

A retargeting sequence is a campaign that gets sent when a subscriber has clicked on a product but hasn't bought it yet. We have a specific email sequence about this that we teach inside our membership, The League. We call it the Tell Me More sequence, and as Chelsea put it, it's probably one of the most underrated email automation campaigns for service providers. Because a lot of people think the automation stops when the subscriber buys. Or when they don’t. And that's not quite the case.

Chelsea explains that if you're running a campaign and presenting an offer you believe in – one that’s going to help people solve problems - then you need to take a moment to re-engage and retarget those people. Chelsea refers to these campaigns as retargeting sequences or click sequences. If you work in e-commerce, you've probably heard the phrase abandoned cart sequence.

What can an abandoned cart email sequence do for your business?

Your retargeting  (or abandoned cart) campaign allows you to check in with any subscribers who clicked on your link but didn't buy. Do they have any questions? Why didn't they go ahead and purchase? Asking these types of questions gives you the chance to receive immediate feedback as to why your subscribers didn't buy. And it might be a very simple reason you can go and fix straight away - like the fact the link didn't work!

But you asking questions works for your prospective customers too because it gives them a sense of security. It lets them know that for you this purchase is not all about the money. You're showing your subscribers that you care about what they think and what's important to them. And you're giving them an opportunity to get all their burning questions answered.

We need to remember that email marketing is about people! And everyone's different - they're in different situations, in different stages of their journey, and have different questions. In an effort to re-engage your audience and answer some of those quesetions you can offer a free call, for example.  This adds another important layer of relationship building. And it gives a little extra touch to let your subscribers know there's a real person behind those emails who cares about them and their success. You getting in touch might give them the reassurance they need to go ahead and make the investment.

What are some of the essential elements of an abandoned cart email campaign?

Timeliness

When it comes to retargeting campaigns, the first to think about (Chelsea says) is timeliness. When will you be sending these emails? Chelsea recommends leaving at least one day from the moment a subscriber has opened her email and clicked on a link (but didn’t buy).

Why?

Because you want to give people some time to think about the offer. But at the same time, you don't want to leave it too long - you definitely want to send them a reminder before they've forgotten all about it. Or before the offer expires!

Personalisation

The second element to consider is personalisation – for the subscriber and for yourself. When creating email campaigns, make sure you use the subscriber’s name if available. You also want to call out those specific issues they have expressed or that you know your offer will be solving.

Add a personal touch to your emails by using the language and phrases you normally use. If you were trying to reassure someone and make them feel better in real life, what would you say? What type of language would you use? You want to infuse all that in your emails. Make it personable. Let your personality fly.

'Nudging'

And finally, retargeting campaigns give your subscribers a ‘nudge’. After all, if someone’s looking to make an investment, they might not buy the first time they go on the site. They might consider it for a while or ask for recommendations from others they trust before making a decision. And sometimes people need a little nudge.

Your retargeting sequence is a way to let your prospective customers know that your offer is the right investment for them to make. It's going to solve their problem. So it's about providing the reassurance to go ahead.

Proof of the fact that retargeting sequences are hugely effective is that Amazon does it. If you’ve added something to your cart but haven’t purchased yet, they nudge you with an email to remind you the product is still in your cart. And if Amazon does it, why shouldn't we all?

How to create best cart abandonment emails for each of your products

If you’re selling more than one product, a great way to handle retargeting sequences for each of your products is to add filters. This allows you to make sure you're not sending multiple retargeting campaigns to the same subscriber for different products at the same time.

Chelsea's strategy is to offer one product at any given time though. This way she know she's always sending the right information to the right people. Would this work for you? Could you cut down on the number of offers you have at any given time? 

If not (and if you're going to run multiple offers at the same time to create different revenue streams), it’s important to create a separate re-targeting sequence for each offer. And if that means your subscribers might get multiple emails, then Chelsea suggests you focus on the most important offer at the time and filter your subscribers in such a way they don’t receive emails about each of your products.

This helps you keep things easier and more streamlined and creates a better experience for your prospective customers. You don’t want your offers to compete with each other for your customers’ attention! In fact, you'd be sending out a series of potentially competing messages which would just confuse your audience.

Subject line of the week with Chelsea Martinus

Chelsea’s choice of subject line of the week is “RE: your delivery”. It's one she received as a subscriber that stayed with her because it worked. She often thinks about how effective it was in prompting her to open the email, even though she hadn’t ordered anything! So whenever she writes subject lines, that’s the one she keeps top of mind as an example because to her it was just genius.

Useful Episode Resources

About Chelsea

Chelsea helps Black women business owners to automate their email marketing so they can build communities and make more sales online. You can find Chelsea on her website, on Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube. And here’s the link to join Chelsea’s email list.

Related episodes

Email Marketing Automation – 6 Automations You Should Have In Your Business.

Using Email Marketing to Build a Profitable Business – a Success Story from a Member of The League.

How to amplify email campaigns, Clate Mask from Keap spills the beans.

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