Written by Raúl Carrión
E-commerce sales can be analyzed from the following equation:
number of visits x conversion rate = sales
With the following email marketing campaign we will improve these two variables to obtain a remarkable increase in sales.
Improving conversion rate
First, we will select a small number of products to promote. For this purpose, we have to assess whether we can reduce the profit margin in order to use them as “hooks” to encourage our old customers to buy again and thus remain on their short list. In addition, through cross-selling we can amortize this promotional discount.
Once the products have been chosen , we will create a promotion in the online store so that the discount applied is reflected in our product catalog. It is not advisable to lower the price directly, it is always better to use the promotion system provided by the e-commerce platform.
Next, using the e-commerce manager, we will select the products that should appear as recommended and complementary in the promotional products file to maximize cross-selling.
We should also review the product sheets of the products being promoted to ensure that they have quality images and complete descriptions. The data sheet for these products must be perfect.
If we are going to lower the price of a product, it is better to use a promotion, it will have a greater visual impact.
If these products have reviews from previous customers we will gain credibility.
Improving web traffic in the short term
Every online store must have a search engine optimization strategy to generate quality and free traffic in the medium and long term, this is indisputable. However, if we need to increase traffic in the short term we can use other online marketing strategies such as sponsored ads (Google Adwords), actions in social networks or email marketing campaigns.
In this case we are going to carry out an email marketing campaign using our customer database and other subscribers. The key in subscriber databases is the following: the more subscribers we have and the more focused they are on what we are going to offer, the better.
The next step is to design a newsletter to show the products, this can be easily done using a Mail Chimp template, a simple tool for sending mass emails. In this design we will add an introductory text indicating that we are promoting a selection of products for a limited time. Next we will add all the promoted products, where we will include for each one of them:
- Image
- Product name
- Brief description
- Previous price
- Current price
If the discount is large, it helps to add the percentage savings.
Both the image and the product name must be links to the product sheets of those products in our online store. To these links we must add tracking parameters to correctly measure the impact on our traffic and sales with Google Analytics. Google provides the URL builder tool for this purpose.
An example of a link would be:
https://www.humanlevel.com/curso/gestion-de-una-campana-de-posicionamiento-en-buscadores.html?utm_source=promocion-agosto&utm_medium=emailmarketing&utm_campaign=curso-posicionamiento
To indicate that:
- Name of the campaign: promocion-agosto
- Medium: emailmarketing
- Product: positioning course
Now all that remains is to choose the right moment to send the shipment. This will depend on the nature of the product, but as a general rule it is recommended at the beginning of the week and in the morning.
Days after the mailing we will analyze the impact of the campaign, for this purpose we will use:
- The Mail Chimp control panel, where we will see how many subscribers have opened the email, the clicks they have made and much more interesting data.
- Google Analytics, where we can analyze the behavior of the users that arrived from the email marketing campaign, including the e-commerce module that will show us the increase in sales of the products in promotion.
If everything has gone as it should, at this point we should notice an increase in sales of the products offered and to a lesser extent in related and complementary products. For some products, the time taken to make a purchase decision can be more than a week, so we should not be impatient.
If the results of the campaign are satisfactory , we should not be tempted to abuse this type of strategy. Depending on the product or service, the maximum frequency should be 15 days or one month.
From here I invite you to do the test and share with us the results obtained.
