Email marketing campaigns are a really useful way of keeping existing customers interested in your products and attracting new ones. As long as you don’t abuse the method, existing customers can be tempted back with targeted emails and potential new customers seduced with special offers and coupon codes.
MailChimp makes it easy for customers to subscribe to your email newsletters and blog posts by placing simple sign-up forms in a website’s side bar. MailChimp provides reusable email templates that can be customised to suit your requirements. The system is very straightforward, but what a lot of MailChimp users don’t realise is that there is a ‘hidden’ feature within the software that allows you to track orders generated by a MailChimp marketing campaign. This feature is called ecommerce 360.
Having the inside scoop on what your customers are buying means you can better target their needs in future email marketing campaigns. Say for example you sell pet products and one of your customers places an order for cat food. An email a few weeks later to let your customer know you have special offers on the brand of cat food they purchased could encourage them to place another order. Targeted emails containing a special offer coupon are also a good way to gently tempt customers back if they haven’t bought anything for a while.
Auto responder emails are a useful way to ‘drip’ information to customers. The ecommerce 360 feature allows you to target specific groups of customers with helpful information relating to the products they purchased. Say, for example, your customer bought a cat flea treatment. You could set up an auto responder for all customers buying this category of product. This could provide them with helpful information about how to use the product and the best ways to get rid of pet fleas in the home. You could also suggest other products they might find useful.
Follow-up emails help to build a good relationship with the customer. By providing them with useful, product related information you are showing them that you care, which will encourage them to come back and make further purchases.
The ecommerce analytics feature of MailChimp works with all of the main shopping carts, including Magento and WooCommerce. However, you will need to install a plugin to access the features and, depending on which shopping cart you use on your ecommerce website, there may be a charge. If you discover that your shopping cart is not supported, you can contact MailChimp and ask them to add support. Alternatively, developers can create their own plugin!
Once the shopping cart plugin is installed, MailChimp 360 tracks data when a visitor makes a purchase on your website and the shopping cart is completed. Different shopping cart plugins generate different amounts of information, but all information harvested is incredibly useful and can be accessed via your MailChimp dashboard.
Existing information not associated with MailChimp can be imported from your shopping cart system. This will get you off to a flying start by providing you with data to kick start an email marketing campaign. If you use Magento, this happens automatically via the MageMonkey feature, and if you use WooCommerce, WooChimp integrates your data.
MailChimp’s ecommerce 360 feature is really useful for ecommerce websites. Having the ability to track customer purchases and use that information to target them with product specific emails is a great way to generate repeat orders and build a happy, productive relationship with your customers.
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