Customer Experience in your Email Marketing Automations with Greg Zakowicz from Omnisend (episode 123)
by April Buencamino-dyGreg Zakowicz is the eCommerce Expert at email and SMS marketing platform Omnisend. AND host of the Cart Insiders Podcast.
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The Importance of Customer Intent
When creating your automated messages, make sure you’re crafting those messages based on the intention of your customer. This way, you’re going to provide them with a better experience with your brand.
Focus on customer intent and where your customers are on their purchase journey regardless of whether you’re creating an email or an SMS message. Make your communication relevant by aligning it to the customer’s intention, no matter if it’s sales-driven or not.
You may incorporate your brand story into your messaging, especially if it’s going to help you connect with your customers. But don’t lose sight of the customer intent and create your content accordingly.
Welcome Campaign Tips
When someone’s new to your brand and signs up for your email program, remember what stage they’re at.
Review the timing and relevance of the emails in your welcome campaign because these will take your customers all the way through to conversion. Give them a good experience and they will most likely convert and buy from you.
Cart Abandonment Tips
Cart abandonment emails are more transactional in nature, and this is where you address obstacles to conversion.
If your brand has something to shout about, such as sustainability, you can add that to your message but still keep it transactional. Think of what matters most to your customer at that point and include that in your communication.
Post Purchase Tips
For Greg, this is one of the most underutilized email series but one of the most effective for customer retention when done right.
This is where you can really engage customers because they’ve already made the purchase and are excited to receive the product or use it.
Create a message that will help your customers have a better experience with your product and your brand, not necessarily to make them buy another product. One example of effective post-purchase emails are product care messages. They make your customers feel like they bought something valuable and will make them feel good about their purchase. Overall, these emails will give them a better experience with you.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with customer experience – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
Go through your own purchase process and do the same thing with your competitors or brands from other industries. You’ll learn a lot by signing up for your own as well as other people’s campaigns.
Also, connect with people on LinkedIn and Twitter and check out community forums. Ask questions and people will give answers or give their perspectives, which is helpful for anyone who’s starting out.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve customer experience performance?
Figure out where the gaps are and then go back to the intent of the customer. When you do that, you’ll be able to identify the areas where you can optimise small things. Over time, the improvements you make to those small things will build up and make everything else better.
And make sure to personalize your messages as much as you can. Don’t overthink it. Make the small changes and see what happens.
If someone listening wants to learn more about customer experience is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
Greg gives us several recommendations:
- Engage with communities because you’ll probably find everything you need there. Again, Slack communities are good because they’re broken down by topic.
- For email marketing courses, check out Shopify Learn. There are courses on different topics and they’re free.
- Go to a conference agenda, find the topics you’re interested in, and see who the presenters are. Then reach out to or follow them on LinkedIn or Twitter to see what kind of content they’re putting out.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in customer experience?
The focus is going to go back to email marketing, and one of the reasons for this is that there is more cost certainty with email.
Aside from this, SMS marketing is also growing, so make sure to check that out as well.
Interview Links
Greg on Social media:
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