Holidays bring sales, but they also bring mass marketing campaigns. Memorial Day is a great example of how emails and Chat Marketing pour into the eCommerce world all at once. It’s any wonder that those Memorial Day emails generate sales when customers are being advertised from all sides during the long weekend.
Is it possible to create an email marketing campaign that is unique and effective in a competitive market? Keeping one step ahead of the competition doesn’t have to be exhausting. With a willingness to dig deep into researching the competitors and consistency in strategizing, your eCommerce business can stand out in a heavily saturated market–yes, even for holiday campaigns.
If you’re wanting to shine in your eCommerce niche and generate sales during this busy holiday weekend then your business will have to think outside of the box. Remember, an inventive campaign idea isn’t enough. Implementing a Memorial Day email and Chat Marketing strategy for 2020 will be the fuel to get your eCommerce business where you want it to be.
Why Your Email Marketing Matters
The popular opinion on email marketing tends to differ depending on who you’re asking. Some eCommerce businesses opt to focus primarily on advertising on social media like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Although efforts can be lucrative, especially during those key social media holidays, it turns out that the money generated from email campaigns exceeds social by a lot.
In a 2016 study, 254 retail professionals in the US at companies with annual revenues under $100 million. About 80% of respondents, respectively, said email marketing drives customer acquisition and retention.
In addition to acquiring and retaining new customers, a successful marketing campaign will:
- Be cost effective. Running ads on social media and more traditional outlets can add up quickly (pun intended). Email campaigns provide a more affordable advertising opportunity to bring new customers your way through proactive emails. Auto-responder emails help to retain customers that have just made a purchase. Even auto-responder emails that are disbursed after a customer fills out a contact form or downloads a free eBook helps to generate sales.
- Add a personalized touch. Customers want to know they are seen, heard, and appreciated. The personalized touch that emails offer are superior to social media posts to the masses.
- Call to action. Emails are a direct line to the customer. The right personalized touch and call to action in a business’ email campaign can make a measurable difference in sales and customer retention. Include a call to action in your campaign. These can include a poll, quick survey, an invitation to a download, etc.
- Provide value. Your email should offer something to the customer that they want, whether that be information, humor, savings, exclusive offers, etc. You might consider holding a prior sale to the main event for your most loyal customers. For your Memorial Day Sale specifically, maybe you want to offer a special discount to veterans or current members of the armed forces.
- Keep improving. Thankfully, there are ways to measure the success of your email campaign. Your business can easily survey how your emails are stacking up against your competition. This chart can help assess your business’ current email strategy’s open, click-through, and bounce rates.
The Best Email Marketing of 2020
There are eCommerce businesses right here and now in 2020 that are excelling in their email marketing strategies. These companies aren’t shy when it comes to hard work and letting their brand voice shine.
Uber
Uber is great at keeping their subscribers updated on the latest news without being overwhelming. The information is brief and any call to action is easy to spot and engage with at the end of the email. Their overall sleek campaign is simple, but effective.
Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is winning at being light and airy for subscribers. The subject line of each newsletter email is instantly engaging. Buzzfeed’s brand voice shines through in their emails—fun and free of starchy unnecessary rambling.
Headspace
The meditation app went the extra mile with their email strategy. Their emails actually have a similar format as the app itself which creates a sense of familiarity for subscribers. The email content gets directly to the point and is always a useful addition or prompt for the app.
Airbnb
This email campaign shows that less is more. Airbnb has a flair for minimalist copy and wide bright space. They create emails that are perfectly customer service oriented and easy to navigate.
The Difference of Chat Marketing
Your chatbot has a lot to say. Are your customers taking the time to listen? Global revenue from artificial intelligence is expected to grow rapidly from $643.7 million in 2016 to $36.8 billion by 2025.
This Memorial Day, your Chat Marketing needs to be on par with your competitors. In a past ManyChat article, Fara Rosensweig wrote that Chat Marketing looks at the entire customer lifecycle, seeing where and how meaningful interactions can be created to drive more committed customers from acquisition to retention using multiple channels to communicate.
If you’re eager to learn more about the stats behind Chat Marketing then you can check out this article from our vault.
Here are some reasons to implement Chat Marketing into your 2020 strategy.
- Chat Marketing engages customers.
- Chat Marketing creates personalized ads.
- Chat Marketing offers instantaneous customer support.
- Chat Marketing generates new leads.
- Chat Marketing increases sales.
The Best Chat Marketing of 2020
Your eCommerce business can really generate serious sales with a Chat Marketing campaign in 2020. Follow a few prompts from these businesses to get your campaign off the ground.
Aerie
Aerie by American Eagle offers customers a fun and personalized experience by helping them shop. Customers are asked a series of questions and then products are recommended to them as a “This or That?” interaction. The customer clicks the one they like until they are able to make a decision and purchase the item.
H&M
Along the same vein as Aerie, H&M also makes recommendations through Chat Marketing. A fun aspect of the H&M system is that the chatbot is able to help the customer create a comprehensive style profile. From there, the customer can shop from outfits that other people have handpicked for them.
Sephora
Sephora doesn’t just make product recommendations, but also offers specific makeup tutorials for customers!
How to Stand Out in 2020
How can your business stand out amongst the vast Memorial Day promotions and beyond this year? There are some vital steps that you should take if you want your email strategy and Chat Marketing to stand above the competition.
Emails
- Have a comprehensive email builder. You may be set up with your ideal email builder. Make sure that you’re opting into any upgrades that are available to you. Investing in your email campaign is well worth the expense.
- Create personalized emails. Does your customer feel like you care? Of course, you can’t make everyone happy, but you can be consistent in the effort your business puts forth. Use the customer’s first name or a warm greeting that is on-brand for your business.
- Include fantastic imagery. Gone are the days of black and white wordy emails. Your email needs to pop! Don’t go too far the other way and throw in too many images. A nice balance for an email strategy is minimal copy and an image. This image can be a GIF, image, or banner.
- All devices welcome. How does your current email campaign look across different devices? You need to know this and design accordingly. If one-third of your subscribers are on Android and your email campaigns only look pristine on Apple products then you’re literally losing money.
- Show your true colors. With Memorial Day around the corner, every business will be showing their patriotism by implementing the American flag colors into their email campaigns. Think of how you can liven your email campaign up. Perhaps you can play around with the saturation, neons, and overlays.
- Be upfront. Make sure that your copy is easy to read and is engaging. Make sure to use a font that works in your favor too. Be bold!
Chat Marketing
- Personalize. Customers may want help right away, but they don’t want to feel like they’re chatting with a robot. Make a wise move by ensuring the representative or chatbot is humanized.
- Include specific prompts. “How may I help you?” is a friendly enough question, but it’s certainly not going to produce a lot of sales. Center your Chat Marketing around asking specific questions. Chatbots have the capacity to include short quizzes to get to know customers’ needs better.
- Recommendations. A great Chat Marketing campaign will recommend products to customers–sometimes even before they know what they want!
Key Takeaways
It’s the perfect time for you to implement an outstanding email and Chat Marketing strategy for Memorial Day. It turns out that 2020 has already produced a lot of marketing pros. There’s no reason that your eCommerce business can’t be part of that crew!
Email copy should be minimalistic, but not boring. Think through the emails that land in your inbox to give you some promotion ideas. Which ones do you click-through and which ones do you delete right away? Think through the deleted ones that don’t make the cut and form your strategy with those details in mind. Yes, your Chat Marketing can have personality. Think of ways to better personalize your customers’ experiences and fine-tune the areas that need improvement.
Let Memorial Day be the holiday you test different discount and sale messaging to see what sticks with your audience. Then, you’ll be one step ahead in planning your Father’s Day promotion plan and ten steps ahead of your 4th of July ads and marketing plan.
We’re excited to see you succeed throughout the rest of 2020 with pristine email and Chat Marketing strategies.
