Use Receipts, Rewards, and Referrals to Personalize and Segment Emails

You’ve probably read about marketing tactics, but how are you supposed to keep them all straight? What’s personalization again? And why do you need to segment?

Just remember: Personalization improves the subscriber experience, and segmentation improves the experience for you, the marketer.

While that may seem like an oversimplification, these are important concepts to keep in mind, especially when it comes to success in ecommerce.

In a digital world full of receipts, rewards, and referrals, personalization and segmentation can help you strategize which tactics to use and when.

But remember, personalization and segmentation aren’t mutually exclusive, and they aren’t the same thing. They actually work best when coexisting together in a marketing strategy.

When it comes to retaining customers, ecommerce professionals have several tactics they can use. No one blanket email marketing approach will work for all your customers.

Enter personalization. According to Experian, personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates. There are reasons for that.

Your customers want to be seen as individuals. They prefer marketing messages that show empathy and understanding of their pain points.

As we’ve reflected in our analysis of CM Commerce customer Pastreez, today’s buyers favor trust and authenticity through nurture campaigns with content combined with email marketing that increases repeat purchase rates and average order value—and that recovers customers who abandon their shopping carts.

That might seem like a tall task when you’re marketing to hundreds or thousands of customers. But it doesn’t have to be overly complicated with today’s advanced segmentation functionality.

List segmentation is a powerful and efficient way to separate your customers into targeted groups.

And you can refine these groups based on their behaviors, preferences, locations and many other factors. Marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns.

These segmented lists of customers can then have personalized messages catered to them. And that is personalization working peacefully with segmentation.

In the case of Pastreez, customers that were sent a specific campaign had a 23.57% higher average order value compared with customers not exposed to the campaign.

Additionally, customers targeted by the campaign made 2.56% more purchases than the rest of the brand’s customers.

Repeat and loyal customers are the best for your business, here’s why: It’s easier to sell to engaged customers who purchase repeatedly. Also, repeat customers tend to spend 3% to 15% more than new ones.

Receipts, rewards, and referrals

Here, we will detail three tactical areas worthy of personalization and segmentation using existing customers as the test case:

• Email receipts
• Email rewards
• Email referrals

Use receipt personalization and segmentation to your advantage.

Email receipts are often overlooked in email marketing, but they’re actually extremely effective, especially when it comes to increasing sales. And of course, customers are some of the most engaged subscribers you have.

Our own open and click rates data support how captive and interested customers are in tracking and confirming their purchases—and uncovering new deals for future purchases.

The following receipt example from Huckberry shows how much depth you can have in your receipt while conveying ideas simply and easily.

Source: Really Good Emails

Here, Huckberry shows gratitude for the order—and gives an incentive for referrals by offering credit. If customers share the info, Huckberry hopes it will increase its brand awareness and gain sales from others.

Furthermore, the receipt doesn’t end with buying and shipping information.

It shows off other trending products the buyer may have already viewed in hopes of driving more sales.

Our own CM Commerce data show that receipts are a highly effective area of conversion.

Over 30 days in the summer of 2018, our merchants saw an additional $600,000 in revenue from using segmented receipts.

Receipt emails have some of the best open and click rates—and our functionality allows for advanced segmentation.

Learn how to segment receipts in CM Commerce.

Remind your most loyal buyers about rewards.

Just how loyal are your customers? Are they willing to try your new products? A free reward email will help you test.

Keeping repeat customers happy keep them loyal. But sometimes they might need a little reminder to try something out—even if the reward is something you’re giving for free.

In this example from Beardbrand, the company creates urgency in its subject line.

Source: Really Good Emails

Beardbrand uses a time constraint of “another 48 hours” to encourage conversion, otherwise it’s gone.

If the customer uses the code and takes the product, then you’ve confirmed the test works and your customer can be placed in a highly loyal segment (or some another list you’ve designated for this test).

There’s also a link to shop other products in case that free one doesn’t do the trick. Remember, always give your customers options.

Don’t forget about referrals in your personalization emails.

It never hurts to ask your customers, especially your most loyal ones, to refer your products to friends and family to increase sales. It’s a great way to gain new leads with minimal effort.

Requests for referrals can be part of your receipt segmentation marketing, or they can be central to your reward emails.

Like most incentive-based marketing techniques, the question you have to answer is: What’s in it for them?

Here’s a simple example from the foodie lifestyle commerce site Food52.

Source: Really Good Emails

The message is an easy one to grasp: We’ll give you and your loved ones a discount when you complete the referral.

Food52 doesn’t lead with this ask, but rather wraps it within an existing order confirmation.

And look at the tone it uses in the referral ask. It’s gracious. It give thanks for the customer—something you can easily emulate in your own marketing.

Everyone gets something. Win-win.

Wrap up

Making emails personalized and targeted to diverse customer lists can work together really well.

Advanced features, including those found in CM Commerce’s receipt segmentations, allow for strong open rates that lead to increased conversions for additional revenue.

Look to these tactics for help:

• Use receipt personalization and segmentation to your advantage.
• Remind your most loyal buyers about rewards.
• Don’t forget about referrals in your personalization emails.

From welcome emails to re-engagement campaigns and beyond, we seamlessly integrate with your ecommerce platforms—Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce—so you’ll have all the features you need to exceed your goals.

You can use CM Commerce, not just for segmentation and personalization, but also for your receipts, rewards, and referrals—any time.

CM Commerce features:

• Pre-made conversion campaigns to recover revenue from abandoned carts
• Follow-up segmented and personalized emails for cross-selling
• Product reviews that spotlight your happy customers and build trust (and sales)
• Automated feedback to increase repeat revenue
• Ready-to-go templates or custom versions, coupons, and rewards with your branding

Try CM Commerce today for free.