EP370: The Automated Email Series That Boosts Sales for the Holidays

4:33AM Oct 7, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

abandoned cart

masterclass

shopify

email

sms

sequence

cart

sales

people

super

create

email marketing platform

social proof

buy

brand

abandoned

shopping cart

tracy matthews

dig

thrive

There is an automated sequence that you can use and hook up to your Klaviyo or whatever email CRM platform that you're using. That will help you increase your sales, sometimes up to 35 to 44%. Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching growing and scaling your business so you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this. Welcome to the thrive by design podcast episode 370. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, chief visionary officer of Flourish & Thrive Academy and the host of the show. I am so so excited. We are ready to wrap up this year and end the year strong and help you do that. With marketing that matters. I have another masterclass coming up. This will be more than likely my final masterclass of the year, but you know, I'm an overachiever. And I like to serve you guys. So you never know I might slide another one under the radar at some point. But this masterclass is one of my favorites. In fact, it is one of the best performing masterclasses that we've had. And what I mean by that it's a super highly attended, because I think everyone wants to have a successful holiday season. Most people are head down during this time. So they have a lot to do, and could use all the little extra help to give their brain a break from thinking about what they need to do you strategically especially for all your last minute errs out there. And we have been working intently with our momentum students and our T yc. Accelerator students this quarter, or this last three months, I should say. And the energy is palpable. Our members in that program are just having a blast, they are crushing it. And I want to bring that same vibe and energy to you and kind of dig into what we've been working with them on. And to give you that little extra push over the edge that's going to help you create a wildly successful holiday season that doesn't necessarily require on algorithms to get your work out there and also to work with the algorithms in a way that's going to help you lean in and crush your sales. So if you want some help with that, please join me for this masterclass super simple all you have to do is head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash marketing that matters. We will also have a link in the show notes you can click here over on the blog or you can click the show notes that you're seeing wherever you're listening to the podcast, and get that information for yourself. RSVP for the masterclass join for free. And let's have a ball. It's gonna be a good one this year, I promise. Every time I do a masterclass like this, I am updating and leaning in and making sure that we're getting the most accurate and up to date information about what is working now because I think that is the most actionable and useful for any jewelry brand and or product business owner because here's the thing, you got a lot on your plate, having an inventory heavy business, meaning you have to have inventory to sell can sometimes eat up your cash flow and cause cashflow crunches and all those things. And so what we want to help you do is to move through your inventory, make sales on the regular and help keep your business cash flow positive, all the things. So today, we're going to do that on this podcast episode, you ready, because what I really wanted to do is help you get the most out of all the sales efforts that you're doing. So there is an automated sequence that you can use and hook up to your Klaviyo or whatever email CRM platform that you're using, that will help you increase your sales, sometimes up to 35 to 44%, you want to know what it is.

It's an abandoned cart sequence. And hopefully you have one hooked up. But if you don't have one hooked up, here's the thing. This is something that could be a huge game changer for you. And if you're not recovering 35 to 44% of your abandoned carts, and you have an abandoned cart sequence set up, then it might be time to take a look at what those emails are doing or saying. Because I think a lot of people just they want to set something and forget it and they're not really thinking about optimizing those things. So if you're driving, I want you to save this episode so that you can listen to it later and take some notes. If you're not driving and you're ready to roll then what I want you to do is to plot notepad, even if you're working at your bench or whatever, and take some notes right now, because you might want to think about some of these things to dig in later, or have a virtual assistant or someone help you dig in later to really dial this in, because that's the most important thing. Now, let's talk about this. So when you do it correctly, as I mentioned earlier, an abandoned cart sequence can increase your conversion rates, meaning the number of people who buy from you who have abandoned their cart, by sometimes 35 to 44%. Now, if you couple that with the fact that 75% of customers who put something into a shopping cart, end up abandoning it, for whatever reason, you can see why having an abandoned cart sequence can be super powerful. Here's the thing, people get busy, I interviewed Chris or chelski, on my show a while back, you can find that episode will actually actually have it linked in the show notes as well. And he talked about abandoned cart sequences a while back on the show and why they are so powerful, and how to actually create a good one. So I'm going to reference that one there. But there's a lot of different ways that you can do this for a product based business. But one of the things that he said on that show, he's like, you know, one time my wife, she was checking out, if something that we really wanted to buy, I can't remember exactly what it was. And somehow, like they had a newborn baby, something tipped over, and glass shattered all over the floor or something like that, I'm kind of making this up. This is all from memory, and I interviewed him two years ago, so please forgive me if this is a different story. But it's along the same lines, right. So obviously, she's taking care of that mass. And then life happens, she has to go pick up other kids at school, make dinner, or whatever it is, and completely forgot. And we all hold these little handheld computers, most of us do, at least in our hands all the time with these tiny browsers, that if you leave it, you know, you're probably gonna forget to check out, I think I opened one of my browsers on my phone the other day, and I had 435 different, basically 435 different tabs open. More than likely, the majority of those were things that I saw on Instagram where I added something to the cart. And then I was like, I'm gonna get back to this later or couldn't find my credit card or whatever it was, and then I never bought it. Most of them, I didn't get an abandoned cart sequence either that I saw, or it wasn't effective, because it didn't capture me. So there's a lot of different ways that you can set this up. And if you don't know what an abandoned cart sequence is, I'm going to really break it down simply for you. It's a series of automated emails that go out, if someone initiated a checkout process, meaning they have stuff in their shopping cart, but failed to complete the checkout. So this is an opportunity for you to get those people to come back and shop from you. And so the way this is done is there's technology things like Klaviyo and several other apps, you can also partner this with attentive, which is an SMS app or SMS bump any of these SMS marketing apps, which I would highly recommend, I would do something that integrates with clay vo clay vo also has SMS messaging. But I think some of these other platforms that were newer on the scene have better functionality for SMS. But you can literally create a text and an email flow that gets sent out to the customer that connects to your Shopify store. This is just a another reason why I love Shopify so much, because all of these applications integrate. And you do not have to re input your information. If you're using shop pay. I buy way too much online because of Shopify stores. Because if I don't have to literally pull up my credit card and buy stuff, and I can just enter my email address and verify my basically my shopping cart. I prefer to do that than have to dig up my cart. And the majority of my abandoned carts are typically from platforms that are not using Shopify, where I have to dig out my cart, and I'm not in a place where I can dig out the card. So if you're still not on Shopify, and you're wondering why you haven't been there yet, then please get on Shopify. We even have a free trial that I will list in the show notes. by heading over to flourish, thrive academy.com, forward slash Shopify, get signed up for Shopify and make a plan to transfer your website over. I feel like everyone's on Shopify now. But if you aren't, and you're still using Squarespace or Wix or one of these other platforms, it might be a less expensive option, but think about all the missed opportunities and sales you're losing. Because people aren't in a place where they can just easily pull their credit card out and enter all their details like Shopify will make it so much easier. I guarantee your conversions are going to increase if you start using it. So anyway, with that being said, you need an abandoned cart sequence and you could do it with SMS. You can also do it with Klaviyo or omnisend or one of these other email marketing platforms that have these automated flows that are connected to your Shopify store. So the best abandoned cart sequences that I have seen have taken people on a journey. So typically, within a short period of time, maybe about one to two hours after the cart is abandoned, you want to send them an email that basically is personalized with strong branding, and a brand voice or message that has some fun copy, and an image or images of the products that were abandoned. You don't need a lot of words in these abandoned emails, you can use things that are highly visually driven, then about 24 hours later, you want to follow up with a second email, that second email can say something along the lines of like, we save these items for you, or we put these aside for you for X period of time. So come back and check out now. So this is great for things that aren't like limited quantities or small quantities, but you can send that out if the item is still available, it just automatically goes out and says, you know, grab it now before it's gone. And we set this aside for you for a limited time. And perhaps that's 24 hours, you can just say, look, I set these aside for you for the next 24 hours. If you still want them come get them before we put them back into regular stock. Now, the next email that should go out, and this is typically, the final email is about 48 hours after they purchase. This is optional, but I recommend sending more emails than you feel comfortable with. Because what if you end up getting, you know 10% More of the people to actually purchase from this third email. So this is optional, but the third email is 48 hours after if they don't purchase, you can send this email that include benefits, you can create different types of urgency. And if you like giving discounts, you can also give them a small discount that might push them over the edge. I don't recommend this for fine or luxury product brands. But if you are someone who has a lower price point brand, and you're really just concerned about volume and trying to get things out the door, this extra incentive might be the thing that actually gets them to buy, it's really a great opportunity for you also to provide social proof in these emails. So if any of these are top rated items, you can show the reviews, you can share a customer testimonial. You can also include your social proof icons. So if you've had publicity, you might want to just create a little bar underneath with like the logos of the publications or media outlets that you've been featured in to create that social proof that your brand that people should be shopping from. So another thing that you can also do is include pictures of customers wearing this product, or just quotes from happy customers think outside of the box about how you can make these super fun, relatable and engaging so that people want to purchase that piece. Now here's the thing, as I mentioned earlier, this type of automated sequence can really improve your conversions significantly. So don't discount it. If you are someone who is a little bit Tech Challenge, what I'd really recommend is that you search the helpdesk for whatever email marketing platform that you have, and figure out how to get the setup because this is one of the things that is not a nice to have, it is literally necessary if you really want to make it online, super, super important. Now mostly what I covered here was abandoned cart emails, you can do exactly the same thing in an SMS flow, it just will be much shorter and more focused on imagery in short captions and text, or just a quick like, get them back to the cart, enjoy this small percentage of a discount or whatever that's going to link them back to where they were in the buying process and get them to come back. Super, super important. If you want to increase your conversion rates and increase your sales this holiday season. I didn't expect this episode to be short, but it did. And I think that we are all crunched on time. And we could you know, we don't mind, you know, saving a little time and not listening to as much information but getting great value. So I want to know from you, are you going to set up your abandoned cart emails?

If that's a yes, I would love for you to do two things for me right now. Number one, take a screenshot of this podcast, share it in your stories and tag me so I know you watched it. And number two, shoot me a direct message on Instagram at Tracy Matthews NY or you can head over to at flourish underscore Thrive either is fine. I've managed both of those. And I want to hold you accountable for getting this set up. So tell me that you are going to get it set up. And I'm going to be your sort of virtual accountability buddy to make sure that you get this done. Cool. Cool. Okay, awesome. So if you would like to know more about optimizing your strategy for the holidays and getting more out of the time you have and getting more Out of the marketing that you're doing then join me for my newly updated masterclass and the your strong with marketing that matters. You won't regret it. I promise to bring it just head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash marketing that matters. And we are legitimately going to be doing this I'm super excited about it because I don't know I don't know about you. I can't wait for 2022 to be overstocked. 2023 Fresh, this has been a rough year for me. And I want to end strong just like you do. So I want to hold you accountable. I want to give you all the value and I want to have fun. So let's do this. Alright, Ciao for now. Thanks for listening to the show and have an awesome day.