Email marketing is essential to any eCommerce business, no matter the size. To master email marketing, you need to have the right tools to gain maximum exposure with current and prospective customers.
As a digital marketing specialist for an eCommerce brand, I know a multi-pronged email marketing campaign is essential.
When I began my initial work in this field, I tried Mailchimp — for a few reasons. First, it offered tools for the easy collection of email addresses from current and prospective customers.
MailChimp also allowed me to easily upload lists and keep them updated, accurately. When I was just getting started, manual campaigns were easily maintained, but only if you were able to waste time closely monitoring them.
I realized that our company needed more than just newsletters and promotional emails. I wanted to include more automation to allow for more transactions, leading to greater revenue and more customers.
As our company started to expand, we outgrew Mailchimp’s capabilities. My customer segments and data started to grow at a rapid pace. I was drowning in work, and my effectiveness was waning. As a one person marketing team, it became impossible to manually manage all these lists, campaigns and emails. My boss demanded endless increases in our revenue.
In order to give my boss the results he desired, I needed an automated tool that required little human intervention. I wanted to use Workflows to create more automated campaigns, but with Mailchimp, the automation tools for eCommerce limited, and with little opportunity for customization.
As a marketer, I know the value that customization brings to the table.
I knew I needed a change, but I didn’t want to just leave Mailchimp behind. I had already put a great deal of effort into my lists and content. So, I started researching other options, eventually narrowing it down to Bronto, Remarkety, TriggMine, and a few minimalist free tools.
Bronto is a decent solution for multichannel marketing automation, but I didn’t have the budget to use it. The price was very high (the solution perfectly fits enterprise business) and I didn’t need all their features because we already had an MSB.
Remarkety and TriggMine have pretty much the same email workflows library, but Remarkety doesn’t allow you to create more than one email inside the workflow (which is strange, since, to make them work, every benchmark for abandoned carts or browse abandoned should have at least 2–3 emails to make them work) and was more expensive (starting at $100/month after a free trial.)
I ended up choosing TriggMine because of their unlimited free testing period, seamless integration and a prepared automation library, which saved me a lot of time.
My email automation was taken to a whole new level. Emails were completely automated with real-time data capture and automatically updated lists. I was able to focus on front-end scheduling and then sit back and let the service do the rest of the work.
My boss loved that we could take advantage of unlimited free trial. Once I got started, all I needed to do was install the plugin, which only took a couple of minutes. The capabilities, including real-time emails and data capture, blew me away and were easy to use.
And best of all? No more lists. The segmentation is totally automated. I also easily integrated my Mailchimp account using the API key. I could not believe how much time (and effort) I saved.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that TriggMine charges you nothing until you hit your first milestone of $1,000 in sales via their email automation. Basically, you don’t have to pay until you’ve achieved substantial results, which is pretty cool.
Because the service is focused around eCommerce, I was able to find a template and workflow that worked perfectly for my business. They also allow for customization, so I was able to create campaigns that were unique and personalized to my needs.
As I worked with email automation, I noticed serious results and an increased response from my customers. The product saved me so much time scheduling and monitoring, it was as if I’d hired my own email specialist.
My numbers began to increase significantly. Through my campaigns, I reached an average conversion rate of 21% for browse abandoned emails, which resulted in over $24K in additional revenue in our first month.
Through best customer and welcome emails, I earned an additional $16K, bringing the total to $40k.
Now, instead of managing a complicated email process, I’m able to focus on other aspects of brand marketing and new customer acquisition, while email automation handles the customer retention and brand loyalty side of things.
In closing, Mailchimp is a great product which is perfect for getting started in email marketing. But if you’re looking to advance your email marketing game, you’re going to want an email automation tool for eCommerce.