Ecommerce follow up emails are crucial to secure leads and to foster healthy relationships with the customers. But the problem is, 70% of follow up emails go unanswered.
This frustrates the marketers and pushes them to make the huge mistake of ending their follow up email campaign. As we said, these emails are crucial to convert leads and halting them after one unsuccessful attempt will only bring grief to you and your business.
When you think about it, writing these emails is not that hard, all you need is to write persuasive content. Once you figure out how to write a follow up email perfectly, your conversions will skyrocket.
But, before you start to write your eCommerce follow up emails, you must also know the mistakes that marketers have made in the past.
We have compiled a list of those common follow up email mistakes in this article and we have also revealed how to send a follow up email easily.
What is an eCommerce Follow up email?
Once a customer completes a purchase or performs an action in the eCommerce store, marketers send an email to keep the engagement going with the customers, these emails are called eCommerce follow up emails.
The ultimate goal of eCommerce follow up emails is to continue engaging with the customers with respect to their actions and bring them back to the store to drive subsequent purchases.
Ecommerce follow up emails generally come under post purchase emails, they can help you convert leads into customers, bring back old customers, recover abandoned carts and convert customers into brand advocates. So, don’t miss out on this conversion land mine.
Why are eCommerce follow up emails important?
Ecommerce follow up emails are not just transactional or communicational emails, they have their own benefits that can boost your conversions and sales.
- Build trust with your customers through increased engagement
- Boost your conversion rates and soar past customers
- Skyrocket your brand awareness and facilitate WOM marketing
- Convert leads or visitors into customers
- Turn regular customers into brand advocates and acquire new customers.
- Recover abandoned carts and boost sales
- Increase customer interaction and retain customers
- Foster customer loyalty
- Bring back lost customers through re-engagement
- Thank customers and improve social proof
9 Ecommerce Follow up email mistakes you must avoid in 2024
Not sending eCommerce follow up emails
We will start off with the obvious mistake of them all, not sending a follow up email. You might have stumbled across this article with second thoughts on sending a follow up email, well our answer is, you shouldn’t miss the opportunity.
Most store owners often avoid eCommerce follow up email campaigns, citing, what is the point in sending them?
The point of sending follow up email is to create a meaningful relationship with the customer. It will show that you care for your customer’s presence in your store and help you increase your conversions.
We showed you why follow up emails are important in the previous section and we are stressing it again. There are more to follow up emails than meets the eye.
Some store owners often think that why should we send an email if the customer has already purchased the product. Well, your eCommerce business will grow only when customers make repeat purchases in your store and follow up emails are crucial to drive repeated sales.
With that being said, you might wonder, how to send a follow up email? Well, to do that, you need an eCommerce marketing plugin that is capable of sending post-purchase follow up emails on its own.
Retainful is one such eCommerce marketing automation plugin that can help you setup a follow up email campaign within minutes and help you increase your engagement.
Poor use of subject lines
Now that you’ve learned how to send a follow up email, it is time we get into the emails themselves. Subject lines are crucial for emails, especially follow up emails. Catchy subject lines will increase your email open rates and eventually boost your conversions.
The reason we put this mistake on top is that follow up emails are notorious to go unnoticed, most customers will not look into an eCommerce follow up email. Perfect email subject lines can come to grab the attention of the customers.
But most eCommerce store owners are oblivious to the benefits of email subject lines. They don’t invest much effort in creating persuasive subject lines, this results in poor open and conversion rates of their follow up emails which leads to them quitting their follow up an email campaign.
Don’t be like those eCommerce business owners who didn’t make use of the subject lines. You can see how big a difference they can bring to your follow up email campaign.
No matter how good your email content is, if your subject line is weak, then customers are probably going to ignore your email, so create a catchy subject line and increase your open rates.
Don’t make your subject lines too big, it must be crisp, compelling and it must persuade the customers into opening your follow up email. Maybe, these subject line rules can help you craft the perfect subject line.
- Avoid using ALL CAPS, you’ll come off as rude
- Keep the subject line from 5 to 8 words
- Avoid grammatical mistakes
- Don’t offer fake money promises
- Avoid too many exclamation points
- Stay away from spam words
Follow these rules and craft your subject lines to get the best out of them and skyrocket your open rates. You can also personalize your emails by adding your customer’s name.
Like we said earlier, subject lines influence your click through rates and open rates of your follow up email, so avoid making these mistakes and follow the subject line rules to nail it.
Sending emails with no context
Another major follow up email mistake is not giving much importance to the content of the email. ‘Just following up’ is just not enough to cut the deal, you need to make more sense with minimal content.
Think about it, there are a plethora of eCommerce businesses these days and customers receive a ton of eCommerce emails. So, if you want your email to not only stand out from the cluster but also to entice the customers, you need to craft the perfect content for the right customers.
To craft the perfect content, you must first figure out your buyer personas, only then you’ll know which customer should be targeted with what content.
Imagine, how awkward it would be if you send the first purchase follow up email to your loyal customers. Your relationship with the customer will take a hit.
When you send a follow up email, you must state the context right away, only then your customers will understand why you are sending the email and they’ll also respond to it. Don’t try too much and confuse your customers, jump to the point right away.
Here is an eCommerce Follow up email template for you with simple context,
Hi[Customer Name],
Thank you for purchasing from our store recently. It feels great to know that you have chosen our service to meet your needs. We would love to hear more from you about your shopping experience in our store, we are thrilled to hear your feedback.
To make it simple for you, we prepared a simple survey that will only take a minute of your time.
Your response will mean a lot to us!
[Insert a link to the survey]
We appreciate your time and we value your feedback.
With regards
[Company Name]
xxxx
Follow up email templates as simple as the above one will persuade the customer to respond and your follow up campaign will be a success
But, this can be done only if you know which customer you should target, only then you can improve the quality of your email content and steer away from the mistake of sending emails with no context at all.
Not personalizing your emails
One of the major and common follow up mistakes made by eCommerce marketers is not personalizing the follow up emails.
Personalization is crucial to increase email rates and click through rates. Customers receive hundreds of emails every day, personalizing them will make your emails stand out from the crowd.
It can be the persuading factor that makes the customers open your eCommerce follow up emails.
Not personalizing your follow up emails will make your emails look more monotonous and robotic. This will make it hard for the customers to establish a stable engagement with you but personalization will eliminate this issue.
It will make your follow up emails feel more direct as if you are directly talking to them. But there is a catch, personalization is not just about adding a customer name in the heading, you can do more based on the customer’s activity in your site, purchase history, search history, etc.
Ways to use customer details to personalize follow up email templates,
- Congratulate them on their recent purchase or accomplishment
- Personalize based on customer location and time
- Send educational guides to the products they purchased
- Suggest products based on search history
If you are wondering how to write a follow up email that is personalized, then you can use the above tips and increase your email open rates.
Excluding call to action
The most obvious of all follow up email mistakes is not including a compelling call to action for customers to interact with.
Personalization can help you increase your email open rates, but what about the conversion rates? Personalization is not enough to convert your customers, you need an action-based conversion medium to do that.
This is where the call to action buttons comes into play, once the customers read through your emails, you need to give them something to click on or take action. Not including those action buttons can result in losing valuable conversions.
The above follow up email example has clearly displayed a persuasive CTA that will push the customers to click after reading the content. This is how to write a follow up email with the right CTA that converts.
The above example is an email with poor use of CTA. Can you spot the CTA? Imagine your customer opening an email like this, they’ll probably get frustrated which will impact your engagement. Don’t send emails with poor CTAs like the one above.
If you are wondering how to send a follow up email with the right CTA, then here are some CTA writing tips for you,
- Make your CTAs vibrant and attractive
- Avoid too many CTAs
- Use only 3 to 4 words in your CTAs
- Use more white space
- Use action-based word
- Display CTAs at the right place
So, the next time when you write a follow up email, make sure you follow these rules and create the best converting CTA and include them in your follow up emails.
Stay in proximity to your products
One thing you must keep in mind every time you send an eCommerce to follow up email is to stay close to your product or business. Avoid deviating from your products.
Your follow up emails must always talk about your business, even when you know the customer details, don’t get too personal with them. This might cause your emails to end up in the spam box.
When you know the customer details, send them follow up emails as to how your products can help their pain points and how they can overcome it with your products.
Follow up with educational newsletters, product updates and offer them coupons and discounts for their next purchase and persuade them to drive repeated sales in your store.
Don’t get personal without the relative cover of your products or you might lose your potential customers.
Taking too much time to follow up
Lastly, this is one of the most common eCommerce follow up mistakes done by marketers, taking too much time to send a follow up email.
As we said earlier, your customers are busy, waiting too long to send a follow up email will only hurt you as some other business will seize the opportunity.
You need to get back to your customers within 3days of them interacting with your store. If you wait for more than 3days, they’ll probably forget that they ever visited your store and your conversion is lost forever.
When you send a follow up email quickly, it will show that you care for your customer’s presence in your store which will boost your engagement and customer loyalty.
Persuasive Ecommerce Follow up email templates for your inspiration
Alright, the common eCommerce follow up email mistakes that we saw in the previous section must have answered your ‘how to write a follow up email’ question. Now let’s look at some enticing follow up email templates that you can use in your campaign.
1. ‘How did we do’ Follow up email
New customers will often run into issues and when that happens, the first thing they do is contact the support team for assistance
Now it is crucial that you get back to them promptly with an apt response or you might lose a potential customer.
Once you have responded to them and assisted their issues, you must make sure that they were satisfied with your service. So, the best way to do that is by sending a ‘How did we do’ email like the one below.
Follow up email template:
Subject line – How did we do?
Email content
Hi[Customer Name]
To help us serve better in the future, it would be great if you share your experience with us.
Were we able to sort out your issues? Do you need more?
[insert a rating scale from easy to difficult]
We are looking forward to your response.
With regards
Xxxx
So, the next time if you want to gauge your customer’s experience, you can use this follow up email template.
2. ‘Checking In’ Follow up email
Some store owners just leave their customers on their own after they have purchased their products. Well, you can send a follow up email like this and surprise your customers.
You might wonder, why haven’t the customer returned to the store after the previous purchase?
The reason can be anything or they might be unsure of your products which might keep them away from your store.
Sending a ‘checking in’ follow up email will help you engage with your customers and reassure them which will encourage them to return to your store again.
Follow up email template:
Subject line – Hey[customer name], it’s been a while.
Email content
Hi[Customer Name]
Just wanted to check in as we haven’t heard from you for quite some time now. How are things going? Did you like the products you purchased from our store?
If there is anything that you want to share with us, just hit the ‘Reply’ button
With regards,
Xxxx
You can make use of this follow up email template to get back in touch with your lost customers.
3. ‘Complete a survey’ Follow up email
Once a customer has purchased from your store, you need to ask them about their shopping experience.
This will help you optimize your store for a better site experience. The best way to do this is by sending a survey follow up email and asking the customer to rate their experience.
Rating emails usually have better response rates. So, you can use this for more than just asking for their shopping experience
Also, this type of follow up email will give you details about your customers perceive your store.
Follow up email template:
Subject line – How was your experience?
Email content
Hi[customer name]
Thank you for completing a successful purchase from our store. We would be very pleased to know how you felt while purchasing from your store.
We have created a quick survey that will only take a minute of your time.
[Insert the survey link]
Please complete the survey, your response will mean a lot to us.
With Regards,
Xxxx
4. ‘Join us’ Follow up email
The main goal of sending eCommerce follow up emails is to keep your customers engaged with your store even after they complete their purchase.
And the easy way to keep them engaged with your store is by requesting them to subscribe to you so that they can receive updates on products and more.
Follow up email template:
Subject line – Join our family for more deals
Email content
Hi[customername]
Thank you for purchasing from our store. We are very pleased to have you as our customer. Hope your purchase experience was good and you are enjoying the product.
We would like to extend our relationship, join our family of premium customers by subscribing to us. You will get regular updates on new products, holiday deals, etc.
List the benefits of subscribing to you,
1.
2.
3.
It will be an honor to have you as a member of our family.
With Regards,
xxxx
5. ‘Thank You’ Follow up email
After a customer completes a purchase, you want them to return to your store, don’t you? If you want that, you need to show your gratitude to them for purchasing at your store.
This will show that you were pleased with their presence in your store and encourage them to return for more purchases.
Saying ‘Thanks’ is also a part of the user experience, it will help you improve your engagement and foster customer loyalty.
Follow up email template:
Subject line – Thank you for purchasing from us.
Email content
Hi[customername]
Thank you for choosing us for your purchase! We are pleased to have you as our customer and your recent purchase[purchase item] has really made our day.
We hope this will not be your only purchase at our store and we are looking forward to seeing you once again in our store looking for more.
We will always be here to assist you, in case of any queries regarding your purchase please reach out to us[support mail] and get your queries sorted promptly.
Thank you and Come again!
With Regards
Xxxx
Wrapping up
Ecommerce follow up emails are necessary as they can help you increase your engagement, convert leads and secure sales. When most marketers are wondering how to write a follow up email, we took our time to show you how not to write a follow up email and the mistakes surrounding it.
This will help you to optimize your follow up email campaign and write the best follow up emails that convert. We have also included a handful of common follow up email templates that you can use in your follow up email campaign and boost your conversions.
The follow up email mistakes discussed in this article were made by marketers in the past, so stay clear of these simple mistakes and your follow up email campaigns will bear fruits for your eCommerce business.
