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Email marketing for e-commerce

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Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#61

Post by jaccarmac »

xivzgrev wrote: post #52
jaccarmac wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places are pretty good about sending unsubscribe links these days. However, I ran into a truly awful exception late last year with TaskEasy. For those who don't know, TaskEasy coordinates lawn care and similar services using independent contractors. I was happy with the service I received, and didn't even have to sign up for an account to order it. Then marketing emails started showing up. The unsubscribe link t…

Yea that sounds like it runs afoul of CAN-SPAM. It's supposed to be one-click away, where you can unsubscribe from all promotional emails.

Yep and I reported them to the FTC. Which as I found out is really easy!

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#62

Post by jaccarmac »

antonkm wrote: post #57
jaccarmac wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places are pretty good about sending unsubscribe links these days. However, I ran into a truly awful exception late last year with TaskEasy. For those who don't know, TaskEasy coordinates lawn care and similar services using independent contractors. I was happy with the service I received, and didn't even have to sign up for an account to order it. Then marketing emails started showing up. The unsubscribe link t…

As a dev, I implemented something similar. And I can't speak for TaskEasy but mine wasn't on purpose. Really complex process made simple: 1. Start out with an email transaction that follows up purchases done in the MVP to registered users. All that receive the emails have accounts since the MVP required it. It's not hard to setup automatic emails through code... It's hard to think of edge cases though. 2. Change in s…

Also a dev and I can see how it would happen. Doesn't make it any less maddening though. It's probably more productive to change the culture around email marketing than to scapegoat one company but I needed to vent that frustration.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#63

Post by DanHulton »

chadash wrote: post #7

> 91% of customers want to hear from the companies they do business with. It’s unavoidable in the modern e-commerce marketing world. The quote is referring to email marketing. This seems pretty misleading. I can believe that 91% of people want to hear from some companies. But I'd bet that most people are not interested in hearing from most of the companies they do business with. There's a simple solution to this. It'…

I generally don't like getting automatic marketing emails, but anecdotes != data, of course. Hacker News readers aren't exactly the general population.

That said, I'm definitely more inclined to engage with properly-personalized emails, even knowing the tactics they employ, because they're usually helpful, or at least have had more forethought put into them.

Heck, even Amazon catches me with a review request from time to time, when I'm keen on venting my spleen.

It works, and in the general case, I definitely prefer it to "no email", because I'd prefer not to miss out on those useful interactions. Even at the cost of having to hit the "unsubscribe" button a few times.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#64

Post by jaccarmac »

awalton wrote: post #59
jaccarmac wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places are pretty good about sending unsubscribe links these days. However, I ran into a truly awful exception late last year with TaskEasy. For those who don't know, TaskEasy coordinates lawn care and similar services using independent contractors. I was happy with the service I received, and didn't even have to sign up for an account to order it. Then marketing emails started showing up. The unsubscribe link t…

> Most places are pretty good about sending unsubscribe links these days. Yeah, but unfortunately companies are also really, really, really good at putting you on mailing lists/ADLs that you never , ever would have signed up for on your own. I went to a coffee shop in Palo Alto, bought a coffee, paid by Square, found I was now on one of their Square Marketing ADLs. Never asked for it, never would have asked for it, w…

Oh yes, the Square thing is horrible as well. Sign up to get an email receipt once and now everyone you pay with that card can send you spam.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#65

Post by howard941 »

xivzgrev wrote: post #60
chadash wrote: post #7

> 91% of customers want to hear from the companies they do business with. It’s unavoidable in the modern e-commerce marketing world. The quote is referring to email marketing. This seems pretty misleading. I can believe that 91% of people want to hear from some companies. But I'd bet that most people are not interested in hearing from most of the companies they do business with. There's a simple solution to this. It'…

This is going to get me downvoted, but it needs to be said. As a marketer, I really wish people behaved logically. If they want to get emails, they opt-in, and they don't want to, they don't opt-in. That's the pervasive belief here based on the comments I've seen so far, and that's really clean right? However, the truth in my experience is that people don't. This black-and-white segmentation IMHO ignores a middle seg…

Maybe offer them something for opting in? I volunteered for an email list with Travelpro because of the 15% discount. I can't remember another time I've voluntarily subscribed to a company's marketing emails.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#66

Post by adventured »

xivzgrev wrote: post #60
chadash wrote: post #7

> 91% of customers want to hear from the companies they do business with. It’s unavoidable in the modern e-commerce marketing world. The quote is referring to email marketing. This seems pretty misleading. I can believe that 91% of people want to hear from some companies. But I'd bet that most people are not interested in hearing from most of the companies they do business with. There's a simple solution to this. It'…

This is going to get me downvoted, but it needs to be said. As a marketer, I really wish people behaved logically. If they want to get emails, they opt-in, and they don't want to, they don't opt-in. That's the pervasive belief here based on the comments I've seen so far, and that's really clean right? However, the truth in my experience is that people don't. This black-and-white segmentation IMHO ignores a middle seg…

> This black-and-white segmentation IMHO ignores a middle segment of customers who don't care that much one way or another.

I think this is very obviously wrong. A middle segment of customers that don't mind getting 47 spam emails per day from dozens of services they've used or businesses they've shopped with in the past (even if it was five years ago and then they just keep getting emails every week forever)? There's no way. Nobody is reading all of that worthless junk. If I didn't aggressively police my inbox from that technically theoretically legally solicited abuse spam, I'd get a thousand plus emails per month of just that. I don't believe for a second that there is anybody on the planet that enjoys that kind of email inbox abuse. Nobody wants to spend their time every day scanning over that and deleting all of it.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#67

Post by SteveGerencser »

I work with several clients that between them send roughly 1 million emails per day, every day, and we are small compared to others I know. They fully understand that there are people like most people here that hate email marketing of any kind. But the response rate to those emails is significant.

On an average day they get a 15% open rate. Click rates and purchase rates step down at each stage depending on the purpose of the email, the offer, etc. But that is 150,000 people every day opening at least one email from one of these businesses.

While the 91% stat is probably pure fantasy, the number is far higher than anyone would want to believe. eMail simply works. It is a large and vital part of many businesses.

All of our lists are double opt-in so there is NO WAY you got on it by accident. We also aggressively clean our lists. Don't open an email in 30 days? You get automatically moved to a different funnel. Don't open an email in 90 days? Yet another funnel. 6 months? Off the list entirely. There is an entire process behind this.

We don't want to send emails to people that don't want them any more than you want to get them. Bad lists create delivery issues and get you sent into automated spam filters by providers like GMail. They aren't sent to harass you, they are sent because they work.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#68

Post by DanHulton »

lvoudour wrote: post #29

It's been a while since we've seen you. We know you get busy but we'd love to see you again soon And I absolutely love spending an hour deleting a flood of auto-genetated e-mails from my inbox every month or hunting for that tiny low saturation "unsubscribe" link (which sometimes doesn't work/exist at all). The worst offenders are the airlines and travel agencies IMO. I mean I understand getting monthly e-mails from…

I think that example is generalized to the point of uselessness.

A really good re-engagement email would hone in on the relationship between you and this company, and offer help in some way. Did you buy a consumable good? Well, maybe you're running out and would like to restock. Did you sign up for a SaaS trial and the trial's nearly over? Here's a step it looks like you had difficulty with, our support number, and maybe a trial extension, so you can really evaluate.

But because the author is trying to write a super general-case email, it actually turns into something you don't want to see in your inbox.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#69

Post by paxy »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #67

I work with several clients that between them send roughly 1 million emails per day, every day, and we are small compared to others I know. They fully understand that there are people like most people here that hate email marketing of any kind. But the response rate to those emails is significant. On an average day they get a 15% open rate. Click rates and purchase rates step down at each stage depending on the purpo…

How do you know whether users have opened an email or not? Or do you mean interacted with the email (i.e. clicked a link)?

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#70

Post by snowwrestler »

paxy wrote: post #69
SteveGerencser wrote: post #67

I work with several clients that between them send roughly 1 million emails per day, every day, and we are small compared to others I know. They fully understand that there are people like most people here that hate email marketing of any kind. But the response rate to those emails is significant. On an average day they get a 15% open rate. Click rates and purchase rates step down at each stage depending on the purpo…

How do you know whether users have opened an email or not? Or do you mean interacted with the email (i.e. clicked a link)?

Unless they're base64-encoded, images in emails must load off a web server. By customizing the image URLs per recipient, the system serving those images can tell who saw the email.

It's not perfect because:

- Some preview functions load images, even if the email was not actually opened, and

- Some email clients block images from loading by default, so it's possible for the user to open and read the text of the email without triggering an "open" signal.

Clicks are much more reliable signals of intent, but there's far fewer of them.

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