Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Email marketing for e-commerce

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 108 posts

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#91

Post by xivzgrev »

adventured wrote: post #66
xivzgrev wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I think you need to follow the data and see where it leads you. What happens to your metrics when you implement opt in or double opt in? Not everyone uses or perceives email (or really anything) the same.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#92

Post by xivzgrev »

turingcompeteme wrote: post #78
adventured wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

I think you and me treat email differently than the average person. I saw my friend's email the other day: 26 thousand unopened emails. And he doesn't mind at all. Sometimes he searches through a few days worth to see if there is anything interesting. I think his use of personal email is much more common than my perfectly organized, and usually 0 unread messages inbox.

Thank you. And yes while 26000 emails would drive me nuts lets not forget there are so many people out there it would not bother that it's actually a big 5 personality trait - conscientiousness. Those who score low or even middle may not police their email or consider inbox zero a worthwhile goal or use of their time.

I personally put in a script that archives all email after 7 days. I figure if I haven't read it in that time period it's not worth while. Keeps my inbox quite small and no policing required :)

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#93

Post by xivzgrev »

howard941 wrote: post #65
xivzgrev wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My kind of guy right here! I would love to do this. In my industry incentives were kind of challenging to work with (you can get in trouble with regulators for false advertising if you dont dutifully fulfill and audit yourself, discounting the product may be too much risk than business is willing to take on, etc). I will soon be changing industries and can't wait to bring back incentives :)

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#94

Post by paulie_a »

mlevental wrote: post #90
paulie_a wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you track open rates that result in clicking unsubscribe? I open a lot of email just to click that link

i wish devs understood something: whatever pathological behavior you're participating in is just that: pathological. 99.99999999% of people just read emails and do nothing insidious/clever/nefarious. there are literally like 5 people like you and 100,000 people just reading the email and either clicking or not clicking, buying or not buying, etc.

Unsubscribing from spam is now considered pathological?. Damn, marketing on the internet has really gone overboard

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#96

Post by spudlyo »

tjoff wrote: post #85
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, sure, nevermind that there is a new list you have to unsubscribe for every month. I never do a second buy, sometimes I have the energy to do a 1 star review for anyone that sends me mails that I couldn't avoid during the purchase.

Agreed, this really grates on me too. I'm seriously thinking about just filtering anything with an unsubscribe link.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#97

Post by a_d »

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…

I will attempt to argue against email marketing as a channel for any startup (B2b or B2c).

1. Channel is extremely crowded. Everyone has read the same best-practices and optimization techniques. So emails from most companies (each one of them thinking that they are ‘differentiated) regress in quality and content to a mean.

2. Because it is so measurable (a marketer’s dream), this channel becomes less about what the emails say, but more about tricks to get one to open and click.

3. Excessive click optimization might erode “brand” (my conjecture). Since “brand” falls under the “soft stuff” in marketing, it gets attention as a second class citizen after one has taken care of the measurable stuff. (Defining brand as the ‘impression a word creates in your mind when you hear that word’)

4. Once a startup gives up on the ‘crutch’ of email - may be the team will think anew and innovate. Due to its measurability, my personal opinion is that companies don’t explore other channels - meaning, there isn’t a lot of invention going on.

If one visited a random saas startup and saw a day in the life of their “email marketing team”, I bet they are all roughly doing the same thing and have the same goals. I fear that no one wants to lose out on the 1% out of 1 million attention that emails are able to get - consistently and repeatably - and are thus like a drug that one can’t get off of :-) and thus companies don’t risk inventing new channels.

This is probably an ignorant rant (Eg a good counter argument would simply be - “email is popular because it works!”).

Given the number of emails I get, I do wish more companies tried more creative techniques to grab attention. (The Snapchat vending machine for spectacles comes to mind as a good attempt at innovation. I must confess I have zero knowledge of how the numbers on that approach worked)

In ecommerce, companies like brandless are doing well at getting attention without playing the standard email game (standard email game = ‘buy lists—>optimize—>$’ -> repeat).

Having said this, the advice in this article is very sensible - if someone comes to your site and didn’t complete the purchase, it doesn’t hurt to ask again. I am just raising a caution against taking email marketing for granted - esp if an entrepreneur is just starting out - presumably she can take some risk and try innovative ways of grabbing attention, than just email.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#98

Post by mars4rp »

fiatjaf wrote: post #56

Imagine you have a list of emails from users of your app. You want to send a one-time notification to them. For example, saying that you'll start charging for the app in two months (just an example). How do you proceed? I wish there was an app that would take a list of emails and a Mailgun/etc. API token and send that one-time email to these people.

Please forgive my ignorance but how hard is it to write a for loop and send email to each? Even Mailgun should have a method for bulk send!

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#99

Post by thirdsun »

vamin wrote: post #79
paulie_a wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you track open rates that result in clicking unsubscribe? I open a lot of email just to click that link

It's not generally a significant effect, unsubscribe rates tend to be well under 1%. Most people just ignore emails they don't want.

Don't forget the people that abuse the "mark as spam"-button as unsubscribe link. I saw that beahvior with non-techy users - it's often easier to find than the unsubscribe link and has the same effect to them.

Re: Email marketing for e-commerce

#100

Post by mlevental »

paulie_a wrote: post #94
mlevental wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wish devs understood something: whatever pathological behavior you're participating in is just that: pathological. 99.99999999% of people just read emails and do nothing insidious/clever/nefarious. there are literally like 5 people like you and 100,000 people just reading the email and either clicking or not clicking, buying or not buying, etc.

Unsubscribing from spam is now considered pathological?. Damn, marketing on the internet has really gone overboard

you're being facetious so i'm going to quote the person running the email campaign that responds directly:

>It's not generally a significant effect, unsubscribe rates tend to be well under 1%. Most people just ignore emails they don't want.

under %1 is almost by definition "pathological"

Post reply on HN