Whether you're a startup or simply new to marketing, you may feel overwhelmed with the torrent of tools you can use to promote your business. It can be difficult to know where to focus your effort.At Seven Sons, we’ve experimented with many of the common online marketing strategies such as social media, SEO, influencer marketing, etc.. While each have their place, nothing has been as consistently effective as email marketing. In fact, at Seven Sons, 35% of our entire revenue is attributed to email marketing, while only 1% is attributed to social media-generated sales. For eCommerce brands, email is KING! The great part of email marketing is that it can be a highly leveraged activity for your time involved because most email campaigns can be automated. This means all of your work is done upfront, but that work will have a long and rewarding payoff. So for today’s GrazeCast episode, Brooks and Blaine are in the farm office to share their three favorite emails they use at Seven Sons, along with the impact these email campaigns can have on your customer-base.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Android, YouTube, your smartspeaker, or you can listen below:
Blaine’s Top 3 Emails:
1.) Cart Abandonment Email: “We noticed you didn’t finish your purchase…” - Use this email to grab customers’ attention back to their shopping cart! Inside testament: Using Drip’s Cart Abandonment automated emails, Seven Sons gained $17,000 in sales in the last 30 days. Check out this article to see how you can use Drip’s Cart Abandonment in GrazeCart.
2.) 1st Order Followup Email: “How was it?” - Use this email to garner trust! Inside tip: At Seven Sons, we use this email to ask customers to leave a Google review with their honest feedback. Doing this shows vulnerability, which builds trust between you and your customers. And while it might sound scary, it pays off by providing social proof. We also found that customers will rarely leave a bad review. If they had an issue with their order, they’ll typically just hit reply to the email :)
3.) Periodic Touch Emails: “Here’s an inside look at this week at the farm…” - Use this email to stay in touch and build the relationship!Inside tip: At Seven Sons, we have a weekly newsletter every Sunday, come rain or shine. Our best advice? Keep a backlog of content. Working ahead ensures your newsletter will be consistent and full of rich, well-thought-out copy. Don’t sabotage your reliability and quality by waiting until the last minute!
Brooks’s Top 3 Emails:
1.) Follow-up Email (with anyone who hasn’t purchased in 6 months): “We’d love to hear your honest reason...” - Use this email to get personal! Insider Tip: At Seven Sons, we never send a survey in our follow-up emails. Instead, we ask them, personally, why they’ve chosen not to shop with us recently. We recommend writing this message (and all messages, really) like it’s a personal note, rather than an email blast. And if they take the time to reply, you should give them the same courtesy.
2.) An Email Onboarding Series (Okay, so this isn’t a single email, but it’s very important!): “This is who we are…” - An onboarding series should be a 4-8 email campaign you send over a period of time to every new person that signup to your list. Use these emails to tell people the most important things about yourself/your operation, to help build a relationship. Insider tip: At Seven Sons, our onboarding series consists of a virtual farm tour, and shares the behind-the-scenes of what we do and why it matters. It’s our way of sharing what sets us apart from other food options they could support.
3.) Order Reminder Email: “This is your order deadline reminder!” - Use this email to remind customers that their order window is closing soon! Inside testament: This email is so important for any business with a deadline for customers to submit their orders before a particular delivery date. Your customers are busy people. They’ll appreciate the nudge. This feature is so important that we built it into GrazeCart. Check out this article to learn more.
Conclusion:
Again, while many of these email campaigns need automated in order to be sustainable, which takes upfront work, but the reward is having a closer relationship with customers that are inspired to support your business long-term. If you’re looking for inspiration, we recommend seeking out businesses you admire, and subscribing to their newsletter for ideas.
Here are some farm newsletters that we’ve drawn inspiration from:
And feel free to subscribe to our newsletter, to see examples of some of the emails we’ve talked about in this episode: Seven Sons Farm