In case you haven’t heard of the software company named after the dinosaur, Bronto is the advanced marketing automation engine for internet retailers. With a wide reach in the US (including a client roster of leading brands worldwide, including Armani Exchange, Timex, Samsonite), Bronto have recently been making drives into Australia, growing their team to 13 locally in a new Sydney office and expanding the local client roster to over 60 retailers in Australia at the time of writing.
So why are we and so many companies jumping on the Bronto bandwagon? At some point in the online journey you will outgrow Mailchimp. Once you get over the 100,000 mark for your list size the price of Mailchimp and Bronto start to become comparable and the additional features available from moving to an integrated marketing automation platform can often yield a much higher ROI.
At the core of their offering is an advance marketing automation platform. These are the top four campaigns that should be setup as an absolute priority:
Welcome
A welcome series should do just that, introduce users to your brand and set the agenda for your digital communications over the course of the relationship. Email automation series and trigger emails get a significantly higher open rate than bulk sends, so you have the opportunity to “pre-frame” the brand and journey, setting up a successful communication when a user is most engaged.
Treat your welcome series like an orientation, decide on the key messages for new subscribers such as differentiation points or key calls to action such as following social accounts. Once the content of the welcome series is on the table you can form a structure for the campaign into logical groupings of information and decide on a single email or multi-email series. Generally, the longer your buying or publishing cycle, the longer your welcome program should last.
Cart Recovery
Its a well known fact that most shoppers will abandoned their car without completing the purchase. Abandoned cart emails are sent to customers who have added products to their cart but failed to check out, it’s a simple yet shockingly underused tactic by even some of the largest retailers on the web.
Usually structured as a single email send, the collection of an email address early on in your checkout process can be passed into your marketing automation software (Bronto). If a successful checkout is not registered then it will trigger the abandoned cart email to send to the shopper.
The contents of the email should contain a reminder or what they have abandoned with a call to action to pick up where they left off. Stronger incentives can also be provided to get people across the line including Free Shipping or a discount on the purchase price.
Post Purchase
Without realising it, all ecommerce brands send some form of post purchase emails such as shipping dispatch or invoice details. There is huge opportunity to build massive brand loyalty and repeat custom by rethinking the post purchase email series.
Providing insider tips or value added content just after someone has made a purchase can add to the user experience of you brand. Examples would include linking to styling videos of the garment just purchased or top tips on the latest tech gadget.
It also provides an exceptional opportunity to up sell, cross sell and drive word of mouth refereals.
Win Back
The beauty of marketing automation is that you can start to treat users as individuals. If someone who used to be a loyal customer, has not purchased for 6 months, it might not be the best idea to keep sending them the same promotional content as they have always received. Dedicated campaigns designed to rengage users back into the brand can be an effective way of increasing lifetime customer value and loyalty.
Offering an incentive, showing appreciation and highlighting what is being missed, are all effective messages to put into the mix of a win back campaign.
If you would like to learn more about email marketing through Bronto comment below or get in touch.