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In this Session we are focusing in on email marketing sequences for your Amazon business. We talk through the tone of your email and the language you use, how many emails to have in your sequence and how often you should send without damaging your relationship.
How many emails in your email marketing sequence for a given product?
- Recommend a 3 emails sequence for most products as you ask for things twice to get results
- Some send 4 others send 2 or 1
- In Email 1 – here’s the product you bought from us and we’re just checking all is okay
- For Email 2 – asking for product review or seller feedback
- Then Email 3 – ask a second time
- Go for 3 emails as gets better results
- People change the email marketing sequence depending on what they are selling
- A supplement product takes longer to show results for users so the email sequence fires longer after they have received the product
- Where as a desk lamp, they just pull it out of the box and use it so can be sent an email soonerAmazon also send emails to customers so consider that too
Recommended sequence
- 1st email goes after straight after order completed – customer service email content
- 5 days later – ask for product review or buyer feedback
- 10 days later – ask for product review of use of product
Key things that should be in the email marketing sequence
- Put up front what you’re emailing them about
- 1st Email – we’re the company behind the product and you’re checking all is well
- Next emails you’re looking for feedback / review
- Followup with your review request
Copywriting plays an important part as does writing style
- Sleazy style
- No nonsense style
- Wrapping customer in cotton wool
- Really depends on what people are selling
- Can’t see how effective people’s campaigns are as there are no aggregated stats
- Amazon selling rules out sleazy and shady copy as you get reported and shutdown
- Adhere to the rules for your email marketing
- Lot of people use the default copy and ‘tweak’ the tone of the default sequence
- A more personal approach seems to work better i.e. A family owned business and we appreciate your feedback
- Personal tone gives good results
- Text based is better than images
- But don’t overthink it – just use the default campaigns and change it later
Type of words to avoid
- Language and tonality is different to a verbal conversation as people can’t ‘hear’ it so the writing needs to cover it
- Accidentally coming across as negative is a risk
- Avoid things that breach Amazon ToS rules
- “We look forward to your 5 star review” – comes across as a bit arrogant
- Don’t use ‘hate’ or ‘dislike’ as you might be building in a negative response
- Make it positive in words and tone if you want a good outcome
- Communicate with customers
- The default campaigns are fairly neutral so you’re good to start there as a baseline
- Figure out what your brand is about and how you communicate to your customers
Techniques to increase customer engagement
- Upfront you want them to take action
- Customers are short on time so you could use a question because it will hook their attention i.e. ‘Do you have 2 minutes to spare, leave us a product review’
- 50% of people don’t open or do anything with your emails
- It’s a numbers game to get the reviews out of these emails
- 1st part of the email is making sure they are happy and you have satisfied their needs
- Only then do you go into looking for a review from them
Subject lines
- Thank you for your ‘Product Name’ purchase
- Incorporate some personalisation – the product name in this case
- Better than just generic
- 3-4 words max with a questions mark works well
- Shorter emails in general are better on Amazon
Terms of Service
- Would you like to leave us a review? And the ‘No’ send them to Seller Feedback so you can trap any ‘negative’ reviews
- Amazon changed ToS and those kind of Smiley Face and Sad Face images in your emails were outlawed
- Outside of Amazon these things are OK and work well
- The incentivised reviews update came out of Amazon and shutdown lots of companies that only focused on getting incentivised reviews
- We focus on what Amazon would like you to do
- Don’t use ‘bias’ in your language
- You don’t want to ‘trick’ buyers into leaving positive reviews
- Don’t offer coupons for reviews
- Amazon don’t want us to artificially inflate reviews and sales
- Rather than do a ‘big bang’ approach to giveaways which will spike numbers, do a more consistent flow of giveaways to increase reviews/feedback which won’t trigger Amazon ToS
Launch sequence
- Selling your product below market rate to stimulate visibility on PPC and build your organics is acceptable because that’s what brick and mortar stores do to stimulate sales
- Your email sequence might change during launch as opposed to steady-state once your product is ranking and selling
- So you change the style of your email wording at launch than you would in steady-state
Plain text versus Graphics in your Email Marketing
- Default campaigns are built on more personal and plain text therefore making this a contrast to what many others are doing with including images, etc
- If I were to bet on one I’d say personal and plain text is stronger because of its personalisation from you
- If you include HTML in there I wouldn’t try and make it ‘look like’ Amazon by using their colours and font because this could be seen as trying to manipulate your customers
- Amazon is all about customer trust and Amazon will protect it’s platform trust with ToS changes to change seller behaviours
- Amazon wants more reviews on listings as it helps Amazon increase sales – people buy more from listings with many positive reviews
- Discounting your product on market entry to gain sales is what the off-Amazon market would do
Infographics & Attachments to emails
- Make sure your attachment is adding value to the thing you’re selling otherwise it’s a waste of time
- Use an attachment rather than put a physical copy in the box – digital is cheaper Instruction manuals are a common attachment
- BBQ space – you might add attachment of your favourite 10 recipes so that it adds value to your 1st email as it builds the reciprocity from your customer for your future emails asking for reviews
Opt-out of emails
- Some buyers are anti-contact and don’t want to hear from you therefore a good practice is to ensure there is the ability for buyers to opt-out of receiving future emails
Testing your email marketing sequence
- Wait until you hit 50-100 units sold because you need at least 100 sales before you see a review
- Statistically you’ll see a very low percentage of people that will leave a review
- Go for a 30 day period before making changes to your email sequence so that you have enough of a sample to test with
- You need enough data – ideally several thousand units to truly understand how your sequence is working
