Dr. Todd’s, an e-commerce site for quality foot care products, turned to SmallBox for a custom web marketing package. One key component of Dr. Todd’s marketing mix is email marketing. We created a new content strategy, a fresh design and mapped out an editorial calendar. We’ve analyzed one of Dr. Todd’s promotional emails to show what makes people click and convert.
A Clear Offer
You may have heard the term “the gamification of couponing” as a way to describe the Groupon phenomenon. We all know people like to score deals, but an official service like Groupon requires parting ways with about half of your already deeply-discounted price. We blogged about taking matters into your own hands to create a Groupon-like promotion. Here’s an example of this in action. Discounting more heavily than usual and limiting it to a little more than 24 hours helped trigger orders.
Link It Up!
Are you a headlne or an image clicker? Different people gravitate towards different types of content. You can always test to see what link type draws the most actiivty from your particular audience, but the best tactic is to provide options of the same link. The headline, the image, the product description and the Shop Now button all link to the product.
The Psychology of Shopping
Language that includes a product guarantee or easy return policy sets the tone for worry-free shopping. Color can also play a key role. Orange, for example, creates a call to action.
A Little Something More
If a customer is engaged enough to open your email, they might also like you on Facebook. Providing links to your blog or social profiles invites customers to engage beyond the purchase.
Always Testing
In the past, we’ve tested send times, subject lines and more. As we tested this new discount tactic, we also experimented wth list segmentation. We took a list of customers with an order history for callus treatments with the rest of the the Dr. Todd’s email list. In the long run, you can save money by sending the right content to the right contacts.
The Results
- The customers with an order history of similar products had an 11% lift in open rate. The click through rates are even more compelling – the general list earned a 16% click rate, while the segmented list earned a whopping 72% click through rate.
- And the sales? We analyzed 6 months of data and determined that Wednesdays were the highest performing sale day. The Wednesday of this email launch, sales increased 91% over the average Wednesday.
- This strategy is one part of an overall email marketing plan. Since we upgraded Dr. Todd’s from a generic email template to a custom, optimized email program, website traffic driven from email has risen 256%.
- The volume of conversions of that traffic to sales has increased an astounding 388%.
See the email online here.
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