When it comes to personalized, targeted email marketing, product recommendation emails are generally at the top of the priority list — and for good reason. For consumers, product recommendation emails are a way to get a curated list of items they may find useful based on their individual needs and preferences. And for eCommerce marketers, they’re a creative way to generate more sales. So when it comes to friend or foe, the answer is clear: product emails are your friend!
Putting successful product recommendation emails to work for your business requires a bit of ingenuity and a bit of data analytics. Below, we’ll go over a few more of the key benefits of these types of emails, plus tips for incorporating product emails into your current email marketing strategy.
Product Recommendation Emails: Why They’re Great
We all know that personalization is key in marketing. As many as 80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from companies that offer personalized experiences, and 59% say that personalization influences their shopping decisions. That gets to the heart of why product emails are such smart marketing — they take personalization to the next level and show prospects that you not only know them well but that sometimes you know what they need before they do. They also provide you with another touchpoint to easily capture your shoppers’ attention.
More of a numbers person? Reports show gains of 300% in-store revenue and 50% in average-order-value for brands that implement product recommendations in their emails. And 90% of leading marketers credit personalization efforts like these with significantly contributing to the profitability of their business.
Product recommendation emails help increase your sales and revenue by driving awareness to the items that individual purchasers are more likely to buy, and they also help get more eyes on products that are in need of an uptick in exposure. Simply put, they’re one of the best tools you have for capitalizing on personalization preferences and connecting the right buyers with the right products.
How to Send Out Successful Product Emails
To be effective, product recommendation emails have to be personalized. This is done in a few different ways:
1. Know Your Audience
Make sure that you know your prospects well enough to make relevant recommendations. Marketing automation and CRM software are integral to helping you do this, allowing you to track prospects’ behavior, such as what they’re clicking on and their previous purchasing behavior. They can also cue you into patterns. If you can hone in on the most popular purchases for certain segments of your audience, you can get a better idea of what you should be marketing and to whom.
Another key thing to do here is to track browse and cart abandonments. Knowing what products your prospects were looking at before they exited your site means you can send recommendations on the nose a lot more.
2. Segment Recommendations Based on Activity
Different behaviors warrant different recommendations. While we often encourage segmenting your audience based on where they are in the buyer’s journey, there’s a lot of utility in segmenting even further here based on other types of activity, including:
- Homepage browsers
- Category browsers
- Product browsers
- Site search browsers
- Cart abandoners
The more aligned your recommendations are with what someone has already expressed interest in, the more likely those recommendations are to succeed.
3. Segment Your Messaging
Using the same behavior segmentations above, think of ways not just to target each segment with specific products but with specific messaging. What you say is just as important as what you show, especially when it comes to personalized recommendations.
Tips and Tricks for Product Recommendation Emails
Step one: Track and segment. Step two: Make sure your emails are formatted to convert. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you do it.
Use large images. They’ll be more eye-catching on the page, and will draw the eye directly to the recommendation itself. Just make sure they load properly before sending.
Use enticing copy that evokes urgency. Your call to action should be specifically product-driven, and even better if it lends timeliness to the purchase.
Optimize for mobile. Mobile accounts for 46% of all email opens, so make sure your product recommendations look as good on mobile as they do on a desktop.
Offer more than one recommendation. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Offer multiple recommendations to increase the likelihood of a conversion.
Avoid one-and-done emails. It’s okay to follow up on your product recommendations. Don’t get spammy with it, but do feel free to send a recommendation again if you think it’s a good fit.
Variety is the spice of life — and of effective email marketing. Play around with how and when you offer product recommendations in your emails, as well as the messaging that supports it. If you’re segmenting your audience and offering great products, you should start to see positive results.