12 Follow-Up Email Examples For Your E-Commerce Business

Let’s assume you have enough visitors and engagement on your website. And you meet all the metrics in terms of user flow and a considerably low bounce rate. But what if you don’t have enough conversions in your funnel?

You may not be generating enough sales despite having enough online traffic to your website. You may even be frustrated by the rising cart abandonment rate.

In this case, you can use email marketing to increase your ROI(Return on investment). Did you know? It is a known fact that emails have an ROI of 3800%. It implies that for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you will likely get 38 back. This is because emails have a higher interaction rate than other social media posts, and an email is six times most like to be clicked on.

Today, most companies use email marketing to increase their sales. And in this marketing process, different types of emails are used to generate sales, attract many customers for online shops or promote new products. Some examples of follow-up emails for e-commerce can help you understand what email can effectively reach subscribers or can be helpful during email marketing.

What Are Follow-Up Emails?

Follow-up emails are used in email campaigns to engage customers or get them to perform specific tasks, such as making another purchase or connecting with a brand through their social media platforms (Twitter/Facebook).

You can send a single follow-up message or send automated follow-up emails in a series.

Your goal is to ensure that each customer follows a specific path through your business.
Your goal is to target customers so that they can move through these stages.

You must interact with customers and target them at critical points in their lives to achieve this goal. You can use different media or channels for this task; follow-up emails are one such effective channel.

Framework For Follow-Up Emails

Four quadrants identify the campaigns on the follow-up emails framework and cover the following points.

The X-Axis represents goals (from engagement to revenue)
Y-Axis represents impact (from long-term and indirect impact to short-term and direct impact)

Each one of the following emails will fit into this framework. However, to use this framework, you must provide every email with a primary goal (engagement or revenue generation) and a focus (indirect/long-term or direct/long-term). Some of the follow-up emails may spread across the spectrum. Identifying the primary goal for each email, even in this scenario, is essential as this will benefit the lifecycle marketing strategy.

7 Best Practices Of Follow-Up Emails

1. Use The Power Of Automation

Automating the process of setting up post-purchase/follow-up emails is advisable.

It saves you from creating a long Excel spreadsheet where you must manually enter the following data.

Your customers purchase each item.
The right time to send the follow-up emails.

This is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task. Automation can determine when a follow-up email should reach a customer.

For example, you can set it to reach a customer 7 or 30 days after purchase. When deciding the right time to send follow-up emails, it is essential to calculate the sending time. It is equally important to consider the time it takes for a customer to use and enjoy a product.

2. Segment Your Customers Intelligently

It is advisable not to send duplicate emails to all customers.

You can use geographic or other types of demographic data for segmentation. However, this type of segmentation is only valid when selling gender or location-specific products. You can use a customer’s behavior or transaction history for segmentation.

You can send an email to a customer who has purchased your products or services for the first time or to a customer who has purchased several products or services over a long period. The nature of the emails will be different in both cases.

3. Attractive Email Subject Lines

Follow-up emails should use attractive subject lines, leading to a higher open and click-through rate. Therefore, increased sales are directly related to catchy subject lines. However, it is essential to ensure that the subject line matches the content and appeals to the target customer. Some examples of catchy subject lines for follow-up emails are

15% off your next purchase!
Did you like your last purchase?
Let us know what you think and get a discount of***.
Your last purchase

4. Think Like Your Customers

When creating follow-up emails, focus on the value you provide to your customers. You will focus on short-term value if you want to increase sales quickly at any cost. Understanding that a satisfied customer will likely become a customer for life is essential. Therefore, it is advisable to focus on long-term value when designing follow-up emails and consider the entire “customer journey” in the marketing funnel when creating the steps.

5. Collect Customer Feedback

You can even use follow-up emails to collect customer feedback about their recent purchases. You can use the feedback to improve product quality, shipping, marketing, packaging, price, and communication (description, offers, etc.).

6. Keep It Short

If marketers do not know what their target customers are interested in, the text of an email will contain a lot of promotional content. This is not the correct way to create follow-up emails, as a customer may not be interested in reading a long email. Therefore, it is essential to segment target customers based on their transaction history or behavior. This way, you can find out what attracts readers and what does not. With the following tips, you can create an attractive email to a customer (short and practical).

Write a complete message to a customer and shorten it without missing the essential points.
Eliminate fillers
Keep all action points

7. Referral Bonus Or Referral Offer

You can also include the following points in a follow-up email.

Referral reward: You get a potential customer and can offer the current customer an incentive to make another purchase.
Referral offer: Your goal is to get the customer to buy again and complete this task quickly.
You can offer a *% discount, free shipping, *$ off, or a gift if the customer makes another purchase.

12 Best Follow-Up Email Examples For Ecommerce

Welcoming E-Mail

These examples of follow-up emails can be used to welcome first-time customers to your brand.

1. Introductory Email

This email is sent within an hour of the first purchase to provide customers with the following information.

Tell customers about your company, team, values, and yours.
Convey the stories of how the company has grown.
Convey to customers the behind-the-scenes story of your business and make them feel connected.

2. Discovery Email (Content Marketing/Social Connection)

This is the type of email you should send within 3-5 days of the initial purchase. This type of email can be sent to let customers discover how they can connect or engage with your brand. For example,

You can direct customers to blogs on your website or your most popular blog posts.
You can ask them to connect through a social media profile.

3. Discovery E-Mail (Product Catalog)

You can send this email 14 days after a customer’s first purchase to discuss the following.

About your products: Why your products are unique and why other customers love them.

Personal product recommendations: Let shoppers discover products they would like but overlooked during their first purchase.

4. Incentive Email

You should send this email 21-28 days after a customer’s first purchase.

You can use this email to send a discount coupon to incentivize the new customer to make another purchase in your shop. Industry statistics show that first-time customers who make a second purchase are expected to continue to invest in your brand, and therefore, repeat customers are profitable for your business.

Post-Purchase E-Mails

The purpose of sending post-purchase emails is to receive feedback on the quality of your products or services and the overall customer experience. You may send the following post-purchase emails for 30 days after a customer’s first purchase.

5. Feedback Email

Depending on delivery time, you can send this email almost 3-7 days after the purchase.

After receiving negative feedback, you can identify dissatisfied customers and resolve their problems, taking the necessary steps to avoid such mistakes in the future.
After receiving positive feedback, you can identify satisfied customers and use their comments as testimonials on your website.

6. Product Review Email

You can send this email 7-14 days after purchase, as the customer will likely have unpacked and used the product by that time.

Customer reviews have been proven to increase revenue by up to 18% after being displayed on a company’s website, as they are authentic. You must sell good quality products and provide excellent customer experiences with positive reviews. These steps will ensure positive customer reviews via email.

7. Discount Reminder Email

This email is usually sent 14-30 days after the first purchase and 24 hours before a discount coupon expires.

The email receipt can acquire additional revenue if a discount is included. This type of email generates a sense of urgency in customers and is likely to encourage customers to impulse buy to avoid the discount.

8. Cross-Sell Email

This type of email is sent 14 to 21 days after the customer’s first purchase. Up-selling and cross-selling techniques are used to increase the customer’s lifetime value.

You can use cross-selling emails to help customers discover products they might like and buy.

9. Loyalty Email

You can send this email 28 days after a customer’s last purchase. It is sent to customers who have bought more than one product from any company, as repeat customers are satisfied and likely recommend the products/services to others. You can incentivize this by using loyalty emails with the following benefits.

You can offer lucrative offers to loyal customers for a referral, encouraging them to make another purchase and becoming an additional source of satisfaction.
Referred customers will likely spend 13% more than customers acquired through other channels.

Win-Back Campaign

10. Win-Back Emails

Customers are inactive if they have not purchased from a company within “X” days (3 times the average number of days between orders). A sequence of emails is used to re-engage inactive customers and encourage them to make another purchase.

The first email should be sent to the customer when they are considered an “inactive customer.” This email should be written as emotionally as possible. This email can offer customers a small discount and persuade them to make another purchase.
The second email is sent seven days after the date the customer became inactive. It can be used to remind the customer of the discount and to make personalized product recommendations.
The third email was sent 14 days after the customer became inactive. You can use this email to offer deeper discounts and limit the timeframe to create a sense of urgency.

Anniversary And Abandoned Cart E-Mails

11. Abandoned Cart E-Mail

It is a fact that 40-70 % of potential customers tend to abandon their shopping trolleys. However, it can win back almost 10 % of customers who abandoned their shopping carts.

In this case, a series of emails are sent at different intervals.

One hour after abandoning the shopping cart. The aim is to ask for the reason for abandonment.
One day after leaving the shopping cart. A discount coupon is sent to encourage the customer to return to the basket and complete the purchase.
Three days after shopping cart abandonment. This email is sent as a final attempt to encourage the customer to complete the purchase and remind them that the discount offer is about to expire.

12. Anniversary Email

This type of email is sent one year after the customer’s first purchase. In this email, you must offer a discount on any purchase made on the anniversary of the customer’s first purchase.

Are You Ready To Include Follow-Up Emails In Your Marketing Strategy?

It is important to remember that not all businesses work similarly. Therefore, you can use some of the above follow-up emails during an email marketing campaign.

However, you need to identify effective follow-up emails for your business.

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12 Follow-Up Email Examples for Your E-commerce Business