Tips to Stand out in the Inbox

Can you believe that it’s Q4 again? Here are five tips you can implement today to make your email & SMS campaigns stand out against the crowd and help you grow sales this holiday season.

Preheaders 

Most ISPs (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) and mail clients allow users to preview lines or two of text within email messages. Yet many brands don’t optimize this space to get the click. Stand out from the crowd and write a PH that generates curiosity about the message. Try swapping your subject line (SL) and PHs within a message. Or test whether directness or curiosity wins by swapping your subject line (SL) and PHs within your next deployment. 

Offer an Out

The widespread assumption is if a visitor leaves your website without making a purchase, we serve them up what they were browsing within follow-up messages since they want to buy. But what if they aren’t interested in the products they left behind? Being too narrowly focused could cause you to lose the sale.

Showcase the categories or items left behind within the primary section of your window shopping, browsing, and cart messages. Then, within the secondary areas, showcase complementary categories or products. This way, you cover your bases if they’ve written off your site for good.

Deliverability Audit

To ensure that your messages are making it to the inbox, pull a report of orders and open rates by ISP address six months ago and compare it to today. Is there a fluctuation between the following?

  • Overall ISP %’s

  • Open rates by ISP

  • Orders by ISP

If there is a fluctuation, your messages may not make it to the inbox. In the short term, stop sending messages to the blocked ISPs. Instead, consider sending them through SMS only. When you send emails to this group, only send them to a group of highly engaged subscribers. Also, don’t forget to reach out to your ESP - some are up-to-date on the latest list hygiene practices.

Building CLV

Use the holiday season to strengthen CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) through offering tiered offers to each cohort. First, use a CLV analysis to build offers to entice customers to purchase again, like Klaviyo’s guide to predictive analytics. If this isn’t possible, pull a list of customers and look at their last purchase AOV to get a baseline of what price point they are spending with your brand. Then, customize offers based on their price points and previous purchases will entice them to buy again.

Backup Plan

It’s essential to have a backup plan if your marketing isn’t resonating, especially if the economy is showing signs of a recession. Depending on your brand, higher price point items and new item may not resonate well with consumers. If this is the case, switch your marketing messaging to include CTA’s to items within specific price points (gifts under $100, gifts under $50) so subscribers know that items on your site are in their budget. And if new items aren’t resonating, start marketing tried & true items that have been around for a few years. The customer is familiar with these items and is likely closer in the funnel to purchase.

Email, Online Marketing, SMSStephanie Maassenpreheaders, deliverabilty, CLV, backup plan