Amazon.com is a powerhouse.
Jeff Bezos and the team at Amazon have essentially defined how we shop online over the last 17 years. Here are here are a few facts you might not know about Amazon:
- Founded 1994 Amazon.com wasn’t profitable until 2001 with a profit of $5 million on revenues of $1 billion.
- Not only a retail store, now earns over $2 billion per year thanks to it’s cloud computing services known as Amazon Web Services (AWS).
- Their email marketing provider Amazon SES grew out of their ability to manage many millions of emails per day.
- The internet virtually didn’t exist back in 1994! Certainly online sales was a new concept. Amazon lead the charge.
Clearly, these guys know what they’re doing.
The internet is scattered with stories of Amazon’s fantastic email marketing. Spend some time purchasing from or simply browsing Amazon.com and it’ll only be a matter of hours before you experience their email marketing for yourself (just check your inbox).
For years Amazon have understood the power of email to drive real revenue and acknowledged that sending single, ‘statis’ emails to all customers is very rarely the best way to maximise your gains.
Here are 6 lessons you can learn from Amazon’s email marketing program toimprove your own.
1. Track everything your customers do
Track absolutely everything your customers do. When it comes to running anonline business, data is power.
Amazon has mastered this. Just take a look at their homepage. Yours will look different but this is a snapshot of mine (and I’m sure it’ll be different tomorrow):
The homepage is never the same. With sections like ‘New for you’, ‘More items to consider’ and ‘Recommendations for you in video games’ Amazon are constantly tracking what I’ve browsed and what I’ve bought and adjusting their messaging to me.
We can get a further glimpse at just how much data they’re collecting by looking at their ‘Account’ section. It’s one of the most robust account management sections of any eCommerce store I’ve ever seen! You can view all of your orders (physical and digital), leave feedback, manage your card details, update your personal details, setup 1-click, let Amazon know if you’re a student, sign up for Prime, build a watch list or a wish list and even connect Twitter and Facebook.
Many of these options are powerful data collection tools for Amazon. Why else would they want you to add Twitter and Facebook other than as a means to learn more about you and encourage you to share amongst your friends?
Amazon don’t hide their data collection either. They let you manage your product recommendations yourself, if you want to.
By tracking everything your customers do you can begin to compile email marketing campaigns that really resonate with your customers at an individual level.
This blog post from The Search Guys is a walks through a series of emails send to author Chris after browsing point-and-shoot digital cameras. Although on Amazon.com for just a few minutes after leaving Chris proceeded to get 9 different emails targeting his specific interests over the next few weeks.
Here’s an example of an email Amazon sent Chris:
As you can see they don’t just use their massive store of data on their home page. Every email they sent Chris was personalized in this way. I’m going to use other examples throughout this post as there are some great examples.
Key takeaway: track what your customers do, use this data to determine their interests based on their browsing or purchasing habits and insert dynamic data into your emails based on the products a customer has expressed interest in.
2. Be consistent: email is an extension of your store
Think of email as giving you a chance to bring your store to the customer in their inbox.
I think Amazon nails this. Two things they do really well are:
1. Keeping their email content and templates consistent, not only with each other but with their website itself. Widgets within emails (such as the product recommendation widget below) look and feel just like they would on their website. By keeping their campaign designs and content consistent with their overall store they create a holisitic experience for their customers. This in turn leads to familiarity, which builds trust and trust is always a good thing.
2. Don’t just sent discounts or offers. Your store has a myriad of aspects. Just some of the emails you receive from Amazon regularly include newsletters, cart abandonment reminders, special competitions, requests for reviews, random product recommendations, reminders to sign up for Amazon Prime, etc. In most cases Amazon does not offer discounts – bear this in mind. You generally don’t discount everything in your store, so don’t do so in emails you send out. Consider other tactics, such as those discussed in point five below!
Use series campaigns
Another thing Amazon do well is setting up series of emails.
They’re not afraid to email their customers. Always A/B test your email campaigns for frequency but in general there are opportunities to maxmize your returns if you get the frequency right.
I’ve seen customers achieve 20% conversion on cart abandonment campaigns by adding a second email to the campaign. You should not only send an email a few hours after a customer abandons the cart but another 24 hours after that. This can increase your conversions by 50% or more, just by adding a second email.
As we can see from the example below Amazon doesn’t mind going to town when they think they’re onto a good thing. Each of the emails below is targeted toward DVDs or Electronics Deals.
Similarly, the campaign I spoke about in point one involved 9 emails after Chris browsed for digital cameras.
Key takeaway: experiment with more frequent, series campaigns. This works in eCommerce, SaaS and many other online businesses. Vary the emails, make the content useful and be prepared to reach a ‘maximum’ that you should back away from!
3. Make life as simple as possible: AKA, Don’t make them think
Making the user experience as simple as possible is an important step in maximizing conversions from your email marketing.
What does this mean? Sweat the details! Take every step in your customersvery seriously.
This can extend from simply calling the customer by their first name to automatically logging customers in anytime they are required to return to your site. When you visit Amazon.com, no matter which email you receive, which link you click or even if you just visit the site directly, you can always view your shopping cart, add to it, remove from it, etc. without re-authenticating.
This might sound basic but it’s surprising how many stores could benefit from this sort of UX-optimization.
In the case of Amazon, nearly the entire site is accessible without logging in and yet it’s very personalized. They haven’t sacrificed the experience and yet have not put up the roadblock of requiring a password (until they have to).
A single call to action
Amazon’s emails are generally very specific and direct. Take following email which is an example of the sort of email you will regularly receive after making a Kindle purchase. The desired goal is to get you to review a book you’ve purchased and, as you can see, there isn’t much else you can other than click through and review the book!
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