This ecommerce strategy article is an excerpt from our new book, The Ultimate Ecommerce Email & SMS Playbook. We’re diving into our ecommerce strategy chapter focused on the 7 Reasons Why Ecommerce Customers Leave Your Brand.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? The brand with the most likes and shares, of course!
Email and SMS is simply not as sexy as social media. Opens and clicks aren’t as “cool” as likes, retweets, views, and shares. Kudos to social media; we’ve all been trained in a true Pavlovian manner to base our entire self-worth on vanity metrics.
Between people screaming that “email is dead,” brands sharing Facebook ads all over our feeds, and influencers hawking products to millions of followers, it’s no wonder that email & SMS gets overlooked.
Quick stats from OptinMonster: even if social media is more prominent in our lives, the channel converts abysmally. The statistics below are pretty generous; the top 1% of brands in the world experience ridiculously low conversion rates from social media. But they know that – which is why they run ads to their site with one goal: capture emails & phone numbers to convert visitors into customers.
There are no email forwards or referrals that brands can share with the public, but a like or comment is visible to the world! Vanity metrics look great to everyone, so I can certainly understand the appeal. I also look at our posts, videos, and podcast statistics and smile at every metric. But, for us, email and SMS converts leads into customers.
Neglecting the email and SMS channel for vanity metrics on social media is an easy way to lose sales. Vanity metrics is reason number six why brands fail at email and SMS.
Let’s recap. I’ve established why customers leave you for competitors, and I’ve shown that a strong email and SMS strategy is the best way to combat it. Simultaneously, email and SMS helps level the playing field between you and the top 1% and builds revenue streams that are profitable, predictable, and sustainable. This chapter helped you identify the “bad habits” and preconceived notions about email and SMS and get you thinking about how to break free from those habits going forward.
For most brands, though, the urgency isn’t quite there. For some brands, the lack of a strong email and SMS strategy is merely an opportunity they haven’t seized yet and haven’t truly felt the pain of customer churn. For others, losing customers is a critical problem they needed to solve yesterday. Stop and think: which category does your brand fall under?
Because some brands are constantly in the weeds of the business due to the pandemic and haven’t stepped out to see the forest from the trees, the next chapter specifically addresses why establishing a strategic email & SMS plan is critical right here and now.
Subscribe to our Ecom 80/20 Podcast!
Subscribe to the e-commerce podcast created for brands who want to compete to win in a crowded marketplace. Hosted by Isaac Hyman and Yaakov Rosenberg, we talk about how e-commerce brands can work smarter, not harder, and build better customer relationships that scale their business. With special guests that include e-commerce founders, e-commerce marketing experts and tech vendors, discover why the 80/20 rule and being customer-centric is critical to ecommerce! You can listen to our past podcast episodes by visiting HiFlyerDigital.com/podcast or subscribing within your preferred podcast listening platform.
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