Lifecycle Emails for Shopify Stores May 18, 2016 19:00

Lifecycle emails are sent to customers at different points during the lifetime of their interaction with your Shopify store. These emails extend your interaction with the customer beyond a single purchase on your store. You can build loyalty and engagement, create advocates, and get repeat purchasers using these emails. All of these ultimately increase your brand value and revenue.

In this post, we will look at the importance of lifecycle emails, highlight the different types of emails, and list a number of Shopify apps you can use to automate lifecycle emails.

Why use lifecycle emails?

Emails are still one of the most effective marketing and engagement channels, according to Custora and McKinsey & Company reports, compared with other channels like social media. Emails are nearly 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers versus social platforms, and customers acquired through emails tend to have a 12% higher lifetime value relative to the average of all marketing channels.

One of the main reasons for emails being highly effective marketing channels for online stores is that almost 91% of consumers check emails every day. In addition, emails have the ability to be highly personalized based on the customer.

Almost 91% of consumers check emails every day.

Lifecycle emails are personalized and targeted emails based on the stage in the customers’ journey. These emails can help engage customers at the discovery stage, and nurture the lead before customers make a purchase. Such nurtured leads tend to be more lucrative as they generate 47% higher order values compared to non-nurtured leads.

You can stay in touch with customers even after their purchase is complete to provide them high value information. This can create a better customer experience as it signals that you care about the customer relationship even after the purchase. This can help turn customers into advocates and repeat purchasers.

5 types of lifecycle emails

There are a number of different emails you can consider implementing for your Shopify store, based on different stages of a customer’s journey.

1. Welcome new customers

Personalized welcome emails can be sent to customers when they create an account on your Shopify store. You can include next-steps, popular items, how-to resources in these emails. These emails are your brand’s first personal impression on your customers.

You can convey the voice of your brand through these emails. It will be especially helpful if this email is signed by the owner/founder of the store, and at the very least, a person. This helps humanize your brand and builds trust amongst customers.

Welcome emails increase customer engagement with a brand by 33%.

2. Promote products

You can send customers emails about store promotions, new product launches, special-occasion sales, store announcements, and more.

Example of new product announcement email

This is an opportunity to keep your store’s products top of mind for customers, while providing incentive to purchase items.

3. Order transactions

These are transactional emails including receipt emails, order confirmation emails, shipping details and update emails, etc. You can spruce up and personalize each of these emails so that they serve a greater function than what they are intended for.

You can include product recommendations, upsell and cross-sell recommendations, and highlight store policies like free shipping or returns. Each email is an opportunity to educate the customer about your store and brand.

4. After-purchase emails

These emails can be prompting customers to provide feedback or leave a review. You can also include product tutorials, helpful resources, and point customers to social communities where other customers are sharing information.

5. Member emails

These are email updates about any new blog or social media posts, and newsletters. Even if you don’t send a newsletter every week, you can set the expectation amongst your customers that they will receive it every few months or so. This will make sure that your customers know what to expect and how often to expect such emails.

Shopify apps to create lifecycle emails

Shopify has a number of apps that can help you automate and manage different types of emails.

1. Email Automation

The Email Automation app by Beeketing is a comprehensive email marketing tool that allows you to automate a number of different lifecycle touch-points. You can automate cart recovery, thank you, new product, and sales recommendation emails, and more for your store.

Email automation example by Beeketing (Source)

You can start using the app for $19 per month

2. Receiptful

The Receiptful app for Shopify connects your store to the Receiptful email marketing service. You can edit and modify receipt emails to personalize them for your brand and customers. In addition, you can include upsell and cross-sell information in the receipt emails.

The Receiptful service is FREE to include branded receipts for your store. You can upgrade to a premium plan to get more features and automate other types of emails.

3. Jilt

Jilt is an abandoned cart recovery solution developed by ShopStorm that automates emails to customers when they leave items in their cart without checking out. The app requires a Jilt account starting at $29 per month.

Jilt allows you to manage campaigns, personalize and edit the email templates, and track recoveries for emails that are sent out.

4. MailChimp

You can use the MailChimp for Shopify app to connect your store with the MailChimp email management platform. You can build different email campaigns, and segment customer lists to cater these campaigns.

You can start using MailChimp for FREE, and can upgrade to include automated emails, delivery by time zone, etc. starting at $10 per month.

Lifecycle emails summary

Engaged customers tend to have a better connection with your brand, and are more likely to become advocates and repeat purchasers. Engagement goes beyond the time customers spend on your store to make a purchase. The greater the lifetime duration of a customer interacting with your store, the greater their lifetime value can be. Lifecycle emails can help extend this duration by engaging customers at various points in their journey – pre, during, and post sale.

There are five broad types of lifecycle emails – welcoming new customers, promoting products, completing transactions, after purchase emails, and member emails. Each of these types have a number of different touch-points during a customer’s journey. Reaching out to customers outside of just a sale builds loyalty. Each of these emails is an opportunity to highlight your brand’s voice and ethos to the customer.

How do you use lifecycle emails? Are there specific emails that are especially effective for your store? Please share in the comments below.

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