Got a question about email marketing?
We speak with hundreds of eCommerce marketing professionals and business owners every day.Here are answers to the top questions we get asked all the time.
Top 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions
How do you capture email addresses?
We have 3 ways of capturing email addresses:
The first way is by capturing emails when people enter their email address anywhere on the site. For example if you have a “join our newsletter” form in the footer of your site or if they enter their email on checkout. This is the most standard way of email capture.
The second way we capture emails is through our dynamic entry and exit overlays. These typically convert at 5-8% of the traffic they appear for.
The third way is by far the most sophisticated and something that most of our simply cannot do. We have the ability to automatically profile any user who clicks on your regular email blasts and end up on your website. This entire process happens in the background and allows us to capture 6-8 times more emails than the other two methods.
So if you’re already running an abandon cart email campaign and not capturing emails with this third method, this feature alone will allow you to email 10 times more people when they abandon their carts because were capturing 10 times more emails.
How are you different to other vendors?
Five main differences that you can read about in more detail here. But in a nutshell, we are substantially cheaper than our competitors. We don’t force companies into long-term contracts. We work on a month to month basis. Many other providers cannot deliver on the browse campaigns we power (product, category and search) and finally, we have some superior ways to capture more email address’s that our competitors simply cannot do. More email address’s equals more emails sent which equals more revenue generated from our campaigns. Read more here.
We already do cart abandonment do we still need SmartMail?
100% you do. Cart abandonment is great and addresses all the people who leave before completing their order but what about the other 95% of your traffic who bounced off your site from a product page, a category page or even a site search result page? Sure, their purchase intent isn’t as great as cart abandoners but research has proven that retargeting shoppers via email who exited on product and category pages before they even added items to their cart can deliver a great revenue uplift than cart abandonment campaigns.
What ROI could we expect to see?
Obviously there is a no one size fits all answer here and there are a handful of variables that can affect the ROI, however we’ve seen across the board that most companies we work with can expect at least a 29x ROI. So if you’re paying us $650/month you can expect to be generating an additional $18,850 in sales as a result of our campaigns.
We already send a lot of emails. Won’t these just annoy people?
At face value it would seem that way, however these emails typically deliver a 54% open rate and over 23% click through rate so the engagement is extremely high. Mainly because they are pitched more as a support type message rather than a heavy sales email.
We work with some companies who mail their list twice a day and still see amazing results with our campaigns without infringing on their regular newsletter sends.
Which platforms do you integrate with?
Because we are platform agnostic, we can integrate with ANY shopping cart platform. You name it we can integrate with them. Plus, we can also work with custom built shopping carts as well.
Do I need to offer incentives to make these campaigns work?
Not necessarily. In fact in most cases we don’t suggest or recommend any incentives in the emails as we don’t want to train your customers to feel like they can get a coupon every time they leave your site. However there are some cases where an incentive will definitely help and make sense.
Are there any long-term contracts or commitments?
No. Unlike any of our competitors we don’t require any long-term commitments. We do not believe in charging for tools if they are not working for your business. The only request we make is that you provide us 30 days termination notice in the event you wish to cancel our service.
Would we still use our regular ESP for regular newsletter sending?
Yes. Nearly all of our clients continue using their regular email provider (Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Exact Target etc.) for their regular email sending and use SmartMail for all their lifecycle and behavioral emails. This has never been an issue for anyone we work with as those platforms can’t do what we do and our email campaigns don’t infringe in anyway on the regular newsletter campaigns so there isn’t any real cross over.
How long do you store user cookies for?
We track a browser’s cookie for one full year from the time they last entered the site. So if they were on the site today and came back again in 364 days, we’d still be able to identify that user as the same person. Additionally, when they come back in 364, the cookie would be renewed for an additional year.
Setup and On-boarding Questions
How long does it take to get these campaigns live?
It usually takes 2-3 weeks to get all the campaigns up and live. These include the following campaigns: Cart and checkout abandon, product abandon, category abandon, site search abandon, an entry light box (pop up) and a complimentary welcome series that follows up on the entry overlay.
How does the integration process work?
The integration process works very easily because it’s something we do for you 🙂 It requires a few lines of java script to be placed on every page of your website (exactly like Google Analytics), and then we take care of the rest. At most, it might take your developer ten min to complete.
Do I need any developers to integrate?
No. The great part about our service is that we manage the entire integration for you and don’t charge a penny for it. The only requirement is for your developer to place a few lines of code on every page of your website. This normally takes about 5-10min of work. From there, we take care of the rest.
Will your scripts slow down page load speeds?
No. Our scripts are all asynchronous based which means by definition that they could never slow your page loads down. We’ve never experienced any issues in this regard either as we use the exact same logic and code structure as Google Analytics.
How does the template creation process work?
We have four main email template layouts that are then used as variations for all the campaigns we set up. We call these the “master templates.” Once we customize the master templates to match the look and feel of your brand, we will email you a sample of each template for your final approval. Once you approve the templates we will then continue the process by adding in all the dynamic elements and all the approved body copy text and recommendations to make sure the finished emails are completely dynamic and personalized for each individual customer.
Are your email templates responsive for mobile?
Yes. All the emails we create are 100% responsive for mobile and are tested on over 40 different email clients and devices to ensure they look beautiful on any device and inside any client.
Can we design our own templates and use them?
Yes. You are also free to design your own templates and provide us the finished PSD files. To help you along, we can provide you with a style guide to help your designer better understand the main elements that need to be in each template to ensure the best results and to make sure they’ll render nicely on mobile devices.
Can you pass emails you capture into our current ESP?
Yes, we are able to pass any new emails we capture directly into your ESP (MailChimp, Campaign Monitor etc.) in real time. Once you provide us your account API key, we’ll take care of the rest.
Platform/Reporting Access Questions
What can we expect to see once we have login access?
Once we get started, every client is given login access to the SmartMail dashboard. The dashboard contains an “event log” that tracks in real time everything that your customers are doing and clicking on the site. You’ll also be able to see all the campaigns we’ve set up, the automation rules we created, the email templates we created and comprehensive real time reporting on all campaigns.
What kind of reporting do you provide?
Our reporting dashboards provides all the main metrics you would wish to see from your email marketing campaigns. We provide percentage breakdowns and actual numbers of open rates, click through rates, unsubscribe rates and bounce rates. Plus, we also provide conversion numbers on orders place and total revenue generated from each campaign.
How do you attribute sales in the reporting?
We only report sales in our reporting if a customer engages with our emails and proceeds back to your site to complete an order. We do not report on any sales that were generated where the user had no engagement with our emails.
Can you append UTM tags to the URL’s for reporting in Google Analytics as well?
Yes. This is easy to do and easy to change at any time. There is one setting in the dashboard where you can edit the Source, Medium and Campaign titles.
Are we able to export data from the platform?
You are able to export subscriber and segmented list data, however there is no ability to export actual event data.
Platform/Reporting Access Questions
Are there any setup fees?
No. There are no setup fees. However we do request that you pay the first month’s fee upfront as a deposit. We do this to ensure that our fixed costs associated with setting up your campaigns (data integration and template creation process) are covered in the event that something goes wrong and we are not able to ever launch the campaigns.
Do you offer free trials?
Unfortunately we don’t offer free trials. We put our money where our mouths are by spending over $1,490 on carrying out the custom data integration and template creation process on your behalf at zero cost. As a result, we are not able to also then waver our monthly fees.
Do you require long term commitments?
No. Unlike our competitors we don’t require any long-term commitments or lock in contracts. We like to keep everything simple. However, we do request 30 days termination notice in the event that you wish to stop working with us.
When does the monthly billing start?
The monthly fee and billing cycle starts the day all the campaigns are ready to turn live. We do not charge any monthly fee’s until then.
How would I cancel the service if I ever wanted to?
Canceling is super easy. Every client is assigned a dedicated account representative and you’d just need to email them and request to cancel. The only request we make is that you provide 30 days notice.
What kind of ROI could I expect to see?
There isn’t a one size fits all answer to this but from the metrics we’ve seen, nearly all our clients could usually expect to see over 29x ROI on the additional revenue our campaigns can help generate.
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