WooCommerce Follow Up Emails : 6 Types with Examples
Editorial Team
January 24, 2023
Are you looking to leverage WooCommerce follow up emails to boost your sales?
According to research, 50% of sales happen after the fifth follow up email.
This shows how important it is to keep engaging with prospective customers on a regular basis. That is because you can prevent them from becoming one-and-done buyers with regular communication.
Keeping the people in your email list who don’t circle back to buy from your website again is an expense you must avoid.
You can change the scenario by sending WooCommerce automated follow up emails to those customers. And, thus, turning them into regular paying customers.
Excited? Let’s dive in.
Contents
WooCommerce follow up emails are those you send to users after they interact with your website or make a purchase. The aim of such an email is to keep the engagement going.
Such emails assist you in maintaining your relationship with your customers. In addition, it also prevents the relationship cord from being cut. Some people confuse follow-up emails with transactional emails. But they are not the same! Transactional emails inform people of the whereabouts of their parcel. WooCommerce follow up emails, on the other hand, can be pre-purchase and post-purchase. With WooCommerce follow up emails, you can :
These emails are important for selling physical products and digital product .
A customized follow up email can encourage users to complete their order or buy again. Therefore, having a follow up email strategy is critical for accelerating the sales.
You can send users a follow up email about cross-sale products to motivate them to make a second purchase. For example, if someone has bought a camera, then you can send them an email asking if they need a ring light or tripods.
Sending customized emails based on the purchase history can help you increase your E-Commerce store's sales.
Customer retention has a significant impact on the ROI (return on investment). When you don't communicate with a first-time customer, you don't get to lay
Usually, users buy from multiple brands. So it becomes your duty as the website owner to keep communicating with them, so they don't forget you.
You can increase customer retention if you engage with them regularly. You can also remind them about the amazing offers and deals you offer through follow-up emails.
One way to build a strong relationship with your customer is to show that you care. Care does not always have to be in the form of discounts.
You can also demonstrate concern for your customers by educating them about your product. Moreover, You can also suggest related products that they may find beneficial.
Engaging with your customer regularly will earn their trust. And this will strengthen the foundation of your relationship.
Hopefully, by now, you are convinced that follow up emails can bring you newer heights of success.
Now let's move to the next section to find out how to set up automated follow up emails in WooCommerce.
We are going to use a next-generation email automation solution - FunnelKit Automations. This plugin comes with various types of 15+ prebuilt automation recipes. Since these are ready to import, you can use them with minimal effort.
Best part? You can add unlimited contacts and send unlimited emails to your contacts.
This WooCommerce plugin offers 360-degree contacts overview, automation, integrated analytics & more. You can send unlimited emails to your users with a few clicks.
On top of that, you can also segment your audience based on their geographical as well as purchase history.
Sounds fascinating, right?
Let’s begin the process. Here we will show you how you can send automated cart abandonment recovery follow up emails from the WooCommerce dashboard.
🔔 Note: You can send other types of follow-up emails using FunnelKit Automation in a similar way.
The first step is to install and activate FunnelKit Automations as your WooCommerce follow up email plugin. You can install the free version from WordPress.org or WordPress dashboard.
Now we are going to use abandon cart reminder prebuilt automation. This automation sends three sequential emails to encourage users to complete the checkout process for their abandoned cart.
Go to FunnelKit Automations ⇒ Automations (Next Gen) and then click on Add New Automation.
Now from the list, click on Abandoned Cart Reminder to send WooCommerce follow up emails free.
Now to import the prebuilt recipe, click on Import.
Then, provide a Name and click on Create.
Now let’s go through each step of this automation so you can understand it better and customize it according to your needs.
The first step is the event that will trigger the follow up actions. And in this case, of course, the event is cart abandonment. Now, to edit the settings related to the event, click on the trigger.
Here you have the option to run this automation one or multiple times for each contact. Since a customer may leave their cart multiple times, it's wise to choose Multiple Times for the Run on Contact option.
For the same reason, it's advised to turn on the "Allow currently active contacts in this automation to re-enter again" option.
In the next step, the automation has a 30 min delay which means it will wait 30 min to take the next step after someone abandons a cart. This is because if he/she comes back within 30 minutes to complete the order, then we can assume they never really abandoned it.
You can alter the first delay according to your follow up strategy. You can create a delay of a specified number of hours, days, or weeks if you want.
🔔 Note: With FunnelKit Automations Pro, you can delay the first follow up email until a specific date and time or specific custom field has been changed.
After the delay, the automation will send its first WooCommerce abandoned cart email. FunnelKit Automations uses a merge tag to personalize the email. Merge tags help you add dynamic user information to the email.
Here is a preview of the first automated follow up email:
After the first email, this automation takes 12 hours and 24 hours delay consecutively and sends two more emails.
You can customize each step according to your strategy.
🔔 Note: You can also set up conditional-based workflows in your WooCommerce follow up email sequences. The conditions are only available in FunnelKit Pro. This conditional cart abandonment recipe is only available with FunnelKit automations pro.
Once you are happy with each step of the email automation, click on the Active button in the top-right corner to activate the automation. This will start sending follow up emails to WooCommerce users.
Now that you know how easily you can send follow up emails, let's look at the types of automated emails you can utilize to grow your eCommerce business’s sales.
It is a follow up email that you send out to ask if the parcel was delivered as expected and if they're satisfied with the shopping experience.
Here's an example of a shipment check-in email from MOO:
We absolutely love this email because it comes from a character called 'Little Moo' which is a print robot, and it is very conversational as well.
This email works because you're training buyers to believe that there is a real person behind the store who cares about their satisfaction.
A product recommendation email is the type of email where you recommend items to your customers based on their recent purchases.
Since they've already bought from you, they know, like, and trust you. It's now time to leverage it.
Let's look at an example of a product recommendation email from a fashion store called Lowellita:
In this email, they're acknowledging that the customer has bought from them and that they're not just another prospect.
They also recommend items based on their recent purchase.
Purchase anniversary emails can be sent three months, six months, or one year after customers have made the purchase. You can choose the time when to send it out based on your strategy.
Here's a mind-boggling stat:
Take a look at an email from Zappos.
We love this email because it is brimming with personality.
In this email, they're simply wishing the customer and reminding them of the brand. Again, you can go a step further and offer an anniversary discount coupon code!
Related: Check out the ready to import first purchase anniversary and purchase anniversary recipes by FunnelKit Automaton.
The educational emails guide users on how to get the most out of the products they've just bought.
As a store owner, you must send out WooCommerce follow up emails to help them at every step of the way.
It also leads to them having a memorable experience and makes them believe that you're not leaving them in the lurch.
Create a hands-on tutorial, a step-by-step plan to help them get started with your product.
Here's a wonderful example from a company called Framebridge that sells arts and frames:
They lead customers to an educational blog post where they explain how to hang their art pieces. Everything's laid out step by step.
Related: Check out the ready to import specific product education recipe by FunnelKit Automatons.
If a customer hasn't bought from your store in 3 months or 6 months, you can send them a win-back campaign.
Most store owners don't acknowledge that the customer hasn't shopped in a while and continue to send blast emails.
You can set yourself apart by making an attempt to woo them back!
As per a stat published by MarketingLand.com, 45% of the customers who get a win back will open your future emails too.
And that's because a win-back email gets their attention and starts a conversation.
Here is a example of win back email:
It's nice, witty, and to the point.
There's also a coupon code worth 15% off that they're offering to bring the customer back to the shop.
Related: Check out the ready to import customer winback campaign with coupon and customer winback without coupon recipes by FunnelKit Automatons.
60% to 80% of customers abandon their shopping basket. Sending follow up emails to these users is a tried and true method of getting them to complete the product.
And sending follow up emails to these users has been shown to increase their likelihood of completing the product.
Cart abandonment emails are sent to users to remind them of their cart and to return to complete the order.
Here is a example of cart abandonment email from the Tools Express team:
We like this email because it is personalized and includes a discount code with a time limit. The discount code serves as a strong incentive to complete the purchase process.
Related: Check out the ready to import Abandoned Cart Reminder, Abandoned Cart Reminder Pro and Abandoned Cart per product recipes by FunnelKit Automaton.
So, these were some of the pre purchase and post purchase follow up email use cases that you can use for your online business.
Now let’s have a look at how you can measure the performance of your follow up emails.
Just sending a bunch of follow up emails to your existing email addresses is not the end of action.
You need to measure how the follow up emails are performing. Based on the previous performance, you can take future action to improve the results your follow up email will bring.
Here are some of the metrics you should consider while deciding whether a follow up email campaign is successful or not:
This represents the percentage of email recipients who open a specific email. Open rate is extremely important as unless people open to see what's inside you can’t really communicate with them.
That's why a good open rate is important for a follow up email to be successful. With FunnelKit Automations, you can check open rate for each of the follow up emails with inline analytics.
In case your open rate is not as good as you had expected, you need to experiment with your email subject line and preview line.
The click rate is the percentage of people who actually click on any of the links in the email. This shows whether or not users are engaging with your email.
If you have a high open-rate but customers are not interacting with it, it will not result in sales.
As a result, monitoring click rate is crucial in determining if a follow up email campaign is successful or not. With FunnelKit Automations, you can simply determine the open rate of your follow up emails.
The main purpose of follow up emails is to increase sales and generate more revenue. That's why it's important that you consider revenue earned from follow up email campaigns as a metric to measure success.
Not only total revenue, but you should also consider revenue/per person as it will give you a better insight into people converting on average.
You should set a target revenue that you want to achieve through a follow up campaign. It will help you to measure the success of your follow up emails more effectively.
The proportion of email recipients who choose to unsubscribe from your mailing list after opening a certain email.
This matrix should be considered because a high unsubscribe rate indicates that something is wrong with your follow up emails.
It's possible that you're sending emails too frequently, at the incorrect time, or simply aren't communicating effectively with your audience.
When you know what's wrong, you can correct it so that your follow up email campaigns provide greater results.
The good news is with FunnelKit Automations; you can keep track of the unsubscribe rate of your email as well.
Each follow up email you send should be customer-focused and add value to the customer's experience.
If your emails are designed to give value to your customers, they will engage with them more, increasing your chances of making more sales.
Every consumer is unique, and you should treat them accordingly. Don't send generic follow up emails to every email address you have.
Instead, segment your audience depending on their interaction with your website, purchase history, purchasing behavior, and so on to make follow up emails more effective.
🔔Note: With FunnelKit Automations, you can generate different audience lists based on how they interact with your WooCommerce site and utilize those audiences to send tailored follow up emails for a higher return.
In this competitive email marketing field, where customers are bombarded with many emails on a daily basis, sending personalized and relevant content in an email is a must-follow rule.
Using customer information (like name, address, etc.) in the email subject, preview, or body is one technique to personalize the email. Another option is to send them follow up emails depending on their purchase history.
To summarize, try to personalize email in whatever manner you can.
An email with the right information is not enough. The email should be aesthetically pleasing as well.
While it's a good idea to add an image to your email, it doesn't necessarily have to be the case every time.
Even if your email is a text-based one, make sure it's formatted in the right way and easily readable for users.
As mentioned before, the purpose of follow up email is to get users to engage with your email and convert.
To achieve this goal you need to add a clear CTA in your email body that tells users exactly what action to take to go to the next step. An email without a proper CTA is just a waste of time and effort for both users and store owners.
Last but not least, automate your follow up emails. Manually sending follow up emails is not difficult, but it is not the most practical choice.
A WooCommerce follow up automation will not only save you time but will also make the process more efficient, making your life easier.
You can use FunnelKit Automations to make all kinds of follow up emails automated.
Now you are aware of different types of WooCommerce follow up emails and also the best practices.
Nurturing your audience with follow up emails has long-term benefits. And automating them will help enjoy the long-term benefits with minimal effort.
FunnelKit Automation is designed to help you achieve the best of WooCommerce follow up emails. And for that, it offers pre-built ready-to-use recipes for almost all kinds of follow up emails such as Abandoned cart reminders, Specific product education, first purchase anniversary, discount for the next purchase, and many more.
Are you ready to start sending automated WooCommerce follow up emails?