Time-sensitive discount campaigns are a big chance to increase your Shopify store’s sales, meet new customers, and boost conversion rates. To make the most of this chance, you need not only design these campaigns but also promote them effectively. In this article, we’ll look at how to use email marketing to get the best results from time-sensitive discount campaigns.
Preparing Time-Limited Campaigns for the Email
Before you start emailing about your time-sensitive discount, first clearly define what your campaign offers.
Your campaign might have many rules, like minimum cart value, products included or excluded, or varying discounts based on cart amount. It is important that your customers understand these easily.
Keep your campaign simple. The fewer terms and conditions, the easier it is for your customer to understand.
Also, explain your campaign with plenty of images. Campaigns like “Buy One Get One” are often misunderstood and can upset customers. For these campaigns, use clear images that make the offer easy to understand.
After you design the campaign, you can ask tools like ChatGPT or Gemini if it is clear and easy to understand. You can also tell a friend who is like your customer base about the campaign in one or two sentences and ask if they understand. If they do not get it in a few seconds, there is a problem.
Building Your Email List and Segmentation
To get the most from email marketing, clean your email list regularly. For example, remove people who haven’t opened your emails in the last 6 months. This way, you avoid sending unnecessary emails and protect your email sender reputation.
Time-sensitive campaigns can sometimes cause problems. For instance, a customer who shopped just one day before the campaign might get upset that they missed the discount and want to cancel their order. So, before announcing your time-sensitive discount, make sure you do not send emails to people who purchased in the last 7 days.
Crafting the Email Content
If you have done all the preparation, now it’s time to create your email content.
For time-sensitive discount campaigns, a good email schedule might be:
•Pre-Campaign Communication: Send an email 7 days or 3 days before the campaign starts. Tell them a time-sensitive campaign is coming, explain the rules, and give the end date. Include links to popular and top products or collections.
•Campaign Start Communication: Send an email as soon as your campaign begins. Let customers know the campaign has started and is for a limited time. Include links to high-conversion products that they will want to check. Clearly show the benefits of this discount. Mention if any products have low stock.
•Last 24 Hours: When 24 hours are left, send a final reminder email. Let them know the campaign is ending soon. Since people don’t open emails immediately, clearly state the end date and time in the email. This prevents frustration for customers who open the email later.
After creating your emails, send a test email to yourself. Check how it looks on different email programs and devices. Many people check emails on mobile phones, so make sure your email looks good on mobile screens.
Timing and Sending Strategies
If you regularly use email marketing, you probably know when your audience opens emails the most. Use this data to schedule your campaign emails when they are most likely to be opened.
If you don’t have this data yet, think about your ideal customer to decide the best day and time.
For example, if your customers are white-collar workers, sending emails on Tuesday or Thursday between 8:00 and 12:00 (local time) might work best. Mondays are busy and Fridays can be low-energy days. Around 8:00-12:00, people are usually active and online.
When sending time-sensitive emails, follow general email marketing rules. If you have sent many emails recently, consider delaying your campaign for a few weeks. Sending emails too often can make subscribers leave your list. In the long run, this can hurt your brand.
Analyzing Performance and Optimizing Campaigns
It is important to track how your email campaigns perform. Key metrics include:
•Open Rates: What percentage of emails were opened?
•Click-Through Rates: How many opened emails had at least one click?
•Conversion Rates: What percent of clicked emails led to a purchase?
•Unsubscribe Rates: How much did your list shrink after the campaign?
These numbers show how well your email efforts worked.
If your email list has more than 10,000 emails, try A/B testing different subject lines, content, and sending times to see what works best.
Best Practices and Common Pitfalls
One common mistake with time-sensitive campaigns is doing them too often. This leads to too many emails, and subscribers may ignore future campaigns or unsubscribe.
Plan time-sensitive campaigns as part of a broader marketing strategy. Create a campaign and communication plan that keeps customer interest and gets good results.
A good suggestion is the 20% rule. Only use time-sensitive campaigns for up to 20% of the month. This way, you don’t overwhelm your customers and can also send other valuable emails.
Also, regularly clean your email list. Quality is more important than quantity. Remove those who have not opened any emails in the last 6 months regularly. This helps protect your reputation and keeps your emails out of spam folders.
Finally, do not rely only on email marketing to announce your time-sensitive discount. Use social media, SMS, and your Shopify store to communicate the campaign. Run an integrated marketing campaign.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed what to watch out for when running a time-sensitive discount campaign on your Shopify store.
In a successful campaign, email marketing is key. Time-sensitive discounts can turn your email list into revenue.
The first rule is to keep your campaign very simple. Make sure the emails you send are easy and effective for your audience to understand.
Send emails before the campaign starts, when it starts, and 24 hours before it ends. Clearly include the campaign rules and start and end dates.
Time-sensitive discount campaigns carry a risk of upsetting recent shoppers. So, before sending emails, remove people who have shopped recently from your list to ensure they do not receive the email.
After each campaign, pay attention to changes in your email marketing performance. Follow the 20% rule to keep your audience excited without overwhelming them. Limit time-sensitive campaigns to no more than 20% of the month. This way, you protect your brand image and do not overuse campaigns.
To manage time-sensitive campaigns easily in your Shopify store, check out the Growth Suite app on the Shopify App Store. Growth Suite helps you create all time-sensitive campaigns quickly and effectively. It also helps you with the emails you send to your audience. Without any code or theme changes, you can install Growth Suite from the Shopify App Store in a few minutes and start increasing your sales.
Also don’t forget to check out these articles.
Shopify Time Limited Offer Guide
Mastering Percentage Discounts in Shopify for Maximum Impact
Fixed Amount Discounts on Shopify: When and How to Use Them Effectively
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