Using Email and SMS to drive repeat customers with Jason K. Williamson of e2agency

Jason K Williamson is a specialist in combining SMS and Email marketing to turbo charge your repeat purchase rate. In the week's podcast, Trevor picks his brains on how to get the most out of your retention marketing campaigns.

What are the best strategies in 2022 for getting customers to return to your Shopify storefront?

There are three different prime methods for driving customers back to your customers

• Retargeting on media buying. You should be following your customers at all times
• Email marketing. This is great as emails are easy to collect as people are used to giving their email out to receive offers and updates. Email marketing can be run at a large scale at a low cost
• SMS Marketing. This is the most potent way to retarget customers. Customers are already on their mobile and so can purchase in only a few clicks

SMS is for everyone

SMS marketing at scale used to be only available at the enterprise level. Now there are great apps on Shopify that can be used to collect and send SMS campaigns for a low cost.

For Shopify users, a checkout option enables customers to subscribe to SMS messages. SMS marketing is super powerful as 98% of SMS' are read in the first 4 hours.

Best SMS use cases

SMS’ can be collected via Shopify and then used to contact customers (with their consent!). ROI on SMS is much as 10x higher than email. Jason recommends the following use cases:

• Abandoned cart. Sending SMS' to customers reminding them to complete their purchase. This is the most successful automation with the highest ROI
• Sending campaigns to your audience. Sending a campaign like you would with email is even simpler with SMS as it only requires writing a short message. No need to worry about creative, subject lines or deliverability.

Using the Trojan Horse technique to grow your SMS list

Growing your list as fast as possible is the best way to start seeing a good return on investment. Jason recommends using email offers to build your SMS list. Jason calls this the Trojan horse method. The process is as follows:

1. Ask the customer to subscribe to an email newsletter for an offer
2. Offer them the to upgrade to a better offer if they subscribe to an SMS offer

This enables the customer to feel they are in control as they are upgrading, not signing up for the first time. Using a juicy offer will maximise the uptake.

The pitfalls of SMS marketing

SMS is a dangerous marketing channel. The fines can be huge if you send emails to customers who have not given consent.

To avoid this, make your messaging super clear.

How to ensure that SMS does not cannibalise email traffic?

SMS has the highest open rate and conversion rate. Because of this, if you have a customer's email and SMS, send them an SMS first for the best results. A phone number is a personal thing which is challenging to get, so treat these customers like VIPs. To avoid cannibalisation, send different messages, even if the offers are identical.

What is the best platform for running campaigns?

Use specialist software for each marketing channel. Jason recommends using Postscript for running SMS campaigns, Optimonk for pop-ups, Klaviyo for email.

Jason talked to Trevor Ginn from vendlab.com, an eCommerce agency specialising in online marketplaces and e-commerce sales platforms.