When I was growing up, online shopping was new and uncertain. Sure, Meijer was 24/7 and FYE offered entertainment for everyone, but it was tough to stay on 10th grade’s cutting edge without an occasional order from CDNow. My mom wasn’t keen on the idea of buying things over the internet at first, but I was persistent. She’d eventually give in, sharing her credit card at a speed measured in baud and kicking off a fortnight of anticipation. It was definitely worth it.
Connect your store
Today, it seems like everyone’s e-commerce. Even my mom, once so leery about the whole thing, now sells cross-stitched pieces on Etsy. It’s easy to set up a store, and even easier for customers—no matter where they live—to buy your stuff. And if you’re selling online and using MailChimp, there’s probably an integration available to help you sell even more.
When you connect your store to your MailChimp account, you’ll send better email and learn more about the people buying your products. Plus, it’s simple to get started. You’ll find integrations for popular platforms like Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce, along with hundreds of others in our directory.
Email marketing for e-commerce
Every month, more of you are selling more stuff with the help of MailChimp, and our collection of integrations continues to grow. Still, in marketing MailChimp for e-commerce, we wanted to follow our own best practice: sending the best message to the best audience at the right time. With help from our team of data scientists, we started with these groups:
- All users who self-identify as “e-commerce” industry, but haven’t connected a store
- Paid users with a shopping cart on their website, but no integration
- New accounts with a shopping cart on their website, but no integration
Together, these totaled more than 240,000 addresses—a lot, but still less than 3% of MailChimp users. We waited 2 weeks, checked the results, and were happy to find a click rate above our list’s average with just a few hundred unsubscribers. More importantly, that 3% accounted for 14% of new stores connected. But confirming our audience was just the beginning.
Learning more with Multivariate Testing
We’re big fans of MailChimp Pro. In fact, we once used MailChimp Pro to market MailChimp Pro. This time, Multivariate Testing helped us refine our content, and fast. We set up tests in each of our campaigns, first adding a series of logos.
It turns out these extra images actually decreased click rate, maybe deflecting a few users of other systems.
Next, we paired longtime champ Abstract Wooden Block Shop with an in-store photo. Evenly matched, they resulted in a tie.
Finally, since it’s painless to test 2 things at once (Thanks, John!), we threw in an extra subject line for good measure.
Step by step
Now that we’ve collected some data, it’s time to put it to use. Enter automation. We’ll employ the MailChimp API to pass specific subscribers to a group in our list, create a campaign from our winning results, and trigger a workflow that delivers a timely message about connecting an online store. We’re excited to see how it turns out, and will be sure to report back on the results.