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The Ultimate Guide to Retention for Shopify Stores

Email and SMS

Power up personalization and performance with loyalty data

Your Email and SMS checklist Email and SMS best practices Bonus top tip  Email and SMS inspiration Back to contents

With email users receiving an average of 99 emails each day and six in ten saying they receive too many promotional messages, you might be wondering about adding yet more emails to a busy schedule. However, loyalty emails are proven to perform 14 times better on average than regular marketing emails. Why? Because they’re personalized, they’re relevant, and they resonate with customers on a personal level. Keep reading to find out how loyalty emails and SMS messages can help you reach even the most jaded inboxes. 

Your email and SMS checklist

  • Integrate your loyalty platform with your ESP and SMS platforms to ensure that you’re always using current loyalty data to personalize messages.
  • Treat loyalty emails and SMS messages like any other comms and continually test sending schedules, sender names, subject lines, and CTAs.
  • Loyalty emails typically generate 3% of a brand’s total revenue. Keep your eye on this metric to understand how your emails are performing.

Best Practice

Follow the best practices below to achieve greater personalization and segmentation

Build a strong welcome sequence

First impressions count, and your welcome email sets the tone for your relationship with every new member. It’s important to get this one right. 

Take the opportunity to connect with the customer emotionally by telling them more about your brand and what you care about. 

Make it personal, too. Use the early data you have, such as how many points they earned with their first purchase or any available rewards, to show them that you now recognize them as individual loyalty program members.

Ensure you also use this email to remind them how they are going to benefit from being part of your loyalty program. Outline the different ways they can earn points and include compelling CTAs that make them return to your site sooner. We highly recommend bringing them back onsite to earn points in exchange for completing a quiz or profile. That way you’ll have even more insights to segment and personalize with ahead of the next email they receive.

Shopify Guide Images Email And Sms V2 Strong Welcome

Keep in touch between purchases

57% of customers don’t know their points balance, and 38% have no clue what their points are worth. That’s why we recommend setting up an automated monthly points statement so members know they have points and feel motivated to use them. Include clear instructions in those emails so they don’t get lost on their loyalty journey!

Top tip: avoid sending points statements to those below a certain points threshold to avoid de-motivating them rather than piquing their interest. Segment those with lower points balances and remind them of the activities they could undertake to earn more.

Finally, ensure that reward-available reminders are triggered when a customer has earned enough points to claim something in return. This will encourage them back to your site sooner and ensure you maintain high levels of reward redemption and engagement with your program.

Shopify Guide Images Email And Sms V2 Points Statements

Run regular re-engagement campaigns

Securing a second purchase is one of the biggest challenges in ecommerce. However, it’s easy to identify which customers have not returned to make a second purchase within the timeframe you expected and use loyalty promotions to bring them back. 

Tailor re-engagement campaigns and points promotions to avoid discounts and be as relevant to the customers you’re trying to win back as possible - for example, offering double points on products you know they’ve purchased before or new products you think they would enjoy. 

Combining re-engagement messages with important occasions, milestones, or holidays is also a powerful way of increasing email engagement and bringing customers back. For example, as a swimwear store, you might combine a triple points re-engagement promotion with the start of the summer to increase the chances of success. 

It’s important to make it clear in these messages that the perks or promotions you’re offering are not available to everyone—just to an exclusive group of people. 

Shopify Guide Images Email And Sms V2 Re Engagement

Top tip

Use your loyalty program to grow your mailing list

Offer loyalty program members points in exchange for signing up for your mailing list. The more customers you have opted into your everyday comms, the less likely you are to be marked as spam and fall foul of Google and Yahoo’s latest email regulations.

Inspiration

Explore the most effective loyalty emails

The Ultimate Guide to Retention for Shopify Stores

Chapter 1: Rewards page Chapter 2: Points strategy Chapter 3: Rewards Chapter 4: VIP Tiers Chapter 5: Referrals Chapter 7: Omnichannel Chapter 8: Your loyalty and retention checklists

Love the Klaviyo integration with LoyaltyLion - it makes it easy to trigger emails and drive engagement throughout the customer journey. This has helped us strengthen our customer relationships and resulted in higher purchase frequency and customer lifetime value.

G2

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