In this case study, I will elaborate on the philosophical perspective on pop-ups, attribution windows, and how you can make over 600k with an email that’s shorter than some text messages. The story of the perfect welcome email.
Topics:
Why you should have pop-ups
What the perfect welcome email looks like
Thinking long term
Attribution windows
Give examples
Pop-ups are quite controversial in the world of eCommerce. Some people hate them. Some love them. Let’s talk about why.
The Haters
The “haters” tend to say that pop-ups just add additional friction into the sales funnel and therefore reduce the website’s conversion rate. Which is true by the way, at least in the short run. Some pop-ups can be truly annoying and make certain people exit your website altogether.
And yes, a lot of times we will end up giving a 15% discount to people that would have bought something anyway. This means that not only does your website conversion rate decrease but your AOV as well. Pretty bad, huh? Well. It depends. And before I elaborate further, let’s look at the other side of the proverbial coin.
The Lovers
The alternative solution is that you publish pop-ups on your eCommerce website. I recommend OptinMonster, but Klaviyo pop-ups will do the job too. Some website visitors will get turned off by these and leave your store. However, the vast majority of people will stay there and either:
Simply exit the pop-up and continue to browse in your store.
Enter their email and get the offer you are presenting.
Also, keep in mind that the pop-up will not show up for everyone. It will only be triggered if people spend a certain amount of time on your page(s) and/or express exit intent. The great thing about people who subscribe to your pop-ups is that you can then retarget them with your emails in the long term (or until they unsubscribe).
And even better… you can use checkboxes on your pop-ups to improve your list segmentation and email performance. You can ask which products they are most interested in, or what their main pain points or habits are. I know this seems obvious but every now and then we need a reminder of these things.
Yes, your AOV might decrease in the short term. “Oh no. This person got 15% off whereas they would have bought anyway. Pop-ups suck.” First of all, you never know if they were going to buy or not. And secondly, they are about to receive their first amazing product from you and have a great buying experience, meaning that they will surely come back in the future!
Let me ask you a hypothetical question: If you were truly confident in your product… And your delivery process… How much more convinced would you be that these people will come back to your store? Maybe this is the true issue lurking in the background?
Is it possible that you want to focus so much on the front end revenue because you are afraid people will not come back?
If this is the case, it’s probably a good idea for you to focus on optimizing your fulfillment process. Okay I know I lost a lot of you at this point. But those of you that haven’t exited this browser window in anger: thanks for your attention, and keep reading!
My Conclusion On Pop-ups
After working with over 50 eCommerce stores over the past few years, I can confidently say that pop-ups ARE WORTH IT for at least 90% of you. I understand that a few of you who have powerful brands and have a certain personality to it… Pop-ups might be more tricky for you to use.
But chances are… you should have pop-ups in your store. And if you are not leveraging them yet properly, then think again.
As a rule of thumb, try to aim for a 10% or higher conversion rate on your pop-ups.
If you are getting above 15%, well done!
If you are getting above 20%, make sure you get in touch with us because you have found a real unicorn!
We’d like to study it and potentially look into replicating that. (Did you get the reference from the YouTube video?) Okay, that was my rant on pop-ups, let’s talk about the actual email you came here for.
The Perfect Welcome Email
So we have created all kinds of welcome emails in the past few years and the one truth we found with welcome emails is that “less is more”.
We tested being funny.
We tested storytelling.
And we even tested asking people to whitelabel our emails.
But in our experience… people just want their goddamn discount code. Or vouchers. Or whatever offer you presented to them. They don’t care what they can expect in the future.
Now let me clarify something real quick here.
A welcome email and a post-purchase email are totally different things. At least in our email marketing dictionary. A welcome email is the thing you send them after they subscribe to your pop-up. The post-purchase email(s) is what you send them after they place an order.
The first post-purchase email is where you want to send all of this “what to expect” stuff. Because you have your customers' attention. They have skin in the game. Now let’s take a look at the stats of the email that’s the subject of this case study.
The numbers reflect the data from the last 12 months.
51.5% open rate
14.4% click rate
Over $650,000 generated
Here is a template you can use for your welcome email. I won’t be sharing the actual copy of this one as we have an NDA with our client.
Subject line: Welcome!
“Greetings!
Thanks a lot for subscribing to [STORE NAME]!
Here is your code: CODE
Simply enter it at checkout to claim it.
CTA: Claim My Discount Code
Happy shopping!
[STORE NAME]
P.S. This code expires in 48 hours, so make sure you get it now!”
That’s it.
And if you’d like to take your list segmentation and email performance to the next level, you can tailor this message to whatever these people told you about themselves using the pop-up checkboxes. Now I know what you’re thinking…
“Come on… this email is just too simple to create. Should the revenue really be attributed to Klaviyo?”
And I’m glad you ask. Which brings me to the next and final topic for this case study.
Attribution Windows
In marketing, it is important to measure what tool is producing the most results. It helps you recognize what brings in the most results and just focus on that. The thing is that when you get to a certain level… And your marketing becomes omnichannel.
It starts to become tricky to track what each conversion is attributed to. Because chances are… before someone buys a product (especially if your prices are relatively high), they probably saw your Facebook ads, they saw your story on Instagram, and perhaps even a few of your emails.
So the question remains: which platform “made the conversion”. So let me reverse this question: does it truly matter for you? Does it really matter if a platform over or underestimates the number of conversions it helps you with? And let me ask an even deeper question: What is the true reason you want to know which marketing message made the conversion? Is it just objective? Or are you emotionally invested in some of your marketing channels?
Maybe you are really good at Facebook ads. And deep down, you’d really want those to be performing the best. Let me refer back to my post from last week when we were talking about rich CEO and poor CEO mindsets.
Rich CEOs are able to get detached from their ego and focus on how they can serve their customers best. Okay and now that I have lost 80% of the readers after bringing up these triggering questions, it’s time, to sum up our learnings.
Summary
Pop-ups are your friends in the long run. If you are not using them right now, make sure you reconsider.
When it comes to welcome emails, less is more.
Don’t worry about a potential decrease in your AOV in the short run, think long term.
Think about segmenting your subscribers based on different product categories you have.
And try to take a step back + remain objective with attribution windows. We are all in this together.
Thanks for reading this case study about the 600k email, hope you found it valuable!
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