Email Marketing: 20% average open rate for auto accessories ecommerce company

SUMMARY: Loyalty programs are a great way to not only engage past purchasers, but also entice potential customers with personalized deals and discounts.

AutoAccessoriesGarage.com has maintained its AAG Insiders email program since 2010, but the team did not want the campaign's success to become stagnant.

Learn how the company put its campaign in overdrive with segmented sends as well as testing and optimization to increase relevance with subscribers, achieving a more one-to-one experience for its customers. From this campaign, the team at AAG is able to attribute 5% of its online revenue back to this email campaign.

by Erin Hogg, Reporter

AutoAccessoriesGarage.com prides itself on providing a world-class shopping experience in a market full of automotive parts and accessories retailers.

Family owned and operated, the company launched its website in 2005 and has been growing ever since, providing support for its customers whenever they need assistance.

"We make ourselves available seven days a week, either on the phone or in live chat, and via email so we can assist in the buying decision as well as field any questions about orders," explained Brad Bonic, Marketing Manager, AutoAccessoriesGarage.com.

CHALLENGE

In 2010, the team at AutoAccessoriesGarage.com was maintaining the AAG Insiders email marketing campaign.

This campaign, a weekly send with heightened frequency around holidays and events, was sent to customers who purchased and opted-in during that process and users who signed up on the website.

"Our customer base was growing. We wanted to reach out to them and provide brand-specific promotions," Bonic said.

In the infancy of the campaign, the goal was to encourage return purchasers by highlighting sales, promotions and valuable resources.

These pieces of original content include buying and research guides housed on the site as well as product demos and videos on the company YouTube channel.

For AAG, the Insiders program was performing well, but the team didn’t want it to become stagnant.

When Bonic joined the team in 2012, the AAG Insiders campaign was a component of marketing that many team members didn't have much time to devote to on top of their other responsibilities.

CAMPAIGN

"Part of me coming in was that we could expand in all things marketing and that we could put a lot more thought to it and study the history of the campaign and see what was working and what wasn't working," Bonic said.

Bonic's main goal was to evaluate what categories of products on AAG that subscribers were responding to the most in the emails to truly discover what his customers wanted most out of communications with AAG.

"We want to make it interesting and compelling so people want to check up on the content and also jump from the email to the site and, obviously, make a purchase," Bonic said.

THE CUSTOMER

AAG mainly caters to high-end performance parts, carrying top-of-the-line brands that add value to a vehicle. This includes interior customization, external parts such as body kits, and performance exhaust and brake systems.

Predominately, Bonic has found the market to be dominated by men, but the team is careful not to narrow themselves down that road.

"We find that a lot of wives are buying for their husbands. There are a lot of women who are car enthusiasts themselves, [and] we try to market and appeal to everybody," he said.

Step #1. Create AAG Insider emails

To manage the email campaign, Bonic's team in the marketing department heads the effort, working with graphic designers as well as the data and Web teams that manage the list. AAG Insider emails are sent once a week, and each email has a template that Bonic is able to easily plug content into.

The graphic design team at AAG is brought in to design and create captivating headers for emails as well as different banners.

Occasionally, AAG product vendors will also supply banners to run in emails, but the team will also create additional versions to change up the look of the email, especially if it's a promotion spanning a few weeks.

Bonic has found that emails featuring top categories of AAG products drive the most traffic to the site.

"So even when we are changing things up, there are different product categories that we always like to have on there," he said.

The team tries to drive the customer in every clickable instance directly to the most relevant page on the site, based on what they are seeing in the email.

"This is so they can get the information they are looking for right away and, hopefully, make a purchase as easily as possible," Bonic said.

Because AAG does send promotional emails highlighting various products and sales, Bonic is careful to tailor emails to not come across as spam.

"Our goal is to stay top of mind with our customers, bring forth to them all of the current promotions, so they have the opportunity to come check us out at their leisure," he said.

Bonic added that when recycling product images in newsletter, it's key to change the images up as much as possible so subscribers don't think they are seeing the same product over and over again.

Step #2. Send the campaign emails

When an AAG customer makes a purchase and opts-in to receive more communications from AAG, they are added to the list and receive a "Welcome to the Garage" email.

The Welcome to the Garage send contains a discount for a future purchase, as well as links to sign up to the AAG Insiders program.

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While the AAG Insider program is a weekly email, it does increase in frequency around various sales periods.

In general, it consists of a banner, where Bonic and the team speak to something relevant in the season.

"If it's the Super Bowl, we've done banners and themes like tailgating and focus on products relating to that," Bonic said.

In addition, each send has a unique coupon code, so the team is able to track and see which subscribers are taking advantage of which offer.

"I like to do a little bit of broad category highlights in the send, so, for the folks who it may be their first email, it's their first glimpse into the broad categories that we offer," he explained.

As well as highlighting promotions, discounts and rebates, additional content is also served up to subscribers, aimed at helping them learn more about products.

"We'll offer links to view our YouTube page, where we have product demos and different fun videos as well as a host of manufacturer videos. Then, on our site, we have research and buying guides," Bonic said, citing that if a customer isn't ready to purchase, they can view that content to compare different formats of a product.

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"Ultimately, this makes them more comfortable with their purchase," he added.

Team management

In managing a team as well as balancing the constant promotions featured in the campaign, Bonic utilizes a tool to internally connect with brand managers and coordinate promotions.

"It allows our brand managers to go in there and input all the different promotions and things they work out directly from the vendors. They assign it to the applicable people internally so that everyone gets to see that," he said.

Action items are also set, and items are divvied up to the team so that everything that needs to completed for each send is ready to go.

Step #3. Perform list hygiene

Prior to every correspondence, the team at AAG updates their list to ensure all recent subscribers are in the system.

Also, the team frequently performs list cleansing, removing broken email addresses or any senders marketing AAG emails as spam.

"Try to keep your list as fresh as possible. We try to manage our bounces, and we look at the reports in our email tool to make sure that we're cleaning that list out," he said.

The team has also automated the unsubscribe process, allowing users to stop receiving emails from AAG as quickly as possible if they choose to unsubscribe.

Through this frequent list cleansing, the team is able to keep bounce rates under 1%.

"I think that speaks to the fact that we are not skewing our numbers by sending out a lot of irrelevant correspondences," Bonic said.

Step #4. Segment audiences

Bonic and the AAG team segment their audience of customers into buckets through the information provided when the contact signs up.

"We know what make, year and model of vehicle they have. Our list is broken up into a number of different overlapping buckets. We've set out emails that are car specific, SUV specific and truck specific," Bonic said.

Also, through the AAG website, which is highly segmented by product offering, the customer will receive a tailored site and email experience based not just on the information they provided, but also based on their behaviors on the site.

"When you come to the site, you're able to pick your make and model from the get go. Then, as you traverse the site, you're only hit with products relevant to your specific vehicle," Bonic explained.

If the user changes their preferences, choosing truck products instead of SUVs, many of the images on the site will switch over to feature truck products.

"What we're trying to move toward in all of our efforts — especially in email — [is] to make it dynamic as well," Bonic said.

For now, the team uses text callouts, such as, "Here are some floor mat offers for your Ford F150."

Bonic explained that overall, it is important to show your customers you are putting thought into the messages they are receiving and providing them an experience relevant to their interests and needs.

Step #5. Test email elements

In Bonic's efforts at AAG, the team has tested send times to determine the most opportune time to send AAG Insider sends and other marketing emails.

The team couples market research as well as data on open rates for their own sends over the last few years and made their send time standard, "where we feel we've afforded the best opportunity to be opened and also read," Bonic said.

The team ties back the data when a customer purchases to see if they are jumping from an AAG email to purchase on the site, ensuring that they are sending that most compelling message that's also hitting subscribers at the right time.

In monitoring the email response data, Bonic noted that specific promotions do not do as well as broad category discounts.

For example, an email promotion via the AAG Insider email containing a "$75 rebate off one product" does not perform as well as a site-wide discount for being an AAG Insider.

"Like any other retailer, it becomes a personal experience. I think that once you're on a mailing list for some time, you don't check everything out right away," he said. "That's our biggest challenge: to try to get folks responding and interacting with emails as much as possible."

He explained for new subscribers, it's key to get them viewing the different categories of product offerings rather than just pushing them to a singular product.

RESULTS

"I think it's extremely important to stay top of mind with your customers, especially if you're an ecommerce company. One of the best ways to do this consistently is with email," Bonic said.

In maintaining and improving the AAG Insiders program, Bonic said that email directly generates 5% of total site revenue.

In addition, AAG is able to maintain an average open rate of 20% and a clickthrough rate of 12%.

"We really like to be down in the trenches, and use [tools] that give us opportunities we need at this time in our growth," Bonic said.

In finding and using tools, Bonic explained the importance of leveraging a solution that the team using it is comfortable with.

Bonic explained AAG's social media is used as an extension of email to announce different promotions to customers.

"You really need to be in social media, not only to present as much information as you can about your business, but to also address the concerns of your customers and celebrate their wins with them as well," he explained.

As for future initiatives, Bonic explained the team is looking to make AAG emails more dynamic, offering up specific discounts relevant to the subscriber's make and model of vehicle.