Content Marketing in Your Email Receipts

Guest Author

Today we’re releasing two new components that you can use in your receipts; one is a tiny improvement to an existing component and the other gives you a whole new sphere of power and opportunity.

Tiny things first… You are now able to add a link to any image that you include within your receipts. This is perfect when you’re already running a marketing campaign for which you have created striking, visual banners. Now you can include them in your receipt and maximise the reach and impact of your campaign(s). This is how easy this is…

(Also don’t forget to use our Google Analytics integration on CM Commerce Premium to allow you to automatically track how your customers interact with these campaigns.)

Now onto the more exciting things…

We have also just released a brand new RSS component that will automatically include the details about your latest blog post or article in your receipt. You just give us the RSS feed URL that you’d like to use and we’ll automatically include the latest post in your receipt.

We have just started using this in our own receipts (naturally powered by CM Commerce) and this is what it looks like:

Amplifying our content marketing tactics
Amplifying our content marketing tactics

Why is this so great?Ā We know a couple of things about our receipts and content marketing already:

  • Your receipts are going to engaged, qualified customers and 13%+ of recipients clicks onĀ something in the receipts. Giving your customers an easy way to engage with your latest content via your receipts are bound to get you (even) more clicks.
  • Content marketing is a fantastic, inbound marketing tactic that helps you acquire new customers and nurture the relationships with existing customers in a cost-efficient way.
  • The biggest challenge with content marketing is however distribution i.e. how do you get great content in front of the right audience. Leveraging this opportunity and attention in your receipts though, you can amplify the distribution your content currently gets.

Talking about this however also leads us to another topic that is close to our hearts…

Let’s talk about the value of your supercharged receipts

The way we currently measure theĀ valueĀ of our receipts is to quantify its impact in terms of the additional value that it generates for merchants. When we last ran this analysis, the average receipt was worth US$0.81Ā in additional revenue.

That’s awesome, but what about the receipts that never generate an additional sale?

When we discussed this internally, we ultimately came to the conclusion that the value of our receipts should be measured in two parts:

  • The additional revenue it generates; and
  • The engagementĀ (with your customers) that it enables.

The former is a very clear metric and is an easy way to quantify the value of the receipts. The latter is however much harder to quantify, because engagement is inherently a qualitative thing. We thus don’t yet have the definitive answer in this regard, but have a couple of examples of how you could measure engagement:

  • If we measure engagement in terms of impressions (i.e. were my receipts opened / viewed) and clicks / actions, we could proxy the value of receipts on average CPM and CPC / CPA rates for your industry. So what we’re saying here is that the alternative to engaging with your customers could be to advertise via Facebook which would result in an expense of $x, but because you are reaching your customers via your receipts, you are saving $x and the baseline value of that engagement is thus $x.
  • Referring toĀ the example of content marketing above and using your receipts to amplify the distribution of your content… You write a craft an awesome new article and include it in your receipt. Your customers click through, loves the article, shares it via their social networks, but don’t spend more money with you (at that time). Because they shared that content though, there’s a bit of a viral and organic influx of new traffic to your site, which results in one new customer spending $50 with you. Your receipt – and the engagement it facilitated – was thus an essential part in acquiring that new customer and $50 in new revenue.

We’re not rocket scientists (even if we are pioneering email receipts) and we have not yet found the perfect blueprint on how to optimize your email receipts. All of our data shows though that we have already created a brand-new, viable marketing channel for you.

If you’re not already using CM Commerce (previously Receiptful) to supercharge your email receipts, you are losing out on a lucrative marketing opportunity… šŸ™‚