When eBags sends one of its subscribers an email, it personalises a couple of things.
Firstly, it puts an icon showing them how many items have been left unbought in their shopping cart.
Secondly, it puts their name on it, how many reward points they’ve accumulated, as well as a customisable header.
“We’ve got 13 different product categories, and 13 different tabs,” Cobb said. “The ones a customer looks at frequently are the ones that go in the header.”
So a customer who often looks at hand-bags won’t get advertised a category at the top of their email saying ‘camping gear’.
“The single biggest lift in our email engagement happened when we put in the header customisation.”
Another personalisation strategy eBags uses is timed emails. These feature animated images (gifs) with a countdown timer which begins counting down when the email is opened. When the countdown timer is finished, the sale is over.
Other tricks include mystery coupon emails, where a customer doesn’t know what their coupon is until they click through to the website. “That drives amazing traffic,” Cobb said. “People are curious.”
When subscribers make a purchase on eBags, it sends them a thank-you voucher that is redeemable within seven days. It also emails subscribers on their birthdays.
“It’s another reason to email without saying the word ‘sale’,” Cobb says. “We’ve done ‘Full Moon Tuesday’ emails just to avoid saying that word.”
Many of eBags brands don’t want their bags ever put on sale. They want to preserve themselves as luxury products, and fair enough.
eBags finds ways around this. For example, its loyalty programs, through which customers earn loyalty points they can then spend on any product.
“The brands think this is okay, because it’s not about their product specifically,” Cobb says.
However, he says businesses have to remember to put an expiration date on loyalty points, or risk building up a large liability.
Other discount strategies include giving premium customers 50% off a new product if they write a testimonial of it.
If people don’t want to shop right now, eBags lets them save their shopping cart in a number of ways.
Through a ‘wish-list’ function, they can email it to a spouse or family member. It’s useful for birthdays and events like Father’s Day, Cobb said.
Another trick is to let customers email their cart to themselves to buy at a later date. “Our site person actually wants to get rid of this functionality,” Cobb said.
“But it does so well. We get $10 from everyone who emails their cart to themselves on average, because they come back later. So I was able to go to our site person and say, ‘no, because it’ll decrease sales by $1 million a year’.”
eBags also sends people a follow-up email when they leave their cart. Some brands do this immediately, but eBags opts to do it the next morning, Cobb says. “But we might try sending it out an hour later and seeing how that goes.”
One benefit of eBag’s vast email subscriber database is that it allows its emails to act as an advertising platform, bringing in more revenue for the company.
“These brands, they’re used to co-branded ads with department stores and the like,” Cobb said. “They’ll pay for exclusivity. It’s good for us, and the brands love it too.”
eBags charges up to $5000 for its brands to send an email to a segment of its list.
Myriam Robin is a reporter for SmartCompany and its sister site LeadingCompany. She has degrees in economics, international studies and journalism. She likes writing about businesses taking risks and doing new things.
