Cross-border enterprises leverage private domains—email marketing is a must.
The essence of email marketing is membership operation, and members constitute the brand's private domain traffic.
Email marketing is not only an important choice for cross-border enterprises to manage their private domains, but it also offers a cost-effective, high-return, high-reach, and targeted solution.
--Webpower
Whether in domestic or international business sectors, traffic is an unavoidable topic in enterprise operations. In the post-pandemic era, as the domestic private domain traffic boom unfolds, we also begin to contemplate private domain strategies suitable for cross-border enterprises.
Note: This article primarily addresses the challenges of private domain operations for cross-border enterprises, the relationship between email marketing and private domain traffic, and how to use email marketing to manage private domains. Through real cases served by Webpower, it systematically demonstrates how to use email marketing to launch private domain operations. The article is quite long, so you may choose to read selectively or bookmark it for later.
### 01 Challenges of Private Domain Operations for Cross-Border Enterprises
Data shows that in 2020, 2.45 billion import and export lists were processed through the customs cross-border e-commerce management platform, a year-on-year increase of 63.3%. Cross-border e-commerce imports and exports totalled 1.69 trillion yuan, growing by 31.1%. All signs indicate that cross-border e-commerce is rapidly becoming a new booming sector.
However, in general, Chinese cross-border export enterprises still show some signs of struggling with private domain operations in international markets.
Currently, Chinese export cross-border enterprises' private domain operations are more related to cooperation with KOLs/KOCs—since KOLs/KOCs already have their own followers.
For example, it is common to "borrow" the followers of KOLs/KOCs by selling products through live streams on social platforms like YouTube, and then share the revenue based on the performance.
It is evident that this approach is very similar to domestic live-streaming e-commerce. Between the brand and the traffic, there stands the mountain of the KOL/KOC. When the KOL/KOC leaves, the traffic disappears too. By domestic private domain standards, this cannot be considered successful traffic management.
Some cross-border enterprises also attempt to use Facebook Groups for private domain operations.
The specific approach is to create a personal page on social media platforms like Facebook, then add friends. Once around 5,000 friends are added, they are pulled into a Facebook Group through KOL/KOC collaborations, initiating activities, live broadcasts, and so on, to conduct user operations.
Does it sound familiar? It's essentially the overseas version of a WeChat group, isn't it?
But don't get too excited yet. While Facebook Groups may solve the problem of having a foothold for traffic, they do not form a complete ecosystem for traffic monetization like WeChat, and they are limited in scale and challenging to manage. ``
Hence, Cross-border enterprises, need a more efficient and accurate way to operate in the private domain, Webpower believes that email marketing may be the first choice to solve the problem.
### 02 The Relationship Between Email Marketing and Private Domain Traffic
What is email marketing? Many readers of this article might still have this question, and some might equate it with mass spam emails.
In reality, email marketing is a form of internet marketing that involves sending valuable information to target users via email, under the condition of prior user consent.
In reality, email marketing is a form of internet marketing that involves sending valuable information to target users via email, under the condition of prior user consent.
Its premises are "user consent" and delivering "valuable information", which spam emails cannot achieve.
As a traditional marketing method, email marketing has a wide and mature market application overseas.
Many large enterprises, such as Amazon, which has a membership system with hundreds of millions of users, owe much of their success to email marketing.
Amazon's retention emails, which offer special discounts based on big data analysis for price-sensitive customers, have proven to be highly effective in customer retention.
Brands like Uber, BuzzFeed, and Dropbox also utilize email marketing as a crucial tactic to amplify their voice and maintain member relationships.
It is clear now that the essence of email marketing is membership operation, and members constitute the brand's private domain traffic.
The essence of email marketing is membership operation, and members constitute the brand's private domain traffic.
Furthermore, email marketing is not only an important choice for cross-border brands to manage private domains, but it is also a more cost-effective, high-return, high-reach, and precise private domain marketing method.
A great example is the website Envelopes.com, which provides envelopes and card services:
They use big data to identify the main types of products that customers abandon in their shopping carts. Based on the type of product abandoned, shopping cart abandonment, and checkout abandonment, they categorize and automatically trigger three types of corresponding emails.
As a result, they achieved a 40% reduction in checkout abandonment and a 65% increase in the company's net checkout conversion rate. And the cost of sending these emails is merely a drop in the bucket compared to the overall marketing budget!
It's no exaggeration to say that effective email marketing can yield significant results in private domain operations, effortlessly achieving substantial impact with minimal effort.
### 03 How to Utilize Email Marketing for Private Domain Operations
To excel in email marketing, tools, strategy, and execution are all indispensable. After extensive exploration, Webpower has summarized the following approach:
#### (1) Reliable Email Delivery Platform (Tool)
An email delivery platform is a marketing channel and a tool for conducting email marketing. With it, cross-border enterprises can more conveniently carry out private domain operations.
For example, the Webpower Email Marketing Platform can achieve the following:
- Proactively send bulk emails
- Triggered emails
- Segmented user sends
- Data dashboard and analytics
- Email content editing and style references
With this set of tools, the following steps can be effectively carried out.
#### (2) Building an Email List (Traffic Pool)
To successfully conduct email marketing, you must have an email list with user consent. This list is equivalent to the enterprise's private domain traffic pool.The process of acquiring an email list is similar to the process of private domain traffic acquisition domestically.
Specifically, we can encourage customers to provide their email addresses through website sign-ups, mini-programs, app registration prompts, and membership registration guides.
#### (3) Develop an Email Marketing Strategy (Operations)
In the previous step, the focus was on "attracting traffic," and now the test is the "operation" ability, which, when applied to email marketing, means developing an email marketing strategy. Specifically, we can follow these principles and techniques.
#Content is King
The email itself is just a medium; whether the marketing goal can be achieved depends on the content of the email. Therefore, when creating email content, three points must be achieved:
- Clear Subject
- Concise Content with Key Benefits
- Clear Formatting
For example, the following email has a clear structure and highlights key benefits, making it hard for recipients to refuse.
#Segmented Sending
Sending the same email to all users is a foolish approach. We should analyze user preferences based on feedback data of email sends, segment users accordingly, and send different email content based on these segments.
#Test for Optimal Send Time
In the initial stages, we can conduct some tests to evaluate the effectiveness of sending emails at different intervals and times. By doing this, we can determine the optimal send time, which will certainly be more efficient than sending emails blindly.
#Prioritize Key Users
Whether it's email or other marketing methods, only a portion of users at the top of the pyramid can ultimately provide value. Therefore, these users are our primary focus. We can customize more personalized email content for them.
#Adjust Strategy Based on Feedback
Users are not static, so an email marketing strategy cannot remain unchanged forever. Continually adjusting based on feedback data is the only way to enhance the effectiveness of private domain marketing.
The main metrics that can reflect the effectiveness of email marketing are as follows:
- Delivery Rate: The number of emails successfully delivered to users' inboxes divided by the total number of emails sent. This metric evaluates the quality of the email sending platform.
- Open Rate: The number of users who open the email divided by the number of users who received the email.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The number of users who clicked on links within the email divided by the number of users who received the email.
- CTO (Click-To-Open Rate): The number of users who clicked on links within the email divided by the number of users who opened the email. This is an important metric for evaluating the quality of the email's content.
By performing a comprehensive analysis of several metrics and combining it with user feedback, timely adjustments can be made to create more effective marketing emails.
(4) Strategies for Different Companies
Different cross-border companies have certain differences in using email marketing to manage private domains:
For B2B Companies
Strategy: Refined Operations, Focus on Maintaining Contact
B2B companies serve other businesses, so their user base is not as large, and user conversions are not as frequent. However, once a deal is made, the order value tends to be quite high.
Therefore, in terms of strategy, we do not need to "bother" customers too frequently. Instead, we prefer to maintain relatively stable contact with them and inform them of our services when necessary.
For example, a semiconductor-related service provider that Webpower served; when developing their email marketing strategy, we helped to restructure their email marketing system in six steps—optimizing email coding, standardizing send frequency and scheduling, establishing an E-CRM database, assisting with data reorganization, and enabling more precise email sending...
The final statistics showed a significant improvement in customer goodwill and the brand's influence within the industry.
For B2C Companies
Strategy: Lifecycle Email Marketing, Directly Stimulate Conversions
According to Webpower's long-term observations, the user lifecycle is very similar to the stages of a romantic relationship, broadly divided into 6 stages:
- Stranger Phase (First Encounter)
- Exploration Phase (Getting to Know)
- Trust Phase (Favorable Impression)
- Sharing Phase (In Love)
- Stability Phase (Loyalty)
- Decline Phase (Disinterest)
By implementing corresponding marketing strategies for each phase, we can gradually cultivate user loyalty and enhance conversions.
Let's break down a B2C case that Webpower has served. The company mainly provides and operates maintenance services, and its website's main products are wedding dresses and formal wear.
Based on understanding the user lifecycle, Webpower designed the following comprehensive private domain operation plan for the company.
- Stranger Phase — Optimize the subscription point, increase user interest, and improve open rates
- Exploration Phase — Establish the user lifecycle and perfect system emails to guide users towards further reactions and interactions
- Trust Phase — Send timed promotional emails to keep users engaged and active
- Sharing (Viral Growth) Phase — Implement multi-channel integrated marketing to maximize user value
- Stability Phase — Customize personalized emails to allow users to experience personalized services.
- Decline Phase — Implement a recovery email mechanism by triggering users' sensitive points to spark new interest.
Through Webpower's marketing efforts, statistics show that email open rates, website click-through rates, and CTO are all higher than industry standards.
Conclusion:
Email marketing, which may seem like an old-fashioned approach, still demonstrates irreplaceable importance even amidst the ever-changing business landscape. At its core, it is the deep overlap and collision between traditional membership marketing and the emerging concept of private domains. To discover more innovative approaches to email and private domain marketing, turn to Webpower!
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