Take another look at your email

Aside from a very simple signup form on our Shoes of Prey home page, and a monthly email newsletter, we’ve never explored email marketing in great detail.

We recently added a dismissible email signup popup on our Sneaking Duck online try-on page and we’re now capturing email addresses from about 5% of the total visitors to the Sneaking Duck website. This has us thinking about ways we can use email marketing more for both Shoes of Prey and Sneaking Duck.

Successful online retailers like Fab.com, Gilt Group and BrandsExclusive here in Australia require you to sign up and provide your email address to even access their site, and email marketing has been a key component of their success.

We don’t want to go that far, but we’ve been thinking of adding a dismissible email signup popup on our 3D shoe designer page, then creating a five part email series that goes to new customers explaining some of our most commonly asked questions around shipping, delivery time and returns policy.

We also cover some key sales messages, like the very bespoke way our shoes are made, the natural leathers and materials we use, the fact we sell gift certificates and that our shoes are great for events like weddings.

Have you considered using email marketing in your start-up? If so, what has worked well for you?