How to Excel in eCommerce Email Marketing

The benefits of having an attractive newsletter are immense for eCommerce businesses. Statistics show that eCommerce email marketing can help you to take your business to the next level. There are 4.03 billion people worldwide who use email in 2021 and this number is expected to grow to 4.6 billion by 2025 with 376 billion emails being sent daily during the same year. This clearly shows that the number of email users significantly exceeds the number of users of any other media outlet such as social media. This means that other platforms can not even come close to the potential reach of eCommerce emails. For this reason, email marketing is the second most widely used content type with 74% of B2C marketers utilizing this tool in 2021. Although it is a great tool, it requires the right knowledge to champion it and get a return on your investment. This is why in this article, we collected useful tips and tricks that will help you to excel in eCommerce email marketing and drive your business to success.

When we think about eCommerce email marketing we usually associate it with promotional emails only. But the truth is that promotional emails should go hand in hand with transactional emails in order for you to establish a strategy where you both support your customers and nurture your sales. To understand the difference between the two and why you need both, read further.

It is crucial to have a form placed on your website to allow your visitors to sign up for your mailing list and for you to be able to collect their data for future promotions. Promotional emails or email newsletters are campaigns that are mailed to your emailing list subscribers who opted in to receive your emails on a regular basis. Promotional eCommerce emails are providing business owners with a way to keep in touch with their customers and keep their brand alive in their minds. They can be used to inform your customers about promotions, discounts, and newly launched collections, share successful customer stories, and build a deeper connection.

Transactional emails are used to inform your customers during every step of the purchase process. Starting with the payment confirmation, emails should be sent out until the delivery is completed so your customers can track and stay informed about their orders’ whereabouts. Since your customers will surely be interested in these emails, use the opportunity to encourage them to submit a review of your store or the product they have purchased and remind them about other products that are available and they might be interested in. When choosing an email marketing service or software, make sure you can use it to send out both promotional and transactional emails. This will help you to keep a consistent design across all your communication and also allow you to manage all your emails in one place.

Pre-designed eCommerce email templates can, not only help you with maintaining a consistent brand image, but can also come in handy when you want to send out an email quickly. By using templates that you have previously created, you will not need to build each and every email up from scratch and you can cut back on the time spent preparing your upcoming eCommerce email marketing campaign. Most email marketing services and software offer you the option to customize your email templates by dragging and dropping sections in an editor interface, so you do not need coding knowledge to create stunning emails. You can also add a digital business card at the end of your emails – a strategy that’s an effective way of getting customers to visit your online store it can also be used as an opportunity to upsell products or services if you’re so inclined.

A welcome email is a great way to show your new subscribers that you are pleased to have them on board and an opportunity for you to introduce yourself and your brand to them. Also, statistics show that customers who receive a welcome letter after signing up for a newsletter are showing 33% more engagement towards the brand. In these emails, you have the opportunity to encourage your new audience to make a purchase by including a first-time-visitor discount for them and you can add all your social media links followed by a CTA (Call To Action) to get them engaged across multiple platforms.

All visitors have different interests, so segmenting your eCommerce email marketing subscribers is the first step you must take. This way you can ensure that each one of them is receiving relevant communication so you can avoid them being overboard and potentially unsubscribing from your mailing list. You can analyze and list your subscribers into segments according to the actions they have previously taken on your website. You can break down your marketing funnel into different stages based on the level of engagement of your customers:

• Stage one is when a visitor signs up for a promo or free educational material but they have not made any purchases yet. Your goal with these visitors will be to get them to make their first purchase
• Stage two is when your visitors have already turned into customers and made at least one purchase at your store. Your goal with them will be to keep them engaged and encourage them to make repetitive purchases over time
• Stage three is when your previous customers stopped engaging with your brand and are not opening your email communication. Your goal with these customers is to re-engage them and have them open your emails or complete another purchase.

By having this information you will be able to categorize and target your subscribers with personalized content, product recommendations, and promotions that will result in higher engagement rates.

For every business, it is vital to engage subscribers and nurture them into loyal and returning customers with the help of your eCommerce email marketing strategy. One way you can do this is by providing useful educational content to them on a regular basis. Also, by sending out eye-catching educational teasers you can lure your readers back to your website’s blog where you can write about relevant topics in more detail.

If you are seeing certain clients losing interest in your brand and products you can re-engage them with a single email. There are different ways to do this. First, make sure you try to capture their attention with promotion and try to invite them back to your website with a special offer or a promo code. If you see this working, you have successfully re-engaged a visitor and potentially ended up with a new sale. If they are still reluctant to re-engage with your brand, follow them up with an email that asks if they are still interested in your eCommerce email marketing and to update their email preferences. Although it is not the goal, be sure that you allow your visitors to unsubscribe from your mailing list at any point in time in order to maintain the integrity and reputation of your store.

To make your customers purchase more from you you can target them with promotional emails that highlight products that can complement their previous purchases. Benefit from cross-selling by offering them items based on their purchase history. Segmentation is highly important when using this strategy because you would not want to offer irrelevant complimentary items as it could show you in a bad light in the eyes of your customers.

When it comes to abandoned carts, eCommerce email marketing can be a great way to get your visitors back to your website and encourage them to go through with their purchases. First, you can do this with a simple reminder email that they have items sitting in their cart. If their cart still remains abandoned and they do not turn back to it you can try to offer them incentives in the form of a discount code or you can try upselling to increase the perceived value of their purchase. When upselling you can offer more expensive products to your customers by highlighting the additional benefits of the more expensive items or you can encourage them to reach a certain amount in spending in order to receive a free gift or shipping. This way they will likely return to your store’s page and complete the checkout process.

When your business is booming, automation can be a lifesaver as it can save you significant time on your eCommerce email marketing efforts. Many email services and software offer you the possibility to automatically send your customers emails when a certain action they take triggers the algorithm. This makes automation both timely and relevant which will result in high engagement and conversion rates.

To make sure that your email marketing efforts are successful and worth the time and money you invest in creating and sending them out, you will need to track your audience’s response and see how they interact with your emails. According to statistics, the metrics that are measured the most by eCommerce business owners are open rate (95%), click rate (88%), and unsubscribe rate (73%). Surprisingly, less than one-fifth of business owners measure their return on investment, and even less (12%) of them measure subscriber lifetime value which should be considered the North Star of metrics. Subscriber lifetime value will show you how valuable a subscriber is for your business based on the profit you can earn from them. To excel in this field, always analyze your results in-depth and create your own KPIs when it comes to measuring the success of your eCommerce email marketing strategy.

ECommerce email marketing holds enormous potential for your store but, as this article highlighted, there are many aspects of it that you need to pay attention to if you want to excel in this field and enjoy the benefits of your time and effort invested. Thanks to the advancement of eCommerce email marketing tools, keeping track of your customers’ behaviors and tailoring your emails to them are relatively easy once you have a strategy in place for each of your segments. Try to find potential drop-off points for every stage of your funnel and figure out how best you can re-engage and provide value to your customers.