Here is a short but effective guide to put you on the right track with your eCommerce email marketing. Whether you’re having problems raising your monthly sales or to keep old clients fidelity, maybe the problem is you are not using this powerful communication tool the right way.
Maybe, you aren’t sure about how to define your strategy to send effective emails to your clients. Well, do not worry you are in the right place!
Here is a list of all the topics we will cover in this article:
- The Importance of Email Marketing For Ecommerce
- Ecommerce Email Marketing Strategies
- Ecommerce Email Marketing Tips
- The Best Email Marketing Platform for Ecommerce
- Best Email Marketing Service for Ecommerce
The Importance of Email Marketing for Ecommerce
First, email marketing is not necessarily about sending tons of emails to your clients — or potential customers, informing them about the products and services you provide.
It is an art and a science all at the same time. It’s not rocket science but it does have its own methodology too it, and you must learn it if you want to get good results.
How many times per day do you check your email? A recent study shows that Americans spend 5 hours a day checking their emails on average. This shows that email is still a significant platform for digital marketers to be able to reach their customers.
Benefits of Ecommerce Email Marketing
- Higher ROI
- Repeat purchases
- Recover abandoned cart sales
- Automate your marketing campaigns
- You can see and control the success of your campaigns
On the other hand, if you do email marketing wrong you could get a bad brand reputation and have all your emails hit the SPAM folder.
Ecommerce Email Marketing Strategies
Before you begin with an aggressive email marketing campaign and send tons of emails to your clients, it’s important that you define the objectives of your strategy.
You must ask yourself:
What do I want to achieve?
And this could be:
- Convert new clients
- Increase your sales
- Receive positive reviews
- Increase customer trust
- Increase communication with your customers
- Get repeat purchases
- Launch a new product
- Tell your brand story
- Get loyal Fans
- Promote a special offer.
Obviously, you can target several of these objectives in a single campaign, but to simplify things, it’s better that you focus on only a few of them.
If you can focus on the objectives that are more important for your business at the present time, you can save a lot of time and resources.
Try to adapt the campaign to the needs of your business and define a clear objective that you can modify along with the duration of your campaign.
What are the most valuable Campaigns for Ecommerce Email Marketing?
- Abandoned Cart
- Sales or Promotions
- Customer Win-Back
Abandoned Cart
This is an automated series of emails based on who is abandoning checkout on your store and leaving something in their cart. Depending on the platform or checkout you use the customer has to be logged in or have entered their email address for this campaign to work.
For our abandoned cart sequences we create 2-4 emails.
The first email should go out 3-4 hours after abandonment. This should be pretty simple. “You left something behind”
The second email should go out 24 hours after abandonment. This one could add some Urgency. “Your cart is going to expire” We also like to use a coupon sometimes with this as an added bonus.
The third email should be very similar to the second. Coupon and Urgency.
Your email marketing plan should also define:
- Your Ideal Client
- How often you want to send emails
- The objective of your emails
Your ideal client
If you want your emails to be effective, you need to know very well who are the people you want to reach. The more specific you are, the better.
You can create your “customer avatar”, where you can define: name, age, job, interests, etc. of the people you want to target. When you understand your customer demographic you are able to target them in a more effective way.
The frequency of your campaigns
Prioritize quality over quantity. Although this is something you can modify depending on how your campaign is performing, it’s a good idea to avoid being too intrusive.
A good idea is that you define a sales funnel you can automate with an autoresponder software.
The frequency of your campaigns depends on your business and your business goals.
For some businesses, around once a day will be perfect and for some, that will be too much. Figure out what is best for you and your business.
The objectives of your emails
Although the ultimate goal is to sell your product or service, every email must have a different objective, for example.
- Add value: you can empower your content strategy when you send quality content with each email.
- Gain trust: a key element in internet-based businesses. Try telling the story of your business and showing who makes up your team; engage emotionally with your audiences.
- Segmentation: there are several tools you can use to automatically filter your subscribers and divide them according to their interests.
- Drive traffic: when you send a newsletter, for example, the objective is that everyone can click a link to your website, either to the store or to a post on your blog.
The best email marketing software
Another key factor is to choose the right email marketing provider.
It is important and convenient that the software includes the option to implement an autoresponder, so you can program a series of emails, allowing you to sell automatically and save a lot of time.
One of the best and more popular options in the market right now is MailChimp. More on this later.
Ecommerce Email Marketing Tips
Now that you have a basic guideline on how to create an effective eCommerce email marketing strategy for your business, there are some additional factors you should bear in mind in order to improve your results.
Dedicate some time to your email’s content and design
Poor text and presentation can throw away all your hopes of generating clicks on your emails.
The first step is to optimize the subject line and the preview texts because these are what people see first.
The content of the emails must trigger curiosity and make people think that they are missing something. Your subject line is the most important factor in determining whether someone opens your email or not. Spend time brainstorming a good subject line before moving on.
Know the different types of emails
You must be diverse and creative with your email marketing. Different types of emails are for different types of audiences, and this ensures efficiency in the marketing strategy.
- Transactional emails: send this after a customer completes an action such as confirming a purchase.
- Marketing emails: emails you send to incite customers to buy.
- Automated emails: these are automatically sent after a simple action, like giving thanks to a customer for their purchase.
Depending on the type of email you send will change the content of the email completely.
Optimize Your Marketing Strategy
Even your best performing campaign can always be improved. You can do this by asking yourself questions, such as:
What are the emails with the best open rate?
Which CTA’s (Call To Action) are generating the most clicks?
What content is resulting in less engagement from your audience?
Answers these questions for yourself and analyze the feedback to be able to see what can be improved.
Go here if your business needs help with their email marketing.
Related: How To Connect Google Analytics and OptinMonster
Mailchimp: The Best Email Marketing Platform for Ecommerce
Mailchimp is a cloud-based service that allows you to create, manage, send, and analyze email marketing campaigns — an Email Service Provider or ESP.
But in short, Mailchimp is the best email marketing software for ecommerce. Mailchimp has a customer base of 10 million.
There are a lot of things you can do with Mailchimp, besides sending out your emails.
- Capture data from people visiting your website
- Send email campaigns both automated or in real-time
- Send sequences according to your preferred criteria like demographics, age, sex, etc.
- Segment your campaigns by activity, responses from previous posts, etc.
- Perform A/B double tests to compare and improve elements that could affect the efficiency of your campaigns
- And much more!
Mailchimp is also suitable for every type of business and profession that can benefit from email marketing campaigns, including freelancers, local businesses, and online businesses.
Mailchimp features:
- A simple and easy to use interface
- Great variety of options for segmentation
- Easy to understand analytics
- High ISP reputation
- Powerful autoresponder software
- High integration level with other platforms
- Backup copies system
- Frequent updates
- Excellent customer support available 24/7
Mailchimp also has several plans that adapt to your business needs, starting with the “Free Plan” to help you get started, and continuing with the “Essentials”, “Standard” and “Premium” plans at a price of $9.99, $14.99 and $299 respectively.
There is an option for every type and size of business.
Best Email Marketing Service for Ecommerce
There is no doubt about it: email marketing continues being the preferred communication channel between brands and clients; in fact, about 70% of people prefer it, including millennials and teenagers.
Now that you have a general idea of what you need to improve your ecommerce email marketing, it’s time to decide which path you are going to take.
Work With Us
At JohnFSchuster Ecommerce we have a team of professional strategists that are passionate about working with startups and small businesses.
We will create and implement the perfect marketing plan for your eCommerce business needs. Learn more about our email marketing services.
At JohnFSchuster.com, we also offer several services including Search Engine Optimization, website development, consulting, Facebook ads, and more! We can grow your business to the next level together.
For more info contact us here.
I hope this advice helps you a lot in reaching your goal of growing your business. Good luck!
