Regardless of what you have heard, email marketing is still alive! In fact, it is more alive than ever before, and email marketing has proven time and again that it is one of the highly successful channels to reach out to prospective customers and convince them to buy from you.
A lot of brands are sending emails regularly, although most of them find it difficult to succeed in email marketing because the competition is fierce out there. But what if there is a proven, fool-proof way where you can succeed in email marketing? Sounds too good to be true, eh?
The kind of email marketing strategy that will lead to higher click-through rates and guaranteed conversions for every email that you send? Check out this guide on how you can use email marketing for eCommerce.
Email Marketing for eCommerce
1. Send a Welcome Email
Before you send your new subscribers any kind of deals and promotions, you have to welcome and thank them first for joining your email list. In fact, we always tell our clients at Voy Media Marketing Agency NYC that although this kind of welcome email is relatively simple, it makes people feel good about themselves.
This feeling carries over to turn subscribers into customers who are loyal to your brand and will be more than happy to hear about your new products. Ideally, your welcome email should contain:
- A message of appreciation for those who joined your email list.
- A description that would tell they should expect from your marketing emails.
- A call-to-action.
Once you are thankful and clear with your intentions, then your welcome email can create a strong customer base that will help you with your marketing efforts later on.
2. Segment Your Audience
A lot of people opt-out from your email marketing campaigns especially if it fails to act in a people specific manner. That’s why one of the best ways to avoid this is by segmenting your list. That way, you can send highly targeted and personalized emails. According to Neil Patel, segmenting your emails boosts open rates by up to 203 percent. Segmentation gives you the ability to cut and segment your subscribers in as many different segments as you want.
3. Write a Compelling Subject Line
Writing a compelling subject line is one of the crucial components in your email marketing strategy. Having an excellent email subject line is key. They could be the best judge of the success or failure of your email campaign.
The ideal email subject line or headline has a combination of these best practices:
- Something that will trigger their curiosity.
- Employs urgency and scarcity such as limited offers.
- Having an offer that they could not resist.
Refrain from using a long-winded sales pitch. Instead, try to keep friendly. Do not lose your prospects before they could even have the chance to see your offer. Utilize compelling headlines that will lure them to take a look and see what you can offer them.
4. Brand Yourself
There are a lot of online businesses today that it is getting harder and harder to stand out from the rest of the competition. That’s why you must put out your brand in a way that gives you every possible chance to interact with your customers.
There are a couple of tactics that you can utilize to effectively brand your emails so that it is easier for people to recognize your business:
- Show your logo clearly on the top: When a user opens your promotional email, the first thing that they need to come across is your logo so that they will know that it came directly from you.
- Use your brand colors: Apart from showing your logo, using brand colors emphasizes the fact that it is your company that sent the email.
- Mimic your website’s design. Whether it is writing long paragraphs or writing a simple copy, whether you do not want to use photos or bright colors, all of your emails should mimic your website’s design so that it is consistent with your branding efforts even in the long run.
As you eventually get better in branding emails, people will be more and more comfortable reading and opening them over time. Doing so creates a valuable trust with your audience.
5. Send Abandoned Cart Emails
Abandoned cart emails could recover at least 15 percent of what could have been otherwise considered as lost revenue which could easily sum up tobe 50% of your total store revenue. This will also help recover sales.
There are at least two different kinds of abandoned email options:
- Abandoned Cart Email: This attracts customers to complete their purchase if ever they have left items in their carts. You can send an email that will remind customers of the items that they have left behind.
- Abandoned Cart Series: This kind of email encourages prospects to complete a purchase in a series of emails if they have remaining items in their cart which they abandoned earlier. Most retailers would usually send follow-ups within 3-5 days and will send a discounted rate of the product eventually in order to make successful conversions.
6. Create an Elegant Email Design
Elegant email design is important if you want users to open your emails and click your call-to-action. A well-designed email will have the customer’s eyes and smoothly send them straight into your eCommerce store’s checkout. If it is too much for the reader to figure out what you are trying to tell them, then they will not read your email altogether. That’s why a good email design is important.
Ideally, try to use a simple color scheme, something that will not distract your readers. You can also provide them with only one action that they need to take in every part of your email.
- First, they need to read the headline.
- Second, they will check out the reason why you sent the email.
- Third, they will click through to find the store and finally make a purchase.
Good design is always important. If you want to fulfill your marketing goals and encourage your subscribers to take action, then a good design will always help.
7. Use a Clear Call-to-Action
Your call-to-action, otherwise known as CTA, should be clear so that it will be obvious to your prospects what they should do next. Once they open your emails, using a clear call-to-action is one of the best ways to encourage your conversion rates.
8. Send Upsell and Cross-Sell Emails
Upsell and cross-sell emails will be sent to users who bought an item already. The main goal is to sell them additional or complimentary items and boost your store’s AOV(average order value). According to a study, most of the upsell and cross-sell emails have at least a 55% conversion rate, together with a 6.84% click-to-conversion rate.
There are several ways you can do this
- Product follow-up: Sending a follow-up message after a customer buys something from your store. Most of these emails include a similar product bought along with the item a person has purchased.
- Category Follow-Up: Promotion of related items after someone purchases from a particular category. These emails are often utilized when a customer bought something from a campaign. For example, if someone bought an item from your collection of jeans, then you can send them a similar collection of accessories that go with it. Send a follow-up, and then show them similar options.
- Receipt Follow-Up: Receipts made from a recent purchase has one of the highest open rates on the internet. The majority of users open these emails. Place discounts and offers for recommendations. Ask a product review from your customers once they receive it. Then, make sure that they have full access to your return and exchange policy, in case they might need it later. And make sure it’s hassle-free.
Email marketing is key to eCommerce success
The reality of having website traffic, even if it is a highly targeted kind of traffic, is that most of your web visitors will never return unless there is something that you will do to keep them coming back for more.
Creating an email list and sending compelling messages will provide you a way to maintain the traffic that you have worked so hard to get, by providing users the incentive to keep in touch with your business. That’s why, if you have not taken the time to adapt to email marketing, then you are leaving out money on the table.
So, go out there and create campaigns that will help drive engagement, revenue, and more goodwill to your business!
