It’s critical to design email marketing strategies for your business in order to thrive in this super competitive marketplace. Have you been wondering how you can increase sales on your e-commerce website using email marketing? If so, you’re in luck.
Mail conversation outstrips both organic traffic and social media in terms of performance. First-rate email marketing is therefore essential to your success because it allows you to build meaningful relationships with your customers.
Today, we will detail several of the best practises you should follow when formulating and using e-commerce email marketing strategies to grow your business.
Let’s dive in.
A welcome email series
When people sign up to receive your e-commerce newsletter, they want to hear from you. If you make an effort to contact your customers immediately after they have signed up, you can let people know the sort of things they can expect from this relationship.
It is a good idea to send a series of welcome emails, so that customers can acquaint themselves with you before they get moved onto a regular mailing list. This initial series of emails is not usually less than 3 in number. This way, you have plenty of time and room in which to outline what people can expect from you and share a little more detail about your business, brand and even experience in your particular industry or niche.
You’ll want to do your best to include engaging, interesting and valuable information that’s also useful to subscribers into these emails as they really do care about what you send. If you pack your emails with high-quality information you can begin to build a rapport with people straightaway. This may lead to more sales further down the road. Don’t put too much information in a single email, though. Use the whole welcome series to present all the information you want to convey in manageable chunks.
How do we know that subscribers really care about the emails you send? Well, welcome emails are 86% more likely to be opened than other emails. They also boost revenue significantly, much more so than other promotional emails do.
What is more, you can make things easy for yourself by automating the process. Just set up a series of welcome emails in your email marketing service provider (ESP). One of the best ESPs available if you don’t have one already, is Constant Contact, which is user-friendly and provides you with excellent support.
By making sure the process is automated, you’ll never miss an opportunity to start a relationship with a new customer and your response will always will be prompt and consistent. Automation of welcome emails has been shown to increase customer engagement by up to five times more than standard promotional campaigns. Remember to personalise emails using the customer’s name as this will emphasise the sense of one-on-one communication and boost engagement even more. You can use these emails to start to collect further information about your customers, too.
Let people know how frequently you’ll be in touch and take the opportunity to direct them back to your website, perhaps by giving them access to special content or offers. Reassure your customers that your communications with them are secure and private by including a link to your privacy policy. Always make sure you also include all the necessary legal requirements and that there is an option to unsubscribe should people wish to. This should be made clear in every email.
Email automation, behaviours, personalisation and segmentation
People’s inboxes are being filled with promotional emails each day. This means that if you want people to notice your emails, you’ll have to make them stand out. Personising your emails is one of the most crucial email marketing strategies to use. This is what makes it more likely that your emails will be noticed and read. There are two common ways to send automated, personalised emails.
- Email Segmentation – Divide customers into groups based on characteristics like their email preferences or on-site behaviour. This lets you send emails to these customers which address their preferences and what they particularly like to know.
Emails Triggered by Customer Actions and Behaviours – Set up emails which are triggered by peoples actions and behaviour on-site. These are more likely to be read than traditional emails. You can set up triggers for transactional emails, too.
Using email personalisation to target different segments
Email personalisation dramatically increases customer engagement while reducing bounce and unsubscribe rates. Sending targeted emails with content tailored to a section of your audience keeps your subscribers happy and thus makes them more likely to buy. You can segment your emails in a number of different ways.
- Standard demographics – Age, education, gender identity and income are good ones to start with.
- By their values and personality – You can discover your customers’ values and more about their personal through continued communication with them.
- By finding out more about their interests – This will allow you to send more targeted emails filled with information relevant to their hobbies and interests. You will be able to direct customers to certain products more easily.
- By their shopping habits – This allows you to get an idea of their likes and dislikes and tailor your emails accordingly.
Produce responsive, well-designed emails
All emails from your e-commerce business must be well-designed and responsive, from welcome emails through to promotional and transactional emails. This doesn’t mean that all the emails you send out have to include images, but it does mean each email has be interesting. Your emails should:
- Be visually appealing – There are a number of ways you can achieve this. You can use headings and bullet points to break up chucks of text and make emails more readable. You can also include images or gifs to make them more eye-catching, appealing and engaging.
- Look good on mobile – The chances are that your ESP makes use of templates which alter according to the size of a display screen. With several ESPs, including Constant Contact, you can send a test email so that you can make sure everything looks as you want it to.
- Capture readers’ interest – Begin your emails with a hook to draw people in and write engaging copy which draws people in further as they read on. You can also use these emails to upsell and cross-sell your products and thereby increase your conversion rate.
- Be easy to understand – Ensure your emails are easy to understand and read. Include only a single call-to-action in each email and plan them well.
Aim to increase Average Order Value (AOV)
One of the best ways to make more income or revenue from your e-store is to encourage people to spend more when they buy something. In other words, you should aim to increase Average Order Value (AOV). The AOV shows you the average value of transactions in your e-store. One way you can increase this is by offering customers a discount if they spend more than a certain amount in one go. You can divide people into groups based on their spending habits and automate a series of emails to customers which aims to entice them to spend more on your e-commerce website.
Use abandoned cart emails
One of the best ways to make more income or revenue from your e-store is to encourage people to spend more when they buy something. In other words, you should aim to increase Average Order Value (AOV). The AOV shows you the average value of transactions in your e-store. One way you can increase this is by offering customers a discount if they spend more than a certain amount in one go. You can divide people into groups based on their spending habits and automate a series of emails to customers which aims to entice them to spend more on your e-commerce website.
Be sure to design a mobile-friendly layout
Nowadays, over half of all emails are opened on a smartphone or tablet, so the chances are that your customers will read emails from you when you’re on the move. Thus, if your emails are not easily readable on a small screen and well-organised, they are likely to be deleted.
Make sure that the design of your emails is simple and that you enable users to move sideways and zoon in. Don’t test your customers’ patience. A good way to display information is to use a multi-column layout with product images which is easy for people to scan. This layout can help entice people to click through to your website. Implement a design which ensures your content is optimised for a range of different devices. You can use responsive templates available on email service providers to help you do this.
Encourage sharing
One useful advantage of good customer engagement is that it allows you to target people who are likely to advocate your brand. Being referred by existing shoppers often works to entice others to buy from you. It can also persuade existing customers to spend more on your site. In fact, referrals from customers are often considered a business’s most valuable sales leads. Trying to persuade subscribers to share content extends the reach of your brand and message beyond your initial customer base.
To encourage sharing you can add social media buttons to the emails you send, link to your own social media channels or entice people to share your content with their own followers on social media. It is common practice to place icons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms in the header of an email, or else in the footer. This way, they are easily found but don’t distract from the content of the email itself. You can also encourage sharing by using direct calls-to-action in emails where appropriate, as this serves to capture attention.
Ensure you include content that it easy to share, too. Links to images which are suitable for sharing, for example, are especially valuable as people can reproduce them on their blogs and thus drive more traffic to your online store.
Offer exclusive discounts to loyal customers
A great way to encourage loyal customers to keep returning to you is to introduce a loyalty scheme. Repeat customers ensure your business will continue to thrive and grow and creating a loyalty club is a fantastic way to build a committed following for your e-commerce business.
You can use email marketing to identify which customers to target. By doing do, you can send out an email specifically to your most loyal customers and let them know you appreciate that loyalty by offering them exclusive deals when they shop with you again. This also helps to further cement and strengthen customer relationships.
Don’t forget to test your email marketing campaigns
Always remember to split test your email marketing campaigns. If you don’t do this, you’re letting revenue slip through your fingers. Split testing is the process of taking the original version of an email and comparing it to another version of the same email in which one element has been changed. This change can be made to the subject line, to an element of the design, to the call-to-action or to the text of the email itself. By doing this you can find out what works best in your emails, make the campaigns as a whole more effective and boost customer engagement with your business and brand.
Conclusion
Always remember to split test your email marketing campaigns. If you don’t do this, you’re letting revenue slip through your fingers. Split testing is the process of taking the original version of an email and comparing it to another version of the same email in which one element has been changed. This change can be made to the subject line, to an element of the design, to the call-to-action or to the text of the email itself. By doing this you can find out what works best in your emails, make the campaigns as a whole more effective and boost customer engagement with your business and brand.