Quick and Easy Fixes to Amp Up Your E-commerce Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses. It can be used to promote discounts, drive traffic to your online store, and increase sales.
While social media is an important part of any e-commerce business' marketing plan, it's simply not enough.
Social media marketing is great for building awareness, but when it comes to driving sales, social media is no match for email marketing.
Improve your email list signup numbers
The first step in an e-commerce email marketing strategy is to build a list of potential customers you can send emails to consistently. This can be done through your website, social media accounts, or even offline if you have physical stores or run events with your customers. The key is to get subscribers who are interested in your brand and products.
When building your list, it is important to remember that a quality list of subscribers will always outperform a quantity one. As such, make sure you’re putting the effort into building a quality subscriber base that you can send emails to rather than simply building up a large number of subscribers without knowing their interests and preferences.
Email marketing services work by providing templates and features to help you create, distribute and analyze the performance of your email campaigns. While some services offer basic templates with limited functionality that are suitable for small companies, others offer more advanced features such as A/B testing and multiple user accounts for collaboration.
The goal of email marketing is to transform your customers into subscribers, then use that subscriber list to send them promotions and offers in order to increase sales. It also allows you to stay in touch with them, which builds trust and loyalty. And when you build loyalty with your customers, they spend more money with your business.
The process begins with acquiring new subscribers for your newsletter. You can do this by signing up potential customers on your website, or by offering an incentive such as a free eBook or getting 10% off their first purchase. Once you have a list of subscribers, you'll want to start sending them newsletters. You can do this either manually or through a third party email service provider (ESP) such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact.
These ESPs allow you to design newsletters and manage your mailing list from one location, making it easier for you to customize emails for certain groups of subscribers. They also help ensure that emails are sent without being flagged as spam. Sending out too many emails at once can set off spam filters and hurt your deliverability rate, so it’s very important to work with an ESP if you're just starting out with email marketing.
The last piece of the puzzle is tracking and analyzing the results of these campaigns.
We all know that email marketing is an effective way to keep your customers and prospects engaged with your company. But it can be challenging to get people to sign up for email communications.
According to a study by MarketingSherpa, the top reason why people subscribe to emails is that they offer valuable information (48 percent), followed by discounts (31 percent) and relevancy (17 percent). So how do you convince people that your emails are worth signing up for?
There are a number of ways to increase the number of people who subscribe to your email list. Here are some things you can do to grow your subscriber base:
Create a custom sign-up form.
Highlight the benefits of subscribing.
Create an incentive for people to sign up.
Offer something of value.
Embed a sign-up form on your website.
Post a link to your sign-up form on your Facebook page.
Add a sign-up button to your tweets on Twitter.
Include a call to action in every email you send out, and include a link or button that leads back to your sign-up form.
Put a call to action (CTA) on your business's Facebook page, Pinterest board and Instagram account (if it's appropriate for your business).
Use targeted ads on social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and add a CTA button with a link to your sign-up page.
Make signing up for updates part of the checkout process if customers buy from you online (this is particularly effective for e-commerce businesses).
Run contests and sweepstakes where people have to enter their email addresses for the chance to win something cool, like free tickets or other prizes (just be careful about privacy laws).
Add an email opt-in.
Now that you've built your email list, you need to make sure they're opening and reading your emails. Here are 13 ways to get more customers engaged with your emails:
Use an engaging subject line that clearly communicates the value of the email.
Personalize the greeting by referring to the customer by name.
Keep the email short. Only include information that's relevant.
Include images, but make sure the images help tell your story, rather than just looking pretty.
Make sure all links are working properly and take readers directly to their intended destination.
Add social sharing buttons so readers can easily share your content on social media.
Include a clear call-to-action button. The most successful CTAs are personalized and specific, such as "shop now" or "learn more."
Include an incentive for reading or taking action on your email. For example, offer a discount code for a future purchase or free shipping on orders over $50.
Segment your subscribers so you can send them more personalized emails based on their interests and needs.
Write like a person, not like a company.
Use mobile-friendly templates.
Limit Your Colors: More colors don't necessarily mean a more visually appealing email. When it comes to color schemes for your email, less is more. You want your email recipients to concentrate on the copy and CTA, not how weird the color scheme looks or how off-brand certain colors may be. Stick with two or three colors max!
Test different types of content, subject lines and CTAs to determine what works best for your audience. You can also test using text-only emails vs. those with images included.
What about email subject lines?
A good email subject line entices the reader to open the email and read it, so it needs to be as engaging as possible.
The best way to do this is to use something that’s relevant and personal to them, such as something that relates to their purchase history or interests, or a problem they might have.
So, what makes a good email subject line?
Something specific: ‘Special offer for newsletter readers’ is boring. ‘Get 20% off your next order’ is much better, because it’s specific about what you’re offering the customer.
Something personal: A generic subject line like ‘New products in store now!’ doesn’t work well. ‘You might like these new products…’ is better because it makes the customer feel like you know them personally, and are making them an offer they can’t resist.
Something timely (but also timeless): A great example of this is a subject line I received from a company selling Christmas decorations: ‘You can still get your Christmas decorations delivered in time for Christmas!’ That was relevant at the time it was sent, but if you had received the same email at Easter, you might have deleted it.
Final thought
When done well, email marketing can generate interest from potential customers, increase web traffic, and build brand loyalty. Plus, it can help boost sales by giving your e-commerce business an opportunity to promote new products and special offers.