Running an e-commerce business can be tough. As any person with an online business will tell you, there is a lot of competition. Simply put, it can be difficult to set yourself apart from everything else available on the internet.
Fortunately, email marketing offers an affordable channel for connecting with new customers. Not to mention that it can also be one of the most valuable tools for re-engaging and retaining past customers. It sounds easy but, as you may have guessed already, there is more to a successful email marketing campaign than sending out mass amounts of messages.
If you want to maximize the results of your efforts, you have to use the right tactics. Practices, like segmenting lists, tracking key performance metrics, and using a tool for validating emails, are all essential to running a successful campaign.
This post will provide tips for e-commerce businesses that want to leverage email marketing and increase sales.
Personalize Your Emails
In the early days of online marketing, you could get away with flooding inboxes with tons of generic messages but (fortunately) that era ended long ago. Today’s consumers are used to these tactics and see them coming from miles away. Spammy emails — or messages that look like it — get deleted on the spot.
In order to avoid ending up in the dreaded spam folder, marketers need to personalise their messages. Statistics may vary from one source to the next, but research has repeatedly shown that customised emails receive better open rates, higher click-through rates, and generate more conversions.
Common tactics include segmenting audiences and adding a customer’s name to the subject line which can increase your open rates by more than 25%.
Create Urgency
Urgency can be a powerful tool for marketers. Generally, people don’t want to feel like they are missing out on a good deal which is why this tactic is effective. One of the most popular ways to create urgency is by announcing a promotion that will run for a limited time only. Add a countdown timer to create more drama!
Another possibility is to send a notice whenever a popular product is about to go out of stock. Whatever you do, just make sure everyone understands that it won’t last forever.
Note: You may also want to read ‘Social commerce? An infographic explains it.’
Send Cart Abandonment Emails
The average cart abandonment rate is around 75% – that’s a lot. While most people won’t return, there’s a small number of them that just might when given the right nudge.
Thanks to marketing automation tools like Pardot, we can nowadays program an email to be sent at a specific moment after the customer leaves the cart. The message can act as both a reminder and an additional opportunity to highlight the benefits of the product.
Sell Your Products with Social Proof
A recommendation or review from a real customer can be far more effective than anything you may have to say about your products. As studies have shown, people are more likely to trust the opinions of other customers than an advertising campaign.
When you include social proof in your emails, it can act as the final note of reassurance a customer needs to make a purchase. You could highlight positive reviews in some of your emails, or even show the number of perfect ratings your business has received on platforms like TrustPilot.
Note: You may also want to read ‘Comparing online and offline shopping (infographic).’
Send Content that is Useful and Engaging
Your customers might not be aware of all the benefits certain types of products offer or they may have questions concerning the right types of products for different situations. Engaging content is an opportunity for you to send emails that inform the consumer while, at the same time, subtly encourages them to make a purchase.
Content upgrades or ‘freebies’ are a type of content that works great when collecting information from readers. For example, if you’re running an online business related to travel, you could write a free tourist guide for a specific city. In order for them to get the guide, first they’d have to give you their phone or other detail so then, they can access the download link. This way, you both get useful information.
Get More from Transactional Emails
Many businesses do not realize just how important transactional emails can be. In fact, these messages receive some of the highest open rates. Just to look at one case, the average order confirmation email has an open rate of 114%. That means that all customers open them at least once. This makes the space in transactional emails very valuable.
E-commerce businesses can take advantage of these opportunities by using some of their transactional emails to cross-sell or upsell. If you are sending an email to confirm a purchase, think about including recommendations for other products that complement the purchased items.
On the other hand, if a customer cancels a purchase, you could use the cancellation email as an opportunity to recommend alternatives to the cancelled items.
Start a Customer Loyalty Program
Acquiring new customers is costly so you may want to offer incentives to your already established clients to keep them happy. A simple way to do this is to offer some type of loyalty program or benefits to repeat customers. Once you have a loyalty program in place, you could use email marketing to send special deals to members.
As another option, you could award points to customers for each purchase. Once a customer accumulates enough points, they could then redeem them for a discount. You could even use your email marketing efforts to remind customers when they have enough points for a discount or when they are getting close to.
Print on Demand
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From the moment you connect your online shop (like Shopify) with our platform, anyone can buy one of your designs. We deliver all over the UK and Europe. Drop shipping has never been this easy.
Why worry about inventory or logistics when we can take care of that? We deal with the boring stuff so you have more time to do what you love. To find out more, simply visit our brand new website.
