E-Commerce Email Marketing – Top Tips to Increase Sales

Key Takeaways:

1.????Email marketing is especially beneficial for e-commerce organisations since it is their sole means to re-engage leads.

2.????Email marketing can be quite inexpensive, and there are numerous useful solutions on the market to aid young e-commerce businesses.

3.????High-quality design, well-thought-out email campaign strategies, and adequate sender reputation maintenance are required for effective email marketing.

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Why Should E-Commerce Businesses Invest in Email Marketing?

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When your whole business is online, email marketing is the best way to get new leads, keep existing leads interested, and keep your company growing.

Email marketing can do things that traditional retail outlets cannot. While e-commerce companies may pursue abandoned baskets, store employees cannot pursue window shoppers

Because email marketing is not limited by geography, it enables businesses to expand internationally while still reaching customers in their own homes

Though e-commerce firms may engage leads through their website, SEO, and social media, they cannot leverage these channels to arrive directly in users' inboxes. As a result, email is a critical component of marketing that should not be overlooked.

Still not convinced? Businesses may expect an?average of $40 return on investment for every dollar spent on email marketing.

Continue reading to find out everything e-commerce businesses need to know about email marketing:

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How Does Email Marketing Work? An Overview:

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Here’s a beginner’s guide to how email marketing works:

1.????First, you develop a sign-up form on your website to collect people's contact information. This is configured to include their email addresses in your mailing list.

2.????Then, using smart design, effective text, marketing methods, and brand personality, you generate powerful emails.

3.????You send promotional emails to boost sales, incentivize purchases, remain in touch with consumers, and convey critical corporate information when regulations change.

4.????You frequently remove inactive subscribers from your email list and take additional steps to safeguard your sender's reputation.

5.????You assess and enhance your operations by reviewing email marketing performance statistics using specific tools.

6.????You may need to employ a designer, copywriter, or marketing manager to assist with specific areas of your email marketing.

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Pros and Cons of Using Email Marketing in E-Commerce

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You may be thinking if email marketing is ideal for your company. Even if it has certain drawbacks, you may be persuaded by its advantages:

Pros

-???????Email marketing is often inexpensive, particularly when compared to other marketing mediums.

-???????Because email marketing is permission-based, users are truly interested in getting communications from your company.

-???????Email marketing is scalable, so it can be tailored to your company's stage.

-???????Deep degrees of personalization may be obtained by audience segmentation, which is not feasible with even paid advertising channels.

-???????Through the use of a few KPIs, email marketing initiatives may be highly and easily tracked.

-???????Every firm that uses email marketing has the opportunity to reach a large, worldwide audience.

-???????Email marketing allows businesses to reach out to leads in real time since emails may be triggered by events such as abandoned carts.

-???????Email marketing is discreet. While consumers may scroll through advertising or hang up on cold calls, people may return to your emails at their leisure, which not only extends the life of your communications but also fosters the buyer's journey by making the lead feel in charge of their decisions.

-???????If you don't have an expert on your team, there are a plethora of low-cost email marketing solutions that can assist you with all stages of your campaigns.

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Cons

-???????Because email marketing leads aren't always qualified, they may need to be weeded out later on.

-???????You may be flagged as spam via no fault of your own (a subscriber may get overwhelmed by the volume of promotional emails they receive from various firms).

-???????Email design is frequently seen as limited in comparison to the creative capabilities of other advertising tools.

-???????You'll need to keep your sender reputation up to date and be aware of spam control tactics utilised by email providers.

-???????You will require knowledge, money, and resources. If a small company does not yet have a large enough budget to engage numerous contractors, it may be necessary to oversimplify its email marketing efforts.

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How to Build a Successful Mailing List

Make it simple and appealing for visitors to subscribe

First, you need to create a subscription form that will appear on your website – either as a To begin, you must design a subscription form that will display on your website, either as a pop-up, in the footer, or on landing pages.

Sign-up incentives, as well as forms that aren't too difficult to fill out, are likely to entice more consumers to leave their information. If you’d like to have a deeper dive into creating lead capture forms, check out this article.

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Keep subscribers engaged

Email marketing may be used to reach leads at all phases of the buyer's journey, from awareness, consideration, and action through post-purchase support and bonding.

Check out the section below for more information on the many sorts of email you may use to engage subscribers at various stages of their buyer's journeys.

While there are things you can do to keep subscribers interested, there are also things you should avoid doing to keep subscribers engaged. See the section below to find out what they are.

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Segmenting your mailing list

Segmenting your mailing list entails establishing smaller, more focused lists so that subscribers receive more personalised and relevant communications. Meanwhile, e-commerce businesses profit from audience segmentation since they are more likely to meet certain email marketing goals:

Individuals not only believe emails are relevant to them, but they also do not have to deal with the inconvenience of irrelevant emails. As a result, your sender's reputation is better safeguarded, and users are less likely to get bored with your messages.

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When to let subscribers go

You may believe that "bigger is better," but this is not necessarily the case with email lists. Every 3-6 months, businesses should purge unengaged email accounts. Keeping inactive subscribers can only affect your KPIs and jeopardise your sender's reputation.

Identifying fatigued and disengaged prospects will increase your CTR and provide you with a more realistic picture of your email performance.

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What NOT to do

Sending unsolicited emails should be avoided. You're breaching the law if you've obtained email addresses in a method that isn't GDPR compliant. Furthermore, your emails will most likely be labelled as spam or not opened, harming your sender's reputation.

Don't make the mistake of sending out a large number of emails on a regular basis; this is known as spam. You may believe that being continuously in your subscribers' inboxes is advantageous, but this couldn't be farther from the truth. Companies that send fewer, higher-quality emails will do better.

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Types of Emails to Send

Welcome emails

The initial impression is formed by a welcome email. Express your joy and thanks that this person is interested in your business! Use their first name, and possibly use the email to explain more about the company's beliefs and what it provides.

Welcome mailings typically include a 10% or higher first-purchase discount. These promotions are so common that people practically anticipate them when they join up for something. (To attract visitors, you could even publicise the discount on your sign-up forms!) A discount is a terrific approach to attract those leads and encourage them to test your products or services.

The average open rate for companies across all industries is?19.7%,?whilst it’s 68.6% for welcome emails! This indicates that the original email has a higher chance of generating purchases.

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Anniversary emails

Because anniversary emails are uncommon, they might favourably surprise consumers while also conveying a good business attitude.

They may be used to commemorate a year of being on your mailing list, a special birthday greeting, or a repurchase if your business provides repeat-purchase items.

Anniversary emails are more personal than other sorts since they take into consideration personal information relevant to individual users. Customers will feel more thought and cared for if your brand acts in this manner.

Repeat-purchase reminders must be properly planned, so figure out how long your items generally last and send such emails when your consumers are nearing the end of them.

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Abandoned cart emails

You can catch those almost-customers using abandoned cart emails. The Consideration stage is an important element of your sales funnel, and even a modest discount may be all that is required to convert that lead to the Action step.

Did you know that sending three abandoned cart emails generates 69% more purchases than sending just one?

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Special deals emails

Special promotions are an excellent method to re-engage email subscribers, clear away surplus stock, and build interest in unknown or new goods.

Discounts and special offers that focus on a single CTA perform better than those that include numerous CTAs. They're also a lot less difficult to create and measure.

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Referral emails

We already know how valuable it is for subscribers to share or suggest your business to their friends and family - it's an excellent approach to create new leads. You may boost referrals by rewarding your subscribers when they successfully suggest a friend. You may provide a free gift or a one-time discount.

Calculate your cost-per-customer-acquisition initially before developing your'refer-a-friend' programme. This will inform you how much of an incentive you can afford to provide while still making a profit.

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Newsletter emails

E-commerce firms may benefit greatly from newsletters. They are commonly used to educate subscribers and position businesses as industry thought leaders. For example, you may distribute newsletters that explain industry news or give further information about your products or services.

A skincare firm, for example, may use its emails to cover winter skincare, an upcoming product line, or a recent scientific research regarding SPF. Whatever your business sells, a newsletter is a more formal means of getting in touch with your customers and starting a discussion.

If you have a regular blog, you might advertise this in your newsletter to bring more visitors to your site and then to product pages.

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Feedback emails

Because feedback is an important part of Client Relationship Management (CRM), having access to customer email addresses is a goldmine that should be exploited!

An incentive is sometimes required to motivate consumers to fill satisfaction surveys, but other times their strong sentiments can be enough. Sending feedback requests following a transaction (and delivery) is a wonderful moment to contact clients since they will have fresh memories of their experience.

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How to Optimise Your Emails

We've all gotten spammy advertising emails with broken links and too many CTAs.

Building and designing great emails is an art, and you may need to bring in a designer to assist you. Though it will cost money, it is just as crucial as having a well-designed website or a solid handshake.

Emails with strong visual hierarchy, accurate colour theory, and optimised text get greater outcomes. Keeping this in mind, remember the following tips while creating your emails:

-???????Adapt your emails for mobile and desktop devices

-???????Create appealing headers and subject lines

-???????Optimised use and design of CTA buttons

-???????Easy-to-read font

-???????High-quality photos

-???????Attractive use of colour that’s easy on the eyes

-???????Experiment with both little and large components to bring attention to key sections

-???????Keep visual hierarchies in mind

-???????Check that all links are working properly

-???????Build in sections needed for personalisation

-???????Be aware of the name in the email address you’re sending from

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Which Email Marketing Metrics Should You Track for E-Commerce?

1.???Clickthrough rate

Your CTR is the proportion of subscribers that clicked on one or more of the embedded links in your email. You may figure it out by doing the following:

(total amount of clicks / total number of emails delivered) x 100

CTR clearly demonstrates the performance and user engagement levels of each email. You could discover that it's the primary metric assessed in A/B testing because the objective of these tests is frequently to determine how emails might be more 'clickable'.

2.???Bounce rate

When discussing emails, the bounce rate refers to emails that were unable to be delivered. This may be calculated as follows:

(total number of bounced emails / total number of sent emails) x 100

The bounce rate is critical to your sender's reputation since it is utilised by internet service providers to judge your reliability.

Keep an eye out for both gentle and hard bounces. Hard bounces occur when the email inbox is closed or invalid; these email addresses should be removed immediately. Soft bounces are caused by temporary difficulties that may be fixed by resending the email or waiting until the problem on the recipient's end is rectified.

Bounce rate is only a concern if your sender's reputation is jeopardised. (A few bounces are to be expected.)

3.???Conversion rate

The percentage of subscribers that performed a given activity, such as clicking on a link and completing a purchase, is referred to as your email conversion rate. You may figure it out by doing the following:

(number of subscribers who completed action / total number of emails delivered) × 100

When evaluating the performance of your CTAs and, more broadly, your overall company goals, conversion rate is critical.

4.???List growth rate

This KPI indicates how quickly your mailing list is increasing. You may figure it out by doing the following:

(((new subscribers) - (unsubscribes + spam flags)) / total number of subscribers) x 100

The size of your mailing list may indicate the effectiveness of your mailing list sign-up forms or landing pages, however mailing lists naturally diminish each year. As a result, a slowing growth rate does not always imply that you are not gaining new subscribers.?

Keep an eye on this one because it's critical that your email list is large enough.

5.???Unsubscribe rate

This indicator represents the proportion of subscribers that unsubscribe after opening a certain email. You may figure it out by doing the following:

(total unsubscribes / total emails delivered) multiplied by 100

You may also wish to consider those who have reported you as spam in this computation.

The unsubscribe rate should not be depended on entirely since some subscribers will demonstrate their indifference by not receiving your emails or opening but not reading them - which you cannot be certain of. It's far better to look at measures like conversion rate, sharing rate, and clickthrough rate to gauge engagement.

6.???Open rate

The percentage of subscribers that open an email is what your open rate is. You may figure it out by doing the following:

(number of emails opened / number of emails delivered) x 100

Though the open rate is valuable for comparing emails over time, it does not tell you much on its own. Emails can be opened but not read; they can also be opened but not read. As a result, open rates are frequently ambiguous and may not provide a clear picture. As a result, they should not be depended on excessively.

7.???Sharing or forwarding rates

The percentage of people who share your emails on social media or with friends is indicated by your sharing or forwarding rate. You may figure it out by doing the following:

(total number of emails delivered / number of clicks on the'share' or 'forwarding' button) x 100

This measure provides a wealth of information regarding customer happiness and engagement levels. It's often forgotten, but it may be critical in getting new leads and subscribers, so don't miss it.

8.???ROI

Your ROI is the total return on investment from your email marketing - however you could calculate it for individual emails if you wanted to. The total amount may be calculated as follows:

((￡ in campaign produced sales - ￡ spent on campaign) / ￡ spent on campaign) / $ spent on campaign) x 100

Return on investment is critical since it demonstrates the genuine, measurable benefits of your efforts. You may use it to analyse different email campaigns to evaluate the performance of various tactics, or simply to manage expenditures. In most situations, it's the bottom line that indicates success.

5 Best Email Marketing Tools

Some tools can be extremely helpful in automating your email marketing strategy…

MailChimp (for beginners)

If you've thought about email marketing, you've probably heard of MailChimp. It was the most popular email marketing tool in 2021 and 2022, boasting increases of 88% in revenue to their customers.

MailChimp is primarily a marketing tool, therefore it cannot accomplish as much as other tools; nonetheless, it is extremely simple to use, making it excellent for novices.

A free MailChimp package limits you to 2500 sends per month and a maximum of 500 contacts. You'll have access to a large number of email templates, albeit the level of customisation isn't as extensive as it is with HubSpot.

HubSpot (all-in-one)

HubSpot has the benefit of being an all-in-one solution, but that isn't always necessary if you only need assistance with email marketing.

HubSpot's free plan limits you to 2000 sends every month, despite the fact that you may have an infinite amount of contacts. If you wish to upgrade to more comprehensive plans, it may be pricey, and the programme itself isn't totally user-friendly.

Though HubSpot has a steep learning curve, this means you'll have access to complex automations and tons of email design customization.

Drip (e-commerce)

Drip, like the other tools on our list, focuses on email marketing and automation, but it primarily targets e-commerce enterprises.

Drip, according to the common view, is just as excellent as MailChimp but does not have the same reputation owing to its age (being founded 12 years after). This is sad because Drip's automation builder is far more sophisticated and aesthetically appealing.

Drip's starting fees are nearly double those of MailChimp; nevertheless, Drip offers a lot more slick user interface and more unique options when it comes to generating email campaigns.

Klaviyo (e-commerce)

Though Klaviyo does not prioritise usability, it compensates with a plethora of capabilities and advanced customization, audience segmentation, and automation possibilities.

Though Klaviyo has one of the more difficult user interfaces, it does provide a lot of help when you join up.

Klaviyo, which primarily focuses on email and SMS marketing, does not assist with landing sites or social media, and it's free plan only allows for half as many subscribers as MailChimp's.

If e-commerce is your primary issue, Klaviyo provides plenty of flexibility for your needs, such as automatic notifications, integrations, and wide target accomplishments that are all suitable for larger businesses.

Salesforce (for CRM and reporting)

Salesforce competes with HubSpot in terms of vast marketing options and high degrees of customization.

Salesforce's CRM and reporting are notable features. Salesforce's dashboard makes it very simple to see your full e-commerce profile at a glance, which is ideal for busy business owners and enterprises with several projects running at the same time.

Salesforce does not provide a free plan, despite offering a free trial. However, its pricing plan offers add-ons, so you won't have to pay for items you don't require.

Finally, Salesforce is extremely comparable to HubSpot, which is a considerably less expensive and more comprehensive product.

Final thoughts

If your company is digital, it stands to reason that your customer acquisition and lead nurturing channels would be as well. You might employ social media and search engine advertisements, but these channels will not allow you to follow up with potential leads or nurture them after they make a purchase.

However, because so many email users are tired of spammy, unnecessary, or forceful commercial emails, optimising your email marketing is critical. Figure out how to make yours stand out and you'll be reaping the benefits in no time.

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Please contact us if you believe you require assistance with email optimization.