The Definitive Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing has become crucial for success in today’s e-commerce space. It’s one of the best methods to engage current and prospective customers—prompting them to purchase and boosting your bottom line.

In this ultimate guide to ecommerce email marketing, we will cover everything that you need to get started, drive sales, and win more campaigns.

What is eCommerce email marketing?

Email marketing is one of the most valuable techniques, especially for eCommerce businesses today, since it lets you connect with customers in a personalized way at a much lower cost. 

eCommerce marketing is a persuasive marketing strategy dependent on emails to publicize the products and services of an online store to prospective and existing customers. Emails are a very prevalent form of online communication because they are compelling, efficient, affordable, and beneficial. 

Your emails impact how your customers perceive your brand when they shop from your store, whether online or offline. Therefore, you must engage your consumers and keep them hooked with your email marketing strategy. Or else, with lots of emails flooded daily by various businesses, you can lose your consumers to your competitors.

However, emails being explicit communication from the brand is a more cost-effective and targeted way to reach your customers. Additionally, you can easily get a full picture of your email marketing performance, make adjustments, and improve efficacy. 

The key metrics to track for eCommerce email marketing campaigns contain but are not limited to:

1. Delivery rate
2. Open rate
3. Click-through rate
4. Bounce rate
5. Conversion rate
6. Subscribe rate
7. Unsubscribe rate

For eCommerce business development, it is important to streamline exhaustive email marketing campaigns in alignment with the goals, KPIs, and performance metrics. 

Email marketing can drive brand awareness, first impressions, and user hook. However, a few things you need to remember to avoid emails going to spam:

1. Not purchasing email lists
2. Utilizing opt-in forms to collect emails
3. Offering an unsubscribe option
4. Creating audience segments
5. Not utilizing spammy phrases
6. Disseminating quality content

Now that you know exactly what eCommerce email marketing is, why it is important, and the metrics to track and watch the email marketing campaigns.

It’s time to jump onto the next section of this ecommerce email marketing guide

Why are eCommerce email campaigns the key to success?

Here are the statistics that explain why email marketing is paramount for accomplishing eCommerce success:

• Over 99% of customers check their inboxes every day.
• More than 80% of retailers consider email marketing one of the most cost-effective techniques to retain customers.
• 59% of customers believe that marketing emails impact their purchasing decisions.

Email marketing builds brand awareness, creates credibility, and strengthens customer relationships. 

Types of eCommerce emails you can send

1. Welcome emails

A welcome email is the first effort toward creating a long-term relationship with a customer. It can make or break, so the challenge is to make sure that your email is purpose-driven, exhilarates the user, and prompts action. You’re doing it incorrectly if your welcome email is nothing but a signup receipt.

To start with, the basic goal of these kinds of messages should be to guide the existing and new subscribers on what your business is really about – because this is the moment you have more attention from a user than you ever will have again.

While a straightforward, clean, and easy-on-the-eyes email template is a wonderful place to start, they’d appreciate brands that go beyond the norms by rewarding them for signing up.

2. Loyalty emails

Customer loyalty doesn’t build overnight or through just one campaign, but preparing frequent well-targeted email campaigns to nurture your existing and new subscribers to gain customer loyalty is a great idea. It improves the customer’s lifetime value.

You must have listened to exclusive membership programs, right? Well, these are the most common types of loyalty programs that brands utilize to ask users to sign up for an “exclusive” email list that provides them with early access to product releases, special deals, and exclusive invitations to special events.

3. Re-engagement emails

For eCommerce platforms, there are numerous “disengaged subscribers” who haven’t visited your store, bought from you or even opened your email for a long time. They are acquainted with your brand and products/services, but their behavior is odd and cannot be fixed. 

Therefore, they are usually a warmer audience than strangers. So, re-engagement emails with good offers can prompt them to get back on track. 

Whether it is a discount code or competition, highlight your reward in a way that cannot be overlooked. It is recommended to make it personalized and make the consumer feel special and wanted. Try to use phrases like “We miss you!” or “Please come back!” to remind them of their past relationship with your brand. 

4. Anniversary emails

Everyone likes to feel special. Particularly if a business remembers your birthday or anniversary, it takes it to a new level. Personalized wishes with coupons, discounts, rewards, and exclusive offers effectively lead to customer interaction and build trust. 

It is pretty straightforward; just ask for the date of birth or anniversary date when somebody opts into your email list without asking for any other information. By delivering incentives based on the customer’s previous interactions, you can boost them to make purchase decisions not just on price but on shared values, engagement, and the all-around experience of your brand. You can also calculate  ages of customers from their birth dates to send more targeted marketing in future.

5. Promotional emails

Every day we all receive lots of promotional emails. 

From experience as a consumer, most of these messages usually need to be more strategic and systematic. For instance, we all get hundreds of monotonous promotional email cliches every month, most of which people would only care to open. Now, this is a disaster. You have to believe these campaigns through. 

Unlike transactional emails that tell customers about their orders or account information, promotional emails generally translate email subscribers into customers and customers into brand advocates. 

Brands generally utilize these emails to advertise their products, services, offers, and campaigns. Therefore, you must pay more attention to these campaigns.

6. Post-purchase emails

Investing in a new customer needs much more effort and money than keeping one. Therefore, returning customers is considered a great practice to boost the ROI of a company. 

One of the primary benefits of setting up a post-purchase campaign is that it stimulates your efforts to build seamless communication with your customers. Instead of interrupting someone’s active schedule with an annoying phone call – which also costs a lot of your time—emails make up a feasible follow-up option.

The first purchase of any buyer marks the basis of the relationship between the retailer and the customer. Therefore you must send post-purchase emails to your first-time buyers – to nurture and turn them into loyal customers.

Post-purchase emails act not only to get customer feedback but also to announce additional products and services that your customers might be curious about.

7. Review request emails

Testimonials and reviews are fantastic to demonstrate customer trust, especially for those unwilling to purchase. It drives them one step ahead in the sales funnel. 

83% of people discover new products based on customer reviews. Every 4 out of 5 American customers read reviews before making a purchase decision since testimonials help create a brand reputation, bring a lot of credibility to your company, and deliver the kind of social proof required to influence consumer behavior. 

Reviews are a wonderful way to get useful insights about your product and service and also send a message that your brand is interested in customers. Therefore, customer feedback emails go a long way in building a relationship between your brand and the customer. 

8. Cart abandonment emails

The average cart abandonment rate ranges between 60% and 80%. However, one of the widespread ways to recoup lost revenue is to utilize an abandoned cart email to follow up with shoppers.

Abandoned cart emails are too conversion-oriented messages that move recipients and get them to take action. These emails are crucial for holiday-oriented emails like Christmas or Thanksgiving marketing campaigns.

9. Price drop emails

The success of all eCommerce transactions is impacted the most by pricing. A promising marketing strategy involves the seller’s wisdom of the competition and the potential buyers’ decision-making processes to create pricing that encourages purchases.

Since the price of a product stays a crucial factor in eCommerce, why can’t we use that to push more sales?‍

Price drop alerts tell shoppers of discounts on their favorite products outside a formal sale. The triggered email allows everyone curious about the product to know it just got cheaper. The browsing data of shoppers who have opted into your email marketing is captured and kept. The email is automatically triggered when you lower a price in your eCommerce system.

10. Back-in-stock emails

Your products may go out of stock for multiple reasons, including increased demand during Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year, and Christmas. The impact can be highly frustrating for shoppers, who wish to be able to purchase what they want, and when they want it.

The damage of stock-outs can be long-term. Not only do you lose a sale, but that consumer might buy from the competitor instead, establishing a pleasing relationship with them. ‍

But marketers can turn an out-of-stock product into favorable customer interaction.

Sending back-in-stock emails allows you to recover potential lost revenue, keep customers contented with your brand, and ultimately delight shoppers by providing them with the desired product.

Ecommerce email marketing tips and strategies

It might take some time and testing to decide what email techniques resonate most with your audience, but several best marketing practices are useful.

1. Segment your audience

The easiest way to personalize emails is to segment your customers into groups based on demographics, buyer journey stage, or other significant factors to your brand. Once customers are categorized, you can strategically target emails to improve open rates and purchases.

You might decide to segment your audience by:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Household income level
• Job title
• Education level
• Interests
• Past purchases
• Purchase frequency
• Level of engagement

Where applicable, gather this information when customers first sign up for your mailing list.Also, use a reliable free email verifier to ensure the accuracy of the provided email addresses.

2. Get personal

Personalization is the most crucial strategy when it comes to email marketing. Customers are used to personalized brand communication, so don’t fall behind — make people feel like you’re catering straight to them.

Here are a few personalization tactics you can use.

• Incorporate the customer’s first name in the subject line or the first line of the email.
• Send triggered emails based on browsing behavior or data from your CRM.
• Capitalize on birthdays or other anniversaries.

3. Cross-sell and upsell

Emails are a wonderful way to cross-sell related products after a customer has scanned your site or completed a purchase. 

To make the most of cross-selling email marketing:

• Recommend add-ons that would go well with the bought item, like an accessory to complement a piece of clothing or decor that fits a recent furniture purchase.
• Define the value of this additional product in the text of the email.
• Use social proof by demonstrating that other customers who bought the same item also purchased the new one you’re recommending.
• Use images to exhibit the item that was bought with the item you’re recommending.
• Propose a limited-time discount or free shipping on the additional item.

Similarly, you can use email marketing to upsell, suggesting a higher-end product if a customer left something in their cart. Offer a CTA with a direct link to make the upgrade easy and painless.

4. Focus on the subject line.

EarthWeb states that the average person receives more than 100 emails per day. Therefore, your subject line is necessary — it’s your chance to catch a customer’s eye before they delete your message.

Here are a few ways to make the subject line concise, catchy, and fascinating.

• Restrict it to 50 characters or less.
• Place essential words toward the front of the subject line.
• Use words that appeal to people’s FOMO and create a sense of urgency, like “secret,” “free,” or “win.”
• Use emojis to add color and make your email stand out in a packed inbox.

5. Use images

Quality images help you grab customers’ attention and get them to click through. The right image expresses more efficiently than text and can communicate much more than words.

Here are some tips for getting the imagery right in your email marketing.

• Don’t utilize free stock photos recognizable across the web — utilize original high-resolution product photos.
• Use a JPG file format to allow the images to load quickly.
• Don’t overdo it. Over three images per email overwhelm users and make emails load slower.

6. Consider the frequency

Determining the right schedule for your marketing emails demands time and testing, but it’s worth the struggle. Every industry, niche, and audience will choose a different schedule, so experiment with your assumptions.

• Begin by sending one email per week and watch engagement metrics like opens and clicks. Then, add a second email per week and see how the metrics change.
• Mix up the kinds of emails you send. If you begin with a weekly promotion email, add a more enlightening newsletter email on a different day of the week.

The frequency you send emails might change based on the time of year and what’s going on with your business. 

7. Carefully choose words and tone.

The copy in your email is a large part of the overall message. It should speak straight to your target audience, be compelling, and be true to your brand voice. Have a look at the following tips for getting the copy just right.

• Begin by writing what you want to say, and then go back and edit the text to cut out excessive words and replace weak terms with more descriptive synonyms.
• Review the text to make sure there are at least a few sensory words. The copy should invite the reader into the experience your product creates.
• Tell the reader to do something. At least one sentence in the short text should prompt the reader to action.

8. Nurture the relationship

Ecommerce email marketing is all about creating and sustaining long-lasting customer relationships. Don’t just send emails to get a quick conversion — think about delivering a pleasant customer experience that will lead to more profitable customer retention. You can do this via:

• Birthday and anniversary emails to celebrate your audience
• Immediate customer service responses that exceed expectations
• Post-purchase check-ins to ensure that the customer is happy
• Requesting feedback or submitting a survey to gather thoughts

9. Test and optimize

No e-commerce email campaign is one-size-fits-all. Therefore A/B testing is important. Some elements of your email marketing to test include:

• CTA text, color, and placement
• Subject lines
• Images
• Time and day of send
• Message length

The key to A/B testing is to test with one variable at a time. Trying even a short list of elements can take a few campaigns. Every email you send lets you test and optimize your messaging.

Ecommerce email marketing software

You’ll need email marketing software to successfully build effective e-commerce campaigns. Many solutions aren’t the right fit for e-commerce-specific emails, so look for software capable of fulfilling the intricate needs of an e-commerce company.

An email marketing solution for an e-commerce brand should be able to:

• Merge with your e-commerce platforms, tools, and CMS.
• Create email templates and build your email list.
• Personalize and customize messages.
• Store customer details and data in a particular location.
• Protect customer information.
• Offer data and analytics.
• Use automation for simple and repetitive tasks.

Email software like NotifyVisitors can help you build effective email marketing campaigns and let you target your audience in a personalized way.