5 Things Your Ecommerce Email Strategy Might be Missing
7 Min. Read
One of the most crucial characteristics of having and running an independent website includes the ability to come up with an email list via an effective eCommerce email strategy.
This is exclusive data that nobody else on the web except you possesses. It becomes a key mechanism in increasing the lifetime value of your customers and simultaneously predicting the direction your business is headed towards.
Consequently, the strategies that you employ with regards to your email list become vital, just as the way you interact with all your customers across different platforms is.
At the end of the day, emailing your customers entails that you build a relationship, share information, and provide opportunities beyond something an average person who isn’t on the email list probably wouldn’t receive.
The people on your email list are basically VIPs – after all, they’re already customers, having purchased the product/service you’re offering on your website. Research shows that around 20% of all your email recipients actually open the mail, out of which around 3% click through to your website.
Moreover, around 30% of recipients open your email on the basis of the subject line alone, and around 50-60% of emails get opened on a mobile device. Undoubtedly, your business does not need to settle for these standards.
Instead, you should work towards beating them, and following some of the best eCommerce emailing strategies will probably yield definitive results. Read on to find out what they are!
eCommerce eMail Strategy - TOC
Start with a “Welcome Email Series”
When new customers willingly subscribe to your eCommerce newsletter, they sign up to hear from you regularly. The best time to reach out to them is immediately after they have signed up because this is exactly when they expect an email from you.
What we recommend is that you send a welcome email series that comprises a minimum of three different emails so that all your new subscribers get the time to understand the goals of your brand before they become members of your regular mailing list. In this manner, you get the opportunity to show off your brand a little and set expectations regarding the things that your customers can hope to receive in terms of information.
You may even segment them accordingly such that your future communications with them are personalised. You must be wondering, do your subscribers even care? Yes, of course!
Welcome emails are known to have more than 85% chances of being opened than other emails. They also generate about 300% more revenue per email compared to other promotional emails. You may even automate this email process by setting up the welcome email series in your ESP (email marketing service provider) to make all this more convenient.
Quite simply, a personalized buyer persona acts as a blueprint for your brand–to approach customers the right way, to communicate with them with the right intent, and to demonstrate your brand in the ‘right light.’ If you want the accurate big-picture along with the short-term nuances that make your customers unique, creating a buyer persona and personalizing it is a must.
Moreover, it allows customers to connect deeper and more intimately with your brand as they feel inherently understood (and appreciated) by it. To wrap up, here are the top-7 strategies to embrace and supercharge your personalization initiatives using buyer persona as a strong foundational base:
- Straighten up your data game and focus on collecting user data (try Conversific).
- Invest in a live chat tool to gain valuable insights into your buyer persona.
- Comb through your social media handles to understand your customer’s buying choices better (and deeper).
- Relook at your buyer personas based on the information gathered in real-time as a thumb rule.
- Include real-life quotes and snippets of conversation within your buyer persona.
- Focus on crafting the right message based on the buyer persona insights.
- Tie it all together via a customer-centric collaborative culture.
Think we’ve missed out on any user-persona-based personalization hacks? Please share your comments below; we’re all ears.
Usage of Personalization in order to target specific segments
Undoubtedly, you may have several target audiences that you try to reach out to since it isn’t uncommon at all for products and services to appeal to several different segments of the population at once. But, the trouble arises when you realise that it is impossible for you to contact your entire audience with just one singular message.
This is the time that you should consider personalising your messages. Personalization has been said to dramatically improve open rates, clickthrough rates as well as engagement, while simultaneously reducing the number of bounces, spam reports and unsubscribers. If you haven’t considered dividing up your email recipients into segments, you should definitely do so now.
The best part about sending out emails with customized content for each target audience is that not only do you get to keep your subscribers happy, but it also in turn ensures that your subscribers are more willing to purchase what you are trying to sell. But the question arises – how do you incorporate this into your eCommerce email marketing strategy?
First off, you can begin by segregating your list on the basis of some standard demographics like age, income, and possibly gender identity (depending upon what you wish to sell).
Then look to your customer analytics found in the dashboard of your in your Shopify – Conversific app installation for behavioral analytics. Here you will see much of what you’ll need and you can segment your customer base in many different ways assisting you in generating your various email campaign lists.
Apart from demographics and behavioral analytics which are the easily discoverable details, you can also greatly improve personalization with the use of psychographics and custom field data to further your understanding of your audience’s values, traits, personality, likes and dislikes.
All these factors, when combined, create a holistic and extremely valuable picture of your subscriber, and therefore, how to communicate with them in the best way possible.
Offer Exclusive discounts to your loyal customers
Ensure that your most loyal customers keep coming back to your store time and again with the help of an exclusive loyalty program. Think of it this way – repeat customers basically act as fodder for your business which will help it to grow.
So, the easiest and quickest way to build a loyal and committed customer base is by creating a special club for those who you consider your best and brightest. It’s entirely up to you to decide who. Coming to the how part, you can go about doing this in several ways. Some eCommerce newsletters themselves become hyped as the loyalty club – all you have to do is sign up, and you’re in! But we suggest that you should tailor it to be a bit more special for the customers you consider most engaged in your business.
Send Promotional Emails to All Subscribers
While you ensure that all your VIPs get their well-deserved perks, don’t forget to send across the very important, traditional promotional sales emails that should attract your other subscribers as well. The best times to do this include end of seasons and holidays, as it is a great way of grabbing the attention of subscribers who haven’t yet converted from being window-shoppers to actual customers.
Create well-designed emails that are responsive
It goes without saying that all emails you send out as an eCommerce business need to be well-designed and responsive – including the ones that are promotional and transactional. We don’t mean to say that each email should be stocked with images and GIFs, but only that they do well when they’re interesting and engaging. A few things that your emails need to do include :
Be Visually Appealing
Obviously, this can be done with the help of images, but you can also use the help of some formatting that doesn’t need images – such as catchy headlines and bullets that highlight important points so that your email is an easy read.
Look Good on Mobile
There are good chances that your ESP uses responsive templates which automatically adjust based on the screen of the device being used.
Be Easy to Understand
Keep it simple and to the point – focussing on just one call to action in each email is a good idea.
Capture the Reader’s Interest
It would be silly to underestimate the power of your words, and this fact obviously applies to your emails as well. A good idea is to start with a hook and ensure that your email copy engages the reader with every paragraph.
With the help of these practical yet highly effective tips, your eCommerce email strategy is made a lot more strengthened. As a business owner, you are better placed to come up with and execute successful email marketing campaigns.
It’s good to keep in mind that email marketing is never a game of chance or luck – you must put certain structures and orders in place for you to be able to see a substantial return on investment.
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Shantanu
Shantanu is the SEO expert and founder of Page Potato, a marketing automation agency in Melbourne that helps small businesses with smart email marketing and lead generation solutions, tailor-made to their needs. Other than work, Shantanu also loves trying new recipes and spending lazy Sunday afternoons playing with his kitten, Smokey.
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