Building an Email Marketing Strategy for Your eCommerce Store: a Complete Guide
If you run an eCommerce store, email marketing is an important part of connecting with your customers. Although you have other marketing options, email marketing allows you to build more meaningful relationships to grow your business.
Even though social media has become a crucial part of our daily lives, platforms like Twitter and Facebook still can’t replace good old-fashioned emails. Research shows that email marketing is significantly more effective than social media in attracting customers.
Utilizing email marketing in conjunction with other marketing strategies, like a customized landing page, can even increase conversion rates by up to 25%.
When you look at all of this, you can see why email marketing can be crucial to your eCommerce store. Whether you’re just starting out or want to expand, you’re going to need some email marketing ideas. In this article, we’ll explain how you can use an eCommerce email marketing strategy to grow your business.
Why Email Marketing for eCommerce?
It’s important that you build credibility and brand awareness as an eCommerce business owner. If you want to generate leads, you need to find sustainable channels to reach your target audience. Email marketing makes this possible. Let’s look at a few reasons why email marketing is important for eCommerce.
Impressive Reach and Open Rate
According to recent reports, emails reach about 79% of the people you send them to. Reports conducted by Mailchimp also show that, on average, 21.33% of the people that get your emails actually open them. This is most likely because people generally consider email content important, while social media is mostly visited for pleasure.
Emails are More Personal
When you’re building an eCommerce brand, sending emails lets you add a personal touch to your marketing. This can make your customers feel connected to your business in some way. You should also consider customizing these emails because some customers say they only engage with customized emails and messaging.
Easy to Measure
You’re going to spend on marketing when you’re building an eCommerce store, so why not consider marketing options that help you easily measure the results? With email marketing, you can track details like open rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate; all of which help you know where you stand with your customers.
Email Marketing Statistics You Should Know About
It helps to know a little more about email marketing statistics to understand how to best reach your customers. Below we’ve gathered some important statistics you should know to help you make informed decisions when you’re creating your email marketing strategy.
Over 4.2 Billion Email Users
Email marketing offers you limitless opportunities to reach potential customers. With over 4.2 billion email users, you can rest assured that the market is there.
You can technically send emails at any time, but it’s a good idea to use a planned email campaign because it can help you perfect your eCommerce email marketing strategy. One report shows that the best day to send email marketing campaigns is Friday, which was found to have a high click-through rate. If you didn’t know plan out your email campaign, you wouldn’t know that and may not think of the day you’re sending the email.
Impressive Returns on Investment (ROI)
More than 59% of marketers say that email provides the largest ROI for them. With more than 340 billion emails sent every day, it’s a great idea to get in on these high returns by using email marketing for your business.
Email marketing, unlike social media content, also allows you to customize messages to your customers. This feature makes your audience feel valued and can influence how they see your brand.
A Great Content Marketing Channel
Email marketing is a great channel for content marketing. In fact, email marketing was the most automated digital marketing channel in 2021. As a brand owner, you’ll probably want to pay attention to this channel. You can market a variety of content to your customers without boring them.
People Read Brand Emails in Under Ten Seconds
The average consumer’s attention span is vital for you to factor into your email campaign. A Statista report shows that people spent less than ten seconds reading brand emails in 2021.
This means you either grab their attention or lose them in the first few seconds after they open your email. Make it good—you’ve got no time to waste!
5 Key Emails to Set Up
Here are five key types of emails you should write as an eCommerce store owner.
The Welcome Email
Will your audience continue to open your emails? Your welcome email will determine that. Your job with this email is to make a good impression in the shortest time possible. Make sure it’s memorable because this will make for a soft landing for the rest of your campaigns.
If you get your welcome email right, you might just win some returning customers. A good welcome email should welcome your new subscribers, thank them for subscribing, and let them know what to expect. You may even want to consider adding some appealing, simple graphics to help get their attention.
The Engagement Email
Even though email marketing has a wide reach, you still have to make sure your emails engage your readers. Your goal in this email is to get your audience to take action. You can tell them you offer free shipping or some other incentive that would interest them. Getting them to claim incentives helps to keep their interest.
The Upsell Email
As a brand owner and marketer, your goal is to build relationships and make it easier to upsell. Upselling is ultimately getting a potential customer to buy a more expensive product. One of the most popular ways to do this is to suggest more expensive items or services that go well with what they’re already buying.
When a customer thinks, “Wow! I do need a [insert expensive product] to go with my [purchased product]!” it improves their average order values and is good for your bottom line.
The Cart Abandonment Email
Everybody has done this at one point or another.. You add tons of items to your cart and leave them there. Sometimes people forget to check out because of distractions. It could also be because of high shipping prices.
A cart abandonment email is a way to check on your customers and remind them about their items. You can also use this email to advertise cheaper shipping options.
The Win-Back Email
Eventually, someone is going to unsubscribe for whatever reason. A win-back email is your chance for them to tell you how you can address any issue they might’ve had. It lets you re-engage previous subscribers to see how you can get them back. It might not work 100% of the time, but why not give it a go?
How to Write for Your Audience
The biggest lesson in email marketing is understanding that it’s not generic. The best brands create a specific tone and style to address their audience. To have a meaningful relationship with your customers, you need to know how to write specifically for them.
Start by understanding their needs as customers. When you write emails that resonate with your customers, you sell to them indirectly by sustaining their interest. If they stay interested, your follow-up campaigns will most likely be well-received.
We’ve discussed that most emails are read in under ten seconds, so you don’t want to waste any time by writing long, boring emails. Keep it short, warm, and friendly. Don’t forget to use your emails to introduce new offers and specials to your customers. This shows them you have their interests in mind, which is a great way to strengthen your relationship.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is a journey. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to learn the tricks of the trade. Knowing important eCommerce email marketing statistics like the ones we shared today will help you create more effective campaigns.
With sustainable campaigns, you can improve your conversion rates and ultimately get more sales. Remember, you can’t always capture 100% of your audience. Start small and celebrate each win.
