What is email marketing in e-commerce?
E-mail marketing for online stores involves sending e-mails to specific groups or individual recipients. E-mail marketing can be used for simple actions, but also for complex and precise actions.
An example of a simple campaign action is sending an e-mail with an offer to all people signed up for a mailing list. However, if you are looking for more effective methods, you can use the right tools to send personalized messages in response to actions taken by the customer. In this way, you can respond not only to a purchase, but also to an abandonment of the basket or adding a product to the wish list. In this way, you can plan to send messages at key moments of user interaction with your store.
Types of Email Marketing
As part of email marketing, you can send welcome emails, promotional emails, sales emails, as well as messages about specific products (e.g. premieres), discount coupons, newsletters or customer service messages. The above list, although long, is certainly not complete – emails can be used to achieve many marketing goals. We will discuss them later in the article.
Email Marketing Basics
It’s time to get to know the basics of email marketing. First, we’ll try to understand its popularity, then we’ll discuss how to acquire email recipients and how to make your company’s messages stand out from the rest.
Low entry threshold and endless possibilities
The popularity of email marketing did not come out of nowhere.
First of all, the entry threshold is exceptionally low. All you need is an email account in a company domain, recipients’ addresses, and you can launch your first campaign. Manually sending messages may not be convenient, but it is possible.
Secondly, the potential of email marketing is immeasurable. Using the right tools, thanks to automation and data acquisition, you can create campaigns that will significantly affect the store’s sales. However, achieving the desired results requires much deeper knowledge and mastery of sometimes complicated tools.
Important!
Regardless of whether you want to start with a simple email to potential or current customers or you intend to immediately conduct large-scale campaigns, you must comply with the law – including obtaining consent to marketing communications from the recipients of your messages.
Low entry threshold and endless possibilities
Without a list of people to whom you can send messages, you cannot run any email marketing campaign. So how do you acquire recipients of your marketing communications? There are many possibilities:
First: Place a subscription form on your store’s website – it’s good if it appears on the main page, or you can create a separate subpage for this purpose.
Second: Inform about the subscription in other places as well – under blog posts, on landing pages.
Third: Place the option to sign up for the mailing list as an option when creating an account in the store.
Fourth: Plan rewards for signing up for the newsletter – a discount, free shipping or other incentives.
After Friday: Create lead magnets that will encourage subscribers to sign up.
Sixth: Place information about the possibility of signing up for the newsletter at key moments in the customer’s journey – for example, after registration or after making a purchase.
Seventh: Acquire subscribers offline as well – for example, in brick-and-mortar stores (if you have any) or at industry events.
Eighth: Once you have prepared lead magnets, such as discount coupons, loyalty program points or free product samples, promote them off-site as well – for example, on social media.
Obtain appropriate consents
In the last few years, the law on personal data protection has changed dramatically. Regulations implemented under GDPR (in the European Union) or CAN-SPAM (in the USA) require a number of conditions to be met before sending commercial emails, but they also impose conditions. Some concern the content present in the header, others require that subscribers be able to easily resign at any time.
With the introduction of new regulations, the practice of buying mailing lists has become – from a legal point of view – pointless. It is worth noting, however, that it has always been controversial and an element of the so-called grey zone.
Stand out from the crowd
Check your own mailbox – how many emails do you receive every day? Ten? A hundred? Or maybe even more? So if you want your messages to be noticed first and then read, you need to make sure they stand out.
The first element that the recipient notices is the email header. Make sure it fits within the character limit, says what the email is about, and at the same time arouses interest. Avoid clickbaits, which may work once or twice, but in the long run only frustrate readers.
The graphic design of the email is also important. Once you have encouraged recipients to open the message, make sure that the content is arranged in a legible way. You can also try to create a company template or add a footer to make it easier for recipients to contact your store.
Important!
Remember to communicate with your subscribers regularly. Don’t overdo it with the number of emails, but consider the fact that if a customer doesn’t receive news from your company after signing up for the newsletter, they may simply forget about it. As a result, when you finally contact them with an offer, they may treat it as SPAM.
Why does e-mail marketing for online stores work so well?
A low entry threshold isn’t the only reason why companies reach for email marketing. This technique can bring your store a number of specific benefits. Among them, you’ll find:
High ROI (return on investment)
Email marketing is relatively cheap, especially when compared to regular social media advertising or influencer marketing. Low costs make it easier to achieve a high return on investment in email marketing.
The ability to build relationships with customers
By collecting a mailing list, you also gain a simple way to communicate directly with customers – potential, current or those who visited your store before and now no longer do so.
You can divide recipients into categories to provide them with more tailored content and offers, you can inform them about changes in the store, promotions and special offers. Any form of communication you can imagine can be implemented thanks to e-mail marketing. What’s more, you do not have to rely on companies other than the postal service provider. You are not limited by social media algorithms – all emails you send will reach their recipients.
Support in the fight for customer retention
There is no doubt that it is cheaper – and generally better – to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. Unfortunately, “cheaper” and “better” do not mean “easier”. Many customers will visit your store once. Maybe it is because they found the product they are interested in the cheapest, or maybe because your store appeared at the top of the search results.
However, if you try to obtain the email address of each new customer (for example, by offering a discount on the first purchase in exchange for filling out a registration form), you will gain the opportunity to communicate with them (and remind them about the existence of your store).
Clear and instant results
Using techniques such as time-limited offers, you can significantly increase sales in a short time. In every other aspect, emails are easy to track. With the right tool, you can easily check how many recipients opened the email, how many of them clicked on the link inside, and what the final conversion rate (sales) was.
This means that in a short time you can evaluate the results of the email campaign and – depending on the result – congratulate yourself and start counting the profits or make the necessary corrections.
Examples of email marketing activities
Email marketing is a bottomless well that you can still draw from. Every now and then, new, increasingly effective and modern ways of using email in marketing appear. Here are the most popular examples of activities that can significantly affect how your online store will be perceived and what sales you will achieve.
Automatic emails
Email marketing automation is a real gamechanger. With tools like HubSpot or MailChimp, you can respond immediately to almost any action a customer takes on a store website. This includes emails sent after placing an order, creating an account, or signing up to a newsletter. There are many more.
Welcome emails
Greeting a new customer is a move that may not make them immediately put money on the table, but it is a nice gesture that can be a good start to a new customer-company relationship. You can also use the welcome email to thank them for registering and confirm it (include a verification link in the same message).
Use this opportunity to make a good first impression – there won’t be a second chance.
Thank you emails
Are you asking a customer to fill out a survey or leave a review? Or maybe someone took advantage of a promotion in your store or took part in a competition? It is worth thanking for each of these actions. Such an email fulfills two functions. Firstly, it is a confirmation of the action taken (the form was successfully sent, it reached us and we have your response), and secondly, it is another element of building a bond with the recipients of your emails.
Thank you emails are also about evoking positive emotions. If the customer has been struggling with their thoughts for a long time whether they should make a given purchase, your email in which you simply thank them for the successful transaction and appreciate the fact that the buyer chose your store will be a positive, pleasant signal sent to the customer.
Abandoned cart emails
Abandoned carts are a common problem. Everyone has added a few products to their cart and then, for various reasons, not completed their purchase. Thanks to automation, you can send an email to every customer who abandons their cart. In the email, it is worth reminding them about the products that are left in the cart, or possibly offering a special discount (of course, this cannot become a rule).
Reminder emails
Do you sell services or software on a subscription basis? You can remind customers about upcoming payments or about the expiration of their subscription (if it expires automatically). This way, you will be transparent and show that you care about your customers. Of course, some of them will take advantage of the opportunity to cancel their subscription, but those who stay will certainly appreciate this move.
Birthday email
Even though it’s a small thing, a birthday email can be a nice surprise for a customer. If you ask for their date of birth when registering, there’s nothing stopping you from sending a short email once a year with wishes and thanks for their purchases. Birthdays are also an opportunity to give gifts – it could be a discount on purchases, a free product for the next order, or a voucher.
Sales Email
This is actually the most typical way to use email marketing. A sales message can be any email in which you offer subscribers the opportunity to buy a product. Here are some examples:
Product launch email
Are you launching a new service or starting a (pre)sale of a product that many have been waiting for? Inform your subscribers about it, let them know that the offer is limited (in time or number of products), and maybe even add a bonus when you buy in pre-sale? It can be a discount, loyalty points or a voucher for future purchases.
Sometimes – if the product is well-known and desired enough – all you need to do is inform them:
Product Email
Another example that does not quite fit into any of the previous categories is prospecting, or searching for potential customers. This is a set of activities that serve to obtain leads that match the company’s profile. As part of prospecting, you first need to create a customer persona, then research the market and the selected target group, and finally contact potential customers – for example, through cold mailing. However, this technique is most often used in B2B sales – mainly for legal reasons.
In contact with individual customers (B2C), current legal regulations practically prevent the implementation of cold mailing activities, because they consist of sending marketing messages to recipients who have not yet had contact with the company (and therefore have not consented to marketing communication).
Summary
You already know how to start e-mail marketing. But that’s just the beginning. You’ll have to choose the right tool, send the first promotional emails, first A/B tests, and plenty of opportunities for direct customer contact.
Remember not to send messages to customers who don’t want it. Every now and then, review your mailing list and manually remove inactive addresses or the effects of bots filling out forms. Also, remember to give the option to unsubscribe in each message.
