Admit it
Ecommerce email marketing has the ability many channels don’t have.
That is:
- Creating value
- Add personal touch
Want to know more about e-commerce email marketing?
As a beginner, it can be overwhelming but let me walk you through it
Let’s jump right in.
E-commerce Email Marketing Stats
Investing in e-commerce email marketing pays.
- 138% of customers who buy products buy through emails
- Tuesday is the best day to send emails
- 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices
- 70% of people who use coupons receive them from email marketing
How do your favorite stores create and send their emails?
Assignment 1
Subscribe to newsletters from three favorite companies of your choice.
Pay close attention to their welcome emails.
Pay attention to what they promise after subscribing. See what they offer (discounts, free products, valuable content)
What do you notice? Share your experience in the comment section.
Assignment 2
What happens when you abandon carts?
Abandon a few checkouts for some of your favorite brands and see if they have abandoned carts emails.
How many follow-up emails do you receive?
Which of these emails entice you to buy?
Share your experience too in the comment section.
Ecommerce Email Marketing Common Terms
A/B Testing: Also known as split testing where you run experiments with your email copy.
The objective is to find the best combination that gives results. You test different subject lines, email copy, CTAs, color schemes, HTML vs plain emails.
Abandoned cart: It happens when buyers enter the checkout but don’t complete the buying process.
Campaign: These include e-blasts or a newsletter where you send a sequence of emails around a specific theme for instance ” Black Friday Deals”
Customer Relation Management (CRM): They are email software that is used to manage the communication with your subscribers
Call to Action (CTA): It’s the action you want your readers to do next. Buy now, Try Demo, Subscribe, or Download.
Click-Through Rate: It’s the number of people who click a specific link compared to the number of people who accessed the link.
Email Service Provider (ESP): Email marketing software
Lifecycle marketing: This is when a business sends emails to customers based on where they are on the buying journey.
For instance, new subscribers may receive a VIP discount as a way of rewarding them for subscribing.
List: It is where you store your subscriber’s and recipient’s information.
Open- Rate: It’s the percentage of emails opened during the email marketing campaign.
Opt-in: This is the way people sign up for your mailing list.
Subscribers: This is typical contact on your mailing list
Template: It’s the layout of your email campaign.
Segmentations: This refers to the grouping of email subscribers into smaller groups based on some set criteria to ideally increase the open rate.
It can include new subscribers, first-time buyers, or those who have attempted to buy but have abandoned.
Welcome series: It’s either one or automated series of emails that welcome new subscribers. They help build trust, educate, inform and add value to your potential buyers.
Types of emails
Transactional emails: They are sent after a checkout or purchase action.
Broadcast: They are sent to the entire list of subscribers or segment
Triggered emails: They resonate with user behavior for example the email sequences through lifecycle email journeys.
Choosing Email Service Provider What to Consider
One of the worst regret that I hear from most online entrepreneurs is that they didn’t start collecting emails from day one.
Costing: Cost is something to consider if you are a beginner you will look for free ESP like MailChimp that allows you to send 2,000 emails monthly.
If you are well established you can work with the big boys that cost from $900 monthly.
Deliverability standards: Any email sent is scanned by an Internet Service Provider at the user end before being delivered. If the IP that sends the email is blacklisted then the ISP will filter the email and not allow it to pass.
API Integration: At some point, you will need to work with 3rd party applications/ plugins to monitor some matrics that your ESP may not be providing. Check whether your ESP has API integration support.
Scalability: You are currently serving 2000 subscribers comfortably, what will happen when your subscribers explode to 20,000 +. Does your ESP support more users?
Customer support: How fast do they respond in case their server experiences downtime. Do they have a direct line that you can call to speak to their agent? What about chatbot:?
Ease-to-use: Are their features easy to use? Do you need technical knowledge to operate the platform?
Migration possibility: If your current ESP is not able to meet your needs how easy can you import or export your data? How smooth is the experience?
GDPR Compliance: Since May 2018 if you send emails to EU residence your ESP becomes a data handler and will be fined heavily if the data leaks.
Make sure your ESP employs enough security towards data safety and complies with GDPR guidelines.
Metric of measure: Most ESP provide metrics such as open rate, click rate, unsubscriber but if you need more advanced metrics like heatmaps, the last email opened, and optimum open rate then you need an ESP with those features.
How to Collect emails
If you are thinking of email marketing then you have to collect emails.
More importantly, you need to collect the right email. People are looking for leads not just contacts.
Here are some smart ways that you can use to collect emails.
- Collect emails using Facebook Ads
- Offer lead magnets
- Have a sign-up button on your Facebook business page
- Use popups
- Reach people one on one
- Share your link on social media including compelling visuals.
- Create a newsletter with incredible email content
- Host live events and display your forms
- Have content on YouTube or Pinterest then link back to your site.
- Add subscription bar to your site
- Partner with people in your industry
How to write effective welcome emails
Your welcome email sets the tone for your relationship with each subscriber. It introduces subscribers to the way you do things giving them a good reason why they should stick around.
On average the welcome email generates 320% more revenue than regular broadcast email. So it’s worth a thorough thought before its send,
You can send one welcome email or send a series of welcome emails.
Best practices
- Thank the person for subscribing remember this person made a choice to give you their email.
- Set transparent expectations. Let them know what to expect and how often they will hear from you weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
- Personalize your message by adding the recipient name you can either personalize it on the subject line or the main body.
- Send your welcome email automatically when someone subscribes.
- Have a clear CTA
- Test your email on mobile
- Test your welcome series before they go to the public.
How to write abandoned cart emails
Between 60-80% of online shopping carts are abandoned.
Making online retailers lose up to $ 4 trillion to cart abandonment.
why?
- The customers are presented with an unexpected cost like tax, shipping costs that come as a surprise.
- Customers were just browsing in the first place
- Customers had other tabs open and found a better price
- The process was taking too long
- Customer was distracted
- The customer was using mobile and wanted to buy the item later on the desktop.
How to fix this
Subject line: You need an interesting subject line that will trigger the curiosity of the reader to open the email.
You need some short copy about the product to remind the customer about the value of using the product
An incentive to buy now: Share a discount, free shipping offer to push the customer to the edge to buy now.
Send a series of abandoned cart emails
Email 1- sent after 24 hours later
Remind shoppers what they left behind
Email 2- Sent after 48 hours later
Handle objections
Email 3- Sent after 72 hours later
Offers a discount or incentive
Receipt emails
Receipt email is the most opened email yet retailers ignore it.
The open rate of receipt is over 70-90 % compared to regular broadcasts that are at 20%.
How to optimize sale receipts
- Ask your customer to join your community by connecting them to your Facebook Page or Instagram hashtag.
- Offer a discount code or free delivery for future purchases within a limited time frame
- Encourage them to share the good news
- Encourage them to share a referral link
- Inform them of special promotions coming up for holidays or their birthday and ask them to mark their calendars.
E-commerce Copywriting Mistakes to Avoid
Make it simple, make it memorable, make it inviting to look at, make it fun to read- Leo Burnett
The genius behind Coca-Cola and McDonald adverts.Here are mistakes that kill copy and how to fix them.
| Mistake | How to fix it |
| Writing to everyone | Write to one person more like a friend. |
| Writing an essay | Write 5 sentences 6 grade |
| A complete lack of personality | Educate, answer their questions. |
| Being pushy | Provide value and ask questions |
Over to You
There you have it.
Ecommerce email marketing tips that will get you started as a beginner.
Start by familiarizing yourself with email marketing terms, then choose the right email service provider, collect emails, send welcome emails and remember to optimize both your abandoned cart and receipt emails for more leads.
Now make it happen and start by choosing any of these best email marketing tools.
For the assignments share your experience in the comment section.
Further Reading
