You’re likely to invest in email marketing if you’re like most ecommerce marketers.
You are growing your email list, sending effective email campaigns and engaging return visitors by sending personalized messages on-site.
Email marketing can be very effective, but it is not enough.
Why? It’s not about the right strategy, it’s about the correct sequence.
If you don’t send the right emails to the right prospect at the right time, people will unsubscribe or move on to another company.
If you send the right emails at just the right time to the right prospects you will not only have long-term customers but brand ambassadors.
Today I’m sharing 11 ecommerce marketing strategies that will help you grow a loyal following. This post has something for everyone, regardless of whether you want to increase engagement, boost revenues, or decrease unsubscribes.
Let’s get started.
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11 of the Best Email Marketing Examples That We Have Ever Seen
What is E-Commerce Email Marketing?
1. The Welcome Email
2. Curation Email
3. The Engagement Email
4. The Referral Email
5. Get a Discount Email
6. Email Cart Abandonment
7. The Order Confirmation Email
8. The Upsell Email
9. The Win-Back Email
10. Survey Email
11. Thank You Email
What is E-Commerce Email Marketing?
Email marketing via e-commerce is a channel that allows you notify your subscribers about new products, special offers, and other promotions.
Email can also be used to soft-sell by educating your customers about the brand’s value and keeping them engaged between purchases.
1. The Welcome Email
One chance to make a first impression. Your introduction to a new subscriber won’t be memorable. Neither will your follow-up communications.
The welcome email is an essential campaign to include in your marketing arsenal. It drives 3x more revenue and transactions per email than any other promotional mail.
It serves two purposes: to thank subscribers who have signed up for your mailing list and to set expectations for the future (e.g. It will let you know how often you’ll be emailing and simplify your sales process.
Pandora offers a discount code to new subscribers, which is a way for them to reward their customers for signing up.
Levi’s is another retailer that understands the importance a welcome email. They offer their subscribers the opportunity to shop by purchasing preference.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
Be original. You must be unique if you want to stand out from the crowd. This means offering something your subscribers don’t expect. Offer a discount. Learn their language. Ask them to respond to your email. Make it easy for them to find the information they need. You can remove any barriers to purchasing if you have a large product range. Make it easy for new subscribers, regardless of whether they are browsing by product category or another aspect, to find what they need.
2. Curation Email
One by The Beatles. Madonna’s Immaculate Collection. Abba’s Greatest Hits: Gold
What does it have in common?
(Apart form being the best compilations?)
These are some of the most popular albums of all time.
Why?
Curated content is a hit with people.
No matter what music you are looking for, or if it is physical products, people love to buy the best.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that curation emails are popular with e-commerce marketers.
The curation email’s goal is to share the best assets of a brand, if you don’t know what that means.
This could be sharing content popular from the previous week, such as One King’s Lane.
You could also promote popular products like Huckberry does in his email
It allows subscribers to select the topics they are interested in learning more about, allowing them to curate the best of the best.
This is why so many websites have “start here” pages and why product pages often filter by bestselling by default.
It’s also effective for another reason:
It allows email marketers segment recipients based upon interest.
Here’s an example.
Imagine that you own an online furniture shop and your newsletter curates furniture from the following categories.
SeatingLightingStorage cabinetsDecorative objectsTablesServewareOther
You can start scoring subscribers based on their behavior if you are tagging them using an email service provider (ESP), such as Infusionsoft. If a user clicks only on seating-related offers, you can assume that your promotional campaigns can be focused solely on seating.
3. The Engagement Email
Gary Halbert, a copywriter from the golden age direct response marketing was well-known for attaching “grabbers”, such as dollar bills to mailings.
Why?
Because he wanted to grab the attention of his prospects.
The average office worker receives 122 emails per working day. It is important to invite subscribers to engage with your email messages if you want to remain visible in their inbox.
Although attaching cryptocurrency to campaigns may not be an option, it is possible increase engagement in other ways without spending a lot of money.
Brooklinen encourages engagement, offering free shipping
Brooklinen understands that cart abandonment is often due to shipping. Brooklinen offers subscribers free shipping and gives them the option to activate it. It’s genius. Brooklinen understands that people value the things they work for… and free shipping is no exception.
Campaigns such as the one above encourage engagement, but it also creates a two-way relationship between Brooklinen customers and Brooklinen.
You can offer free shipping, or invite users to sign up for a free trial. Give your readers reasons to engage with your campaigns. And remember to make it memorable.
4. Referral Email
It is no secret that inviting friends and family members to refer a brand to them is a great way to get free leads.
A recent BigCommerce survey found that 74% of consumers consider word-of mouth to be a major influencer in their purchase decision.
With numbers like these, it’s easy to see why brands spend time setting up referral programs.
It’s possible that you already ask for referrals on your thank-you page. Are you asking for referrals in your thank-you pages?
Bombas is an excellent example of how to ask for referrals. They not only provide clear instructions via email but also offer an incentive: a pair of socks for free.
Although you might not be in a position to give free socks to each referee (very few can), you do have enough money to give a thank-you or at the very least, an Internet high five.
5. Get a Discount Email
E-commerce is a great way to market your products by offering discounts
It’s easy to see why brands such as Apuls have conversion rates as high at 5.13%.
VWO conducted a study and found that 72% of Millennials are open to retargeting using discounts.
Furthermore, 54% of shoppers will buy abandoned products if they are offered at a discount price. (I will be back shortly with more information).
Blue Apron, an American meal delivery company, offers discounts to its subscribers to encourage more purchases. (Note the scarcity to evoke fear of missing out).
However, be aware:
You need to find a balance between discounting and not discounting.
You risk losing customers to your competitor if you do not use it enough.
There is a silver lining to this story: Only subscribers who engage with your campaigns (e.g. opening emails, clicking links, etc. ).
6. Email Cart Abandonment
We’ve all done it.
When we are online and going through the checkout process of a website, something catches our attention.
We hear a knock at the door. A Facebook notification is sent to our phones.
We abandoned our wagon without even blinking an eye.
A Baymard Institute report has revealed that 69% of all online shoppers abandon their shopping carts. 61% cite shipping costs as the number one reason.
Beardbrand, a men’s grooming brand, turns cart abandoners into customers through the address of the shipping costs objection and overcoming it via a cart recovery email.
Beardbrand probably knows the lifetime value of each customer so you can offer discounts to encourage cart completion.
I understand what you are thinking:
But what if your margins don’t allow you to compete in shipping?
It is easy to get feedback.
This is exactly what Ugmonk does.
After I abandoned my cart, I received this message a few hours later.
You can’t always convert abandoning shoppers. This is a fact. You can still make an effort to find out why they didn’t finish their order. You can then improve your checkout process by learning from the feedback.
Editor’s Note
Shopify popups are a great way to recover lost sales, as we all know. Did you know that you can show them based upon the size of your basket? Well, you can. It’s easy with Sleeknote’s SiteData condition. This article will explain how to create high-converting popups.
Sam Thomas DaviesHead Content
7. The Order Confirmation Email
Conversio discovered something interesting after analysing 100,000+ emails receipts.
E-commerce stores earn $0.25 more revenue for every order confirmation email
It doesn’t sound like much. It didn’t seem like much to me, too. Then I did the math. For every 100 receipts that you send, you can generate an average of $25 more revenue.
It’s not bad for an automated email, is it?
The order confirmation email can be a great way to increase sales but it also serves as a way to set customer expectations.
Joybird, an online furniture retailer, includes an explainer video in its order confirmation email. This video explains their delivery process.
Your order confirmation email is not just a digital receipt. It’s also a reminder to shoppers that they made the right purchase by buying from you.
8. The Upsell Email
Most likely, you are familiar with cross-selling and upselling.
Here’s a refresher for those who aren’t familiar with the basics:
Upselling refers to inviting prospects to purchase a more costly item to increase their average order value. Cross-selling involves recommending a similar or complementary product.
This is why McDonald’s asks you, “Does that sound good with fries?” And Amazon offers products that can be bought together.
It’s not surprising that many e-commerce companies regularly upsell products to customers who’ve already purchased.
Beardbrand sends new customers recommendations after receiving an order
Tiered-pricing is an option if cross-selling is not an option.
Apuls, an online retailer that specializes in exercise equipment, encourages customers to spend more by offering a value ladder at one of their popups.
The price of the exercise bike they offer increases from left to right. This gives customers more options and Apuls more revenue.
9. The Win-Back Email
It happened to me, and it is likely to happen to you.
It is a waste of time and effort to grow your email list, only for a small percentage of your subscribers to unsubscribe or disengage completely (costing you money).
Every year, email marketing databases are subject to a natural decline of 22.5%. With that in mind, it is crucial to re-engage members who have been emotionally “checked off” (especially if your goal is to decrease email unsubscribe rate).
After switching from Fotolia (sorry Fotolia), and neglecting their emails for a few week, I received this email inviting me to return:
Although it doesn’t always work, it’s worth reminding past buyers that you are still thinking about them (even if they have switched to a competitor).
10. Survey Email
You don’t have to ask…
(Say it now …)
You don’t get.
Similar to the above, if your subscribers don’t ask them regularly what they’re looking, how can they expect you to give them what you want?
You can gain valuable insight into your customers’ needs and goals by surveying them.
Frye is one of many brands that offer gift certificates to their customers.
Others, such as Ryan Levesque’s survey company The Ask Method Company argue the opposite.
Ask’s #1 bestseller Levesque explains that if you offer a free gift to take the survey, your data may be biased towards people who want it. If you want to encourage more people to take surveys, offer them a discount on the solution.
Revolution Tea is following Levesque’s advice and offering a discount after users have completed their survey.
It works well for many brands and can work for you too.
11. Thank You Email
Sometimes we just don’t thank you enough. Even if we say thank you, we rarely mean it.
It’s more than thanking your audience for signing up to your newsletter or purchasing a product. It’s about acknowledging that they are the reason you’re still in business.
Brooklinen is one of those companies that will occasionally write from the heart to thank customers for making their work possible.
It is easy to get lost in the details of business life. Sometimes, it’s important to thank your customers.
How can you give back the people who made your company what they are today?
Free Downloadable Bonus
Need more email marketing inspiration?
We have 11 email marketing resources that will help you get more out of your campaigns.
We have something for everyone, whether you are looking for email templates or timeless subject lines.
You will also have immediate access to 24+ bonus resources, which are categorized in Notion.
Swipe File Available Now
Conclusion
In the introduction, I said that email marketing is more about sequence than strategy.
There’s another thing that’s equally important.
Your brand’s unique voice.
The emails I have included are not due to what they contain (the content isn’t what’s important). They are what I am referring to, and not because of the content.
You can still search for your voice if you aren’t yet found it.
If you do and you are able to make your brand known like the ones above, then email marketing will be a success.
Which emails do you send new subscribers? Comment below.
Sleeknote’s first article, 11 Must-Have E-Commerce Email Marketing campaigns appeared first on Sleeknote.
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By: Sam Thomas Davies
Title: 11 Must-Have E-Commerce Email Marketing Campaigns
Sourced From: sleeknote.com/blog/e-commerce-email-marketing
Published Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:31:34 +0000
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