For the longest time, civilization runs on blood, sweat, and tears.
Today, it’s safe to say there’s a new ingredient added into the mix. And as familiar as you are with it, it’s still humbling to remember how only recently we realized its importance—information.
Since the birth of the internet, information became more accessible to the common person.
What would once take a day or two in the local library would now only take minutes or even seconds using your preferred internet search engine.
Along with the ever-increasing convenience of information gathering, the ability to send information has seen a dramatic improvement as well.
Enter—the email.
Email bypasses all the challenges met by traditional mailing services, making it the preferred format for business-related activities in the modern world.
As businesses started seeing the potential of the email as a marketing tool, this gave rise to one of the older yet still effective business strategies today.
We’re talking about email marketing.
But what is email marketing? Or specifically, what is eCommerce email marketing?
Now, we know what you’re thinking. And yes email marketing is basically you sending emails to promote your business or brand to potential customers.
But is it really that simple?
Turns out, it takes more than just sending emails.
For you as an eCommerce business owner, you use marketing emails as marketing tools with marketing strategies in mind.
Especially if you want your emails to effectively drive sales and revenue to your business.
Now, out of the many forms of internet marketing, why choose email marketing?
We think the more appropriate question here is—
Why is Email Marketing Important to Your eCommerce Business?
You want to know what’s a bigger challenge to eCommerce businesses than customers not visiting your website?
It’s when customers do visit—and don’t come back.
How can you get them to come back to your online store? How on earth can you convince them they’re missing out on all the goodies your business has to offer?
That’s where email marketing comes into play.
Email marketing allows you to reach out to customers for a chance to convert them into regular customers.
How, you ask?
One word—incentivizing.
Email marketing is a way for you to offer incentives to customers, these incentives can include:
- Sales
- Promotions
- Discounts
- New products, and more!
Now, how can they say no to a 50% discount to, let’s say, those trendy shoes they were eyeing?
Plus points if they went for the deal because you informed them that your business is offering such a great deal.
Incentives like that can convince customers to return to your website and be on the lookout for more amazing promotions.
Well, those are some ways to show potential customers how they can benefit from becoming your regular customers.
But we’re sure you’re wondering—
How Can Marketing Emails Benefit Your eCommerce Business?
We know what you want, and we’re here to deliver.
So let’s talk numbers.
According to a report by Marketing Sherpa about returning visitors:
- 44% of the respondents said the percentage of their returning visitors was rising
- 53% of the respondents said the percentage of their returning visitors was steady
- Only 3% reported their percentage of returning visitors was dropping
Not only that, but according to another report from the Direct Marketing Association, the average email ROI can go up to $38 for each $1 spent.
Here are some more numbers for you to consider:
- 72% of people would prefer email as the method of contact with business
- 73% of people aged 19-34 preferred email over other forms of contact
- 91% of Americans WANT to receive promotional emails
Not only is email marketing beneficial when it comes to customer acquisition, but it’s also beneficial to your business in a practical way.
What do we mean? Well—
Email marketing takes advantage of market segmentation
With emails, you can accurately aim your efforts to your target market. Knowing your target market means knowing that they want and what they need.
Knowing that kind of information can help you save time and resources. This helps in telling you:
- What to write in your emails
- How to design them
- What kind of information to include in them
It’s cost-efficient
Say goodbye to printing flyers and paying for airtime on television or radio. All you need here is a reliable internet connection and some good old-fashioned creativity.
It’s is easy to learn and use
In this day and age, everyone and their mother uses email. You, along with many other businesses, gave it a marketing tool function.
So it isn’t difficult to get a team up and running and start creating and sending out emails in a short period of time.
It has an edge over social media marketing
Think of social media as an ocean, and your business as a remote island. Your promotional posts are messages in bottles you throw into the big blue.
Sure, someone is bound to find one of these bottles one day. And then they’ll finally learn of your existence out there.
But that’s the challenge with using social media as a marketing platform—you’ll rely heavily on the chance of someone seeing your posts.
Then there’s email marketing. Picture it like homing pigeons you can use to send your content from your remote island straight to civilization.
Only this time imagine the pigeons flying at almost the speed of light if you’re using fiber optics.
It’s scaleable
Create emails that can cater to larger customer groups or to smaller, more focused groups. Email marketing is as versatile as you need it to be.
It offers the ability to customize customer experience
Nothing engages customers more than believing an email they received was specifically made for them.
Going back to market segmentation, knowing your customers will give you an advantage in coming up with effective marketing strategies.
You can design emails with graphics or videos, whatever best fits your customers’ personalities. This makes them more receptive to your emails, which is always good.
So, now you’re aware of the many benefits that marketing emails can give to both your eCommerce business and your potential customers.
But do you know how to best use marketing emails? Sure, it’s easy to use but the challenges come from learning how to use these emails effectively.
So without further ado:
How to Use eCommerce Email Marketing Effectively
So let’s say you’ve got everything you need to start showering emails on potential customers.
You have the team, the internet connection, and a contact list of customers. Now, what to do with all these resources?
First of all, you’re going to need—an email list
What’s an Email List? And Why is it Important?
Think of an email list as a database. A database of what, you ask?
Well, it’s a database of your email subscribers. These are the people who have agreed to receive emails from your business.
It’s like a list of your best friends. You have this list to maintain healthy long-term relationships with them.
In fact, think of your new email subscribers as potential best friends who can help support your business.
So let’s go back to the email list, how do you get around to building one?
Not just any email list though, how do you build an optimized email list?
Here are three things you’ll need to keep in mind when building an email list:
- Consent
As we mentioned earlier, an email list is a list of people who have AGREED to receive emails from your business.
The last thing potential customers would want is an email out of the blue talking about all these special offers. It’s basically a one-way ticket to the spam bin.
- Quality Data
Make sure the people who signed up for your list have legit email addresses.
You wouldn’t want your special handcrafted marketing emails to end up in the endless void now, would you?
Besides, this is to ensure a reliable source of basic data about your subscribers. This is to help you design better marketing email strategies.
- Relevance
Finally, make sure the people on your list are actually interested in the products and services your business is offering.
This is part of segmenting your target market. So can create a marketing strategy that best fits the needs of customers in your email list.
With these pointers, you should be well on your way to creating a quality email list.
But as you may have noticed, half of creating an email list comes from your ability to segment your market. If that’s the case, then what makes the other half?
It will come to no surprise when we say—it’s your subscribers.
In order to create an email list, people are going to have to sign up for it first. And their choice of doing so is a little bit out of your control.
Or is it?
Here are some ways for you to create your email list:
- What’s In It for Me?
What’s the best way to convince a customer to give their contact information?
Again—incentivize.
Customers are more likely to agree to sign up for your regular emails if you give them something in return.
Let them know what to expect from your emails when they sign up, like:
- Discounts
- Special offers
- Relevant Content
- Opt-in
You know potential customers visit your website, and at least that tells you they’re interested in what your business is offering.
Give them a little nudge by adding a pop-up giving them an opportunity to sign-up for more content from your website.
Don’t make your pop-ups get too in-your-face though. This could make your advances intrusive, turning off potential subscribers. You can do this by:
- Delaying the pop-up This will give visitors time to browse your website. If they like what they see then by the time the pop-up appears, they’re ready to signup.
- Not showing the pop-up on every page It’s nice to get a reminder to do something and all, but don’t overdo it.The last thing they need is the same pop-up hounding them down through every page of your website they browse.
- Don’t use pop-ups at all Yes, this is a thing. And you can make use of a scroll-triggered box. Basically, your registration box appears after visitors have scrolled down a set percentage of your website page.Much like delaying the pop-up, this also gives visitors time to take in as much of your website as they can so they’ll know if they’ll finally want to sign up.
- Build a Blog What’s a great way for your customers to know more about your business? Blogs. Having a section where potential subscribers can read more about what your business is about can help convince them to sign up.
- Share the Love Add some convenient share buttons to your emails. This way, your potential subscribers can easily share your content through their social media accounts. Who knows, that can lead to your subscribers’ friends and family signing up as well.
- Engage in Social Media While email marketing is the preferred platform for internet marketing, it doesn’t hurt to have a presence in social media. After all, aside from checking their emails people would check on their social media profiles.This further increases your ability to reach more audiences and create new connections. Social media is also a great place to be up-to-date with what’s trending.
Takeaways:
As you can see, email marketing for eCommerce still has a place in the modern world of business.
This is because of its focus on creating engaging experiences for potential customers.
As far as email has come and no matter what form it’s taken through the years, it never lost its core function—communication.
Communication continues to evolve into many forms today, with no signs of stopping.
Along with it, email marketing adapts new strategies to keep up with the times.
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