As an eCommerce business owner, you’ve heard email marketing for eCommerce before.
Email marketing is the key to your eCommerce success.
You understand that email marketing can level up your business. You know it will help your business, but you haven’t had the chance to jump in yet.
This doesn’t mean that you’re not interested–you definitely are! It’s just that you still feel a bit overwhelmed. There are things you need to consider before you dive into email marketing.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the things that you need to look at before rocking your email marketing strategy.
Why should you invest in an eCommerce email marketing strategy?
First, you need to review the benefits of email marketing and align them with your business goals. That way, your strategy will be on point.
Knowing the numbers is a great way to begin. You get to have an idea of what works for other businesses. This means you can set yourself up for maximum success.
Here’s a quick rundown of the top benefits of email marketing for your eCommerce business.
- The number of active email accounts is expected to reach 5.6 billion by this year.
- A whopping 73% of millennials actually prefer communicating with businesses via email.
- Marketers who segment their lists for campaigns had as much as 760% increase in revenue.
- 99% of consumers check their personal emails every day. This means more opportunities for conversions.
Email marketing also builds strong customer relationships, establishes credibility, and optimizes your processes.
If you still need some in-depth justifications, you can check out these 12 facts that explain why your eCommerce marketing strategy needs email.
Things to consider before crafting an email marketing strategy
Now that you’re even more sure of adding email to your eCommerce marketing strategy, here are the things that you need to consider before giving yourself the go signal.
What are your goals?
As with any new endeavor, it’s important to take a step back before you take a big step forward.
Think about your goals and what you want to achieve with the help of email marketing. Do you want to generate new leads or do you want to strengthen relationships with existing customers?
Here’s a tip on how you can develop your email marketing goals: align them with your business goals and targets.
Email marketing can help achieve different objectives. It’s important to narrow down the specifics so you know where to focus.
Knowing what you want to achieve with email marketing makes it easier to plan your content and strategy.
How’s your current relationship with your customers?
How is your current relationship with your customers? Do your customers trust you? Do you have a large number of high-value customers? How are the feedback and reviews you receive?
The possibilities of leveling up your customer engagement are endless once you begin email marketing. But before you start, you will need to build your email list.
This is where your current relationship with them comes in. Will they opt into your list? If you are currently using social media, are they engaging with you regularly on Facebook or Instagram?
If you already have an established social media presence, you can use this to your advantage when you start list building.
Here’s a tip: Gather data on the sales and revenue before email marketing. Study the direct effects of email marketing on sales as you go along.
How much is your budget?
Your budget is one of the most important things you need to consider. It will keep you focused on your targets. How much are you willing to allocate for email marketing on a monthly or annual basis?
Ask yourself these questions to help you with your budget preparation:
- Are you going to hire a team, or work with your current one?
- Are you planning to partner with an email marketing agency?
- Are you willing to pay for custom templates?
- Will you get the budget from your existing marketing budget?
Remember that email marketing is long-term. You should be able to sustain your strategy, so you should have enough finances to cover this. Also, decide whether your budget will be fixed or if it will be flexible depending on the results.
What is the email marketing software that you are considering?
This is also related to budget because email marketing software providers have different pricing plans. The pricing plans are usually based on features that you want to avail of. Some plans are also based on the volume of your list and the emails you plan to send out.
Klaviyo, for example, bases its pricing on a combination of subscribers and emails to be sent.
You need to carefully think about which service provider to push through with because it will determine the ease of implementation of your strategy.
It’s also important for your ESP to have the flexibility that you are comfortable with. This is in case you want to tweak your strategy sometime in the future.
What metrics do you want to track?
Knowing what metrics you want to track will help you focus on your long term email marketing strategy. It will guide you towards the right approach to your campaigns.
For example, one of the metrics you want to track is the open rate of your emails. With this metric in mind, you can focus on crafting attractive and interesting email subject lines.
Basically, if you know the metrics you want to track, you will also know which aspects of email marketing to focus on.
The usual metrics that marketers track are: click rate, unsubscribe rate, list growth rate, and leads generated.
You have to prepare yourself for regular data analysis and monitoring. Familiarizing yourself with the current state of your metrics will give you an idea if you’re moving towards your goals.
What will your lead magnets be?
Once you start email marketing, you will need to build your list. A lead magnet is a free resource or something that you can offer to people so they sign up to be part of your email list.
You have to offer something that the customers would want.
If a lead magnet is valuable and interesting, it will be able to rake in tons of sign-ups.
To help you come up with effective lead magnets, here is a quick guide. Ask yourself these questions if you’re still not yet decided on the lead magnets you will use.
What is one thing that is insanely useful to your customers?
- Does it spark emotions?
- Is it relevant?
These are the different types of lead magnets you can explore:
- Coupons or special promos
- Infographics
- How-to Guides for your products and services
Remember, it has to be something that your customers would want to get their hands on. They are willing to give their email address for what you’re offering.
Steps to begin your eCommerce email marketing
Now that you’ve carefully thought through the things you need to consider, you’re more than ready to jumpstart your email marketing journey.
Follow these steps as you work your way towards being an eCommerce email marketing expert.
Gather contacts
Start building your list with customers who will enjoy purchasing from you. This is where lead magnets and opt-in forms come in. When you first begin email marketing, your objective is to increase the number of your email list subscribers.
Do not engage in third-party data vendors. Instead, grow your list organically by preparing irresistible opt-ins. A great opt in form has an enticing headline, a clear message, stunning graphics, and a call to action (subscribe).
Remember, you want to be able to make it into your customers’ inboxes so you can facilitate more conversions in the future. But without a list, your campaigns won’t get anywhere.
Build a team
Will you be managing your email list and marketing campaigns yourself? The best thing is to hire a team who can focus on this so you can focus on the rest of your business.
The truth is, email marketing is more efficient than manually communicating with your customers. But it takes a lot of time to set a whole system up.
For email marketing, you need a copywriter, a graphic designer, and an email marketer. If you’re not too sure about hiring individuals, you can partner with an email marketing agency. You can even delegate the analysis of metrics to them.
Determine types of content
Now it’s time to identify the specific types of content you will include in your campaigns. Email marketing is all about delivering the message directly to the customer’s inbox. Your email content should always stay interesting and relevant to the customer.
Aside from the usual welcome email, newsletters, and promotional emails, you can explore other types of content.
You can send out guides and blog articles related to your products. These can include how-to guides and even feature articles.
Testimonials are also great because your customers get to read content from fellow customers.
Surveys are also good when done in moderation. Use these once in a while and use a very personal approach. It’s a great tool to get feedback.
It’s also important to define the specific content that is relevant to your subscribers. List segmentation helps ensure that each subscriber receives relevant content.
Some brands end up having a lot of email list subscribers but zero engagement.
Familiarize yourself with automation flows
You need to consider the various email marketing automation flows that you plan to implement. Having a concrete vision for this will help you in terms of budgeting and content creation.
Automation flows can help you craft personalized content based on behavior. When a customer adds an item to the shopping cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, a cart recovery flow can still convert this into a sale!
You can make behavioral emails based on any action, so familiarizing yourself with the different automation flows is an advantage. It will help you think in the shoes of the customers. Plus, you can create content applicable to specific behaviors.
Takeaways
Once you have these things laid out, you’re ready to begin. If you need help in any of the items discussed in this post, reach out to us and we’ll help you get ready and fired up for email marketing.
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