With today's abundance of marketing tools available for free online, it's easy to forget how valuable the original eCommerce marketing tool can be: using email to drive sales and increase customer retention is still a very viable method of eCommerce marketing, and some several tips and tricks can make the process more effective than ever before. Thousands of online businesses use email marketing to make millions each year, and the formula is more simple than some may think.
The basic idea of email marketing is simple:
- Ask customers to subscribe for discounts when they first visit a store or checkout for the first time.
- Send offers and newsletters to their inbox weekly to encourage sales.
- Send frequent emails and offers to remind the customer of your business, but you need more to annoy them.
While the idea may seem pretty straightforward, this process can be improved in several ways to increase sales generated from email marketing by an extensive margin. Essentially, the key to successful email marketing is ensuring that each subscriber feels they are being treated as unique every time they open an email from an eCommerce website they have subscribed to. What does this mean? When customers open an email from a company, it should be free of a cookie-cutter discount that can be found anywhere on the web to achieve the same results. Instead, the reader should feel that the value or sale is for them and them only, as they will be far more likely to engage with the email when they think it is targeted directly at them rather than to a large audience. Prior to this, you should, of course, ensure that the list has valid email addresses.
The first key to successful email marketing is a successful and informative welcome email. This is sent when a store visitor enters their email to sign up with a website or subscribe to their email list. The welcome email should include some fun information about the company and a special welcome discount for the customer. When the reader opens this first email, they should feel encouraged to revisit the store to use their welcome code, whether for store credit or a specific percentage discount. Whatever the case, the customer should feel special when they receive this email, as it will determine their future shopping habits with the store.
The second key to successful email marketing is to keep the customer engaged over time with personalized emails offering discounts and sales “just for them.” This should be combined with creating a sense of urgency, using phrases like “You've been chosen to receive 15 percent off of your next order, but you've only got 24 hours!” While this phrase is far from the perfect example of a great email marketing catch, it gives the basic idea of what captures the reader's attention and drives them to purchase.
Finally, I'd like to point out that it's important to send emails whenever a cart or category has been abandoned. It's common for customers to put items in their cart only to leave the site and never checkout. This may result in a higher-than-expected total and can often be remedied with a small discount. Be sure to send personalized emails with small deals to each customer who leaves the store without making a purchase, as it is a highly effective way to easily convert lost sales into repeat customers.
