Email Marketing for Ecommerce in 2020: The Definitive Guide

There are so many ways that you can Maximize your eCommerce sales using marketing techniques. One of these is through email marketing.

In fact, online stores are well aware that email marketing is one of the most profitable and efficient ways to market their products.

However, getting email marketing right can be a struggle. There are so many ways to use this strategy, and making sure you choose the right one for you is imperative.

That’s why we’ve compiled together a quick guide, along with hints and tips on how to use email marketing to maximize your sales.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is exactly what it sounds like.

It all began with Gary Thuerk – a marketing manager at Digital Equipment. He sent the first commercial email, and email marketing was born. While there were only a few hundred on the list, it was enough to start a movement. So much so, Thuerk was branded the “Father of Spam.”

Email marketing is, in essence, using emails to promote your brand, product, or service.

There’s no denying just how effective it can be, as well. Sure, some might seem a tiny bit like “spam,” but there’s no doubt that a well-crafted, personalized, and relevant email can have a fantastic effect. Email marketing helps you connect with your audience, promote your company, and increase your sales.

You’re probably wondering, does email marketing work? In short, yes.

When utilized correctly and wisely, email marketing has the potential to ultimately elevate your company. A 2015 study founds that every $1 spent on email marketing, you gain an average of $38 in return. With everyone using emails – companies and customers alike, it’s essential that you stand out from the crowd. That’s why finding the best way to use email marketing is imperative.

Automation:

Email marketing doesn’t require a lot of individual effort. Once you know your strategy and goals, you can use automation to your advantage.

B2C marketers that use marketing automation experienced higher conversion rates, sometimes by as much as 50%.

With tools like MailChimp or systeme.io, automation is super easy. You can simply use your content and templates, and send out weekly emails to all your subscribers.

Remember, you must make each email easy to convert. Include a call to action and easy-to-find links throughout.

Promote Your Deals:

Realistically, new deals are the main reason why your audience has signed up to receive emails from you.

These types of emails are a campaign, which a direct goal of a response. This could be a campaign that showcases some of the most recent stock – you could encourage people to purchase. It could also be a campaign that offers a specific promotion or discount to your products.

For example, a Black Friday sale or 50% off all products.

Marketing offer emails are incredibly useful – especially if your goal is to drive sales.

How can people resist a sale, that arrives straight into their inbox?

It’s important to point out that you should send more than promotional content. Sure, your audience might want it – but every email shouldn’t be blatant sales/promotion.

If you do this, you’ll be sure to get unsubscribed.

When plotting your email marketing strategy, make sure that you follow the 80/20 mix. This means that 80% of your content should be valuable, useful, and engaging. 20% should be devoted to sales, product promotion, and offers.

Build Relationships: 

Remember, it’s not all about making direct sales. Very often, customers need a slight degree of nurturing. This comes with building up relationships. Emails are the perfect way to directly contact your audience and ensure that they feel valued and noticed. This only amplifies the importance of making sure your emails aren’t just promotions and personalizing your emails.

More importantly, building a strong relationship with your clientele isn’t the easiest of tasks, and will typically demand a professional to calibrate the necessary language, tone, and voice for your audience. There are many writing companies out there that can consult you on the topic.

Content Share:

With the importance of meaningful relationships, sharing content is one of the sure-fire ways to keep people subscribed to your list. Content, for the majority of eCommerce stores, comes from blogs. This highlights the importance of a blog section – and publishing valuable content here- videos, podcasts, images, and other forms of content can also be shared through email. Ultimately, this increases the number of traffic to your site – thus increasing the chance of a sale. Of course, make sure that you include a call to action in your email efforts and your actual content.

Cart Abandonment:

One truly innovative way that marketers are using email marketing revolves around cart abandonment. These rely heavily on segmentation, which is something we’ll briefly mention later on.

Cart abandonment emails are explicitly designed to contact people who have left their products in a cart. They mostly say something along the lines of “You’ve left these in your cart.”

When executed well, these emails are compelling and can help elevate sales.

Newsletters:

These are highly popular in the marketing world – for all industries and niches. It’s a regularly distributed email campaign that your audience knowingly subscribes to. It usually focuses on a particular theme or subject – obviously, this will vary depending on your niche. For instance, if your eCommerce store is targeted at backpackers – you could send a campaign that focuses on travel tips, stories, and photography.

If your goal is to increase recurring customers, a newsletter could be your best option. Sending out a regular email keeps you fresh in the mind of many existing customers.

Newsletters also ensure that you drive people back to your website.

Events:

The top 1% of all viral emails focused on the topic of events and webinars. Initially, you might not think this is relevant to you, but events can happen in any niche or industry. For instance, you could have industry events or even pop-up stores. There’s no doubt you can organize certain events, or attend some event. These could even be charity events.

Segmentation

Now comes the topic of segmentation.

You should always consider creating a segmented list, based on the specific interests and values that people have. These could be on products that they have purchased or actions that they have taken on your site. Segmentation is so essential, especially if you’re aiming to make sales. Firstly, you’ll avoid sending irrelevant emails to people. This dramatically reduces the chance of getting unsubscribed.

Secondly, you’ll help build relationships. As we mentioned, this is vital when trying to increase sales and improve word of mouth marketing.

The long-term effect of segmentation? Open rates will improve, and the ROI will increase.

How to get subscribers?

It’s all great knowing the importance of email marketing, and the best content to distribute. However, getting subscribers is the first step. Without contacts on your list, your content shared is a little irrelevant. Luckily, there are multiple ways that you can get subscribers – helping you to get started with your email marketing campaign.

There are multiple ways that you can gain subscribers, the most popular of which are:

Contests

If you host a contest or offer some kind of discount, you’ll gain many subscribers. Obviously, to be entered into one of these giveaways/contests, they have to provide their email address.

This tactic is used by the majority of email marketers. If you decide to use this tactic, make sure that your email signup/giveaway is easy to share. This will ensure that you get the maximum number of new subscribers.

Pop-up

With tools like MailChimp, you’re also able to create appealing pop-ups on landing pages. As with everything, make sure that this is appealing and hard to say no to. Many eCommerce stores create a big pop-up that says, “Stay updated on the latest deals.”

Another tactic is making the option to close seem counterproductive. For instance, to close the pop-up, the customer has to click on”No thanks, I’m not interested in deals.”

Signup sheets

You could also opt for a traditional signup form or sheet. When your audience creates a new account on your eCommerce store, they should be able to tick a box that allows them to be subscribed to emails/newsletters. If you hold events or have a brick and mortar store, you should also have a traditional sign-up sheet. This is a quick and easy way to gain more contacts.

Social media

You could also drive signups through social media. This is perfect for companies that are trying to see their email list grow. Simply share your signup form on your social channels, and watch as new contacts come through.

Over to You!

Email marketing might seem like a trick strategy to get into. However, once you’ve carefully established your goals and techniques – you should reap the benefits. Make sure that you follow the above tips (particularly on segmentation and content), and you’ll have a great marketing plan.

The reality is, if you’re an online realtor, email marketing should be one of your priorities. If you don’t take advantage of this, you could be missing out on opportunities. ?