Email is a vital tool for any ecommerce business, serving as a direct and personal line of communication with customers.
What are the benefits of email marketing? It allows businesses to connect with customers throughout the customer journey, from acquisition to retention. Email enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized promotions, updates on new products or services, and targeted marketing campaigns. It also provides a platform for customer service, allowing businesses to address inquiries, resolve issues, and build customer trust. Moreover, email serves as a reliable channel for order confirmations, shipping notifications, and post-purchase follow-ups, keeping customers informed and satisfied. Additionally, email marketing provides valuable data and insights on customer behavior, preferences, and trends, which businesses can leverage to optimize their marketing strategies and drive sales.
NEED MORE CONVINCING? CHECK OUT THESE STATS:
- Email marketing has an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent
- 20-25% of total ecommerce revenue should be coming from email + SMS marketing
- 10% of total revenue coming email + SMS revenue comes from automation with the remainder coming from campaigns
- 80% of marketers use email marketing as their primary channel for customer retention.
- 85% of consumers prefer to receive a text than a phone call or email.
- 60% of consumers say they’ve made a purchase as the result of a marketing email they received.
Objectives of an email strategy
for an ecommerce company
for an ecommerce company
In many ecommerce marketing operations, email is the closest to direct conversation with your customers. It’s recommended to employ a chat and contact feature on the website in order to ensure excellence customer service and social engagement. Those communication channels are often reactive. With email, you’re able to initiate conversations with your customers.
ESTABLISH AN EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY TO COMMUNICATE WITH CUSTOMERS IN THE ENGAGEMENT, CONVERSION AND ADVOCACY BUY CYCLES TO:
Increase customer lifetime value
Increase customer satisfaction, brand advocacy and brand recall
Increase revenue directly attributable to email marketing
Email marketing strategy
So, how does an ecommerce business get email set up? There are a few initial steps to ensuring a smooth onboarding experience.
- Perform discovery and select the best ecommerce-focused Email Service Provider (ESP) for your business.
- Prioritize flow development and enhancement to establish quick ROI and initiate an always-on communication path.
- Increase list size through active and incentivized on-site lead capture. Most ecommerce platforms have a popup app or feature available. If yours doesn’t, your ESP will.
- Before launching, go through IP warming with your ESP to ensure campaigns don’t end up in junk/spam folders.
- Establish marketing content strategy in advance. If you don’t already have a content calendar, now would be a great time to create one. There are many ways to do this, including martech tools, platforms or simply a good old spreadsheet.
- As much as possible, leverage other channels’ content to support email marketing and vice versa to make sure you maximize the value of the content produced. If you’re creating a video, blog, running a promotion, have an influencer partnership or receive regular user-generated content (including testimonials!) this is excellent content to share with your marketing list!
Types of ecommerce marketing emails
THERE ARE A FEW PRIORITY EMAIL TYPES THAT ARE ESSENTIAL TO ACTIVATE IN AN EMAIL JOURNEY.
MARKETING
Planned content, based on timely offerings, news, product releases or company information. These are emails that show up in your content calendar.
TRANSACTIONAL
Emails that are sent based on a consumer action. Post-purchase emails, thank you emails, shipping notification emails, and signup confirmation emails.
AUTOMATIONS
Automations are set up based on contact qualifications (also called segmenting).
Dictionary
Email Service Providers use different terminology to explain similar email programs. The below group of terms all refer to building a path that email contacts will go through. Throughout the path, they’ll receive strategically timed communications, guiding them to a desired outcome (usually purchase behavior).
AUTOMATIONS | FLOWS | JOURNEYS | WORKFLOWS
EXECUTION:
Month 1 (build the foundation).
EXECUTION: MONTH 1
These steps don’t have to be taken in order - in other words, don’t let one component hold you back from executing on others.
- Migrate customer lists to selected ESP. Gather all your contacts. Make sure you’ve obtained them through permissions or opt-ins. Organize them into a spreadsheet with standard columns: first name, last name, email address, address, birthday and other information you’ve gathered about them.
- IP warming to ensure good campaign deliverability. An added bonus of solid ecommerce-based ESPs is an IP warming process. This is a step in setup for ESPs (like Klaviyo) that minimize the risk of being blacklisted.
- Set up branding and templates. ESP Technical set up. Do you have a brand guide? Your ESP should allow for font standardization, color templating and layouts.
- Create and optimize essential email flows
- Welcome series, cart abandon, browse abandon, birthday flow, purchase anniversary flow, transactional email setup/optimization
- ESPs often have templated approaches for each of these. In month one, where time = money, it’s best to get these up and running ASAP (make sure your branding comes through though). These can be optimized, refined or redesigned in the future!
- Create on-site signup (popup, footer link etc.). Starting with a list is great – growing it is even better! Create an offer and implement the popup app or integration through your ESP. Think: “10% off your first purchase in exchange for your email address” or something similar.
- 3-month promotional calendar to outline weekly focus/sales/promotions + content topics. This is where your planning will come in handy. Drop dates of promotions on the calendar first. Fill in with content topics meaningful to the business. Think: “Our story” or “Our beliefs”. This is a chance to build brand advocacy around values rather than just promotions.
- 1 month of marketing email development (8-12 emails). Make your ideas come to life through copy and design. Remember, simple is usually better in ecommerce emails. Consumers are smart. They know you’re selling them something so they’ll scan for the deal and quickly abandon if they’re not able to see the value in it for them. Here’s a example of what this ideation can look like.
HERE’S AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT THIS IDEATION CAN LOOK LIKE
8. Monthly performance review and optimization analysis. In your first few months of running, test your email performance against industry standards (most ESPs will share standard industry KPIs in their reporting dashboards). Optimize each month for improvement!
EXECUTION:
Month 2 (optimize sending volume):
EXECUTION: MONTH 2
- Monthly promotional emails
- Activate lead capture through delayed, incentivized popup
- Optimize additional email flows
- Cross-sell
- Upsell Comeback
- Product value workflows (specific to purchase type)
- Replenishment flow
- Back in stock notification
- Review request
- Monthly performance review and optimization analysis
EXECUTION:
Month 3 and ongoing (creating superfans):
EXECUTION: MONTH 3 AND ONGOING
- Monthly promotional emails (12-16)
- Deep segmentation work
- Customers vs. non-customers
- Product-focused
- Seasonal purchases
- Volume/quantity of products purchased)
- Monthly performance review and optimization analysis
Need an Email Boost?
We've got you covered!
We've got you covered!
Our ecommerce email experts are here to help you get your email marketing program running at full potential. Right now, we're offering consultations and email setups for ecommerce clients, focusing on the 7 core email flows every ecommerce business should use.
Interested? Let's chat!
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INTERESTED IN MAXIMIZING ECOMM REVENUE THROUGH EMAIL? LET’S CHAT ABOUT AN ONGOING STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT.
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