Ecommerce Email Marketing Guide for Growth

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

• Increase customer lifetime value
• Increase customer satisfaction, brand advocacy and brand recall
• Increase revenue directly attributable to email marketing

Types of emails

• 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. These include post-purchase emails, thank you emails, shipping notification emails, and signup confirmation emails.

• Flows: Automations are set up based on contact qualifications (also called segmenting).

Commonly used email terms

• Automations
• Flows
• Journeys
• Workflows

Strategy

1. Perform discovery and select the best ecommerce-focused email service provider (ESP) for your business.
2. Prioritize flow development and enhancement to establish quick ROI and initiate an always-on communication path.
3. 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.
4. Before launching, go through IP warming with your ESP to ensure campaigns don’t end up in junk/spam folders.
5. Establish your 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, content platforms, or simply a good old spreadsheet.
6. As much as possible, leverage other channels’ content to support email marketing and vice versa to maximize the value of your content. If you create a video or blog, run a promotion, have an influencer partnership, or receive regular user-generated content (including testimonials!) you already have excellent content to share with your marketing list!

Execution

Month 1 (build the foundation)

• 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!

Month 2 (optimize sending volume):

• 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

• Cross-sell
• Upsell
• Comeback
• Product value workflows (specific to purchase type)
• Replenishment flow
• Back-in-stock notification
• Review request

Month 3 and ongoing (creating superfans):

• 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

• Customers vs. non-customers
• Product focused
• Seasonal purchases
• Volume/quantity of products purchased

Need an email boost? We’ve got you covered!