Email is one of the most powerful marketing channels that drive sales. Email marketing is about building relationships. It may seem outdated but is still the most efficient way to reach your customer. Email leads such digital marketing channels, as social media, SEO, and paid search.
Customer inbox is the most personal and direct online environment.
It doesn’t have the distraction of social media newsfeeds or banner ads. If you have the permission to interact with customers. Email provides you big opportunity for conversion.
- 75.8% of businesses use more promotional emails in their campaigns than previous three years.
- 138% more spending by people on products marketed through email.
- 72% Marketers claim that abandoned cart emails are useful.
- Build Trust
It’s a great honor to have people opting to your list and happy to receive your messages. Each subscriber gives you a hard-earned vote of confidence. Don’t take them for granted. You have to keep proving your value to your email subscribers. You have to know your readers well to empathize with their struggles. Keep probing and offer help. Write the way you email your good friend, that’s the way people will get to know, like and trust you. On earning these three things, you have the ability to push send and grow your business. Let them know what to expect. Sales messages too can be part of your email marketing. Be upfront about it when they sign up. Once you get people to open your email, be sure to follow through on what you promised in the subject line. If you don’t, you’ll likely hurt the trust between you and your subscribers.
- Keep building contact lists
The base of a good email marketing program is a clean and fresh email database. With the right audience, the best email marketing messages will work wonders.
Do not buy email lists from the internet. Its only recycled amongst hundreds of businesses like yours. More often than not the people on these lists have nothing to do with your industry or niche. Moreover, nobody likes receiving unsolicited email from unknown brands. Buying an email database is the worst thing you can do to kick-start your email marketing program.
The super easy way to grow your email list is to ask your visitors to subscribe. A pop-up (giving them an incentive) or a fly-out appear at the bottom of the screen as they stay onsite for some time. Though you have a newsletter sign-up in your footer, ask customers upfront if they want to be on your list. It gives them a clear choice without needing to hunt for it.
- Segment your contacts
Segmented emails result in 50% more click through than non-segmented emails. Web shops own a lot of customer information. They can use this data for event driven email as part of email marketing strategy. Event driven emails use a set of triggers. It lets you set up and fine tune your communication and response, based on the behavior of customers. Consider using event driven emails such as
- Birthday mails.
- Retention mails.
- Abandoned shopping cart mailings.
- Mails to improve customer satisfaction.
- Mailings to reward loyal customers with incentives.
Personalize automated emails to include name, address and a host of customer specific information. It ensures your communication is as personal and relevant, leading to an increased conversion. Consider segmenting email lists based on the device a user is likely to use. Those who open on mobile devices should receive emails designed for the mobile experience.
Once you segment your list, the more creative you can get, and the more money you can make.
- Receptive to all replies
Customers respond to any marketing email. They may question about orders or simple unsubscription. Or just complain about how long the USPS takes to deliver their order. Let it be easy for your customers to contact you. So tell them exactly how they can reach you in your emails. Accept the way people use the internet. Always prepare to take responses to your automated mail on whichever address you receive.
Sync your role-based email addresses (info@company.com or sales@company.com) to a CRM. So that nothing falls through the cracks.
- Pack some punch to your subject line
The subject line is what will attract people’s attention. 64% of the people say they open an email because of the subject line. Put in time and effort to write great subject lines. Rewrite and A/B test them till it is perfect. Keep it short. Make it informative, make it look urgent and add a personal creative touch. Your subject line should support your email content.
- Preheader gives a heads up
The preheader is an extension of the subject line. It should summarize your promotion that conveys a sense of value. Inspiring recipients to open your message rather than rejecting it as spam.
- Best is simple
Of course, you want your email to be the best. But if it becomes content loaded, the call-to-action of the email might get buried. Your customer won’t know what to do.
Keep emails as simple as possible. Plan the layout in three chunks.
- Headline
- Description
- Call to Action
That’s about all you need for a super valid email. The process of crafting effective marketing emails can get complex. Emails themselves should, in essence, be simple. The simple principle relates to email formatting. A template with an image, a little text and a strong call to action. As a rule, lighter the content, easier it is to load. On various devices from where your recipients view their emails.
- Create urge
Free shipping, free returns, recommendations, coupons, new items, sales, are deal sweeteners. For an abandoned cart campaign, offer 10% off. For inactive customers who haven’t ordered in months, consider giving 20% of their order. The buy rate jumps thrice with coupons.The thing to keep in mind with all your emails is how often they go out. You don’t want customers to game the system. If you send out a coupon for abandoned carts, make sure not to send if a customer already received one in the past.
- Fresh piping newsletters
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Newsletters are versatile. It’s the most economical way to reach your audience and deliver a targeted message. The moment someone signs-up for your newsletter. A welcome series lets you tell them more about you and your store. It can be a great time to show them that your store runs by real people. Studies show these email newsletters have five times more clicks than the typical email you send. If you aren’t regular in sending a newsletter. Whether that’s monthly, weekly or daily based on your business. Customers will forget you and the reason your emailing them. We see that spam complaints are lower if you email clients in a consistent manner.
Newsletters are useful in various ways:
- Capture new leads
- Communicate with current customers
- Position yourself as an industry expert
- Nurture leads until they become customers
- Salvage cart abandonment
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According to Baymard Institute, a web research company in the UK. “68.50% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts.” Focus on Improving cart and checkout abandonment is one of the highest value areas. From the point of optimizing conversion rate. Why not, if someone has added an item to their cart, they qualify as a potential customer.
- Plan for the Holiday
During holidays focus on building a relationship with all the new customers. It’s good to make a first impression.
* Go Automate: MailChimp’s automation workflows are versatile. It offers both pre-built and customizable recipes that you can use for anything. Consider building a workflow to target your new customers. Based on the date when added to your list or a special item they’ve purchased. Thank them for their business.Dole out tips and care instructions for their new products. Hand out coupons so that they are eager to do more business with you again.
*Stretch your list in novel ways: Cash on the traffic that come to your online store or site. Convert your new customers into active subscribers. Insert a pop-up form to your site that will encourage new sign ups. Explore our Integrations Directory for e-commerce tools. It can integrate with your online store and keep adding customers to your MailChimp list. Consider installing MailChimp Subscribe on a tablet so customers can join your mailing list.
- Spruce up your email tactics
Keep recipients engaged to keep your click rates steady on the rising. Keep changing your email content as regular as possible. Keep Rotating product offers and discounts with other types of communications. This can include, for example:
- New product features
- Top 10 lists
- Product recommendations based on previous purchases
- Gift giving ideas
- Articles, tips, or tricks
- Drip Emails
A drip email is a chain of emails sent to the subscriber in a delayed fashion. So when he or she subscribes, your customer will receive the first which is a welcome email. After that, three days later, they may receive a discount of 20%.
Again, three days after that, they may receive a different email, etc. This way you strike a relationship with your customer without doing much work at all. Sure, you two are communicating in a straightforward manner. Now, if you can provide genuine value to him or her, he or she will not mind receiving emails from you.
- Video increases clicks
Videos engage as they produce clicks to your site, social shares & brand awareness. It’s a novel way to explain a product or service. Which otherwise is hard in a text.
Deliverability reduces when you embed a video in the body of an email. Instead, use a simple image with a play button over it, to look like the start of the video game. When a recipient clicks, he glides to the page where the video hosts.
- Right fit for mobiles
According to Constant Contact, the email platform. Almost Four in ten American adults read emails on a mobile device. Implying that if an e-commerce marketer is not optimizing email messages for mobile devices. 40 percent of potential customers who may like an offer might not read or interact with the message. Just because it doesn’t work well on their device of choice.
Make emails more mobile friendly. Don’t use table layouts and inline styles that affect appearance. Consider segmenting email lists based on the type of device a user is likely to use.
- Pamper loyal customers
Give back to your best customers, this can keep them coming back. Just like 80-20 rule, top 20% of your database account for the large part of your revenue. These are certain relationships you want to protect. One way to do this is through an automated reward program.
Figure out how much your best customers are spending on average and how often they buy. Set up an automated email response going to customers who trigger the discount/reward threshold.
Next,you need to decide what kind of rewards you are going to offer customers. Will it be a discount with every buy? A point’s program letting customers cash in their loyalty for goods and prizes. Avoid limiting your rewards to just discounts. They don’t have a lasting impact on customer’s memories. More so if your customer is a B2B purchaser with no direct benefit of money from the order.
- Revive inactive customers
Every web shop has prospective clients who haven’t been active in the web store for a long time. Those who don’t open the newsletter any more. This group is inactive and useless for your site. Approach all who haven’t purchased anything during the past six months. Go to these customers with a win back tactic. You can revive them and help boost your conversion and the traffic to your web shop.
Email marketing is key to the e-commerce puzzle. While you drive traffic to your store with SEO. Building a great brand and offering excellent products. Email sees that you make the best use of the visitors. Taking care to convert potential customers into buyer and keeping them coming back.
To make a mark in a hyper-competitive and attention-starved market.Embrace the most intimate of communication modes – email marketing. As we just discovered. It’s easy to set up, inexpensive, highly customizable and most importantly, extremely useful.
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