How email marketing can enhance your ecommerce business

The internet has created a wealth of opportunities for anyone to sell their products or services to people all around the world. But with the volume of brands in the ecommerce space, it can be easy to get lost in the masses, and unlike brick-and-mortar businesses, you can’t attract customers to a physical, local location. This means you have to not only explore all your marketing options, but you also need to use avenues that are going to benefit your brand while keeping costs low. Fortunately, email marketing can do just that. 

In the wake of social media and influencer marketing, good ol’ fashioned email marketing can be seen as outdated—but this couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re going to cover why email marketing is not only still king, but how it can do wonders for your ecommerce business.

Why should you use email marketing?

It’s inexpensive

Businesses use a wide range of marketing tactics to reel in new customers and keep old ones, but most aren’t anywhere near as efficient or cost-effective as email marketing. For ecommerce brands specifically, email marketing has an incredible 45:1 ROI. That means that for every $1 you spend on your email marketing, you can make an average of $45. Email marketing can even be totally free for smaller brands. Mailchimp, for example, offers a free plan that includes up to 2000 contacts and 10,000 sends a month, which is more than enough for most brands. Klaviyo also offers a free plan if your contact list is 250 or less, and very reasonable plans thereafter.

Most people have an email address

For ecommerce brands, having an online presence that is separate from a website is a matter of necessity for advertising purposes. Social media tends to be a popular channel, but even in 2021, not everyone has social media. Even those that do may not use it frequently or they may prefer to tune out the chaos of likes and follows every now and then. But almost everyone has an email address and consistently checks their inbox. In fact, over 1/5 of opened emails are opened within the first hour of delivery. Better yet, 60% of consumers say they’ve purchased a product or service because of an email they received, but only 12.5% feel comfortable purchasing on a social media platform.

Segmenting your audience is very useful

As your brand matures, you’re likely going to have a variety of products and services you want to promote, and with that comes a range of audiences who are going to expect a certain level of personalization. With email marketing, you can give your various audiences the attention and care they deserve through segmentation. This allows you to split your customers into unique lists, using criteria such as age, gender, location, or even interest and buying behavior. For example, let’s say you sell athletic apparel, but you want to be able to separately market to an audience who’s expressed interest in surfing as well as an audience that loves snowboarding. With segmentation, you can ensure that both audiences regularly see content that is likely to pique their interest, which will in return keep them coming back for more.

Check out another one of our blog posts if you’re looking for more help with personalization and segmentation.

How can you grow your business with email marketing?

Welcome customers properly

Email marketing is a wonderful way to give your customers a warm welcome to your brand, and most customers actually expect some sort of email introduction quite soon after they fill out a contact form or buy your product. The read rate of a typical welcome email is 42% higher than an average email and can generate up to 320% more revenue than other promotional emails. That’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss out on. So, where do you start with a welcome email?

Your welcome email doesn’t have to be too extensive or complicated. It can simply be a chance to just say hello to your subscribers while letting them know what they can expect next. On the other hand, if you want to keep your audience’s attention, you can even implement an onboarding campaign. This campaign would kick off with the welcome email and could be followed up with a product recommendation email, an email leading people to your blog or a webinar, or even a testimonial email. The types of emails you could use depends on your business’s needs, but the purpose of this campaign is to welcome your customers to your brand and slowly get them more comfortable with what you have to offer.

Ask for reviews

The vast majority of your potential customers are going to want to know about the quality of your service or product before purchasing, and the primary way customers discover this information is through reviews. This is especially true with ecommerce since customers can’t readily go to a store and test out your product for themselves. But reviews aren’t always easy to get, especially for newer brands.  

However, email marketing allows you to ask for feedback and reviews in a way that doesn’t come across as too insistent. For instance, after your customer makes a purchase, you could send them a short and sweet email asking them to review the product they just bought. If you want to take it even further, you could provide more incentive by offering some sort of discount on their next purchase or points in your referral program, regardless of how they rate the product. Many ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, offer automated review emails out of the box.

Promote new products

Once you have a solid email list, your subscribers will already be interested in your services to some capacity, which means they’ll be on the lookout for whatever you have to offer. That makes your email audience perfect to introduce new products and offers to. In fact, you could even create an entire email campaign around your new product. To build anticipation, give your subscribers a taste of what features to expect and how the product will be rolled out. If you’re planning on holding a contest to increase interest or offering first access to certain customers, email would also be a great way to communicate the news and increase engagement.

Reel back in previous customers

Your customers get busy and distracted sometimes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve completely lost interest in your brand. They may just need a little nudge. Maybe they were close to making a purchase, but didn’t quite make it past the “Add to Cart” phase. In that case, you can send them a short email reminding them of where they left off and kindly encouraging them to finish the purchase. 

You may also notice that it’s been a while since certain customers have made a purchase or engaged with your other promotional emails. Instead of ignoring these customers or giving up on them, you’ll want to check in with them by sending a winback email. In this email, you’ll tell them how much you miss them, ask them if they’re still interested in receiving emails, and you can even meet them halfway with a website-wide discount or a special offer for a specific item.

Conclusion

Operating an ecommerce business is no easy task, especially with online sales and marketing trends constantly in flux. But email marketing can be a mighty addition to your existing strategies, and more often than not, it saves you precious time and money.

Now that you know the benefits of email marketing, you’ll also want to make sure the emails you send out sufficiently reflect your brand and give off the best impression to your customers. At Scalero, that’s what we do best. Our team can help you by creating custom email templates to enhance your email communication and keep your customers loyal and happy. Contact us here to learn more!