Email Marketing for eCommerce
Email marketing is one of the best marketing tools you can utilize for your online business. The cost of email marketing is relatively low compared to other forms of advertising/marketing and the value of a truly engaged customer is astronomical.
When we get our clients started with email marketing for e-commerce, we begin with three basic email sequences.
The Welcome Series
The Abandoned Cart Email
The Post-Purchase Email
Let’s break down why and how you can build an effective email marketing strategy starting with these main touchpoints.
The Welcome Series
This is your opportunity to have an in-depth introduction to your subscribers. They’ve already seen your website and liked what they saw enough to subscribe. Now it’s your turn to show them why your brand is valuable.
We like to offer a coupon for subscribers, as an incentive for signing up. The standard we go with is 10% or free shipping – evaluate what would work best for your brand or if you wanted to offer a coupon at all.
Next, we like to feature a blurb about the brand or the founders. Explain why your brand is unique and what you’re going to have in store for them as a subscriber.
Lastly, we always want to link back to the website. This can be done in the form of header/footer links in the email or with calls to action to browse your best-sellers.
This is one of the most important sequences you can set up for your brand. You can choose to have multiple emails in your welcome series, but setting up the first email is the most important. The additional emails in your series can feature: Your social media, your best-sellers, a reminder to use their coupon code, or a highlight on something unique about your brand.
The Abandoned Cart Email
The abandoned cart email has become expected by consumers, it’s important that you’ve set this up properly and are sending your customers reminders to return to their cart. We like to offer a discount for returning to the cart – as it has become the standard in online retail, certain customers have come to expect an incentive. We like to offer 5-10% for returning to the cart, but you can decide what works best for your brand, if you want to offer an incentive at all.
The abandoned cart email should feature a catchy headline, the item that the customer forgot in their cart, and then a call to action to complete their checkout.
This email, like all emails you send, should be tailored to your brand. Use consistent font/color choices across all of your emails to let customers know what to expect.
The Post-Purchase Email
This email gets sent to customers after they’ve purchased from your store.
This is an opportunity to thank them for their purchase and let them know that their business is appreciated. Note: This email is different and separate from an order confirmation email, which should be sent automatically from your website.
It’s important to send a post-purchase email, you want the customer to feel good about their recent purchase and ideally come back for more. If your brand offers discounts, you can provide a discount code to prompt another purchase, as a thank you.
These basic email flows are just a starting point for your email marketing strategy. As your business grows and your strategy changes, you can tailor your messaging and promotions to suit your customers and their email preferences.
