You were thinking of shopping for a pair of jeans online. For this, you visited an eCommerce store. After entering your name and email address, you started scrolling through the website. Because of some reasons, you did not complete your shopping and came out of the website.
Now, what you notice is that since the day you entered your email address on the website, you have been receiving emails from them. Be it cart abandonment, special offers, or more. There are different types of emails that you have been getting.
Finally, seeing an amazing offer that you received over the mail, you made a purchase. Yes, you guessed it right! This is what email marketing is all about.
Do you know that about 81% of companies are actively including email marketing as their prime marketing strategy? Thanks to the fact that email marketing presents itself as a super effective and reliable tool.
In this chapter, we are going to discuss email marketing from a detailed perspective. How will it be helpful for your eCommerce business? What are the aspects that you need to keep in check? We will discuss everything here. So, let us proceed.
Email marketing refers to the process of sending commercial messages to customers through email. These are usually sent in groups with the intent of engaging with new customers or re-engaging with the old ones.
In the eCommerce business, email marketing presents itself as one of the most powerful tools. From connecting with customers to building lasting relationships and driving sales, it is crucial.
Take an example of yourself. In this era of technology, you are already receiving thousands of messages every day. However, just a single personalized email with an element of creativity will catch your attention. Right? Thus, email marketing helps your eCommerce business stand out from the crowd of messages that people are already receiving.
The first important aspect of email marketing for an eCommerce business is building an email list. You have to grow your email list for an effective email marketing campaign. How to do this? There are two ways.
First, you buy an email list and the second is that you build your list organically. It is recommended that you follow the second method, instead of buying. So, place sign-up forms on your website, and offer various incentives such as discounts, early access, or even exclusive content.
Let us say for example you own an online clothing brand. To build your email list, you could offer a 10% discount to new subscribers, which would not only add value but also encourage immediate action.
In addition to this, if you want to ensure that you are reaching an engaged audience, you can implement a double opt-in process. What it will do is that after someone signs up, they are going to receive an email asking them to confirm their subscription.
It will help you eliminate uninterested parties and ensure a higher-quality list of subscribers who are genuinely interested in your brand.
Now that you have the email list with you, the next step is segmenting your email list. With segmentation, you can make your email marketing more effective. But what does segmenting mean?
With segmentation, we will divide the email list into smaller groups based on specific criteria. Thus, for each audience and the segmented list we have made, we can tailor the content as per their requirements.
Let us talk about three major segmentation categories that we can keep:
The first segmented list that you can keep can be based on demographics. Divide your list based on different factors like age, gender, and income. Let us take an example of this.
As a luxury brand, you might send different messages to high-income customers when compared to those with lower incomes. Here, you will offer exclusive products to the former and some budget-friendly options to the latter.
Behavioral segmentation will be based on how subscribers are interacting with your brand. Let us understand this with an example. You can make three different segments for your brand. These segments can be the ones who are frequent buyers, who have abandoned their carts, and the ones who only browse.
So, you can tailor your emails as per each of these segments and can witness an improvement in sales. Suppose you own a beauty brand, for such a scenario, you can send personalized recommendations to those who have made recent purchases or can send a special discount to someone who has abandoned their cart.
For geographic segmentation, you can share customized emails as per the subscriber’s location. For instance, a global eCommerce store can provide recommendations for winter coats to customers in the colder regions and summer outfits to those in the warmer climates.
Do you know that segmented emails drive 50% more click-throughs and 30% more opens than unsegmented ones? This is what the effect of segmentation on your email marketing campaign is.
You must be thinking about the aspects to consider when crafting an effective email campaign. Right? Just like any other operations you are doing regarding your eCommerce business, you have to craft your email campaign carefully too.
Keep the following points in consideration when crafting your email marketing campaign:
Using email automation, you can set up campaigns that run on autopilot. These automated emails are triggered by specific user actions. Hence, it not only saves a lot of your time but also ensures that your emails are timely and relevant.
The automation process for email marketing can be divided into three major categories. These are:
After subscribing to your list, the individual should immediately receive a welcome email. In this welcome series, you can provide a series of emails with the intention of introducing them to your brand, showcasing best-selling products, and also offering special discounts on their first purchase.
Drip campaigns refer to the sequences of emails that are sent over time to the user. These emails have the intent of educating subscribers or nurturing leads. An example of these drip campaigns can be an eCommerce store that sells kitchen gadgets. The store could send a series of emails with recipes, tips on using the product, and also some promotions of a popular item.
An automatic abandoned cart email will be sent to the customer when they add items to their carts but do not complete the purchase. In that case, reminding the customer of their items can help in recovering lost sales. To make the customer successfully purchase the product, you can include various incentives such as free shipping or discounts, encouraging them to complete the purchase.
Personalization in automation is one of the most effective ways that deliver highly targeted messages at the right time. As we learned above, personalization helps curate the best emails for clients, resulting in an increase in effectiveness.
Let us understand through an example as to how it works. A customer visits a platform and purchases a camera. Now, through a series of automated emails, we can recommend accessories like lenses or tripods.
This eventually will enhance customer satisfaction and experience while also driving additional sales.
So, this is how email marketing works. As an eCommerce business, harnessing email marketing will help your eCommerce business grow.