The goal sounds awesome, but it’s a challenge. After all, if it were easy, everyone would have massive ROI.
But while it may be difficult, there are ways you can dramatically increase your eCommerce email marketing ROI. It just takes studying some of the best practices to know exactly where you can improve your own campaigns and strategy for maximized benefits.
The 8 eCommerce Email Marketing Best Practices You Need for Incredible ROI
While increasing your revenue from email marketing isn’t as easy as flipping a switch, if you know what you’re doing, you’ll find some quick wins that lead to dramatic results.
At SmartMail, we’ve honed our eCommerce email marketing skills over billions of sends and dozens of clients. This experience has led to us learning the best ways to increase open and click-through rates, and also revenue. These are the eight techniques we recommend to take their brands to the next level.
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1. Automate Your Campaigns
Automated campaigns allow you to deliver the right emails at the right time to the right customer. This translates to a more relevant message that drives sales.
These emails should be created throughout the customer lifecycle, including welcome, browse and cart abandonment, as well as post-purchase campaigns. With automated messages, your marketing manages itself, delivering timely emails when a contact takes an action that triggers them. This lets you focus on the other parts of your business where you’re more needed.
At SmartMail, we specialize in delivering high-converting trigger-based email campaigns, all done for you. We’ve honed our craft by creating and sending billions of automated trigger emails, resulting in millions of dollars in sales. If you want to see similar results with your own company, request a proposal.
2. Personalize Your Content
Personalized content is more than just using a subscriber’s name. It’s about showing them relevant content that proves your company understands their interest. That, in turn, encourages them to buy more products from your store.
Personalization allows you to provide discounts that they’re likely to use. It lets you avoid coming across as overly “sales-y” because the customer is already interested in the product you’re presenting, making it far easier to convince them to make a purchase.
Some simple ways to incorporate personalized messages are to send birthday and anniversary emails, as well as cart and browse abandonment. These emails show the recipient you’re aware of them and their needs. It also improves the chances of them engaging with your emails.
3. Integrate Email Into Your Content Strategy
As you’re sending personalized emails, consider integrating these messages into your content strategy. This ultimately means when you publish an article, video, or post on social media, you’re sharing the same content with your email list.
Providing updates when you’ve published new content comes across as more helpful than sales-y and encourage readers to engage with your brand on another platform. Doing this builds trust and shows you’re focused on providing them value in any way you can. That simple act can go a long way in increasing your revenue.
4. Develop a Loyalty or Referral Program
There are many strategies for building a loyalty program, but the most important thing is that you give back to the customers who are purchasing from your brand. This is another way to show your customers are appreciated and encourages them to continue doing business with you.
We recommend including loyalty perks in your emails to keep customers informed on your program. You can highlight where they’re at in the program by showing what incentives they can earn, how many points they’ve accumulated, or anything else that makes being loyal to your brand more enticing and valuable.
For a referral program, offer rewards and discounts for any subscriber that can get more people to join your email list or purchase from your store. The rewards should vary in significance, based on the value they’re producing for your brand. If someone is doing an exceptional job of highlighting your company, send them a personal email along with their reward. A strong referral program can dramatically increase revenue, and you should take a special interest in any customers helping your brand through it.
5. Optimize for Mobile
More and more people are using their mobile phone to read emails. In fact, up to 70% of emails are read on a mobile device. This means if you’re not optimizing your messages to present correctly on their device, you’re missing an opportunity.
Many services enable you to customize your email formatting specifically for each device. This allows you to fine-tune the display. You can ensure videos present correctly and that your headlines don’t span an entire screen.
6. Use the Sender to Your Advantage
While often overlooked, the sender of an email matters. First, using an actual person’s name is a much more personal way of delivering a message. Consider that option over “Our Team.” It puts a name and personality behind the email, humanizing your brand, and making it much easier for someone to relate to the content.
For certain emails, use your CEO or founder’s name. A thank you note with a discount from the CEO could be the special email that gets someone returning to your shop. It makes the reader feel more important, and when adding some of the personalization techniques we’ve mentioned, this can be an extremely powerful message.
7. Make Everything Convenient
The more convenient your email marketing, the more likely someone will engage with your messages. This means reducing the number of steps to get someone from opening your email to making a purchase.
For example, if you send a browse abandonment email with recommendations for other purchases they could make, provide a button that adds the item to a cart when they show interest. Saving them that single step could be what motivates them to go through with buying it.
Additionally, a form with too many fields will be looked at as a burden. Cutting back on the requirements makes it more convenient for the user to fill out, therefore increasing the likelihood they will.
8. Test Everything
Finally, when you’re putting all of these techniques to use and trying out new messaging, you need to test it. With modern email marketing technology, you can A/B test content, graphics, subjects, send times, and a dozen other variables. Doing so will provide you with valuable insights that illustrate exactly what your customers prefer and engage with, increasing revenue.
When testing, ensure you’re not comparing multiple variables that could interact. For example, testing copy and imagery in the same email won’t tell you which is actually helping your click-through rate. Testing subject lines and calls to action works because each variable influences a different metric.
Putting the Best Practices to Use
Adding all of these techniques to your strategy will take some effort, but could dramatically increase your revenue. We recommend recording your successes and struggles so you can determine which of these works best, letting you know where to double down on your efforts.
If you want another way to increase your revenue, consider hiring a company to develop and implement automated email marketing campaigns. We’ve delivered billions of emails and learned what works best for eCommerce, allowing us to provide outstanding results for our clients. If you’re interested in seeing what we could do, request a consultation, and we’ll put our expertise to work for you.