fbpx

The Most Effective Email Marketing Strategies for eCommerce

SMStrategies
What are the secret ingredients of effective eCommerce email marketing strategies?
What are the secret ingredients of effective eCommerce email marketing strategies?

It may include having a large list, so you have a better chance of engaging your audience.

Maybe it’s the frequency of sends. Not providing so many they’re annoyed, and not so few they forget about you.

It could even be all about the relevance of the content.

Fortunately, there are some email marketing strategies that stand out, providing outstanding ROI, and engaging customers in a way that builds loyalty. If you can adopt these approaches, you’re sure to find similar results.

Email Marketing Strategies for eCommerce That Deliver Impressive Results

For the best results, you need the best strategies.

best ecommerce email marketing digital agency Results

At SmartMail, we’ve delivered billions of emails that have increased our clients’ ROI by up to 39x. There’s no single secret to how we do it, just years of honing our skills to know the exact way to help each brand through their specific situation.

And while every brand is different, we’ve worked with enough to know how we can best deliver results through email marketing. That’s where these five strategies come into play.

Enjoying this content?
Join the other 5,473 eCommerce business owners.

1. Personalize Emails

Have you ever spelled your name wrong on a form, only to have it pop up incorrectly on every email from that company? Although it’s all automated, these mishaps give the impression that a company doesn’t care about you. It’s also the reason that sending emails with “Hey $first_name,” no longer checks the box for personalizing emails. Readers expect much more than their name being the only relevant content in an email.

Instead, treat emails like a relationship. When you know someone well, you don’t always begin an email with their name. Sometimes, you jump right to the content because you know you’re sending them something they care about.

Relevant content matters more in email marketing now than ever before. And while readers still like seeing their name at the top of the message, if you’re not providing them with content they actually want to engage with, you’re losing their attention.

Talk to your contacts like they’re people and provide value in everything you send. When they engage with a certain product, send them more information on it. If you can show your audience that you care about providing them exactly what they need, you’ll build trust and gain more customers that are loyal to your brand.

2. Send at the Right Time

Email marketing has a lot of data behind it. For instance, did you know that the best time to send an email is between 6 and 8 am, or from 8 pm to midnight? How about that Tuesday and Wednesday are the days with the highest open rates?

Well, while you should test the time that works best for your audience, we have a solution that delivers content at the right time for each individual customer. It’s called automated triggers.

img email lifecycle

Automated trigger emails require you to to establish a set of rules. Depending on the goal, these will vary, but they can be as simple as the user taking an action on your site, or as complex as them spending a certain amount of time on a given page. The idea is that once that action is taken, it triggers an email to be delivered to their inbox.

For example, if someone looks at a specific product on your site, but doesn’t purchase, you can automatically deliver a browse abandonment email. This message shows them the product they were looking at, and maybe some other recommendations based on that item. While the email can be delayed based on your persona’s preferences, it’s delivered when the items are still fresh in the customer’s mind. This reminds them of what they were looking at and makes it more convenient for them to make the purchase.

3. Optimize for Mobile

anatomy mobile email

With mobile devices being responsible for up to 77% of email opens, you’re missing a huge opportunity if you’re not optimizing for mobile.

Many brands make simple mistakes with their formatting because they’re using the wrong tools or aren’t aware of how to optimize them. For example, if an email is formatted with two columns, they’ll appear stacked when viewed on a mobile device. Depending on how you arranged any images and copy, this may not affect your email, but more often than not, it damages the flow of your message.

It’s also important to note the difference between mobile and desktop. For instance, the “add to cart” rate on smartphones is significantly lower than computers. This means your website isn’t where you’ll secure the sale if they’re on a phone, it’s through your email.

Additionally, if you have an app for your eCommerce store, integrating calls to action that open it directly are especially helpful for smartphone users. The app should already be optimized for mobile, making it far easier for customers to shop there than on a mobile browser.

4. Give Stuff Away

This may sound counter-intuitive, but if you give stuff away, you can make more money.

If customers know that you give away prizes or gifts, your open rates will skyrocket. And, every time someone opens an email, there’s a chance they see something else they’re interested in purchasing.

The issue with giving items away is that it’s not sustainable. Instead, we recommend something that costs a lot less but can be worth a lot more: information.

Providing free content, including advice, insights, and news, can help customers work through issues they’re having and guide them to your products. Repurposing this content on your blog is also a fantastic way to promote your website. The more valuable the information you provide, the more your contacts will open emails because they’ll come to expect useful content.

And, if you still want to provide something a little more financially enticing, discount codes or free shipping can work just as well and cost less than giving away your products.

5. Segment Your Audience

Finally, if you want to increase your open and click-through rates while providing your audience with the best content for them, you need to start segmenting. Mailchimp found a 14% higher open rate, and a 100.1% higher click-through rate on segmented campaigns.

You can segment content based on interests, engagements, pages viewed, favorite colors, purchase amounts, basket size, and anything else you deem important to your brand.

Listrak, a marketing automation company, claims you have 90 days to turn a new subscriber into a loyal customer. Personalization is a way to get there, and that means segmenting your audience into well-refined groups and delivering relevant content based on their interests.

Creating Your Email Marketing Strategy

These strategies have the potential to take your email marketing to the next level. But, taking full advantage of each can be challenging.

This is why we recommend working with a team that’s experienced in delivering results. We at SmartMail specialize in delivering high-converting trigger-based email campaigns, all done for you. And, by scheduling a consultation, we’ll look at your brand’s specific situation to determine the best approach to maximizing your results.

About The Author

More Email Marketing Articles

Get The eCommerce Email Automation Playbook

Inside you’ll discover flow charts, design examples and best practices for the 10 most profitable automations.

book template
book template

Download The eCommerce Email Automation Playbook

Inside you’ll discover flow charts, design examples and best practices 

for the 10 most profitable automations you’ll ever send.

Get The eCommerce Email Automation Playbook

Inside you’ll discover flow charts, design examples and best practices for the 10 most profitable automations.

book template