Introduction

Email marketing accounts for over 7% of all ecommerce transactions, making it the second most effective ecommerce marketing channel behind search (15.8%). Search is about people reaching you, either on Google, YouTube of even a social media sites like Pinterest. However Email Marketing is about keeping your customers in the funnel and coming back.

Email is no longer a teenager, she’s a full fledged adult, and has been around for some 22 years and with this newfound maturity comes tools that help you personalize and segement and predictive what the consumer wants! This is the job of SaaS ESPs and predictive marketing engines.  As Ecommerce is going mainstream, so will the AI behind it. However, this article is going to show you how Email marketing can help too.

We’ll be going through some tips, it’s important that you’re using email marketing software that is up to date and has some advanced features.

In 2015, it’s essential your shopping cart and email list have some automation, personalization and list segementation tools built in.

1. Give your Customers a Chance to Review what they have Bought via Email 

• Product Reviews that postiively highlight what they bought, and a personal tone to encourage them to buy simliar products.
• Product reviews lead to a 12.5% increase in conversion rate on products with reviews compared to those without!

How-to: 

Simply set up an automated personalized email that’s scheduled to customers a few days after they receive their product. Test timing, prize offered and number of simliar products reviewed.

2. A/B to Optimize CTRs

You have to A/B test to optimize the subject-line to your segments in order to boost open-rates. By segement, you can also vary time of the day and pintpoint the optimal time for each segement. For instance, back in the day, Barack Obama’s team found, through email A/B testing, that one subject line generated $403,600 in donations, whereas another variation generated $2,540,866.

How-to: 

Establish a baseline of open-rates and click through rates per segement, and then vary the subject line or content template to FIND which one has the highest enagement and conversation rates!

3. Send Automated Cart Abandonment Emails to Boost Checkout Conversation Rates

Improving cart and checkout abandonment is essential and a best practice for ROI for Ecommerce Email marketing techniques. Consider it essential for conversation rate optimization and of critical importance!

How-to: 

Write good content for these automated Emails that help remind potential customers to come back and finish their transaction or choose something that is more appropriate for them from your online store. The quality of the copywriting here is extremely important, and variations by the items that were abandoned in the cart is a good idea.

4. Focus on the Golden Rule of Rewarding Loyal Customers 

Customer retention and creating loyalty and maximing customer lifetime value is the golden rule of Ecommerce. For most ecommerce websites, an 80/20 relationship exists between customers and total revenue. That is, a large proportion of revenue is typically driven by a relatively small number of loyal customers. So don’t penny pinch in giving them sales and best access to your quality goods.

Consider creating a gamification paradigm for them to keep engagement levels high. These include Gift Card incenstives, Contests, reward programs, a mobile application, etc….

How-to: 

One way is to segement your customers  based on behavioral, sales and demographic data and create gamification programs for each segement that has the best chance of working on them.

Howards Storage World found that by categorising their customers into five categories based on engagement and loyalty, and targeting certain categories with gift card incentives, they were able to increase their short-term revenue by $250,000. Their most loyal group of customers had a gift card redemption rate of 34%, representing $105,000 of the total revenue driven from this campaign.

4. Have a Newsletter and Social Media that is in tune with the Calendar 

 

Email Marketers must create promotions and material in real-time, with content that address the customer whims of the moment. Buidl a 12-month Newsletter by segement that highlights X-mas, Valentine’s day, Halloween and other festivals that may be linked to the products you offer. Target weeks where retail events would be most profitable and integrate them into your E-Campaigns.

Tools like Trello can help you brainstorm and organize ideas for Camaigns and content related to different months, festivals, seasonal events and so forth. Trello is great for collaborative work for different campaigns where the marketing team has a number of different contributors.

Your blog and social media should be in tune and reciprocal with your Email Campaigns and your Newsletters can link to video content you have created for each event in the calendar year.

Linking to product images and descriptions in your landing page or on Pinterest Facebook is a good idea.

5. Don’t be Shy to Offer Free Promotions 

Surprise your customers with free credits to get them on your online store or to your real store location. Offering something for free to get them in the door is an age old sales cliche, but it works.

The idea is to create urgency, so your free offer should only be valid for the next 48 hours or something along those lines. The new customers you gain and their business over time makes up for the costs of the free offferings.

We’ll continue these hints soon, but the bottom line is Email Marketing is still essential  and a good ROI for Ecommerce.

Upgrading your Email Service Provide and using predictive analytics in your Ecommerce with engaging video content to be & stay competitive.