The Role of Ecommerce Email Marketing in Growing Your Business

Social media has become a number one choice for introducing brands and growing visibility. However, you will be surprised that ecommerce email marketing has a high return on investment (ROI). It is 20% more effective than social media for gaining customers, building effective communication, and ultimately, driving sales.

Growing an e-commerce business is difficult because of high customer acquisition costs, retaining loyal customers, low sales, and many others. You invest time and money to attract visitors to your website, only to see them leave without making a purchase.

Ecommerce email marketing can help you here. It is a cost-effective strategy that can drive significant sales to your business. If you want to boost your e-commerce business, email marketing is a technique you should implement now.

Read this blog to find the role of ecommerce email marketing in growing your business. We will also discuss e-mail lists and how to measure the success of your email campaigns.

• What is Email Marketing?
• Types of Email Marketing with Examples
• Role of Ecommerce Email Marketing in Growing Your Business
• How to Implement Email Marketing in Business Launch Successfully?
• How to Track the Performance of Email Marketing Campaigns?
• Strategies for Growing Your Business with Ecommerce Email Marketing
• 6 Common Mistakes in Ecommerce Email Marketing and How to Avoid It?

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a process to send a specific message to your target audience. These emails can be about information related to the products or services, exclusive discounts or offers, valuable content, or any recent news.

Ecommerce email marketing is a direct marketing channel where any brand can send marketing emails to promote their online businesses.

Message can differ depending on the audience’s preferences or be generic according to the purpose of the emails. Through ecommerce email marketing, small businesses can grab the attention of their prospects, and keep them in touch by sending relevant content.

According to Salesforce, 93% of people use email as their primary digital marketing channel to stay in touch with companies. Even people who read emails, prefer to get special offers or new products/services information through companies’ e-mails.

Why is Email Important for your E-commerce Business?

Ecommerce email marketing makes you reach your customers directly to their inboxes. These messages are sent to those who are already interested in your business.

Here are some of the importance of ecommerce email marketing.

• It helps in narrowing down your prospects list.
• It is also cost-effective as it does not have expenses related to print or heavy marketing tools.
• You can measure results by accessing analytics to track open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
• A consistent email delivery helps drive more traffic to your website by interlinking links with each message.

Consistent email communication can keep your audience informed and engaged too. It helps to build and maintain strong customer relationships over time.

Types of Email Marketing with Examples

There are various types of ecommerce email marketing that a company sends to its customers. It is important to know what types of e-mail you could send them with different objectives.

Let’s explore them in detail:

1. Promotional Emails

Promotional emails highlight new products, services, or special offers like “limited sales” or “last day deals” to your email list. It is ideal for all ecommerce stores or any B2B, B2C, or D2C businesses.

It can also be sent as welcome emails to introduce your brand, show gratitude, and make the first impression.

2. Lead Nurturing Emails

These emails are ideal for B2B and B2C brands to send specific communications. Lead nurturing emails engage potential customers throughout their buying journey. You can also guide your email marketing customer journey by offering valuable content and addressing concerns.

3. Feedback or Survey Emails

They are ideal for businesses to gather customer feedback and know their viewpoint. You can ask them to rate your products or services. Share their satisfaction or dissatisfaction through thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons.

4. Transactional Emails

It’s used to share important updates like subscription follow-ups, purchase confirmations, or password resets related to a customer’s actions on your store. Transactional emails require customers to take specific actions to guide them in their journey.

5. Newsletter Emails

These are the most common types of emails that are sent to your subscribers regularly. You can send them weekly or monthly to share updates about products and services, or stories related to your business.

It helps to build regular communication with your customers or subscribers. 31% of marketers say email newsletters are the preferred way to promote B2B leads. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

6. Confirmation Emails

These are automatic messages sent to customers to confirm their actions are successful after bookings, signing up, or purchasing a product. For example, after placing an order, customers receive an email with their order details and tracking information to show a confirmation.

7. Interactive Emails

Interactive emails ensure that your customers get updated information and personalized experiences. These emails are more engaging and useful to initiate engagement.

Some examples of interactive emails are:

• Booking appointments through an embedded form.
• Showing updated product details in a shopping cart.
• Fun quizzes, polls, or surveys to learn about customer interests or experiences.

Role of Ecommerce Email Marketing in Growing Your Business

Ecommerce email marketing helps you promote your brand straight to the customers. This can make them familiar with your products, values, and missions. Apart from this, email marketing has various other roles in growing your business. Let’s find them out:

1. Helps to Create a Direct Communication Channel

Email marketing creates a direct medium to connect with prospects, helping your audience understand your business while knowing they can easily communicate. This creates a sense of personal communication.

On social media, algorithms sometimes limit the visibility of posts. However, emails reach the audience’s inbox directly without any interference. This unmediated reach further helps you to build subscription forms and create personalized messages.

2. Focus on Targeted Messaging

With ecommerce email marketing, you can segment your audience based on demographics, behavior, or preferences. This segmentation helps to create customized content that resonates with specific groups and leads to more effective campaigns.

Targeted emails help you gain higher engagement and better conversion rates. For instance, cart abandonment emails boost sales by 4.43% across all e-commerce sectors.

3. Build a Better Relationship with Your Customers

Email marketing can be used to conduct polls or feedback surveys to discover audiences’ likes and dislikes. You can consider their feedback and improve your products and services accordingly. This can increase the chances of converting your audience into leads and building trust.

4. Cost-Effectiveness and High ROI

Ecommerce email marketing has proved to be relatively affordable compared to traditional marketing channels. It requires minimal cost to set up email campaigns. Unlike content marketing or paid ads, it is budget-friendly and suitable for small businesses.

Apart from being cost-effective, ecommerce email marketing delivers high returns too. Every dollar spent generates an ROI of approximately $42. That’s a 4200% ROI and depending on the industry it can be even higher.

5. Brings Traffic to your Website

Use ecommerce email marketing to improve SEO techniques. You are already sending periodic content with links to your website. Every time a lead clicks on those links, they get directed to your website, thus increasing traffic.

Use the subscriber’s first name, segment your audience, and add a convincing call to action. You can also include blog links where the audience can learn new information related to your products.

6. Reach a Wider and Authentic Audience

Ecommerce email marketing allows you to build your email list. It helps you reach out to the leads and convert them into customers. You can expand your reach by sending a high volume of emails to your growing subscribers without adding high costs. This can help you scale your business on a larger level.

How to Implement Email Marketing in Business Launch Successfully?

Getting success from your ecommerce email marketing requires effort, time, and a step-by-step process. You can start by creating your goals of gaining more visibility, subscriptions, or higher sales to stay focused and keep your campaigns realistic. Set KPIs based on the goals to track the performance.

For instance, let’s say you want the visitors to download an exclusive e-book with information on industry trends. Your goal here is lead generation. The KPIs would be the number of e-book downloads and the conversion rate of visitors to leads.

Once your goals are set, create an email list.

1. Build an Email List

An email list is the first and most important step in establishing contact with your customers. Create this list from scratch instead of collecting it randomly.

Random email lists are ineffective as those people are not particularly interested in your products. All the emails would go in vain as they won’t be intrigued to open them and may sent to spam.

Here are some tactics to follow for building an effective email list:

• Share content such as e-books, discounts, or exclusive access, in exchange for email sign-ups.
• Put clear and engaging sign-up forms on your website, blog, and landing pages where visitors can easily notice.
• Use social media channels to promote sign-up opportunities there.

2. Craft Compelling Welcome Emails

Welcome emails are the first impression because they set the tone for further communications. These emails instantly attract the audience and serve as an introduction to your brand. They usually have higher engagement rates with an average read rate of 34% (42% higher than other types of emails).

Suggestions for writing effective welcome emails:

• Share your brand’s story, mission, and values to create a connection with new subscribers. You can add some funny elements to make it more catchy.
• Inform subscribers about the type and frequency of emails they can expect.
• Offer a welcome gift, such as a discount or exclusive content, to encourage immediate engagement.

3. Design an Email Template

Create your email marketing templates with creative elements to boost engagement. The design should be clean, visually appealing, and optimized for both desktop and mobile devices.

A few tips for designing an email layout:

• Create an email layout by adding typography, images, CTA buttons, and color combinations to make it easily accessible.
• Use existing templates (available online) and customize them with your brand’s logo, font, and colors.

4. Launch Email Campaign

Once, the email is created, it’s time to launch your email campaigns. But first, segment your audience to make sure your emails are sent to the right audience.

Your first email should inform subscribers about your business launch, new product releases, or special offers. Use clear and engaging subject lines and preheader text to impact open rates. Personalized subject lines are more likely to be opened by the readers.

Tips for effective email campaigns:

• Send interactive emails and ask them to share their thoughts or take part in surveys.
• Add social media links and encourage subscribers to share them with others. This will expand your reach.

Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, etc are various email marketing platforms you can try for building an ecommerce email marketing strategy. They come with features like creating templates, automation, and segmentation.

How to Track the Performance of Email Marketing Campaigns?

Tracking an email marketing campaign’s performance helps to identify the errors and fix them on time. It will give you an idea of what’s working and what’s not. So, you can modify your current strategy by brainstorming other ideas.

Here are Some Key Metrics to Track

• Open Rates: It shows the ‘%’ of people who open your email. It helps you understand whether your subject line or timing is effective.
• Click-Through Rates (CTR): CTR tracks the ‘%’ of people who clicked on links in your email.
• Conversion Rates: This metric shows the ‘%’ of people who take action after clicking a link. It can be buying something or signing up.
• Bounce Rates: It shows the ‘%’ of emails that don’t reach your audience because of invalid addresses or full inboxes.
• Unsubscribe Rates: It indicate the ‘%’ of people who removed themselves from your email list.
• Spam Complaints: This shows recipients have marked your email as spam. Too many complaints can harm your sender’s reputation.

You can use various email analytics tools like HubSpot, MailTrack or Zoho Campaigns to measure the above data. This information helps you improve your marketing campaigns in growing your ecommerce business.

Try different subject lines, email content, and sending frequency to see what works best for your brand. Pay attention to people’s responses to your emails, replies, clicks, or even unsubscribes. Use this feedback to make your future emails better.

Strategies for Growing Your Business with Ecommerce Email Marketing

Ecommerce email marketing can help your business grow by driving more leads and building relationships.

Here are some effective strategies to try:

Send Regular Newsletters

Send newsletters regularly to share updates, news, or helpful tips. This keeps your audience connected and informed. You can also include industry information or expert advice in your newsletters. This helps you build trust and show your brand as a leader in your field.

For instance, check out H&M’s newsletter email to share offer details.

2. Promotional Emails

Send emails with exclusive deals to encourage subscribers to make a purchase. For example, “20% off for new customers!“. Introduce seasonal campaigns using holidays or events. You can create promotions, like a summer sale, big savings deals or events like Halloween or other festive offers, as shown below.

3. Automated Email Sequences

Use drip campaigns by automating a series of emails that guide customers through a journey. For instance, introduce your brand, share helpful tips, and eventually recommend a product. Send emails based on your subscribers’ actions, like a reminder. Inform them if they left items in their cart or a thank-you email after a purchase.

Click here to learn: The 6-Step Formula for Drip Email Campaign Success

4. Personalize Your Emails

Personalization is the key to getting observed by your audience. Use subscriber data (like past purchases or interests) to make your emails more personal and relevant. This increases engagement and helps your business by building lasting relationships with your audience.

6 Common Mistakes in Ecommerce Email Marketing and How to Avoid It?

1. Not Segmenting the Email List

Sending the same email to everyone is a mistake you should avoid as an email marketer. It makes your emails less effective and the audience will not relate it.

How to avoid it: Arrange your audience based on their preferences or demographics to send specific messages. You can add the recipient’s name or suggest products based on their interests.

2. Overloading with the Emails

Sending too many emails can annoy your audience and lead to unsubscribes. They may also list you as spam and may never read the emails.

How to avoid it: Focus on quality over quantity. Stick to a consistent schedule without overdoing it.

3. Avoiding Mobile Optimization

People don’t read emails that look bad on phones because of poor formatting or unreadable content.

How to avoid it: Use responsive email designs that adapt to mobile screens, ensuring images, text, and buttons display properly. Test your emails on different devices to confirm it.

4. Weak Subject Lines

Boring or vague subject lines reduce the chances of opening the emails as they fail to generate curiosity or provide value. A compelling subject line is key to engaging recipients at first glance.

How to avoid it: Write catchy, clear, and short subject lines to grab attention.

5. No Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

No clear CTAs can confuse the readers about what to do next after reading the email. They will ignore even the most engaging emails.

How to avoid it: Include clear and compelling CTAs, like “Shop Now” or “Sign Up Today” to direct readers toward the desired action. Make the CTA stand out visually to increase click-through rates.

6. Ignoring Metrics

Not checking metrics means missing opportunities to understand what’s working and what isn’t. Without data, you can’t effectively measure your progress or improve your approach.

How to avoid it: Track key metrics like open rates, clicks, and conversions to analyze your email performance and improve your strategy over time.

Bonus Tip: Don’t use keywords that are usually associated with spam. They can end up in the spam folder and lower the email open rates.

Click here: Learn 13 practical tips to avoid emails in spam folder

Conclusion

Email marketing is a great way to grow your e-commerce business by allowing you to communicate with your customers directly. It’s cost-effective and implementing this strategy is quick and easy.

You can also combine ecommerce email marketing with other channels like social media or content marketing to maximize the results. You can create a deeper connection with your customers by creating personalized emails and using different types of campaigns.

Use promotional offers, transactional updates, or informative newsletters, to increase brand awareness and engagement. Avoid common mistakes like sending generic emails, weak subject lines, or ignoring mobile optimization.

If you want to grow your business successfully, email marketing is the right way to start. Don’t wait any longer! Contact our experts at Mastroke to include email marketing in your strategy and see your business’s full potential.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How to start with email marketing?

You can start by setting up your marketing goals and creating an email list. Use a reliable tool to create and send your email campaigns or you can take help from any agency.

2. How to maximize email marketing efforts?

Start with segmenting your audience, building personalized content, setting up automated campaigns, analyzing performance metrics, and optimizing based on the data obtained to achieve the best results.

3. Is email marketing still relevant?

Yes, email marketing is more relevant than ever. Researchers have found its impact will continue to grow in the coming years. So, it’s best to start leveraging email marketing for your business.

4. How is ecommerce email marketing different from email marketing?

Email marketing is a broad tool of using email to communicate with an audience for various purposes while ecommerce email marketing is specifically designed to optimize sales, customer retention, and revenue for online businesses.

About The Author

Lata Raj

I am a content writer who loves telling stories with words. I am an animal lover and believe that everything happens for a reason. I try to find ideas in everyday life and try to think out of the box.