Maximizing Ecommerce Sales Through Email Marketing

Once you have a website, an established brand, and products designed or sourced, your ecommerce business is more or less ready to launch. These are large parts of the foundation you need before you can start the marketing process.

There are dozens of strategies used by online retailers across the web, so you might be asking yourself: How do I ensure that I effectively market my online store to my target audience?

If you thought, ‘Through email?’ then you’re correct.

When your subscribers can see the products you offer, reach your website, and place their orders online, they’re far more likely to become actual customers instead of just window shoppers.

There are a few things that ecommerce store owners are already aware of: email is necessary, social media platforms can be very useful marketing tools, and brand and online presence are vital to drawing in your target audience.

Yet despite their prominence and abilities, many ecommerce businesses still struggle to generate leads and sales through email marketing. It can quickly become a nightmare when emails are being sent to prospective and existing customers with little to no return on the investment, but these tips can help you boost your conversion rates. 

How to Maximize Ecommerce Sales Using Email Marketing highlights:

• Segment your customers to increase personalization
• Create a welcome email series
• Set up an abandoned cart email series
• Offer exclusive discounts and other advantages
• Make sure your email’s design and layout are mobile-friendly
• Always make testing a habit

Segment your customers to increase personalization

Personalized emails are much more valuable to a potential or existing customer than generalized content. In short, segmentation and personalization work hand-in-hand to increase customer engagement. It allows businesses to break through the noise (as well as spam) and to reach their email subscribers at the right time with the right message.

Emails that have personalized subject lines are almost 26% more likely to get opened, and 3 out of 4 marketers say that targeted personalization increases their subscribers’ engagement.

So, what are you waiting for? Get to know your potential customers’ tastes, and offer recommendations accordingly. For example, segment leads that haven’t purchased anything from you yet by location, and offer tailored recommendations via email with products they may like based on where they live (such as winter coats for leads in the Midwest.) Keep in mind that by grouping your contacts and validating their email addresses, you’re going to make the personalization process more manageable.

Create a Welcome Email Series

One of the best email marketing strategies you can utilize is a welcome email series for your new subscribers. The welcome series is a perfect chance to create a stellar first impression. At this stage, the goal is to get your new subscribers hooked on your brand and what it stands for. This is where you introduce your business, tell your brand’s story, reinforce the benefits of being subscribed to your list, and emphasize why you differ from your competitors.
Your welcome series can also include some useful tips on how to use your products, or you may also mention the benefits of your products or include customer stories. Here’s an example of a welcome email series that CodeCrew created for one of its clients:

Set up an abandoned cart email series

Did you know that barely one-third of ecommerce businesses are following up on instances of cart abandonment through email? With the global average rate of cart abandonment of 75.6% in 2019, online retailers can’t afford to miss the opportunity to recover abandoned carts. 

Following up with people who were ready to purchase your product but for some reason didn’t can lead to massive wins for your ecommerce sales. This is where marketing automation and email marketing align—an effective cart abandonment recovery tool will give you the ability to automate incentives and reminders for those subscribers who complete their order – and bring them back to your online store so they can finalize the purchase. 

Regardless of what you do, cart abandonment will always happen, which means you’ll never bring your cart abandonment rate down to zero. Still, having a smart abandoned cart email strategy and pairing it with marketing automation will help you win back some of these shoppers and increase your ecommerce sales. 

Offer exclusive discounts and other advantages

Entice your marketing contacts by offering them subscriber-only discounts and other advantages. You will incentivize your potential customers to stay on your email list, and they’ll feel unique for having access to exclusive deals.

It sounds simple, but you can’t just promise an offer and leave it at that. You need to captivate your readers with email copy and convince them to say yes.

Limited-time offers and discounts are a smart and powerful marketing move. Those on your list will jump on promotions like there’s no tomorrow. But it’s not only the time constraints that encourage sales. As previously mentioned, the way you write your copy won’t just affect your current success rate; it will also impact future campaigns.

Make sure your email design and layout are mobile-friendly

Today, over 81% of American adults have at least one smartphone, up from only 35% in 2011, so more users are reading their emails on their hand-held devices than ever before. In fact, one study discovered that around 62% of email opens occurred on mobile devices in 2019.

What does this mean for your ecommerce business? Because mobile plays a major part in your potential customers’ purchase decisions, if you’re not optimizing your email campaigns to be mobile responsive, then you’re missing out on a vital portion of your audience that just doesn’t want to be bothered with poorly formatted emails. 

Each touchpoint matters. Absolutely every single email you send—not just newsletters or sales emails—ought to be easy to read and well-designed. 

Make email testing a habit

Testing your emails will help you boost your conversions and get vital insights about your subscribers that you might not have seen before. It’s generally a good practice to test your email marketing campaigns. From email subject lines, copy, and CTAs to imagery and colors, each element should be tested (ideally A/B tested) to optimize your outbound communication. You can also test layouts and delivery days or times to determine which perform best in terms of open rates and unsubscribe totals. 

After consistent testing, you’re going to find patterns to structure your future email campaigns so they’ll be effective and drive sales in your online store. 

Wrapping up

Email marketing remains one of the best digital marketing channels nowadays, especially considering 82% of consumers will open emails from businesses they’re already in contact with. It’s direct, it’s proven, and it can help you maximize your bottom line. By adding personalization to your emails, ensuring content is relevant, offering exclusive discounts and other benefits, and making sure your emails are mobile responsive, your chances of driving more sales will dramatically increase. 

Donna Delic is a content writer at CodeCrew, an Oakland-based email marketing agency.