In this week’s podcast, Trevor talked to Kelsey Johnson from the email marketing aWeber about how to use email to generate sales for your eCommerce business.
Email is still important!
Email is used more than any other communication platform and is still widely used, even among Millenials and Gen Zs. Most people will look at their email daily, so it is a very personal and effective way to reach customers. Unlike other platforms such as social, it is used for work, private message and promotional messages.
Benefits of email marketing
Email marketing works across almost all businesses and has the following benefits:
- Drives repeat business. Emails enable merchants to stay in touch with customers and encourage future sales.
- Nurture future customers. Customers may sign up for an email marketing list as they are interested in making a future purchase
- Ownership. Unlike marketplaces and social media channels, you have complete ownership of your email list
- Cheap! Email marketing is very cost-effective.
Opt-in is crucial
From both a compliance perspective and to ensure good performance, it is essential to get customers to opt to receive emails from your business.
Steps to run an email marketing campaign
Kelsey recommends the following steps to run an email marketing campaign:
- Choose a tool. You will need a tool to run your email marketing campaigns that supports list management, sign up forms and automations. Very nice to have are split testing and good reporting.
- Migrate your existing list. Ensure that any email your port over are recent to prevent ending up in the spam box.
- Integrate with your eCommerce platform. Systems such as Shopify will integrate with most email markets tools enabling customers to be added to lists automatically.
- Add a sign-up form to your site. Pop-up forms with a discount are one of the most effective ways to build you list AND incentivise sales
- Create automations. Automations are email flows which automatically send emails to customers to keep them in the loop. Automations could recommend new products or invite them to follow you on social media (see below).
- To be most effective, tailor the email to the recipient. Most email marketing tools will enable the email to be personalised, for example, with the recipient’s name and product recommendations based on their purchase history.
Tips for building a list
The bigger your list, the greater your opportunity to make sales. It is never too early to start list building. Strategies for building a list include:
- Pop up form on your site
- Tick box at checkout
- Make listing building part of your social strategy. Link to your email sign-up form from your social profiles and offer an incentive to sign up
Recommended Automations
When customers are added to a mailing list, they can be automatically sent a series of emails called an automation. These need only be set up once and can generate a steady stream of sales over time. Successful automations include
- Welcome series. E.g. send a different popular product every day for 5 days
- Weekly product. Send out a product of the week to each customer
- Win back. After a customer has not purchased for a while, send through an enticing offer to win them back
- Abandoned cart emails. Send out emails to customers who have started the checkout process to remind them to complete the purchase. Abandoned checkout emails are among the most successful email automations.
Creating successful broadcast emails
If you have specific offers, or useful announcements, these can be broadcast to your list. Tips for creating broadcast emails
- Create compelling emails. Ensure your emails are well designed and
- Keep it specific. Keep the message specific and focused
- Discount. Discounts are always successful but are to be used sparingly so your customers do not expect discounts
