When you look at companies like Overstock, do you know where they are getting the majority of their sales from? Email marketing is the lifeblood of eCommerce stores to raise conversion rates. However, if you use it wrong, it will not generate any sales.
Email marketing for ecommerce
Email marketing for e-commerce
Email marketing is a clear opportunity that brands have to get an impressive ROI. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42 (DMA, 2019). In spite of the new forms of communication, email continues to grow and be the main driver of customer retention and acquisition for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). 81% of SMBs rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel, and 80% for retention (Emarsys, 2018).
What a nice surprise! Recent studies have shown that adding videos to your email can increase click rates by 300%. Internet marketers also tend to include sliders, collapsible menus, or GIFs to make their marketing emails look better to customers. – Martech Advisor’s, 2017
How many of you use email when it comes to e-commerce marketing? If you do, what are your results? Once your ROI is increasing, it will allow you to spend more money on Content Marketing, SEO, FB Ads, Google Ads, etc, but email marketing should be your first marketing tool. Let’s break down eight email marketing tactics that work like a charm, mainly when it comes to e-commerce websites.
1. Filter your email list
Too many people are now working with e-commerce email marketing out there and often they are just like, “My list is huge, I am at 100,000“, “I am at 200,000“, and “I am going to keep emailing everyone“. However, my suggestion is that you should scrub your list of subscribers! Otherwise, what you will find is that your emails are going to Google’s Gmail promotions tab.
Subject lines lead 50% of users to open emails
- # Remove duplicate emails
- # Remove spam email addresses
- # Re-engage subscribers with offers
- # Test if you create poor subject lines
- # Delete cold leads if they don’t re-engage
- # Delete subscribers that never open emails
- # Prioritize the most-engaged subscribers’ list
- # Remove emails with typos (e.g., Hotnail)
- # Your info matches the right field? (e.g., Don’t say, “Hi, marketing”)
- # Find out “what your most engaged subscribers respond to best” and “why“
Why are your emails going to the promotions tab? It happens because you keep emailing people that are not opening up your messages. On the other side, if you scrub your list, you will be sending emails only to those people that are opening them. Your deliverability rates go up! You get into the inbox, and thus your open rates go up, your clicks go up, and finally, your sales go up. The established GetResponse email marketing platform advises us to run an engagement check every 3-6 months as a minimum for every branch of business.
How to scrub GetResponse’s email list
If you are using another email provider like ConvertKit, they will automatically do it for you. Some email providers like MailChimp may eventually end up changing it. Email providers will not incentive this practice. When people scrub their email lists, it makes their revenue go down, drastically. But, if you do not scrub your email list, you will end up noticing that your emails will go more into the promotions tab.
2. Combine email with other marketing tools
Be aware that email marketing is not just about sending emails. Actually, other marketing tools can boost your newsletter. For instance, you can combine the action of sending emails to your subscribers with push notifications. Push tools send information through people’s browsers. Thus, when someone subscribes to your website with built-in advanced tools like Subscribers, you will be able to let your list know about products that they could end up buying.
Email notifications are by far the preferred method of communication
You can push them to news like “Dear, these products are now going on sale“, “Dear, your cart is not complete“, or “Click here to finish the checkout process“. In fact, you are not going to get a ton of sales through this system, but all these little things add up value. If you leverage each of the seven tactics combined, you will start seeing your sales go up. 
Unѕurрrіѕіnglу, people who uѕе their ѕmаrtрhоnе аѕ their primary dеvісе аrе mоrе lіkеlу tо wаnt mobile content nоtіfісаtіоnѕ or tеxt/mеѕѕеngеr nоtіfісаtіоnѕ. Nеwеr орtіоnѕ, lіkе desktop notifications аnd mеѕѕеngеr арр nоtіfісаtіоnѕ hаvе a ѕmаll potential аudіеnсе сurrеntlу. Gіvеn that dеѕktор notifications are bеіng pushed оut bу bіg рlауеrѕ like Fасеbооk, wе еxресt to ѕее mоrе ореnnеѕѕ tо rесеіvе thеѕе nоtіfісаtіоnѕ іn thе futurе.
3. Create trigger-based eCommerce emails
Are you using sales and marketing triggers effectively? You want to make sure you do trigger-based emails, mainly if you running an e-commerce store. If someone else subscribed to your list of emails, it means that the person added some stuff to his shopping cart, but not completed the checkout process.
You may be asking yourself “What should be my email to this potential client?“. It should be about how this person can complete that checkout for those products!
To recover a potential client that abandoned the shopping cart, do not shoot an email containing not-related, general information like “Check out our e-commerce store” or “Here are all these products that we sell. What a terrible email!
Understand that person already has shown interest in what you are selling out, he wants to buy and just needs that push over the edge. Your email should be warm and specific about the products or services added to the cart.
Put reviews in that email to show what it is like if your potential clients buy such items. You may also include a time-based offer that will expire within hours or days. You may even insert (or simply show) a countdown gadget to them.
Perhaps, some testimonials that already have experienced those items. Sales triggers used to be super effective, they will make you produce a ton of sales from that. The messaging in abandoned cart emails is fairly simple. Below is an outline of the basic structure:
- # Snappy subject line
- # Introduction text
- # Items left in the cart
- # Offer or discount
- # Checkout button or call to action (CTA)
- # Reviews or social proof
- # Closing text
According to Omnisend, a series of emails works 63% better than a single email for abandoned cart emails. You might thus consider a drip campaign for your cart recovery emails. A drip campaign is a series of automated emails. For an abandoned cart workflow, the emails could be structured like this:
- Email 1: Cart reminder (sent a few hours after cart abandonment)
- Email 2: Follow up (sent a few days later)
- Email 3: Promotional discount (sent a few days after email two)
Whether you send one email or implement a full drip campaign, there are a few best practices to keep in mind when planning an abandoned cart email. For instance:
- Timing: Send an email within a few hours after a customer abandons their cart
- Personalization: Put the left items in their cart and address them by name
- CTA: Encourage customers to complete their purchase (e.g.; “Buy Now”)
- Copywriting: Create a snappy, concise, and compelling copy
- Subject line: Put discounts, humor, or questions (e.g., “20% off today purchase”)
- Social proof: Use reviews and testimonials to create FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
Sales triggers are perfect for nudging prospects over the line and discovering sales opportunities you never knew existed. After all, it is one thing to convince prospects that you are selling a great product. It is another thing to get them to pull the trigger and choose your product over dozens of competing purchases.
While triggers alone can be enough to create urgency and drive a sale, they work even better when paired with micro triggers — events that reflect product demand at the individual level (reviews, testimonials, etc). The best sales outreach combines multiple triggers. Establishing urgency doesn’t need to be hard.
Abandoned cart emails to win customers
4. Send promotional emails
Promotional email is the most popular type of email in marketing. Permanent discounts and frequent bonuses may not be necessarily the best thing to do. But, in e-commerce, when you do promotional email campaigns during Cyber Monday, Black Friday sales, a Christmas special, or a New Year’s special, you’ll see a whole slew of sales come in.
We’ve seen that e-commerce stores can typically get 25%, and 30% of your sales during these peak holiday seasons. You do not want to be at the last minute writing these promotional emails.
You want to make your email campaigns set up in advance, to leverage these promotional-based periods when happens a sharp increase in sales. Besides, you want your buyers to tell others about your products. You’ll be surprised at how often they tell their Twitter followers about the items you offered.
Ask your buyers to Tweet-share your promotions
Create promotional emails
5. Set the optimal text-image ratio
Most e-commerce companies love using image-based emails. Do you know what happens with image-based emails? They get pushed into the promotions tab. For instance, Gmail and Outlook, all know that when someone sends you an email with a ton of images, it is usually a promotion. However, when someone sends you a text-based email, it is typically a friend. Hence, you want to use text-based emails.
Text to-image ratio recommended by Mailchimp
If you decide to include a single image in your emails, the MailChimp recommendation is to adopt the 20% to 80% text-image ratio as a standard. Besides, you should follow thе basic tірѕ оf a good nеwѕlеttеr content:
- # Avоіd spam wоrdѕ
- # Add Unsubscribe link
- # Keep your emails short, to the point
- # Add a lіnk tо thе nеwѕlеttеr web vеrѕіоn
- # Use lіghtwеіght vіѕuаlѕ (nо mоrе thаn 5 Mb)
- # Thіnk twісе оvеr thе ѕubhеаdіng аnd pre-header оf уоur email campaign
Short content emails found in affiliate marketing
6. Add upsells to post-purchase emails
Typically, upsells and downsells are shown on the checkout page as soon as clients add items to the shopping cart. Make sure you add this option to your web store. That is interesting to note that most of your audience will not buy them right then and there. Therefore, you should look at what people are currently buying primarily, and then, send the respective upsells and downsells by email to your buyers.
Uрѕеllіng іѕ a ѕаlеѕ tесhnіԛuе whеrе a ѕеllеr іnduсеѕ the customer to рurсhаѕе mоrе еxреnѕіvе іtеmѕ, like high-end products, upgrades or other add-ons in аn attempt to make a mоrе рrоfіtаblе ѕаlе (e.g., if your customer bought a necklace so offers the earrings as upsell). If a сuѕtоmеr dоеѕ not wаnt thе product уоu wаnt to ѕеll, уоu suggest a сhеареr аltеrnаtіvе, the dоwnѕеll (a rеvеrѕаl оf the uрѕеll) (e.g., if your customer rejected the earrings so offers the ring as downsell).
At Thank You pages, secondary products are usually short and to the point. Through email, they can be shown much more in-depth, and longer, and you want to space it out. You want to follow up with all the other products that they can buy from you and make their shopping experience even better. However, it is very important to get the right timing! Otherwise, your emails will not convert at all. 
What do customers expect to see in personalized ecommerce emails?
Let your customers know your forthcoming recommendation is not random, it is rather closely related to the item previously bought by them. Since their first purchase was such a success, they will likely stick around to see what else you can offer again. Some recommendations to offer upsells are:
-
- # Put upsells/downsells on the checkout page
- # Put upsells/downsells at “Thank You page”
- # Send an email within an hour to buyers that did not buy the upsells at the checkout page
- # If they did not buy upsells/downsells in the first email, so do not hit them the next day saying, “Buy this upsell, buy this downsell“
- # Wait a week or two weeks after they receive their primary products, then offer again upsells and downsells
7. Create short, text-based emails
Everyone thinks like, “When you send out an email, people open it up whenever they do“. If you have a ton of unopened emails in your inbox, what happens? You will find that you are less likely to go through all the ones that are at the bottom and open them up. People get lazy, it is not just you! It is everyone! You should thus look at what time that person came to your website and put in their email address during the checkout process (or anywhere else on your site). That is when you should be sending them an email. I try to stick within that timeframe, usually within an hour, versus sending it whenever it is my convenience. 
The average email open rate by potential buyers tends to be higher when the store owner emails them back within an hour after they’ve abandoned products/services in a cart.
Abandoned cart emails statistics
Email campaign success depends upon subscriber engagement. You can analyze subscriber engagement by answering some simple questions: What time do your readers normally browse through their inboxes? When are they most likely to open and click? Do they read messages that are more than 12 hours old? GetResponse set out to answer these questions in their latest research on open-and-click times and came up with some interesting conclusions shown in the infographic below.
Infographic: Best time to send email
8. Best days to send emails
In 2013, GetResponse also analyzed over 300 million messages to determine the top times for open and click-through rates. They analyzed autoresponder email sequences to measure client engagement over time. And their results are shown below:
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