Ecommerce Email Marketing – Tried-and-True Way of Generating Traffic
The objective of eCommerce businesses is to generate as much traffic as possible to increase sales. There are many ways you can generate traffic to your business, and one of them is email marketing.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t take advantage of email marketing. However, this strategy has multiple benefits, and one of them is making your customers feel like they are part of your brand.
It also gives them firsthand information about offers, discounts, and new products. This personalized marketing strategy is an excellent avenue for boosting sales.
This article discusses how you can drive traffic for your business using email marketing. It also covers the best solutions for eCommerce email marketing strategy.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing involves sending direct and personalized messages to people in large volumes. The goal of these electronic mails is to generate leads or sales for the company.
Advantages of email marketing
- It is permission-based, meaning customers who subscribed to your emails trust you and are likely to purchase from you in the future.
- Direct access to your target audience.
- It helps you build and control relationships with leads.
- It personalizes your interactions with each customer.
- It is measurable. Therefore, you can track and analyze the marketing campaign with automated email marketing solutions.
- It is scalable and hardly affects your resources or the quality of campaigns.
Disadvantages of email marketing
- Competition for attention with other emails in your lead’s inbox.
- Building an email list can be difficult.
- Difficulty navigating tricky rules and regulations governing the commercial use of emails.
- Delivery and deliverability issues.
Why is email marketing important for eCommerce businesses?
There are multiple ways through which businesses generate traffic and sales. Social media, affiliate marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine marketing (SEM).
Email marketing remains the most effective promotion strategy despite these other traffic-generation methods. In 2020, 4 billion people used emails, and the number is expected to grow to 4.6 billion by 2025.
In addition, 83% of consumers preferred receiving communications from businesses via email. Another impressive statistic is a $38 ROI for every dollar spent on email marketing.
This promotion strategy helps you generate leads. You can nurture these pointers and increase customer loyalty. You also have better conversion rates than any other marketing medium.
What do you need for an email marketing campaign?
Before embarking on an email marketing campaign, it is vital to know how it works. Three essential elements every email marketing strategy should have are:
- An email list
- An email service provider
- Marketing objectives
An email list
Every successful marketing campaign needs an email list. It is a database of people interested in receiving messages from your eCommerce brand.
Multiple ways exist for building email lists. A popular and easy method is offering your target audience something that interests them and requesting their email address. You can also take advantage of email lead generation tools.
An email service provider (ESP)
ESPs are email marketing platforms with software for electronic mail list management. Besides managing your messaging inventory, email service providers plan and execute your brand’s marketing campaigns.
With ESPs, it is easier to track each lead’s preferences or behavior and personalize communications with them. This leads to more conversion and a happy customer base.
Marketing objectives
Before starting an eCommerce email marketing campaign, have clearly outlined business goals. Examples of these goals include:
- Driving traffic
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating leads
- Engaging customers
- Boosting customers’ loyalty
- Increasing sales
Email lists, ESPs, and marketing objectives must align to make your email marketing campaign successful.
Tips for driving traffic with eCommerce email marketing
eCommerce businesses rely on traffic to have any chance of making sales. It is a big problem if you have an online store that no one knows about.
Email marketing helps you reach as many potential customers as possible. However, it would be best if you still did things the right way to have any chance of success. Here are some email marketing tips to help you drive traffic.
Avoid Complications
Ask them without overcomplicating things if you want people to sign up to your email list. A simple and effective way to do this is via a form builder. These documents help you get extensive information from a potential lead. However, they shouldn’t take too much time to fill; you won’t get a high conversion rate.
Offer Incentives
Give people sufficient reasons to sign up for your mailing list. What benefit do they stand to gain? Is it worth them signing up for the email list?
Therefore, please find out the needs of your target audience and offer them something tangible. For example, new sign-ups can get a 20% discount on a product or a shopping voucher. These offers spur people to sign up to your list.
Explore social media
As an online store, you should be on social media platforms. Leverage your followers on these platforms by urging them to sign up to your email lists. Platforms like Facebook have great email marketing tools, so capitalize on them.
Communicate clearly
All communications with email leads should be clear and straightforward. Tell new subscribers what they will get after signing up. You should be honest in all your dealings and avoid spamming to increase your chances of retaining leads and converting them to sales. In a nutshell, don’t offer what you can’t deliver.
Interact with your customers
After getting an email list, you shouldn’t leave the subscribers idle. Interact with them and tell them more about your brand and what they will benefit from becoming a customer. However, be creative with how you interact with your leads. Ensure every message has something of value and is not just cliché.
Know your customers and cater to their needs
Every customer is unique. Understand their preferences, behaviors, etc., and send personalized emails based on this information. These could be recommended services or products. Doing this increases your chances of making sales and boosts customer loyalty.
Ensure the email content is optimized for every device
People read emails via several means. While some do so on their mobile phones, others prefer their desktops or PCs. So, ensure all texts, pictures, or videos in your emails are easily accessible on all devices.
Although it is easy to keep to these tips, things can get complicated with many more customers subscribing to your email list. Therefore, never relent in your email marketing campaigns. Ensuring your email marketing strategy is always active is by using electronic mail service providers or automation tools.
Best Email service providers
eCommerce companies benefit from using email marketing solutions. Below are some of the best ESPs:
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an email marketing solution known for its incredible email marketing and SMS messaging capabilities. It is built especially for eCommerce businesses and is an excellent tool for storing customer data in a central place. Thus, it is easier and quicker to track information.
Although Klaviyo has multiple features like sophisticated reports and a comprehensive back-end design, it has drawbacks. For instance, it is expensive and can become very overwhelming for business owners.
Flodesk
Flodesk is one of the best alternatives to Klaviyo. Whether your eCommerce business is just starting or has been existing for a long time, Flodesk is the email marketing solution you can trust for your campaigns. Besides creating tailor-made messages that customers will love, it also has the following benefits:
- An intuitive email builder
- Design-focused email templates
- Automated workflows
- Affordable prices
Mailchimp
Mailchimp started as an email marketing tool before becoming an all-in-one integrated commerce platform. It is attractive to eCommerce startups because of its free plans. Other benefits include:
- Multiple marketing automation features
- Simple A/B testing
- Ability to track digital ads
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign does not stop at email marketing but goes beyond it to include full-spectrum marketing automation as part of its service offerings. If you want to automate every step of your customer’s experience, you should try it. However, it has many features you may never use, meaning you may pay more for less.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit started as an email marketing tool before growing into a creator marketing platform. It broke into the market by serving bloggers but now caters to a wider audience, including podcasters, musicians, etc. In addition, it has multiple beneficial features like built-in landing templates.
Drip
Drip helps eCommerce brands with their email and SMS marketing campaigns. Besides this, it helps create solid personalized messages for customers. In addition, you can integrate it into eCommerce platforms like Shopify for better consumer marketing management.
Conclusion
Email marketing is highly beneficial to an eCommerce business. It is a tested and proven way of driving traffic and creating awareness for a brand. Therefore, if you were sleeping on it before, reevaluate your marketing strategy.
This article discussed tried and true ways of generating traffic with eCommerce email marketing. So, avoid complications, offer incentives, communicate, use social media, know their needs, and customize emails.
Author Bio:
Lydia Iseh is a writer with years of experience writing SEO content that provides value to the reader. As someone who believes in the power of SEO to transform businesses, she enjoys being part of the process that helps websites rank high on search engines.
