Junk mail, spam, inbox clogger, whatever you like to call those emails that go straight into the trash, they can leave a negative impression on us. Often, our own bad experiences with email marketing convince us that it doesn’t work. However, research proves that email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social, and is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter!
The Benefits of Email Marketing, Does Email Marketing Work, and What Can it Do For Me?
Email marketing can be a great way to build strong, lasting relationships with customers. Emails that include birthday rewards, personalized messaging, and wish list prompts remind them why they bought from your store in the first place and help keep your brand top-of-mind. Still not convinced? Here’s some of the latest data, according to research and surveys, that should help sway you:
- On average, email has an ROI of 4400%
- 57% of email subscribers spend 10-60 minutes browsing marketing emails during the week.
- 4.24% of email marketing visitors buy something, compared to 2.49% of search engine visitors and 0.59% from social media.
- 66% of all U.S. email is opened/read on smartphones or tablets
Convinced yet? We thought so.
To help you on your email marketing journey, here are five tried-and-true ways to increase eCommerce revenue through email marketing.
1. Capture Email Addresses
Your first step with email marketing is obtaining your customer’s email addresses.
Start by making a call-to-action button on your home page offering a perk, like a certain percentage off or an exclusive free program to show that you care about your customers. What you don’t want is to make it hard for your customers to find your subscription options. A few other vital sign-up spaces are the main page of your blog, your ‘About Us’ page, and your ‘Contact Us’ page. Remember, the goal is to make it easy to find and sign up.
After they sign up, be sure to follow up with a welcome email. This doesn’t have to be anything long, just let your customer know what to expect from you and provide them with whatever incentive got them to sign up in the first place. If you’re upfront with your goals, customers will respect and trust you.
Example: 
2. Reward Loyal Customers
Usually, a large part of your overall revenue will come from a small number of clients; this is called the 80/20 rule. These are the customers you want to focus on rewarding because they’re more likely to engage with your emails, redeem rewards, and make repeat purchases.
We recommend setting up a tier-tracking system based on who’s opening, clicking on, and purchasing products through email campaigns. These tiers of engagement, help you optimize what kind of rewards to give and to who.
Remember, treat your top customers well and they will keep coming back, often times recommending you to their friends. Leading me into our next tip!
3. Promote Product Reviews
By now, it should be common knowledge that having positive reviews of a product increases the likelihood it will sell. In fact, having even just one review can see an uptick of 10% in orders and increase overall sales. This happens thanks impart to social proof (showing others who bought and enjoyed your product), and an increase in search results (more reviews equals more content per page, which equals better SEO!)
The best way to generate product reviews is to set up a personalized automated email a few days after a customer receives their product saying thank you. In the thank you message, inform your customer that any feedback, good or bad, is appreciated on their specific purchases. Be sure to promise that you’re listening and will share their reviews. However, if this still doesn’t bring in enough reviews, you could offer an incentive for customers to leave a review. For example, the company Boden, sends a post-purchase email offering a chance to win $200 when you leave a review. $200 for 2 minutes of work and a few gold stars? Yes, please!
4. Wishlist / Abandoned Cart Reminders
Abandoned cart emails remind customers that those items they looked at but didn’t buy are still waiting for them. If you have a product about to go on sale or go out of stock that you notice is often left abandoned, now’s the perfect opportunity to put together a promotional email to all those individuals that thought about purchasing but for some reason didn’t.
It’s also easy to set up an automated email asking them why they didn’t complete their transaction. According to Business Insider “Initial emails, sent three hours after a consumer abandons a cart, average a 40% open rate and a 20% click-through rate.” This easy reminder might just be the extra push someone needs to purchase the item.
5. A / B Testing
Last, but by all means not least, is the idea of A/B testing your most important emails, like the ones we’ve already discussed. The basic concept behind A/B testing is using multiple versions of the same email, with tweaks to the subject line or email body to determine which one performs better.
HOW WE TRIPLED ECOMMERCE REVENUE IN 18 MONTHS
By capitalizing on conversion-centric email marketing, social media, online giveaways, and abandoned cart emails, we significantly increased brand loyalty, awareness, and most importantly—eCommerce sales.
Doing this will help narrow down what performs well with your customers and what doesn’t. If you know that “20% Off Today Only” performs better than “Save $10 Today”, you can start crafting more emails with this style subject and drive more sales!
Implementing these five email marketing tips is an excellent way to drive more sales and even more loyal customers.
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What other email marketing ideas would you like us to cover? Is there something you’d like to know more about in this article? Be sure to leave us a comment/review and we would be happy to answer it!
