Retailers understand that their email lists are one of their most important assets. However, collecting customer email addresses is one thing, but knowing how to leverage those email addresses is a whole different ball game. In this post we’ll cover the power of email marketing, and how it can benefit your ecommerce business.
When is email marketing the most beneficial?
Email marketing can help solidify your customers’ engagement with your brand. It is most beneficial for brands that sell directly to the consumer so you can tell your story and build that connection with your customer. Emailing marketing is best used for keeping existing customers engaged or building lists of potential customers, rather than cold emailing people in the hope they are interested in your products.
When you receive a new sign up to your email list, you need to consider:
- What was their on-site behavior?
- What do you want them to know about your brand?
- What products are most relevant to them?
- What should they know about your products?
- How do you want them to speak about your brand when they’re talking to other people?
Email marketing should build an experience to turn warm leads into sales, rather than bombarding cold leads with calls to action.
What impact does email marketing have on your business?
Email marketing is one of the most straightforward channels to create a complete campaign to target specific people on your email lists. It offers the perfect ground for testing new products and promotions, and seeing the effectiveness of marketing strategies. You will see the results of email marketing campaigns within 48 to 72 hours, so it is easy to pivot if a campaign is not working. It’s also relatively cheap to create and send emails, versus advertising on Facebook, where you have media costs on top of content creation.
If you manage your email marketing correctly, it can easily account for at least 30% of your sales revenue. It is a massive chunk of your business and therefore needs proper management. Email is the perfect tool for really fostering the relationship with your customers after the sale and increasing the lifetime value of a customer by ensuring they repeat purchase, purchase related products, or purchase a product subscription.
Email is one of the only forms of marketing where you can break your lists down into an almost infinite numbers of segments to target with tailored products, offers, and messaging with the goal of increasing click-throughs and conversion rates. You can segment and target on the basis of factors including, but not limited to:
- Geographical location
- Demographic data (of you collect it, or append it from 3rd parties)
- Number of purchases
- Types of products and product categories purchased
- Types of products and product categories viewed, but not purchased
- Past email interactions
You can see what works for certain demographics and what doesn’t and ensure you are getting the most value from every customer type on your lists.
The role of email marketing in ecommerce strategy
Due to it’s impact and efficiency, email marketing should not be an afterthought in your ecommerce strategy – it should be one of the main pillars. At Emplicit we believe brands can build a sustainable ecommerce business with email marketing and maximize the earnings from their email lists.
Any email marketing should be part of a holistic marketing strategy, and should consider the business and marketing objectives, the brand identity, product launches, and other ecommerce initiatives, to generate bespoke email campaigns for specific segments, products, or product categories.
To create and implement a successful email marketing campaign requires the following specialist skills:
- Strategy development
- Copywriting
- Design
- Email automation software management
- Reporting & analytics
- CRO & testing
For this reason, we recommend using a digital marketing agency like Emplicit as we have the subject matter experts and can take away all of the hassle of running email campaigns, while ensuring that your email marketing is being handled well.
How can an email marketing team help my business?
A professional email marketing service can help you understand what the numbers of your email analytics mean. They can use them to create and implement the best email marketing strategy for your brand. Professionals will not only help you to grow your email marketing list in the right way, but also to retain your current email list and build a strong connection between your brand and your customers.
Emplicit conducts email audits as part of our marketing strategy development process. Here we look at the flows you have now and analyze their performance and look at any gaps in your strategy and creative. Then we make recommendations on quick tactical fixes to increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns be they abandoned cart emails or promotional emails, and longer-term strategic improvements to your segmentation and campaign structures.
