The backbone of an e-commerce business is customer connect. Your potential customer must remain hooked to your e-commerce platform. They should have a high level of interest in your offerings and slowly but surely they must develop curiosity & confidence about your product and services. There are several ways you may adopt to stay connected with your potential customers, email marketing is one of them.
Email marketing can be very rewarding but getting hold of the tricks of the business is not easy unless you have the right guidance. In today’s blog we will briefly teach you to learn how to master the art of effective email marketing. At the initial stage there could be failures too but it’s never advisable to quit.
If we make a comparison with other marketing channels, email marketing has proven to be far more effective, beating its near competitors by more than 24% in terms of customer response and sales generated. If planned and initiated appropriately, email marketing can be highly profitable
Before you start, it’s important to know why you need email marketing in the first place. In e-commerce business, your main goal is to establish a loyal client base who would actually purchase from your platform. You have to build the trust to ensure that repetitive visits do happen. In order to build customer loyalty, several steps like promotional emails, Free coupons, special discount offers etc are initiated.
In order to obtain better results we shall focus on various steps of running a successful email marketing campaign. Help you attain faster & more effective results and equip you with the knowledge and know how about being a smart email marketer.
Creating a reliable & strong customer base
The 1st step is always to create a loyal customer base. Before you start your email marketing campaign, you should be ready with your potential client list, with whom you might have been dealing with already or might have shown keen interest in your products.
This is one scenario, another scenario can be, how can you get the customers hooked to your online retail site/e-commerce platform. You might be having the list of buyers already or if you don’t how can you collect the new contacts & email addresses.
Create a pop-up on your site that works as a bait
Your pop-up display should attract new customers with new offers and discounts, coupons etc. But it should not be too quick to ask for an email address. Anyone who clicks on your pop-up link might be a potential customer and when they make a purchase, they will provide their email address. Majority of e-commerce marketing professionals use this method to collect customer data and leads for sales.
The great tactics of offering Freebies
Freebies are the most common strategy to attract new customers/buyers.
Your email can be equipped with “lead magnets”, relevant to the product on sale or similar to the client’s selection. Not only its cost effective, it’s a smart strategy to get your client hooked to your retail site. An opt-inbox in your sidebar or a pop-up works very well to excite your customer and make them curious about the offer waiting for them.
In case you have a successful blog post running already, you can opt to add on “content upgrades” to attract more client traffic.
Running a contest
Creating a sense of competition among the potential buyers is always a great idea. You can get access to a large number of potential customer email addresses by running a contest on your retail site. It is also an effective way to gain new sign-ups but at the same time it attracts a lot of irrelevant attention too. For example: people who are only interested in the freebies but not your product.
Email address as a way to access your retail site/e-commerce platform
There are e-commerce companies who have achieved success trying this method. It’s about making it mandatory to share the email address of the customer in order to get access to your online store. This is a great idea but might not work with start up companies. For companies that are already established and where customer sign-ups happen in bulk on a regular basis, this method can be successful.
Running advertisements
If you are selling low cost goods on your retail e-store, running ads can be ideal for you. Running ads are generally targeted to boost sales immediately by attracting customers and transact sales. If your idea is to get a sales boost immediately and gather email addresses of customers while completing the sale transaction, Running ads can be a good idea.
Also the running ads can aim to promote a “lead magnet”. This is targeted to sell goods of higher value.
If you have high value products on offer in your e-commerce site, its often very difficult to close a sale instantly. The client may be very sceptical in transacting a high value transaction on the e-commerce site. The lead magnet attached with your site works good here. If your customers opt-in to receive lead magnet, a better & long lasting relationship can be established with your customer based on goodwill & trust.
Also it is not a bad idea to sell low cost items on your e-commerce site to start with, in order to test the waters. Based on the customer response you can collect the email address of the clients while closing the sale and later use it for promoting higher value items. If the client has already used
Email Campaign
Once your email data base is ready your next step is to launch a well calculated campaign to your target clients and get them encouraged for sale. You may engage the people by running promotional emails.
Significance of Welcome Email
An old English proverb rightly says that the “first impression is the last impression”, that our 1st impression to other people should be the best one so that it can create a long lasting effect on the other person. Same rule applies for email marketing strategies.
The welcome email is your 1st impression towards your customer. There is always a possibility that the welcome emails have the highest open rates (more than 50%) than the normal/regular promotional emails. Hence if the welcome email can make a positive impact in the minds of your customer, you win half of your battle. With a great 1st impression you can gather a good response in terms of new subscribers, enquiry emails etc.
Seasonal events & email promotions
Seasonal events are of great significance to kick start your email marketing campaign. This is the time of the year when the customers tend to loosen their purse strings to make that desired purchase. The festivities also attract a bulk of ritual buyers who abide by the rituals attached to a festival, like buying gifts for friends and family during New Year, Christmas, Diwali, Durga Puja, or smaller events like Valentine’s day, Easter, Halloween etc. There are many online e-commerce companies who wait for these seasonal events to boost their sales.
It is advisable that you do your homework well and try to align your products for the seasonal events and launch an on-time email campaign to reach your potential customers with attractive offers, bonus/coupons, discounts/freebies, so that you can make the most out of the demand surge.
Email campaign targeting the Cart abandoned customers
It must sound very interesting to know how a win situation can be derived out of a loss. Cart abandonment is such a behaviour of the customer that has shown the path to success to many popular ecommerce companies and e-retailers. It is observed that more than 65% of the potential buyers subscribe to check the product on display, some even save it as a wish list for future purchase, or save it on the Cart and then disappear.
It is definitely a good idea to go after these potential buyers with a well-structured email campaign that has the products of their interest on display. A dead enquiry or an abandoned cart request can be live again if the customer is approached with a lucrative offer like: attractive discounts, buy one get one offer, free shipping or others.
It is observed that almost 27% of the abandoned queries can be made live again with a proper targeted email marketing campaign and there is a great possibility that these LIVE customers will turn to be potential buyers. Hence running these kind of strategic email marketing campaigns can be made a regular practice for ecommerce companies.
New Arrivals
New arrivals are a common tag that you find in any retail store that you walk in. They are the fresh products or the fresh design that the company has launched. It can attract the customers who looks for a change or get something new or stay updated as per new trends, or even take a break from the monotony & repetition.
If your ecommerce platform have a variety of new products that can offered to the customers, it is a great idea to refresh your product list, revamp your stocks & display. It is always a great idea to keep your customers engaged and curious. Your potential buyers for the new arrivals can be your existing customers who already know about your company and its products and are now ready for next purchase.
Segmentation
Segmentation is an important element for success in ecommerce business. It is expected that you know the taste and preference of your customers and their buying habits, and you engage them often with your range of products and promotions.
Knowing the buying habits of your clients is a crucial aspect of your success in pushing sales. Hence segmentation helps you to categorise the list of buyers according to their buying habits and their interests. You are recommended to have a separate list for separate customers. For example : some are more interested in gadgets & electronic goods while some are more interested in household goods or some into fashion and garments. If the marketing campaigns are launched as per target clients then the results can be dramatic.
A proper segmentation will also help you escape your emails from getting blocked by your customers. If your mails are relevant to the past buying behaviour of the client and if they have already used your services/products, the opening rate of your email will be much higher. The study puts this figure upto 50% where as if you send irrelevant emails to the clients on a random basis, there is a 35% chance to get the email flagged as spam. To get your email tagged as spam is a bad news for an ecommerce company, its end of the road with that client.
Customer relationship and segmentation
In any business it’s your endeavour to keep your customers pleased with your brand. You can put a two stage segmentation to best use in order to redefine your customer relationship efforts.
You can divide your list into two groups, 1st group as super members and 2nd groups as Semi members. Super members are identified as those who have made purchase on your ecommerce site several times during the span of 12 Months. The Semi members are those who has not purchased anything during the last 12 Months.
You may send your Super members a note of thanks for being loyal to your brand. You may also design loyalty programs or gift cards for the Super members. Normally your customers will feel delighted and will make instant purchases boosting your sales.
For your Semi members also you can launch an email campaign, with vouchers and discount offers and it is bound to boost the sales even more. Hence a well planned email campaign can be your back bone for the sales boost in your company. Even an old inactive client can get enticed with your email marketing event and get you the ROI that could be beyond your imagination.
Another form of segmentation is to ask your customers at the time of subscription, what kind of promotional emails they would like to receive. This way you know their habits and preferences already without making much of efforts and the emails can be targeted accordingly.
Though a basic form of segmentation, this strategy can be helpful, if you’re trying to get subscribers to directly show you what they expect from your email marketing efforts. This can help build trust with your clients and make your ecommerce platform a favourable playing ground for your clients, they won’t move away anywhere.
It is very important that you define how you would like to segment your customers and the best way is to get a professional guidance from your ecommerce marketing support team. If you have a great support from a quality marketing team, you are a winner. They will help you design an affective email marketing plan and help create a long lasting relationship with your clients.
Conclusion
For you are an online retailer or an owner of an ecommerce company, email marketing should be your top priority. The success of your company depends on the kind of guidance/support you get from an email marketing company. It’s absolutely important for your organisation to make smart decisions, effective decisions and result oriented decisions.
Right from the start, your first introduction email, getting your subscribers, getting the right segmentation and then launching that perfect email campaign, will help kick start your journey faster. Try our services now and get your success into an overdrive mode.
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Myself Vignesh.d, doing a digital marketer and passionate about content writing.