The success rate of an ecommerce business depends largely on the marketing techniques being practiced by the company. Of all the popular marketing techniques, email marketing has often been found to be the second most effective marketing channel for e-commerce businesses. But this piece of information is not enough for the implementation of an effective email marketing strategy. It’s been more than two decades that we have the option of e-mailing but today we can personalize it to a significant scale. And it totally depends on how well we are utilizing this leverage and convert the humble email into a powerful marketing weapon.
Let’s have a brief look at the most effective ways in which you can use email marketing to boost ecommerce sales.
1. Customer Relationship Management
Though customer relationship is a much broader term, what we really need to study for efficient email marketing is the customer lifecycle or the different stages in which the customer is in relationship with the seller. Sending out generic emails to all customers barely does the trick. So, you have to personalize the mails according to their life cycle.
A. Abandoned Carts
Potential customers need an extra bit of attention from your end. There are probabilities that a significant part of these customers will abandon the carts after selecting the products of their choice. At this point, you are to study the pattern of abandonment and take steps accordingly. Within half an hour of the abandonment of a cart, a mail should reach them assuring that you are providing quality customer service. The e-mail should be prompting enough to urge them to revert back with their grievances. Even if there is no check out, you would know the shortcomings that led the customer to back out and take measures to fix it at the earliest. You should try at least 2-3 e-mails at appropriate time intervals to convert the abandoned carts into customers.
B. New Customers
An ecommerce business should immediately follow up with a new customer. A welcome mail is mandatory. You should also provide the links of social media portals where they can stay connected with you and get updates about new products and offers. One thing which is really important and should be included in the mail is the story of your business. That definitely helps in establishing a branding with the customer. Further, you can offer discounts for their next purchase and keep them updated about the products they might be interested in.
C. Existing Customers
There should an efficient e-mail campaign for the existing and returning customers. You can send promotion mails which also ask for a feedback and reflects how important their feedback is for you. For your regular customers, there should be a VIP campaign. Meaning, they should get a special treatment now and then. These can be the customers who purchased the most in the last month or have purchased three (or more) times. Let them know that they are one of your best customers and treat them with a discount or free shipping now and then.
D. Previous Customers
These are the customers who didn’t show any purchasing signs since a long time. You can try sending out a polite mail stating that they are missed or work on strategy e-mails to call them back. Study their purchase history and persuade them to check out the latest products which you have for them. You can also provide some incentives to call them back.
2. Reminders
You should always refer to your customer’s purchase list while customizing emails for them. For the products which need replenishments, you can send out reminders to your customers to stock their essentials. It can be beauty products like soap, shampoo, etc, or food essentials like oil, spices, and other home vitals. If someone has a purchase cycle of a month for such products, the e-commerce business should study the pattern and send a marketing e-mail when you can predict the supply might be coming to an end. The mail should be inviting and promoting similar products to the purchase history of the consumer.
3. Product Reviews
Provide incentives to your customers to reply to the feedback mails. Make sure to directly link it to the review section of the product bought by them. A product with reviews definitely gets more preference than the other with no reviews. So you can make your marketing emails a way to lure the customers to leave a review for the product they have purchased.
4. Customize Transactional Emails
The chances of opening a transactional e-mail are around 21% while it stands to only 3% for bulk promotional mails. Optimally utilize the information by promoting your products in the transactional mails. Whenever a customer opens a transactional email, there should be a catchy link that directs him to similar products on the website. You can also try showcasing some handpicked items in the mail, which might be alluring to the prospective customer.
5. E-mail Campaigns on Birthdays and Anniversaries
When a customer signs up as a member, maintain a database of the information about the important dates in their life. It can be their birthday, their spouse’s’ birthday, or their wedding anniversary. Make sure to provide some incentives to your customers on these particular dates. Send an e-mail a few days before along with the expiry date of the offer. You can be selective about the incentives; it can be a ‘free shipping’ thing or a certain percentage off on any particular products (that’s relevant to the specific buyer.)
6. Say no to ‘no-reply’ mails
Many of the e-commerce firms follow a pattern of automated mails where the customer cannot get back to the seller. That’s a strict no. You should always be open to customer enquiries and feedbacks. Keep this platform open and let your customer get in touch with you hassle free by sending the marketing emails from a personalized e-mail id where they can reply back.
The above are some of the basic things you can do to use your e-mail marketing to boost sales. Off course these will be effective only once you have taken care of all the ecommerce storefront development requirements and optimized your store for conversion. There are innumerable innovative ways in which you can call back your existing customers or allure some new ones. You just need to study the patterns and work a bit more when it comes to e-mails.
