It is commonly believed that e-mail marketing is one of the most important areas of digital marketing. The role of e-mail marketing comes down to using e-mail messages aimed at creating and maintaining a valuable relationship with the customers. Nevertheless, the role of e-mail marketing may be multi-faceted. Some companies use e-mail communication to give the insight about their current portfolio as well as the products they intend to launch in the near future.
Let's take a look on how to make the best use of e-mail marketing in order to boost conversion in your online shop. What elements should you pay attention to when creating an e-mail marketing campaign?
Make a plan
According to the “Global Email Marketing Market Analysis & Trends - Industry Forecast is 2025” the email marketing market will grow by over 20% in the next decade and will be worth about $23 billion. Well, that's a really big the icing on the cake!
A high conversion newsletter is like a winning battle – a well-planned strategy will help you win the war for customers. To achieve this goal, you must prepare a strategy. Specify the budget and range of activities, analyse your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as the actions of the competition, to achieve three goals:
obtaining leads,
converting leads into clients,
encouraging customers to re-purchase.
How to achieve it?
Registration form for the newsletter – do you have a “carrot”?
E-mail marketing does not exist without a list of subscribers. How can you build a database? Add a form on the online shop page. Offer additional value to anyone who leaves contact details.
The proverbial “carrot” can be:
discount on first purchases,
e-book with interesting content,
guarantee that your subscribers will be the first to receive information about the latest promotions.
What to look for when creating a mailing campaign?
1. Mobile first
At the beginning, you should make sure if your e-mails are responsive. This means that they should be readable on various screens regardless of the respective size. It is of utmost importance, especially nowadays as mobile devices are more and more prominent.
2. Get attention with the title
The subsequent important element is the subject line. Be aware that the subject line should be coherent and should stir the interest of the reader. Besides, it should be specific and should pay the attention to the content of the message. Don't rush yourself and don't include elements implying that you want to sell something. Add a sales offer in the message.
3. Take care of the visual aspect of mailing
As far as the body content regards, make sure if it is attractive visually. Start a mailing project from its upper part – remember that in this region the recipient will focus after opening the message. That is why it is worth to put here products that meet the needs of customers and those that you want to sell. Also take care of the aesthetics. Remember that one picture is worth a thousand words!
4. Call to action
The indispensable element of any e-mail marketing campaign is a trigger described as “call-to action”. It is important to add only one call-to-action item per e-mail. Multiple call-to-action catchphrases may be quite confusing and make the recipient distracted. For this reason, you should inspire the reader to one crucial action – “buy now”, “order”, “check the offer”. Customers like to know what to do and what kind of benefit they will receive. Remember that!
5. Cross-selling and up-selling
Convince your customers to make another purchase. Offer them complementary products or more expensive than the ones they bought. For example, if a client bought red shoes, it is worth sending her an email with a discount for a similar colour purse. In this way, you will increase the value of the shopping cart in your online shop.
6. Brand awareness
First of all, if you want to increase the number of your potential conversions in e-mail marketing, take care of brand awareness. Be a leader in the industry. Publish interesting content on the blog and in social media, respond to customer inquiries. Trust is a very important issue, also in e-commerce. Clients reach your e-shop with various channels. In each of them you need to build a coherent and authentic messages. Then, after receiving an e-mail from you, the lamp lights in their awareness – “Yes, this is the company that I follow in the social media and I read their blog! I'm happy to buy their products!”.
7. Take care of systematic e-mailing
Be sure to send you e-mails as frequently as you can. Such an action will result in a skyrocketing the number of leads. Notify customers about promotions, a new delivery of goods, events in which your company takes part.
8. Segmentation and personalisation
E-mail marketing is a very direct form of contact with clients. Everyone who reads messages from you should feel – “Yes, this offer has been prepared especially for me!”. Segmentation and personalisation have such power.
9. Test and optimise
Last but not least, you should test out different options from time to time. To put it precisely, you can try out different sending times as well as different subject lines as well as e-mail templates. This behaviour makes it possible to find the optimal solution from the perspective of conversion.
All in all, e-mail marketing may be the great support for any online shop. Use this communication channel to build the image of your brand, establish relationships with customers and to increase sales. Send personalised messages, offer complementary products, show bestsellers. Do not forget to constantly optimise the content of mailings, their format and sending times. Analyse delivery statistics and select products that are most popular. Thanks to this, sales in your online shop will increase!