Your ecommerce email marketing strategy is vital. It will help you stay in touch with your loyal customers, keep them informed about their orders, and increase sales.
For ecommerce businesses that need to communicate with customers about shipping, order confirmations, and other transactional details, email is still a vital marketing channel.
It’s the glue that holds your company together, building customer loyalty and trust.
Once implemented, ecommerce email marketing can help you improve and grow your business over time.
The Ecommerce Email Marketing Process
An ecommerce email strategy differs from a regular email strategy because it includes transactional emails such as order confirmations, delivery notifications, and payment receipts. Promotional emails are used to inform subscribers of special offers, share new product lines, and keep in touch. Instead, they should work together to create a solid strategy that both nurtures sales and meets customer needs.
How to tell promotional emails from transactional emails
Promotional emails (also known as email newsletters) are planned campaigns sent to your email list. These are people who signed up for your emails via a signup form.
A promotional email campaign has two main components:
- An opt-in form to collect emails;
- Your email marketing campaigns to your subscribers.
Retailers use promotional emails to stay in touch with customers beyond purchases. You can use them to promote sales, new product launches, and company news while building stronger customer relationships.
Transactional emails are more formal.
Emails sent automatically after a purchase on your ecommerce website, regardless of whether the recipient has subscribed to your list. Buyers expect to be notified when they make an online purchase, so these emails are vital. Transactional emails are also more likely to be opened because they contain order information.
How to Plan for Promotional Email
1. Create a signup form
Create an email signup form – most email marketing services offer this option, which you can customize with your logo and text boxes. You can even change the button text to something more appealing than “subscribe”.
Place your signup form in prominent locations on your ecommerce site. Popular locations where you can place it are:
- On your homepage
- Sidebar
- In the website’s footer
- Its own signup page
- Below blog posts or news articles
- On any of the above pages
2. Create email templates
Next, pre-design your email templates so you can send emails quickly as needed. So instead of starting from scratch every time, you can use a template.
Create email templates with your brand’s logo and colors that can be used for campaigns and newsletters.
Most email services offer customizable templates or drag-and-drop email editors, so no coding knowledge is required.
How to Plan for Transactional Emails
It takes longer to set up transactional email than promotional email, but once set up, it’s ready to go.
1. Using a dedicated service
Trying to manage your transactional ecommerce email strategy without a dedicated email service provider is a lot of work. You can always use the features provided by the ecommerce platform where your store is hosted, but the options are limited.
Instead, a transactional email service lets you track real-time analytics to ensure delivery and optimize as needed. You can also customize email templates to create a consistent brand experience.
2. Connect email plugin to your ecommerce platform
Plugins are great non-tech tools. It allows you to connect your ecommerce platform to an email service and synchronize the two systems (particularly handy for managing your ecommerce email contacts).