More than 4 billion daily users, over 306+ billion emails sent (and received) each day, and with roughly 64% of small businesses depending on the channel for revenue, email marketing is still the undisputed champion when it comes to digital marketing channels.
Email marketing is effective not just because of the volume of mails sent and received or because of the number of users; it’s also because email marketing is one of the very few marketing channels left that actually brings in results.
Along with SMS marketing, when done right, email marketing allows for personalization and segmentation to a captive audience that voluntarily signed up to hear from your brand.
Start Building Your List
The foundation for email marketing begins here: by building your email list.
Getting subscribers is just as important (if not more!) than the collective push on your e-commerce store to have people buy products and services.
Give away lead magnets (of all kinds) to start growing your list. ECommerce coupon codes are the low hanging fruit (Get 20% Now).
You can add more lead magnets by making information packaged into downloads such as PDF checklists and other documents that present a low-friction offer (not buying yet, just browsing).
Without this first step, everything else you read below falls apart.
Create an Email Marketing Calendar & Identify Main Promotion Periods
Staying organized and knowing what kind of emails you’ll send on any given day (or week, or month) is crucial for email marketing success.
Creating an email marketing calendar and also identifying main -- read “hot” days clearly marked for promotions -- helps you go trigger-happy without guilt when you send email campaigns.
BFCM, the holiday season, special days like “Father’s Day”, “Mother’s Day”, “Back to School” season are special days for you to mark on your calendar.
This is on top of subscriber-specific special days such as anniversaries, birthdays, and more.
Segment Your List
Segmenting your email list(s) helps you send relevant emails to groups of subscribers (some of them might already be customers or maybe just sitting on the fence).
Existing customers of a product don’t want to see an email selling the exact same product. See?
Email marketing segments can be as many as you can handle, depending on how subscribers engage with your email campaigns, action they take on your e-commerce site, subscriptions they make, orders they place, or the shopping carts they abandon, and so on.
Sharp, clear, and well-sorted segments give you specific target groups (within your email subscriber list) that you can send relevant emails to.
Say a customer purchased a “GroPro” -- that should be a segment by itself. Sending cross-selling emails goading them to purchase GoPro add-ons, GroPro cloud subscription, GoPro accessories, and newer versions of Go pro?
Makes terrific sense.
See where we are going with this?
Optimize Over Time For Subject lines and Email design
You never know how email subject lines, email design, email copy (content), and email campaign timing works if you don’t watch these and optimize them over time.
Your own perception of how you “think” your email subject lines are or how well you think your email copy is are rough guidelines that are fine to begin with.
Over a period of time, however, you’ll do very well to optimize so as to create better performing email subject lines, email design, email copy, and more.
Achieve optimal performance over time with regular testing and tweaking. Measure results against existing performers to find better performers.
Implement Automations and Campaign Flows
Automations might be fancy for a regular business; they are mandatory for eCommerce.
Given that you’d have more customers per store (for a DTC brand or a regular B2C brand) and more touch points (or triggers) than normal, automations help you “outsource” mundane tasks, get smart with email campaigns, and help you run a tight ship.
Some email marketing automation campaigns are not only smart but also profitable: win-back campaigns; retargeting campaigns targeting shopping cart abandoners; segment-based automated campaigns aimed at cross-selling or upselling -- these are campaigns that are a must-have for your e-commerce business.
Send 2 Emails Per Week
Most brands don’t email marketing campaigns at all.
Some overdo it.
A few others send a few emails (on and off) -- the frequency is so haphazard that most subscribers and even customers forget the brand.
Much like everything else worth doing in life, an effective email marketing strategy finds support in pre-established frequency of email sends.
We highly recommend at least 2 emails per week.
Need inspiration? Sign up with Panoramata to see thousands of real, active, and ongoing email marketing campaigns that e-commerce brands (sorted according to industry, niche, verticals) use. Including frequency of sending, email subject lines, email design, actual email content, and more.
Measure ROI Weekly
Almost all email marketing platforms allow you complete access to analytics -- all the way from how many people see your opt-in forms and landing pages to how many people convert on each of these. You’d have data readily available on delivery rates, open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, bounce rates, and more.
Often, you’ll also get “replies” from engaged subscribers (and customers) leaving you a window of opportunity for conversations.
Apart from all of these metrics, the main set of KPIs you’ll need is to measure your ROI from weekly campaigns.
Number of emails sent (+ types of campaigns) = Revenue
