8 Practical Email Marketing Tips for E-Commerce Startups

You might have heard dozens of tips on how to craft a perfect email. Some say send marketing emails as often as daily, others say not too often to avoid being branded as spamming. Some advise that a good email is about compelling design, while others think the content is all that matters. But only you can figure out what is working for you and what isn't. Here are some tips that can help you make the most of your email marketing campaigns.

According to the research findings by WBR Digital and Emarsys, over 80% of retail professionals designate email marketing as the greatest driver of customer acquisition as well as retention.

As you can see, email marketing plays the predominant role in running a business. If you have started an e-commerce business recently but have yet to generate leads (collect subscribers), you see how you are missing the biggest opportunity to increase your sales.

#1 Learn From Customer Behavior 

You can focus all your energy on page views, CTR (click through rate)’s, or analysis by geographical locations of your website visitors, etc. To some extent these matters a lot, but these are all behaviors of your customers after they arrive your website. 

If you really want to get to the core of email marketing; to find out which emails have done well or done badly, what time of day is the most optimal time to send a newsletter, and of course, how often you should send it...

Focus on analyzing your customers' behaviors against your action. 

To analyze user behavior, it's essential to use a tool that comes with your email marketing service. GetResponse offers a great tool to help you analyze user interaction with your brand, such as;

Figure out which emails turned out well and why? Change your strategy for next email and see how things turn out.

Related: How to boost your e-commerce sales?

#2 Use Persuasive Call-To-Action Buttons

What good is an email if it doesn’t tell the user what to do next? 

You can design the most beautiful email campaign but if you do not put a proper call-to-action button in your email, it won’t do any more than providing an information. By introducing a button such as 'Sign Up' 'Buy Now' 'Offer Ending Soon' in your email campaign, it will give the user bigger chance to take instant action.

#3 Use Power Words to Stimulate Emotions 

"Power words" are persuasive words to trigger actions by users. The term is often referred by copywriters, but not just for copywriters, you can try various words over time and learn which ones are effective in terms of getting good response from your subscribers.

Figure out what words are getting more attention and clicks and use them from time to time in your email campaign. Power words can be used in the following 3 parts of each email.

1. Use in subject line to grab the attention at the user's inbox ("Confidential: Get This Now or You'll Regret.")
2. Use in main body to persuade them to read on ("This offer is not officially authorized just yet, but I'm revealing it only to you."
3. Use in CTA button to trigger user's action ("Be The First One To Unlock This!")

Fear, Astonishment, Curiosity are beautiful elements will force your user to act. Statements like "Why your dog hates you" or “Are you frustrated with your own website?” will establish some form of emotional appeal to the users. Use these to find the pain points and deliver value to your user.

Set the tone of every email. But you shouldn't be overusing power/emotional words. Not throughout. Because these motional elements should be added to highlight the important parts of your email. 

#4 Integrate Email with Social Media

If you really want to get the full potential from your email, you need to integrate social media with your email. Social media adds credibility to your brand. By letting your subscribers know the existence of your social network accounts, you will provide a sense of trust.

Of course you need to keep up with some of the major networks such as Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram. It's important to update them regularly. The least you can do is to tweet daily. It will send a signal that your brand is actively up and running.

#5 Watch Out for Customer Engagement

It is not about how many hits you got on your website, it is about how many customers took your message seriously and actually engaged with it.

Your customers (subscribers) might click the CTA button in your email and view the destination page. The question is what they do next; not all the customers who are directed to the page will make a purchase. They might simply move away (close the browser), in which case this particular campaign wasn't a success.

But they might click another link to read one of your blog posts or look for other products or discount offer pages that you may have. They are 'engaging' with you, and they are the potentials. You can analyze your user engagement by finding out points such as;

• What was the goal of your campaign?
• How many users followed your message?
• How many percent of users engaged via your email campaign?
• In which area can I improve to get better response?

#6 Retarget Your Customers Based Upon Their Behavior

A 'welcome email' will be sent to new users upon joining your subscription list, followed by some generic autoresponder. But once you know the behavior of your users, you can segment the list of your subscribers by behavior, and plan to retarget accordingly. 

There are some key questions that you can ask yourself in order to figure out how to retarget your customers in a more meaningful manner. The questions include;

• Which service are they most interested in, and why?
• Why did they leave certain emails unread?
• Which campaigns went successfully, and how many % of them engaged?

#7 Optimize Your Email for All Devices

What you need to do is to make your emails as responsive as possible. 

People across the globe will be receiving your email. And people use different devices to go through your email. If your email doesn’t look good on their device, they won’t bother taking further actions.

#9 Keep It Short and Crisp

An email is just a reminder of your services. You don’t need to tell the whole story in the email. And if you do, they'll be unlikely to read it all. The last thing you want is to talk for too long, annoy your potential customers and lose their interest in your business.

It's so easy for e-commerce business owners to only focus on promoting themselves. The more passionate you are about your brand, the more you might want to talk about it. You want to explain to the world how wonderful the products/services you are offering. You want to show them how you care, how you established your business and how you got where you are now.

But the reality is, no one's interested in you that much, unless they are the followers of your brand, or hardcore fans. They're just consumers who are looking for what they need. They can look elsewhere at any time if they don't receive your message clearly.

That's the reason why you should keep all your emails short and crisp. You know what you should be focusing on;

• Help your subscribers - what they need from you,
• Keep them interested, to minimize the number of un-subscribes, and
• Main message you want to convey (you want them to buy your products).

Keep these key points in mind at all times, and organize the series of your campaigns around them.

Over To You...

It costs nothing to be creative with your email. It’s important to note that a professional internet marketers and website agencies master the art of sending an email that generate leads.

Try out different things and analyze the results. The best feedback is when you can learn from your mistakes and design the next email that will be focused on the needs on your customer.