How to design an email marketing strategy for effective e-commerce

Email marketing is one of the older marketing strategies out there, but it is not dead! Here we will give you a few keys for designing effective ecommerce strategies.

These days it is almost impossible not to have been subject to an email marketing action from some ecommerce site if you have an email account. Offers, promotions, corporate information … the contents of these emails can be of any kind. Email marketing is one of the most well-used in the world of online marketing and continues to be one of the most effective channels when it comes to generating conversions in any kind of online business.

According to the study “current state of marketing by email in 2016” from the Newsletter2Go platform, 98% of respondents claim to be willing to increase investment in email marketing for their e-commerce site in the future. And another very interesting study on the subject of email marketing for e-commerce is one by ADigital, entitled “Research on the use and perception of email marketing in Spain“. Of those interviewed as part of this research, a quarter states that between 10 and 20% of their online sales were made thanks to the use of email marketing.

In short, email marketing in e-commerce is more alive than ever and as we previously mentioned, it remains a key and indispensable channel in any online e-commerce marketing strategy. In any case, for our strategy to be effective, we must follow some guidelines that will help us to capture the attention of users, as well as to prevent our mails from ending up in the dreaded spam folder.

In this article we will give you a series of guidelines to follow when launching an email marketing campaign. Ready? Then keep reading…

Adapt to new trends

Online marketing is a constantly evolving subject. This should encourage us to be up-to-date on all the latest innovations and trends in the sector, as well as adapting our strategies and actions constantly. As far as email marketing is concerned, we might highlight three key trends for the coming year:

• Newsletters in motion: the first newsletters with animated GIFs began to appear in 2015, which had a great impact and generated good results in terms of interaction. Thanks to the general advancement of all e-mail platforms, in 2017 more and more corporate emails have animated/moving elements, either GIFs, presentations or inserted videos. However, some mail readers still do not read them well and only show them as a fixed image. Keep this in mind so that if it happens, the email does not lose any of its meaning.
• Simple and responsive designs: it is well known that that more and more users check their email using their mobile phones. Modelling these newsletters by thinking first of mobile phones and of  PCs secondarily, instead of the other way around, will be a key to success in 2017.
• Personalisation: there are more and more tools in email marketing that allow you to personalise emails so that the user receives only what they need and what is relevant.

Segment your database

As we mentioned in previous paragraphs, personalisation, not only in messages but also in the type of content, is one of the key factors for the success of an email marketing strategy in e-commerce. In this regard, it makes sense to offer content that is relevant to each group of users based on their likes and needs.

Let’s look at a simple example from an online dropshipping store for pets. One way to segment our database would be by type of pet, cat owners for example. A weekly newsletter to this segment with the latest product updates for cats would be much more effective than a generic newsletter to our entire database.

Design campaigns that add value and capture the attention of your customers

Did you know that 70% of internet users have used coupons or discounts that they have received by email at least once? Two for the price of one promotional campaigns or those with discount coupons, usually have a high success rate with customers, although they are not the only ones that generate good conversion levels.

A newsletter or bulletin is another of the most common email marketing actions used in e-commerce. This is an email that is usually done periodically (weekly, fortnightly or monthly) and that often combines different types of content, such as products, articles or innovations from the store, for example.

There are countless email marketing actions that can bring very good results. Here are some examples:

• Welcome campaigns for new subscribers.
• Campaigns for special dates: Christmas, Mother’s Day, Black Friday, or our online dropshipping store anniversary, for example.
• Informative campaigns. This could be to announce the launch of our blog or a new section of our online store for instance.
• News: products, collections, services, etc.
• Tips relating to recently purchased products.
• Congratulations on birthdays, festivities and so on.
• Customer testimonials.

If you want to know more about different types of emails, you can look at this other post on the BigBuy blog which goes into more detail on the subject.

Define your KPI and analyse the success of your email marketing campaigns

Once you have created your database segmentation lists, defined your email campaigns, designed the different creative elements and adapted your messages, it is time to launch … and of course to track the results.

After all, you’re going to get little or nothing from your email marketing strategy if you don’t analyse the results of the actions taken. There are different KPI or key indicators for measuring the success or failure of an email marketing strategy for an e-commerce store, although the best ones will be those that well define your business.

We will now detail the most important:

• Opening rate: % of users who have opened your email.
• Un-subscription rate: % of users who have unsubscribed from your notifications.
• Rebound rate: % of failed emails or those that have not reached the inbox.
• Click rate: % of clicks in the email (of the total number of mails and of those that were opened).
• Conversion rate: % of conversions (sales for example) on total shipments.

Do you have any questions or comments on how to implement an email marketing strategy for your e-commerce site or dropshipping store? We look forward to your comments!