Ecommerce Email Marketing Strategies to Boost Sales and Engagement

There are numerous channels available to grow your online store, including social media and affiliate marketing. Yet, successful entrepreneurs know that ecommerce email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to drive profits.

Despite the growing popularity of social apps, email usage continues to rise. With the global market for email marketing valued at over $8.3 billion, your email list is a treasured asset. But turning your subscriber list into a revenue stream takes more than gathering email addresses. 

In this guide, we will show you proven strategies you can implement for great results. We will also share the best tools and automation workflows for ecommerce businesses.

What is ECommerce Email Marketing?

Ecommerce email marketing is a marketing strategy that uses email to engage current and potential customers. It’s an effective tool for generating repeat sales for your business and building relationships with your audience. 

Ecommerce email marketing can be low-effort, like sending messages to promote new products. Or it can be complex, such as sending an automated email triggered by user behavior on your website. No matter what you decide to send, the end goal is to boost engagement and drive more sales.

Why is Email Marketing Important in Ecommerce?

There are many channels through which business owners reach their target audience. So, why is email marketing particularly beneficial? The simple reason is that it works. 

Here are some benefits of e-commerce email marketing:

Effective and direct: Emails are delivered straight to the customer’s inbox. Unlike social media campaigns where the algorithm can reduce your visibility, email marketing offers a one-on-one connection.

Targeted messaging: Email allows you to tailor your content to your audience’s needs. For example, you want to send one campaign to first-time buyers and a different one to repeat customers. 

Strong brand loyalty: Email solutions offer a great way to build a loyal community. Subscribers are people already interested in your product. Sharing updates and relevant resources with them is more likely to convert.

Cost-effective: Email marketing tends to be more cost-effective than other marketing channels. For instance, you eliminate payments for ad placement or location fees for shoots.

Time-saving: Integrating an email marketing API saves time, allowing you to prioritize other parts of your business. You can automate email campaigns, send timed messages, and access detailed analytics.

What Types of Emails Do Ecommerce Businesses Send?

There are various types of ecommerce email campaigns. Each serves a specific purpose in nurturing leads, encouraging customer loyalty, and increasing sales.

Promotional Emails

Businesses use promotional emails to inform subscribers about product launches, discounts, contests, and so on. The main goal of this type of email is to create interest in your products. 

Promotional messages are a common ecommerce email marketing tool. It is essential to give your audience a reason to connect with your brand. You can do that by highlighting how your products stand out or offering discounts.

Promotional emails can be divided into:

Product launch emails: These introduce your customers to new products or collections. If they have bought your product in the past, there’s a high chance they will patronize you again.

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Seasonal newsletters: You can use newsletters to keep customers updated about your brand. They offer a perfect way to ensure your brand stays on top of the minds of your audience.

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Discounts and flash sales: These promotional emails are a great way to drive traffic to your store. They create urgency and encourage immediate purchase. 

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Transactional Emails

Transactional messages are an important part of email marketing in ecommerce. They keep your customers informed throughout the sales cycle. These include:

Subscription confirmation: These are welcome emails you send after someone subscribes to your email list. You can use them to introduce your brand and set the precedent for future interactions. Welcome emails are especially important because their open rates are higher than general emails. 

Order confirmation emails: You send these after a customer makes a purchase. These emails provide purchase details and give customers peace of mind when they patronize your brand.

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Survey or review emails: Feedback is crucial for business growth. With these emails, customers share how they feel about a purchase or shopping from your store. You can gain insight into what your audience likes or dislikes about your brand.

Lifecycle Emails

Lifecycle emails engage customers depending on the stage of their journey with your brand. They are automated and increase conversion by ensuring you send the right message at the right time. Key examples include:

Welcome emails: As stated earlier, these messages are the first content you send to new subscribers. They can also be triggered when a customer purchases for the first time. Welcome emails let the customer know what to expect from your brand. But you can also use them to share more details about your business.

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Re-engagement emails: As a business owner, you’ll notice that shoppers always come and go. A re-engagement email increases your chances of winning them back. You can make your message enticing by offering a discount or suggesting a product based on their purchase history.

Browse or cart abandonment emails: You send browse abandonment emails when a potential customer goes through your catalog and leaves without adding an item to their cart. And if anything was added, cart abandonment emails encourage the shopper to complete their purchase.

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Upselling and cross-selling emails: An upselling and cross-selling message is your ecommerce email strategy for increasing the average order value. If a customer likes one product, there’s a high chance they’ll love a similar or complementary product. Upselling recommends an advanced version of what they just purchased. Cross-selling suggests products that complement their previous orders.

Best Practices for Ecommerce Email Marketing

Knowing the different types of emails and setting them up for your brand is not enough. In a day, over $361 billion emails are sent and received globally on average. Standing out in a crowded inbox can be a challenge. 

What can ecommerce businesses do to improve their open rate? Here are some ecommerce email marketing tips we recommend.

Don’t buy email lists: Building a subscriber list from scratch can take time, but it's worth it in the end. A customer who willingly signs up to your email list will likely engage with your content, while emailing without consent leads to blacklisting and destroys your sender reputation.

Keep your list healthy: Regularly run a check to remove inactive subscribers, duplicate emails, and fake accounts. A clean email list is the foundation of successful ecommerce email campaigns. It improves email deliverability and protects your sender reputation.

Send personalized emails: Everyone is sending emails, but one way to stand out is to send tailored messages. Personalized campaigns typically fall into these categories:

• Behavioral 
• Demographic 
• Contextual 

Behavioral personalization utilizes the customer’s activities, such as purchase history, emails they engage with, etc. Demographics uses information such as location, age, name, and gender to make recommendations. Contextual refers to adapting content based on where they are in their customer journey. For example, are they new, loyal, or about to purchase?

Pay attention to your copy: Email marketing for ecommerce doesn’t have to focus solely on product sales. Create relevant and informative email content. When promoting your product, go beyond its features. Highlight the value it offers your readers.

Optimize for all devices: Use responsive email templates. Some people check their emails on a desktop, while others use mobile devices. Emails should be convenient to read on any device. Pay attention to all elements, including font size, image size, and CTA button placement.

Test your emails: Split testing, also called A/B testing, helps you identify the most effective version of your campaign. By sending different variations of the same campaign to your subscribers, you find out which one delivers better results. For example, you might test the effectiveness of two different button colors. When performing split tests, it’s best to focus on testing one variable at a time. 

Have a compelling call to action: What do you want the subscriber to do? Emails are a great way to nudge your customers to take action. A compelling CTA should be clear, concise, and visible. You can regularly test which CTA your audience responds to using split testing.

How to Create an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

In e-commerce email marketing, having a strategy is essential to achieving your marketing goals. Below are some steps that we recommend you follow.

Step 1: Identify your customer touchpoints 

The first step is identifying the interaction points between your business and customers. How will you get existing and potential customers to subscribe to your email list?

By optimizing these entry points, you can grow your email list organically. For an ecommerce business, key touchpoints include:

• Website and checkout pages 
• Landing pages for sales and promotion
• Blog subscription forms
• Social media channels

Step 2: Define clear goals and objectives 

A successful ecommerce email marketing strategy should align with your business goals. Here are a few questions that can help you define your objectives:

• What do we want to achieve with our email marketing efforts? The answer could be to improve engagement, drive repeat purchases, boost awareness, etc.
• What performance indicators are we trying to improve? Open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, subscriber growth?
• Who are our email subscribers? What are their demographics, interests, and behaviors?
• Which segment of our audience should we target?

Step 3: Determine the kind of emails to send

Sending only sales-related content to subscribers is a poor ecommerce email marketing strategy. In fact, sending these emails too often can increase your unsubscribe rate. Understand the different email types and what purpose they solve for your business.

As a reminder, emails generally fall into these categories:

• Transactional emails: Order confirmations, welcome emails, thank you emails, shipping notifications.
• Promotional emails: Discounts, special offers, sales, product launches.
• Lifecycle emails: Re-engagement emails, welcome, shopping cart abandonment.

Step 4: Craft a customer journey map

The goal of your emails is to guide your audience toward a desired action. Craft a journey map that outlines the steps a subscriber will take to perform this action.

Tailor your campaigns for each stage of the customer journey. Whether a customer is discovering your brand or about to purchase, your emails should meet their needs at each point. If they drop off at any stage, follow up with the relevant email to guide them back. 

Step 5: Choose the right email marketing tool

Manually sending emails is unsustainable, especially as your customer base grows. Invest in a robust email marketing platform with everything you need for your campaigns.

When selecting an ecommerce email marketing tool, there are vital features to consider. These include automation, easy integration with other tools, email templates, and analytics to measure performance. 

Which Email Marketing Tools Work Best for Ecommerce?

Here are the top platforms that offer a variety of features to make your ecommerce email strategy a success:

• UniOne: UniOne is a reliable ecommerce email delivery solution designed to scale with your business. It offers rich templates that are easy to customize, advanced analytics, personalization, and real time webhooks. Also, it allows you to automate your campaigns and integrate with popular marketing tools.
• Mailchimp: This platform allows you to segment your audience and set up behavior-triggered automation. It has an intuitive interface and a drag-and-drop email builder, making it excellent for people with minimal design skills. Other features include A/B testing, audience management, templates, and detailed analytics.
• SendGrid: With SendGrid, you can set up your campaigns with responsive templates or build from scratch using the drag-and-drop editor. It also offers email automation with simple triggers, list management, and high deliverability rates.

What are Examples of Successful Ecommerce Emails?

We’ve said so much about email marketing for ecommerce. Now, let's look at some impactful ecommerce email campaign examples.

Postmates

Source: Really Good Emails

Postmates’ The Meal Matchmaker campaign solves a common customer dilemma – indecision about food. It features a quiz that encourages the reader to actively participate, making the experience enjoyable.

Some interesting elements that make this email work effectively include:

• Personalization. The email is not personalized with a name or preferences. However, the quiz is tailored to individual tastes by offering food options based on the reader’s answers.
• Visual design. The email uses high-quality images of food and vibrant colors that capture attention immediately.
• Clear value proposition. A $10 discount with the code EAT10 encourages immediate action.
• Strong CTA. The prominent “Order now” button ensures the reader knows the next step to take.

BetterBrand

Source: Really Good Emails

BetterBrand’s abandoned cart email combines personalization and sustainability messaging. It also adds a clear incentive to encourage the reader to complete their purchase.

Here’s why BetterBrand’s approach is a great ecommerce email marketing strategy:

• Personalization. The email addresses the reader by name, which creates a sense of connection. Personalization is always a winning factor in campaigns.
• Emphasizes benefits. This email highlights high-quality ingredients that make the product worth purchasing. The mention of eco-friendly practices will appeal to customers who prioritize those values. 
• Incentive. Offering free shipping on orders above $45 motivates the customer to clear their cart. It can also potentially make them add more products to their cart.

How to Measure the Success of Your Ecommerce Email Campaigns

We can't discuss email marketing for ecommerce without mentioning how to track performance. Measuring your performance is the best way to discover which strategy to double down on or eliminate.

When you use an email service provider such as UniOne or Mailchimp to send emails, it tracks key performance indicators. These include bounces, sends, deliveries, opens, and clicks. 

Let's look at some metrics that help you determine the success of your campaigns. 

• Open rate. Your open rate tracks the percentage of recipients who open your email. This metric is important because your campaigns won’t achieve anything if your recipients don’t open and read them.
• Click-through rate. This tells you the percentage of subscribers who click on any link in your email. Often, the goal of an email campaign is to get the reader to click on a link. So, this is also an important metric to track.
• Bounce rates. This occurs when the email server rejects your email. There are two types of bounces: a hard bounce and a soft bounce. A hard bounce happens for permanent reasons like an invalid email address. A soft bounce occurs due to temporary issues, such as a full mailbox.
• Unsubscribes. This shows the percentage of people who opt out of receiving your emails. Customers unsubscribe for many reasons, but a high rate indicates underlying issues. Are your emails irrelevant to your audience? Is your subject line misleading? Do you email too frequently?
• Spam complaints. This indicates the percentage of recipients who mark your email as spam. A spam complaint rate over 0.2% shows your readers don’t find your content valuable. Also, not including an unsubscribe link can make people mark your content as spam. 

How Does Personalization Improve Email Marketing Results?

Personalization is one of the most effective tools in email marketing. It allows you to tailor content based on the recipient’s preferences, behavior, past interactions, and demographics. Instead of sending a generic message, this approach helps craft relevant and engaging campaigns. 

Personalization makes all the difference in your email marketing results. Emails with personalized subject lines increase open rates by 26%. Tailored email content is more likely to capture the reader’s attention, which boosts engagement rates.

Beyond higher engagement, personalization also shows your customers that you understand their needs. It helps you build strong relationships with your audience. This connection, in turn, can lead to brand loyalty. 

Which automation workflows should ecommerce businesses implement?

Workflow automation helps to streamline email marketing for ecommerce businesses. It allows you to engage customers at the right time with minimal manual intervention. Here are some automation sequences you should consider:

Welcome and onboarding series. These are sent automatically when you get a new subscriber. A 3-email sequence can include:

• Email 1: Thank you for subscribing and an introduction to your brand
• Email 2: An overview of your best-selling products
• Email 3: A discount on their first purchase

Abandoned cart recovery. An automated reminder can help you recover lost sales. The goal is to gently remind customers of their cart content and prompt them to return. Your recovery series can look like this:

• Email 1: A summary of the items left in cart
• Email 2: Create a sense of urgency, such as a low-stock alert
• Email 3 (optional): Offer a discount with a time limit. You don’t want to use coupons all the time, as customers may learn to wait for sales before buying.

Post-purchase sequence. This engages customers and encourages a repeat purchase. The sequence can include:

• Order confirmation with tracking details
• A thank-you message with product usage tips
• Request for feedback after some days
• Cross-sell recommendations based on their purchase

Implementing these automation workflows helps you engage with the customer at every step. You can increase conversions and boost revenues with reduced manual effort.

Conclusion

Ecommerce email marketing isn’t just another marketing channel. It’s a powerful tool that provides a direct connection with your customers. 

Email gives you control over the relationship you have with your audience. It also delivers impressive results with the right strategy. Every email you send plays a role in strengthening your relationship with customers and driving revenue.

We’ve covered so much in this guide. Now, it’s time to start creating email campaigns and automated sequences that will drive sales.

How UniOne Can Help with Ecommerce Email Marketing

Not sure where to start? Leveraging an email marketing platform can simplify the process. With the right tool, you can implement everything discussed in this guide, from personalization to automation. 

UniOne offers advanced email solutions to help online stores boost engagement and increase sales. Its email API makes it easy to automate workflows and track real-time performance. You can also integrate with popular ecommerce tools and CRM systems.

If you have any questions or need help getting started, feel free to contact the team.

FAQ

How do I start ecommerce email marketing?

To start email marketing for ecommerce, select an email marketing platform, design engaging email templates, and create a few campaigns. Other things will take shape as you grow your email list. This article highlights effective strategies and best practices you can adopt.

What makes a successful ecommerce email campaign?

A successful ecommerce email delivers tailored content to achieve a clear goal. The goal could be promoting a product or gathering feedback.

How important is email marketing for ecommerce businesses?

Email marketing is crucial for e-commerce businesses. It helps build customer relationships, increase retention, and drive sales. Email remains one of the most effective marketing channels for engaging and converting shoppers.