Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools ecommerce brands have for driving sales. With the right strategy, it lets you reach customers at every stage of the buying journey and drive strong ROI, without blowing the budget.
Here’s how to put the power of email marketing to work for your brand.
Why Email Marketing Is Essential for eCommerce Growth
Email marketing gives ecommerce brands a direct, personalised way to connect with customers, delivering tailored content that drives engagement, encourages repeat purchases, and ultimately boosts revenue.
Key Benefits of Email Marketing for Online Stores
One of the biggest advantages of email marketing for ecommerce brands is how reliably it generates ROI. That comes down to the fact that your subscribers are already engaged, which makes them far more likely to take the action you’re after.
It also lets you reach customers at every stage of the buying journey. Some are ready to buy right now, others need more time to decide. For the ones who aren’t quite convinced yet, sending helpful content and product recommendations can be exactly what turns them into customers.
How Personalisation Improves eCommerce Email Performance
Email personalisation means tailoring content to your audience based on things like what they’ve recently bought and where they sit in their customer journey. With 71% of customers expecting a personalised experience from the brands they engage with, it’s worth getting right.
Backed by a solid ecommerce email strategy, personalisation delivers a range of real benefits, including:
Better open rates: Personalisation isn’t just about the body of the email, it applies to the subject line too. A personalised subject line that addresses your subscriber by name is far more likely to stand out in a crowded inbox and actually get opened.
Higher customer engagement: Personalised emails don’t just get opened and read more often, customers are also more likely to follow through when the email feels genuinely relevant and valuable to them.
Relationship-building: You can’t meet every customer in person, so personalisation is the next best thing for building real relationships. It helps customers feel like they actually matter to your business. Even something as small as a birthday offer can make someone feel valued.
Boosts sales: One of the biggest advantages of personalisation is its direct impact on sales and revenue. The more engagement your emails get, the higher your conversion rates and revenue climb.
Best Strategies to Maximise eCommerce Email Success
Crafting High-Converting Email Subject Lines
An engaging subject line is the foundation of a successful email marketing campaign. The best ecommerce subject lines tend to be personal, descriptive, and no more than 60 characters long.
Shorter subject lines usually perform best, especially for mobile users. Avoid overusing punctuation too, it can make your emails look spammy. Mailchimp’s research suggests capping punctuation at three marks per subject line.
The same goes for emojis. They can add a bit of personality to your subject lines, but one per line is plenty, more than that and it starts to feel like too much.
Shopify Email Marketing: Best Practices for Success
Shopify’s email marketing platform lets you design, automate, and manage campaigns all in one place. Here’s what to keep in mind to get the most out of it.
Optimise your send times
An effective email campaign strikes a careful balance between too few emails and too many. Shopify recommends emailing subscribers at least once a month to keep them engaged.
Before sending anything to your full list, send it to yourself first, it’s the easiest way to catch mistakes and confirm every link actually works.
Create engaging email content and design
What’s inside your emails matters just as much as when you send them. If you’re short on ideas, scroll through your own inbox and pull out the emails that catch your eye. You don’t want to copy them outright, but they’re a great source of inspiration for your own.
When you’re designing emails, keep them consistent with your brand guidelines. Your colours, fonts, and logo should all work together so subscribers recognise your brand the moment they open the email.
Leverage segmentation and personalisation
Sending the exact same email to every subscriber rarely works well, which is exactly why segmentation and personalisation matter so much. New customers, for example, might respond well to a welcome email series with a discount on their first purchase.
For repeat, loyal customers, loyalty perks show them you value their business and help keep them engaged long term.
Target cart abandonment
With over 70% of online shopping carts abandoned before checkout, it’s worth investing real time into effective cart abandonment emails. Remind customers what they left behind, and consider adding an extra incentive to help them finish the purchase.
Some customers respond better to an immediate reminder, others prefer a bit more breathing room, so don’t be afraid to test different send times to see what actually works for your audience.
Need a hand streamlining your email marketing campaigns? At OMDIGI, we’re proud strategic partners with Mailchimp, HubSpot, Active Campaign, and Zoho Campaigns, and we’re ready to help you get the best results no matter which platform you use.
Get in contact with us at hello@omdigigroup.com to get started!