Email Marketing Simplified: A Simple Guide for Busy E-commerce Store Owners"

When it comes to growing your e-commerce store, email marketing is your #1 asset. An over reliance on paid ads can leave you open to problems in cash flow if your ad account is suspended. For many, this could end their store almost overnight.

So why email?

Email has the potential to win you customers and repeat business for a fraction of the price of paid ads. Of course, you need a CRM system, but you don’t need to pay for each email you send with Klaviyo for example. You also have the advantage of your message landing in your customer's inbox and remaining there until deleted or opened. Compare this to the ongoing battle in someone's new feed and it’s easy to see how email can be far more effective.

So done right, we have a much better chance to connect with our audience by email and nurture them. This gives us a chance of winning repeat business and tapping into the 80/20 rule.

How to achieve effective email marketing?

Effective email marketing requires several things to work well at the same time. This will ensure you have a well-oiled machine working daily that wins you sales.

Below are some of the most important things you need to put together to have an effective email strategy.

Automated Sequences

Let’s start with a quick easy one. Automated sequences are there to nurture your audience and capture any missed opportunities without you lifting a finger.

Some sequences you should definitely have are,

-       Welcome sequence

-       Abandoned cart sequence

-       Upsell/cross sell’s

-       Order confirmation email

All these sequences can be on brand and in your brand's tone of voice. Your welcome email for example is a chance to explain what your brand is all about, what it stands for and also what benefits the new subscriber will get now they are part of the family.

List segmentation

In a nutshell, list segmentation is dividing your audience into smaller ones. There are lots of different segmentations that you can try and some marketers might even suggest that you get advanced with it.

The problem with getting too advanced is you possibly exclude customers from promotions or content that they might be interested in. It’s worth remembering that customers' needs/wants change over time so depending on your products bear this in mind.

For most, keeping things simple and dynamic is the best way.

Personalisation in your emails

We just covered segmentation and that is in itself part of a personalisation strategy. A simple example is, a clothing brand that wants to segment males and females to show them more relevant content and offers.

Other tactics include using a subscriber's name in the content or the subject line. Doing this will likely boost open rates but you should be careful not to overuse this tactic. Your audience will soon become accustomed to it if you do.

A/B testing

You have no doubt heard of A/B testing but doing it and doing it right is another thing altogether. You can test things from long copy to short copy, plain text emails over template ones and even different offers.

But while doing these you always need to have in mind how they reflect,

-       Click rates

-       Open rates

-       Revenue

Testing your emails and how they reflect these 3 things overall is the most important.

Effective campaigns

I thought I would save this one till last. It is really important when it comes to your email marketing success.

You should be running campaigns weekly, And I’m not talking about sales campaigns weekly, that would get old pretty quick.

I mean regular campaigns that nurture, educate and connect your audience to your brand. If you can do this then your audience will look forward to you emailing them. Your open rates will improve and more importantly, if the content is good, your click rates too.

Running campaigns effectively is essential to email success for your business.

If you’re struggling with ideas for emails, you can send to your list, then download my PDF guide here. It’s a great way to get structure to the regular email’s you send to your list.

Thanks for reading.

Jon