5 Solid Incentives for Using Ecommerce Email Marketing

Based on a quick Google search, it seems the majority of my fellow writers are finally starting to abandon that whole “email marketing is dead” thing. Because in reality, email is far from dying. Heck, it’s never even been close to kicking the digital bucket.

When social media marketing started growing in popularity around 2011, online marketers began enthusiastically crafting email’s obituary.

But here we are seven years later, and email continues to be one of the most profitable marketing channels. Hopefully you haven’t put all of your marketing eggs in a social media basket. But if you have, you may want to reconsider your strategy.

Here are five reasons you need to use ecommerce email marketing.

It’s the most customizable marketing medium.

Brands can get pretty targeted with social media and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. You can segment customers by age, gender, location, interests, lifestyle, income, browsing behavior, and a ton more. Then you can serve ads customized for each specific audience.

But social media and PPC campaigns have audience size minimums. And if your audience is too small, the platform won’t show your ads.

However, you can personalize marketing emails on a one-to-one level. When you connect customer relationship management (CRM) software to an email marketing solution, you can generate a unique email for each individual shopper. And more personalized marketing has proven higher conversion rates.

It’s a great tool for maintaining brand awareness.

More than half of working adults check their personal email multiple times throughout the workday. And nearly 30% look at their inbox at least once every hour. Thus, as long as you execute the campaigns properly, ecommerce email marketing helps keep your brand in front of consumers.

There is a catch, though. You obviously want your emails to stand out in a crowded inbox. But you can’t bombard customers with your marketing. If you want to keep your brand top of mind without being annoying, use triggered emails.

Triggered emails are automatic, event-based messages. Your email automation software sends them on specific intervals or whenever a shopper completes a specific action. For example, you can set up triggered emails that …

• Remind a shopper she still has unpurchased items in her cart
• Ask a customer for her feedback on her recent order
• Wish a customer happy birthday and include a discount code or coupon

Remember: Frequency is just as important as content. A new message from you can’t pop up every time they check their email. If it does, you’re encouraging consumers to unsubscribe, not engage.

It helps build better consumer-brand relationships.

It doesn’t matter if a relationship is platonic or romantic, professional or casual. A healthy relationship is built on direct communication and is, in one way or another, mutually beneficial.

That’s literally what ecommerce email marketing is: mutually beneficial direct communication.

Consumers want convenience. And what’s more convenient than having personalized product recommendations, helpful advice, and exclusive discounts sent directly to your inbox? Consistently deliver emails that contain content consumers genuinely want and appreciate. And in return, shoppers will reward you with their loyalty.

It inspires action.

By their very nature, emails are action-oriented. They prompt responses. Unfortunately, sometimes that response is to click the delete button. But well-crafted marketing emails inspire shoppers to head directly to your website. They encourage customers to forward your message to their friends or share the content on their social media pages.

Emails also offer the opportunity to include multiple calls-to-action (CTAs) — a feature not available in all marketing channels. Expand your reach by including social sharing buttons. Make it easy for customers to share your email on Facebook or Twitter. Nudge shoppers further along in the buyer’s journey with an “Add to Wishlist” CTA. Convert shoppers immediately by including a “Buy Now for 20% Off” CTA.

Don’t be afraid to include more than one CTA in your emails. Just be sure you don’t use so many CTAs that you overwhelm your customers and they don’t click any.

It has an impressively high ROI.

The median return on investment (ROI) for email marketing is 122%. That’s more than social media, direct mail, paid search, and display advertising combined.

Part of what makes this strategy so cost-effective is the ability to automate much of the process. With email marketing automation software, there’s no risk of expensive human errors. All you have to do is ensure your data sources are accurate.

You don’t have to worry about losing customers because the email content is irrelevant. And you won’t end up in a situation where your entire database received the wrong promotional email and you’re now legally obligated to honor a profits-destroying discount code.

Plus, email marketing automation software, along with your CRM platform, can create and deploy the kinds of valuable, personalized, and timely emails that build customer loyalty. That means lower churn and higher customer lifetime value.

One last thing: ecommerce email marketing will only work if your email content is high quality. If your emails are irrelevant or dull or sent months after the customer’s last interaction, you’re just wasting resources. Don’t send marketing emails simply for the sake of sending them. Make them worth the effort to create them and your customers’ time to read them.