Ecommerce Email Marketing Guide for 2021

via IFTTT

Ecommerce Email Marketing Guide for 2021

Ecommerce Email Marketing when done right is incredibly lucrative. If you are an ecommerce store and want some tips on how to make the most of your email marketing, read on to find out exactly how to do it.

The post Ecommerce Email Marketing Guide for 2021 appeared first on mailfloss.

source https://mailfloss.com/ecommerce-email-marketing/

Ecommerce Email Marketing Guide for 2021

These unprecedented times have rocked the world of marketing. You’ve read this a couple of times, haven’t you?

You’ve also had enough of the word “unprecedented”. It’s just a fancy way to say we’ve never seen anything like the impact of this crazy virus before.

Anyway. It’s true that people are on their phones and computers more than ever now that they shouldn’t leave the house. And guess what? They have more chances of seeing that shiny email notification of yours. But chances aren’t certainties. No worries, we’re here to help.

Let’s start this article with an equally overwhelming, yet not nearly as deadly news as COVID-19.

One number: 293 billion. Ish. That’s the number of emails sent every day, from every single platform to all kinds of people, for a variety of reasons. Have you any idea of how many of these emails go out to your customers? A lot. Do they open all of them? Absolutely not.

Moral of the story: you’ve got to fight hard for the click and everything that comes after.

First Things First: Without Email Marketing, You Won’t Sell a Thing.

Opening any email (unless it’s from Harvard or something) is hard enough as it is. But if it does get opened, it should be a slippery slide towards the purchase.

But don’t get too excited. Your customers won’t necessarily buy your products after the first promotional email sequence you launch. A concrete buying decision can take months. That’s how email marketing does its best work. By firing the right emails at the right time to the right people in hopes to achieve just that. Plus, there's a potentially huge ROI of $42 for every $1 spent.

We put together this guide to help you greatly increase your chances of getting your ecommerce emails opened, clicked on, and your products bought. Maybe they’ll even be used as examples in articles like this one. Trust us, we only share the good stuff.

Here you go.

From Now On, Only Use Responsive and Interactive Email Templates

To be more specific, kinetic email templates.

Your customers have probably interacted with one--but they have no idea what it’s called. It’s like listening to those famous classical music pieces and still not knowing who the hell composed it. All they know is that if they could choose, your customers would only see this type of email when buying anything.

Kinetic templates are fully responsive email templates with one difference: they’re interactive and look like a whole website in and of themselves. We could’ve just called them interactive designs, but whatever.

Anyway, here’s the ace in the hole: viewers won’t need to visit a bunch of pages to get where they need to be. If they need a carousel display to showcase many different products, they’ve got it right there. If they need to add contact information, multiple tabs, shopping carts, and the whole shebang, it’s there.

It’s much easier to buy something if there aren’t a lot of steps to go through, isn’t it?

Holistically speaking, the less they’ve got to do and the least tabs they need to open, the better.

Of course, these templates must be responsive, or else they’ll become a mess and their initial purpose goes down the drain. Emails should look great and flow easily regardless of the device. 46 percent of emails are opened on mobile, so if the Mobile First update still hasn’t jolted you awake yet, you’re lagging.

This interactive template from Adidas is mouthwatering. Here:

source

Let Artificial Intelligence Handle (More) Things

Every marketer knows the dreadful feeling of expecting news such as “AI has taken over the world. You’re all fired”. Every piece of news that remotely touches on how AI is worrying the authorities sends shivers down your whole body, doesn’t it?

The good news is, you can calm down for now. AI is the kind of robot we need, like the Iron Giant. Only, AI is sacrificing itself to give your ecommerce clickable and engaging emails. It’s been doing its thing for years, and without it, we wouldn’t have prestigious email marketing tools saving us hours of work.

Seize the opportunity to take advantage of AI through your favorite email marketing platform. When you use it right, you’ll make people interested in your ecommerce store because:

• You’ll be sending emails that target customers’ current state (active buyers, occasional buyers, cart-abandoners) instead of bombarding them with what will eventually end up in the trash.
• They’ll appreciate that you remember them on special dates like their birthday, or celebrate milestones with them (some of which they’re unaware of).
• You’ll rock personalized campaigns! Segmentation devotees saw a 14.3% increase in open rates and a 100.95% increase in click-through rates. MailChimp said it, so it’s legit.

What’s more, AI allows you to do powerful CPR on your customers by creating specific retargeting campaigns. Customers who have been “dead” for a while still have the opportunity to return as active/occasional buyers. Or it might not work and you'll lose them. Either way, you’ll have done your best.

The bottom line: embrace AI, and embrace your email marketing platforms. Not only does it boost engagement, but it might add extra zeros to your balance.

Create Accessible Emails

Has it ever occurred to you that some of your customers don’t see your emails because you don’t give them a chance to?

No, because you only think about yourself.

Think about it. How often do you see brands on Instagram captioning their pictures so that visually impaired customers might have a chance of seeing them, too? Not often.

How about emails? Maybe you’ve seen one or two, but didn’t even realize they were accessible. Pssst, that’s the goal.

Making emails accessible (as well as every piece of content you write) is your chance to make a difference. Especially when people out there neglect such an important matter. And it’s something you can do by tweaking a few simple things.

Here are a few things you can already apply to your next campaign to make it more accessible to customers:

• Try and use contrasting colors for button background and text. Tools like WebAIM’s Contrast Checker will help you with this.
• If you're adding information to images, be sure to include titles and links with the same purpose. Don’t worry about it looking “repetitive”.
• Use alt text as an opportunity to describe images in detail.
• Use descriptive anchor text for links. It’s your chance to abolish the old “click here”.
• Use content hierarchy. Your subscribers could be using screen-readers to read your content. And it’s much easier to prioritize sections and skim text when people know where to focus.
• Create read-worthy, conversational text. Not only is it great for accessibility, it also scores SEO points and it’s one of the requirements for great voice search optimization.

When you give more people a chance to access your content--and if it’s interesting enough for them--they’ll absolutely appreciate what you’re doing. Do it not for brand recognition only, but also as a way to be kinder to your community.

Look at this example:

source

The image on the left is optimized for accessibility, while the one on the right is not. See how the button colors contrast with the background? See how there’s information on the image, but also a title and a CTA button right below it? That’s what we’re talking about.

Give User-Generated Content the Attention It Deserves

One of the most indispensable marketing books of all time was written by Dr. Robert Cialdini, and it’s called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. This book explains about the five “weapons” of persuasion, one of them being social proof.

Arguably, there’s no better social proof than user-generated content. Because let’s face it, if 9 out of 10 people chant “this product sucks!” to the four winds of the internet. You most likely won’t purchase the product in question and look for something else. After all, the people have spoken.

Brands are inherently biased. Potential customers want to hear from those who waited days or weeks for a product to arrive. They want to see the reactions of people who have touched it and smelled it and had a whole experience with it.

It’s no wonder consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as authentic. Wouldn’t you?

These emails are perfect for when you need a boost in brand trust. Ironically, it turns the attention away from the brand, leaving the limelight to loyal customers. Here are a few expert to nail UGC in your upcoming campaigns:

• Don’t be afraid to show off your best reviews.
• Feature customer photos. You’ll want to avoid influencers for this one as we already know they’re paid to praise products. You’re looking for authenticity, and so are your skeptical customers.
• You can also encourage them to use hashtags on Instagram if they’d like to be featured.

The following example from West Elm rugs aced two of the above.

source

In all cases, you’ll want to ask for permission to feature personal photos and reviews. Be sure to include the customer’s social media handle, as well. Just a heads up.

Focus on Customer Retention (NOT Customer Acquisition)

If you only think about earning new customers, you’re doomed. Customer acquisition is relatively difficult, five times as costly, and won’t guarantee any purchases. Though it’s not certainly not ignorable, customer acquisition shouldn’t be your priority. Now, customer retention should.

When it comes to occasional and recurrent customers, you can be sure they’ll be buying something eventually if you pull the right triggers. They’re the ones who have purchased from you in the past. And the fact that they know and like your brand is a huge opportunity.

They’re advocates who contribute immensely to your brand through word-of-mouth and sharing, which 76 percent of people are more likely to trust.

Also, these people are making you the money you can use to optimize your marketing strategy. So they deserve all the love and attention you can give.

We have a behemoth of an article that breaks down powerful tips you should take to retain customers successfully, examples included. You’ll want to have a look at that if you’re dedicated to turning your ecommerce email marketing strategy around.

The Takeaway

In the foreseeable future, use this guide for your ecommerce marketing endeavors.

Granted, email marketing strategies are always mutating like the Coronavirus itself, but it’s still the email we’ve known for years. We might have a few points added here and there. But the nitty-gritty will remain: giving the right customers the right offers, at the right time.

Would you add any tips to help fellow marketers achieve their longed-for ecommerce goals this year? Comment below.

Remarkety Email Verification is here!

If you’re looking for a Remarkety email verifier, look no further because mailfloss has you covered with our Remarkety integration. Email verification for Remarkety is important mainly for three important reasons, all related to maximizing your email ROI and profits. email verification helps you get your emails delivered to more real people because it increases […]

The post Remarkety Email Verification is here! appeared first on mailfloss.

source https://mailfloss.com/remarkety-email-verification-is-here/

Remarkety email verification options using mailfloss

If you’re using mailfloss for Remarkety email verification, you have four options at your disposal. Before explaining the four options, make sure you have properly connected Remarkety to mailfloss. You only need to do this once and from then on mailfloss will be able to automatically perform email verification for the connected Remarkety account. Here’s a screenshot of […]

The post Remarkety email verification options using mailfloss appeared first on mailfloss.

source https://mailfloss.com/remarkety-email-verification-options-using-mailfloss/

How To Clean Email Lists With Remarkety

Getting started cleaning your email lists with Remarkety is easy with mailfloss. Once Remarkety is connected, you can let mailfloss automatically clean your emails lists with Remarkety going forward. Here’s how to do that.         Step 1. Visit the integrations page Visit the integrations page by clicking on “Integrations” in the left […]

The post How To Clean Email Lists With Remarkety appeared first on mailfloss.

source https://mailfloss.com/connect-remarkety-mailfloss/

The Best Customer Retention Email Marketing Tips

via IFTTT

The Best Customer Retention Email Marketing Tips

Keeping a customer is more cost effective than acquiring a new one. So how do you keep your customers happy? With good emails. We'll show you the best customer retention email marketing emails to keep your customers buying from you again and again.

The post The Best Customer Retention Email Marketing Tips appeared first on mailfloss.

source https://mailfloss.com/best-customer-retention-email-tips/

The Best Customer Retention Email Marketing Tips

Getting to know a new brand is too much work.

You don’t trust the friend who recommended it. Not really. So you power through a sea of reviews, only to find mixed opinions and so-so ratings. You go on to the next one, and the one after that.

Until you’ve finally found a brand that’s worth your money, you’ll have spent a day’s work looking for it.

At the end of the day, some customers would much rather stick to brands they already know. And since acquiring new customers will cost you five times more than keeping older ones, you should kiss the ground they walk on.

So, what’s the best way to reciprocate and give them royal treatment?

You guessed it. Emails.

Sure, these can be a pain in the ass when unwarranted. But if someone subscribed to your mailing list, one would assume they must want to receive new launches, sales, personalized offers...you name it.

Or at least, they wanted to at some point. Your job then, is to make them want it again. Re-ignite that fire as if both of you are a married couple trying to make it work. And you know, sometimes it does.

Crazy as it may sound, there are ways to make subscribers be eager to check (and re-check) your emails. We’re sure you’d like to learn how to do that.

Keep reading to get exact cookbook recipes to keep your customers engaged without becoming a member of their spam or trash folders.

Be Extra Helpful in Post-Purchase Emails

First of all, if you’d like to win at email marketing in 2021 and beyond, interactive kinetic templates are your bestest friends. They’re basically a site within an email, but hopefully, you already knew that. Here’s a refresher:

source

Forever 21 did a banging job with this one. You can do a lot of things: shop men’s fashion, women’s fashion, new arrivals...without leaving the email app or tab. That’s amazing, because people are lazy as hell.

But here’s where it gets interesting:

The templates you use can go that extra mile in erasing customer objections. So, imagine a subscriber bought your product. You’re polite, so you’ll say a resounding “thank you”. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But you’ll also help your customers know where they can go from there.

Go beyond just the billing information. See what we mean?

What if, say, they have trouble with the product? What if they want a refund? What if they want to learn cool things they can do with it? Be helpful! There’s nothing worse than having to write an email with a bunch of questions and then wait weeks for a reply starting with “sorry for the delay”. Apology not accepted.

In your post-purchase emails, it’s a great idea to include FAQs, instructions, and nice suggestions. Take a look at this perfect confirmation email from Classic Specs and how much information it has.

source

Unlike that one salesperson who’s always like “can I help you?”, you’ll already have helped them. Score.

A Simple “Thank You” Goes a Long Way

Come on, a thank you is the bare minimum. Anyone with a caring mother knows that.

But can you say thank you...without saying “thank you”?

Try to avoid that “thank you for shopping with us” type message. Your intentions may be good, but as you already know from our constant ramblings, it's generic. This year and the years to come are all about ultra-personalization in the email department.

Show genuine excitement for their purchase. Be creative. Make consumers glad they shopped your brand, and make them want to shop again. One of the reasons being the awesome messages they read in their inbox every time they buy something.

source

It’s like Abercrombie & Fitch is having a heart-to-heart with their buyers. It shows how much they appreciate their business, but not in a phony or cheesy way. Pretty cool.

Show ‘Em That You know ‘Em

Wanna see someone turn red?

Tell them you remembered them the other day.

It could be someone as frigid as Thomas freaking Shelby. 10 out of 10 times, they’ll be like aw, shucks. Maybe not externally, but they will appreciate it.

People love being thought of. Lucky for you, this is something you can use to increase open rates and engagement. The best way to do this is by taking their recent or recurring purchases into consideration, and suggesting products they might be interested in.

This type of campaign is perfect for pampering your active subscribers and frequent buyers. They devote a lot of time to your brand, so you should do the same in your own special way.

When doing a roundup of recommended products, you’re implicitly saying “Hey, we know your taste. That’s why we’ve done this. These products specifically reminded us of you.”

But “implicit” could do better. Say it. Loud and clear. Match your brand’s voice to the message, and write it out. We promise this will tickle your subscribers.

One brand that does this kind of thing awesomely is Spotify. Arguably, several people create Spotify accounts because of the individual roundup called “Spotify Wrapped” each user gets at the end of the year. That’s amazing because people know full well who their favorite artists and music tastes are. Even better, they enjoy looking at the well-crafted composition and going “yep, Spotify knows me pretty well”.

Another thing people can’t go without is sharing this type of thing with their peers on social media. “Hey look, I’ve listened to The Smiths practically all year! I’m so indie!”

The news you’ve been waiting for: you can apply this technique to your emails right now. Take a look at what David’s Tea did:

source

You can see the attention to detail. Of course these weren’t individually written and sent. This can be achieved with email automation. But wouldn’t you blush? It’s sweet, it’s incredible, and makes you feel loved.

Do this if you can.

Celebrate Achievements With Them (and Give Them Coupons!)

We know you’ve blacklisted those bastards who haven’t congratulated you on your birthday. And that’s fine. Whoever doesn’t remember such an important date doesn’t deserve you.

What about you? Do you deserve your customers? Aren’t you forgetting anything?

If your customers’ Facebook friends won’t remember them, show them you care. Send them virtual birthday wishes, birthday hugs, but most importantly, birthday coupons. They’ll appreciate 10 or 20 percent off of any product with a discount code.

Here’s a heartwarming example of a birthday email from BestSwimWear (that doesn’t look anything like your Grandma’s virtual cards):

source

But achievements go beyond birthdays. Are they loyal customers? Have they been shopping with you for such a long time that they’ve completed several anniversaries with your brand? They’d sure like to be reminded of that.

Would you like your spouse to forget your 20th anniversary? Don’t think so.

source

A coupon code and saying they love you? Genius move.

Plus, if your templates are creative enough, subscribers will be pumped to share it everywhere.

Trouble With Payment? Be Their Solution.

There you are, sliding your card out of your wallet--one of the sexiest moves ever.

You drop the digits, and spend an eternity typing all of your info. Only to read words along the lines of “sorry, there was an issue with your payment”. So close.

Your blood boils. You have two choices: get the problem solved, or go somewhere else with your business. Depending on the type of support they get, a lot of almost-buyers simply give up. You don’t want that.

A lot of times, payment issues are inevitable. And credit card trouble is fond of churn.

The least you can do is give customers a walkthrough with a kind dunning email. You should foresee their doubts (What to do? Who to contact? What caused this?) and assure them it’s nothing to worry about.

It’s a moment of frustration, especially if they couldn’t wait to buy something. And it’s a lose-lose situation here: they won’t be getting the product, and you won’t be getting the money.

Do it like Spotify below:

source

What this says is: we’ll handle it for you. And everyone loves that.

Be Extra Careful When Segmenting Your Email Lists

I dare you to go to your inbox right now. Not the important tab, but the promotional one.

Some of this stuff you’ll never bother reading. You probably subscribed to these lists once because you wanted to grab a free ebook or something. But for some reason, they keep littering your inbox with their promotions. Maybe they think spamming will bring you back.

Here’s a lesson: Just because someone subscribed to you, that doesn’t mean they’ll always see your emails--let alone read them.

That’s why you have to get crystal clear about the types of subscribers you have, segment them accordingly, and give them what they want. Otherwise, you’ll risk losing them.

There’s one purpose to email segmentation: to deliver content catered to your customers’ interests. This simple gesture can increase open rates by 203 percent, according to the one and only Neil Patel.

Now, listen up. There are three types of customers:

The Raging Fans (or the active buyers)

These are the people who deserve VIP treatment. Grab tip #3 above as an example. People love to be remembered, and occasional custom wrap-ups are more than welcome to show them how valuable they are.

They should be A-listers, meaning they’re always the first to know whenever new products launch and whenever special offers arise. These people won’t have an issue with weekly emails.

Give them exclusive content. Send them weekly roundups of your blog content. If you can, do exclusive giveaways, always making sure to stress that they’re exclusive for them. These buyers are special, and you wouldn’t be where you are without them.

source

The Chunky Middle (or occasional buyers)

These people dig your brand. They’ve bought from you a few times, but nothing crazy.

Unlike the kings and queens above, you don’t want to notify this buyer section with new offers as soon as they come up. That might come across as intrusive or unnecessary. To them, at least.

If there’s a crazy offer that they need to know about, go ahead. But what this type of buyer needs is a shot at trust. Win them by giving them snackable, short content that not only educates them about your brand, but also gives them handy information. Ask for nothing in return. That stuff will come naturally.

Here’s the perfect example from Artifact Uprising:

source

See how the tips are to-the-point and short? All 6 tips aren’t included, so whoever’s interested will visit the blog to see the rest. And by the way, this template looks amazing.

The Graveyard (or the infrequent buyers)

Bluntly speaking, these people may not even remember your brand exists. Even if you did send occasional cool tips and were super nice about it, they wouldn’t really care.

These are the people you should email very, very sparingly. Otherwise, you’ll risk littering their inbox and making a bad impression. You’re not a spammer, are you?

To them, you’re just “there”. But hey, they haven’t unsubbed yet, so you still stand a chance. Think of them as that one person you’ve tried to hook up with for years, but they still haven’t said no. It’s your time to shine...or let it go.

When it comes to infrequent buyers, you’ll want to re-engage them. The best way to do this is to offer coupons or notify them of improvements they’d like to know about.

That’s about it. Subject lines such as “we miss you” and “we want you back” work well for this type of email, especially if followed up with an irresistible offer.

Pinkberry did it perfectly:

source

Come on now. Free yogurt?! Take me back.

Here’s one important tip: give folks a chance to change their email preferences or unsubscribe in ALL of your emails. Don’t try to force something that isn’t meant to be.

And If They Leave, Handle It Gracefully

This is the hard part of the job. But Sting himself said that if you love somebody, you should set them free.

People will unsubscribe, but you shouldn’t take it personally. Instead, you should give them one last chance to decide if they’ll stick with you or leave permanently. And this last chance, of course, is an email.

Assure them they’ll no longer be receiving updates, and be candid about not wanting them to leave. But also, be respectful. After all, you understand that their routines might get hectic and their inboxes full.

Refinery29 below makes sure to give subscribers a number of options as part of their strategy: update their subscriptions, unsubscribe forever, or increase the number of emails they receive. That’s a good one.

source

Finally, you might want to gently ask the reason for their parting. Knowing why people are unsubscribing and finding a pattern is essential to perfecting your marketing preferences in the future.

This final tip works perfectly well for relationships as well. Keep that in mind.

The Takeaway

It’s not all about earning, you know. Don’t be greedy.

Retaining customers is about showing appreciation. Part of their hard-earned money is going straight to your bank account. If that doesn’t tinge you with hope, you’re dead inside.

Appreciate these folks, and use the power of email marketing to create content they’ll thoroughly enjoy. The buying decision is just a consequence.

What about you? How do you keep your customers around (without being an A-hole about it)?