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Brainery | | 5 Email Marketing Tips Every eCommerce Seller Should Know

5 Email Marketing Tips Every eCommerce Seller Should Know

Email Marketing Tips

Follow these five steps to create effective email marketing campaigns that increase open & click-through rates, decrease bounces and improve sales. 

Great email marketing can help eCommerce sellers accomplish a number of goals. Not only can it lead to more customers and sales, it can also help you establish an engaging brand tone and boost your industry reputation. 

But that only happens when you get email marketing right. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of five simple-yet-all-important tips any eCommerce seller can use to create more effective email campaigns. Follow the steps in this short guide to ensure your messaging strategy is on-point and improve your click-through rates in no time! 

1. Segment Your Lists

The first step to deploying better email marketing campaigns is to segment your lists. This is to make sure your messages are tailored properly to your target audience.

While some emails may be well-suited to go out to your entire list, others should be reserved for certain sections. For example, you don’t want to send a, “Get 10% off your first order from us,” message to customers who have already bought from you. That particular email would be best for people on your list who have not yet purchased from your shop. 

However, a “Happy Holidays!” email could be sent to everyone who subscribes to your updates.

A few common list segments include:

  • All Subscribers
  • Customers Who Have Bought
  • Users Who Have Subscribed for Updates, but Have Not Bought
  • Users Who Are in Trial Periods (common for software providers)

You can also create automated emails about topics such as abandoned carts and product suggestions based on purchase history. And if your list includes prospects to whom you will be sending cold emails, you can find great advice on the subject in this blog, as well as this one.

2. Write Effective Subject Lines

Once your lists are segmented and you’re ready to start creating emails for them, the next step is to write a subject line. Your subject line should accurately describe the message topic, catch the reader’s eye and compel them to open the email. 

When it comes to email marketing, there are a few qualities that make up a great subject line. Length is highly important, as you want the text to be long enough to be eye-catching, but short enough to fully fit within the viewing window (even on mobile devices, which only tend to show up to 35 characters). A few other crucial components include conveying a sense of urgency, presenting information in a visually appealing way and piquing the reader’s interest. 

Here’s a handy cheat-sheet for writing subject lines that are designed to increase open rates:

  • Keep length between 20 and 45 characters (ideally 35 or less for full mobile device viewability).
  • Use words that convey urgency and time-sensitivity, such as “limited time,” “act” and “fast.”
  • Include parentheses or special characters to make text stand out — example, “Flash Sale [Limited Time]”
  • Engage readers by choosing one word to put in all-caps — example, “FLASH Sale [Limited Time]” 
  • When relevant to your brand, include an emoji or unicode character to catch the reader’s eye (just once per subject line) — example, “📣 FLASH Sale [Limited Time]” 

3. Keep Email Marketing Messages Engaging

Now that you’ve gotten readers to open your emails, you need to keep them reading through the entire message. What was the subject line about that actually compelled them to click? That’s what they’re interested in reading about. 

Keep your messages short, visually engaging and interesting. Cover the important points without being too wordy, include imagery that is relevant to the topic, use fonts and text sizes that draw the reader’s eye without being too “busy,” and be sure to maintain the branding tone you want to convey throughout the message body. 

For instance, if your email is about a flash sale, include a heading about the sale, hyperlinked images of some of the sale items, and punchy content that explains the details (dates, terms, percentage discounts, etc.). 

Your message body should also address your customers’ needs, wants and pain points. In the case of the flash sale, those could include wanting to save money, snag the latest fashions for the season and / or purchase a great gift for an upcoming holiday.

4. Create Relevant Calls to Action

Once your message body is in place, it’s time to finish with a strong call to action. Getting customers to click through your CTA is the purpose of your entire email marketing campaign, so make sure it’s relevant and as irresistible as possible.

Like the message content, your CTA should also address customer needs, wants and pain points. A great way to do this is to include a clickable button that says something like, “Get It Now,” “Save 10% Today” or “Check Out the Sale.” You can also include these types of CTAs in your professional email signature

An effective call to action strategy isn’t just about what the CTA says, however. It is equally important to determine the proper placement of any links, buttons or actionable copy. Many marketers opt to include a call to action in the middle of the message as well as at the end, because some readers may be more compelled to click on a visually appealing button in the center of the page. This also helps you to increase click-through rates even for those readers who do not read all the way to the end of the email.

You can play around with CTA content and placement by utilizing A / B split testing, where you send differently worded and placed CTAs to different parts of your lists.

5. Hit the Optimal Email Marketing Frequency

Now that you’ve learned how to create effective marketing emails, you’ll want to determine the right frequency with which to send them. 

Reaching out to your contacts too often can annoy them and lead to unsubscribes. However, you also need to email frequently enough that your audience remains engaged with your brand. 

While the optimal frequency can differ depending on your brand and target audience, a good basic rule is to create 1 to 2 marketing emails per week. You may also have specific campaigns that you send on a timed schedule, such as weekly or monthly newsletters and daily instructions for new software subscribers (Day 1 of Your Software Trial, Day 2 of Your Software Trial, etc.). 

Crush Your Communication Goals

Once your email marketing techniques increase your opens, click-throughs and sales, you may be receiving more customer messages than ever before. Make sure you’re ready for the influx of emails. 

With Replyco, you can view and respond to customer inquiries from all of your selling channels in one place. No more having to open Amazon, eBay, Shopify and more individually. This means you can ensure lightning fast response rates and positively delighted customers, all for a surprisingly affordable price. Take a tour of our features or start your FREE trial today

Jodi Gaines CGO Replyco Helpdesk for eCommerce

About the author: Jodi Gaines

Jodi has been helping eCommerce sellers improve their communication and marketing strategies for more than 20 years. She currently serves as a Strategic Advisor for Replyco Helpdesk. Jodi was also the co-founder, CEO and editor at ReplyManager (sold to Xsellco in 2015) and has helped manage growth strategies for multiple businesses and start-ups, including eBay, VWERL and Stop Aging Now (The Clorox Company). Follow Jodi on LinkedIn.

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