Steps to Start Email Marketing for your E-commerce Business
Getting started with email marketing for your ecommerce business doesn’t have to take a long time or a huge investment. In fact you can get started today, for free.
All the hype surrounding Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram has taken some of the focus away from email recently. But when you look at the figures, email is really the place you should concentrate your efforts if you want to grow your ecommerce business.
Email marketing has been shown to be 40% more effective than social media for customer acquisition. So it’s always a surprise how many growing ecommerce businesses sign up to use every new social network but have never used email marketing.
I suppose for a growing business it can seem easier to make a Facebook page than to write an effective marketing email. It’s about a hundred times easier to set up a twitter account and start tweeting than it is to create a proper email list.
I’m going to give you three steps to starting a simple email campaign today. Getting started today will be the best decision you make about the future of your business. Don’t wait another 12 months, you’ll only wish you’d started now.
1. Use a proper email marketing service
The first thing to say is: don’t try sending marketing emails in Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook or any other email program designed for one to one communication. There are some important things you need your email marketing software to do that your usual email service can’t provide.
There are lots of great email marketing providers out there. But for ease of use and affordability, Mailchimp is the right service to get you started. They’ve got a great free plan that will get almost any growing business started on the right path. It’s free to use all the most important features until the number of subscribers you have grows beyond 2,000. Then when it does come time to start paying (because you’ve got a big list, or need clever advanced features) plans start from $10 per month.
With Mailchimp you will be able to:
use brilliant responsive email templates designed to work in lots of different email clients
monitor who opens your emails and what they click on
automatically handle unsubscribe requests and updating user information
see if customers who click emails buy things from your website
Action Step: Go to www.mailchimp.com and get an account
2. Get a proper email list
Once you’ve got the software you need people to send emails to. This is where a lot of ecommerce businesses make mistakes. Instead of building an audience of engaged subscribers eager to hear from them — they buy, rent or scrape a list from the internet. I’ve seen them in my own inbox.
Not only are those practices specifically against Mailchimp’s terms and conditions — it may even be against the law. If you do this, the smart people on your list will find the unsubscribe link and click it, telling Mailchimp that they never signed up for the list.
The angry ones, or those that don’t know how to unsubscribe, will hit spam in their email program — and that is much worse. That report goes to their ISP, who then send it to Mailchimp.
Get too many spam reports and your account is toast before you’ve even started properly.
Remember, when you send email you have to take the marketer’s spin on the hippocratic oath, before you worry about selling anything, open rates or clicks:
First, send no spam
Being a spammer is bad for everyone, especially you. You’re looking for a list of engaged subscribers who want to receive your emails, click your links and buy things. You won’t get that buying a list from the internet.
How to get subscribers
1. Have an opt-in form on your website
Every website should have a way for engaged customers to continue their interaction. A newsletter signup form on every page provides just that opportunity. If a customer loves your products but isn’t ready to buy then wouldn’t it be best to have a way to keep in touch?
2. Give people the option to opt-in at checkout
Most ecommerce software will allow you this functionality, it’s built right into OpenCart and there are extensions for Shopify and WooCommerce. It can be pre-checked by default, but make sure that the option is there for your customer not to receive it. To encourage more people to leave it checked, let them know you won’t send spam or bombard them with a new email everyday.
3. Use a lead magnet in exchange for an email address
This can be a piece of downloadable content like an ebook or white-paper. It can even be something like a discount code off the first order if they join the mailing list first; this is a common tactic used by ecommerce stores.
If you want to get going straight away and have a list of customers, it’s not ideal, but here’s the best way to add them to your list.
If all you’ve got is a big list of customers and you want to get them onto your email list, then do yourself a favour and ask them really nicely. Just because they bought something from you once, doesn’t give you permission to start bombarding their inbox.
Import your customers into Mailchimp, but before you start just sending offers, write a polite email, with absolutely no marketing in it. Let your existing customers know that you’ve just started an email newsletter and as they have shopped with you before you’d like to include them in it. Remember to focus on them. Let them know that you’re including them so that they don’t miss out on any deals.
Make it sound like you want them to be part of something new and exciting. It should be clear that they can unsubscribe right now, by clicking a button (make it obvious) and if they want to continue receiving emails they don’t have to do a thing. You should expect to get unsubscribes but if you do this right you shouldn’t get spam complaints. I’d even think about sending this email again to those who didn’t open it the first time just to make sure. Once you’ve got this (tacit) permission you can start to send your real emails, just don’t do it right away, leave it at least 5–7 days before you follow up with a marketing email.
Action Step: Setup a form on your website to capture email addresses or import your customer list (but only if you promise to do it responsibly)
3. Write a proper email
Once you’ve got the technology and the subscribers it’s time to send your first proper marketing email for your ecommerce store. Here’s five tips to help you get it right.
1. Brand your emails consistently
Make it consistent with your website colours and design and your shop too, if you have one. Everything you do should support your brand, your emails are no exception.
Using Mailchimp you can choose from a wide range of drag and drop templates. Once you get serious about your email marketing (when you see its effect on your bottom line) you should invest in your own custom template. For now, pick a template that fits and stick with it every time you send an email.
Email can be as much about repetition of messaging as it is about the effect of an individual message, so having a consistent brand appearing in your customers inbox is important. You want them to recognise your mail as soon as it lands. 2. Focus on one thing per email
Here’s the blunt truth — not everybody is going to open your emails. In fact you’ll be doing well if 1 in 4 people you send to even open your email. So instead of trying to aim at your entire audience with every email pick something specific and try to really target a group of your customers.
Every email should have a single focus. Maybe you sell clothing and it’s June, so you focus on Bikinis, Shorts, Sunglasses. If you sell tyres, then send an email focusing on winter tyres or tyres for off-roaders. You can’t successfully appeal to everybody with every email you send, so concentrate on one thing with each and do it well.
Once you get to know which subscribers open which emails, you’ll be able to send them only the things you know they’re interested in. This is called segmentation and it’s one of the advanced features baked right into Mailchimp from the start.
3. Make sure you include links to your website (give them an action to take)
It seems obvious, but make sure it’s easy to get to the action you want your readers to take. If it’s a product you’re showcasing make sure you’ve got links directly to that product page in your email. Make sure the image is a clickable link to the product too, that’s what readers expect.
Make sure your email includes all the pertinent details about your business. You don’t want your customer to have to think too hard about anything. If you’re a bricks and mortar store too, make your address prominent. There’s nothing worse for the customer than having to hunt around to find out how to find you.
4. Make it easy to contact you, encourage it
Use a real email address as your “Sent From” email and make sure it’s monitored, hitting reply is a quick and simple action from an email client so you should encourage people to get in touch. Offer your phone number too for those who might have questions or need more help during the sales process. Even if nobody calls, it lends your email (and your business) credibility being able to see that somebody is available to speak to; some people still don’t trust shopping online 100%.
5. Send more than just lists of products
Instead of a list of products you have for sale, why not send some advice on how best to use your products? Instead of trying to think up yet another special offer and racing your price to the bottom, why not send a case study about how a customer used your product and achieved lifelong happiness? You get the picture.
Buy this, buy this, buy this is a message that people get bombarded with every single day. Try to stand out by speaking their language instead of the language of the douchebag marketer.
6. Schedule your email
You don’t have to send your email the second you finish writing it. Choose the Schedule option in Mailchimp and pick a time you think your audience is most likely to want to want to open your email.
This time will depend on your audience. You may need a few emails before you get a feel for when your emails are getting opened. Don’t forget, Mailchimp, gives you all the information about who opens your emails, clicks your links and more.
Action Step: Compose and send your first email
This is only the start of your journey
So the steps outlined here are the kick start you need to go from wasting time on social media to building an email list that will be a powerful revenue stream. It’s the difficult first step of a long and rewarding journey.
There’s a lot to learn and email marketing doesn’t happen on autopilot. You have to work at it consistently and keep learning but doing so will reap rewards far greater than you will get from other avenues. It’s a time investment in your ecommerce website’s future.