Email Marketing Ideas For e-Commerce | Boosting Business


If you are running an e-commerce business, you understand how important email marketing is. It helps you engage your existing and potential customers at a personal level. But only some email marketing strategies for e-commerce will create the desired results.

The best email marketing ideas for e-commerce include creating a personalized welcome sequence, having a clear CTA, and giving exclusive bonuses. You should also consider a cart abandonment follow-up email, referral emails, split testing, automation, and regular performance assessment.

In this blog post, we will elaborate on these strategies to help you increase your email conversions. Remember, a random, unplanned email can harm your marketing efforts more than any good it may do.

9 Email Marketing Tips for e-Commerce

Your email marketing campaigns can make a significant impact on your business. Here are a few ideas that will help you increase customer engagement and boost conversions.

1. Personalized Welcome Series

“Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.” These words by Cynthia Ozick are valid about a welcome email. Your first email sets the pace for your brand and customer interaction.

A welcome email is the first direct contact with a prospect. Therefore, it should create a lasting impression that sets you apart from all the noise in their inbox.

First, you should thank and welcome the subscriber to your email list. If you made a promise (like a bonus or coupon) when they signed up, you should fulfill it at this stage.

Another essential feature of a welcome email series is to set expectations. Let the customer know how often they should expect the emails and what they are all about.

An effective welcome email sequence for an e-commerce website should have two to three emails. Anything beyond that may be considered spammy and could lead to unsubscriptions.

2. Split Test Your Emails

One of the most effective email marketing ideas for e-commerce is A/B testing. This technique involves analyzing the effectiveness of 2 variations of an email.

You can use split testing in:

  • Subject line
  • Preview text
  • Email buttons
  • Font size
  • Font color
  • Email design
  • Images
  • Copy

The objective of the test is to help you use the most effective version of your email. For example, you can test 2 different subject lines and select one with more views.

Unless you are doing a split test on scheduling your emails, you should send the emails at the same time. This will give you a clear picture of the performance of each.

You should also keep all the other variables constant, apart from the one you are testing.

Split Test Your Emails

3. Exclusive Bonuses for Loyal Customers

With the advent of email segmentation, you can know your most loyal customers. Offering exclusive rewards can be a great way to thank them.

Bonuses can be in the form of discounts, rewards, points, or special releases. When giving discounts, you should know they affect your profits.

They can also create a perception of low value for your products or services.

Therefore, offering gifts and points to loyal customers can be a better way to appreciate loyal customers. Discounts effectively entice customers to continue with an abandoned cart or welcome new subscribers.

In case you want help with how to write such emails and other texts that offer discounts, do read my guide on copywriting for discounts.

4. Cart Abandonment Follow-up Email

Seeing a potential customer move to checkout but fail to complete the transaction is disheartening.

Identifying and incentivizing abandoned carts is a good email marketing idea for e-commerce. Retargeting emails have a higher click-through rate than regular emails.

You can use discounts to encourage potential customers to complete the purchase.

Apart from that, you can make the discounts time-limited to encourage action within a short period.

Sending the email shortly (an hour or two) after the cart abandonment is advisable because the purchase idea is still fresh.

You can send another email a day if the prospect still needs to take action. Personalizing the email to feature the product in the cart can prompt the potential customer to take action.

Cart Abandonment Follow - up Email

5. Referral Emails

Most people trust word-of-mouth from their peers more than your marketing emails. That is why you should consider this strategy for your e-commerce store if it aligns with your business model.

A referral email should incentivize customers who share about your product or service with their friends or family. You can encourage sharing by giving discounts, gifts, or shout-outs.

When someone is willing to refer you to their sphere of influence, it shows they trust your products or services. Therefore, you should keep their trust because they ride on your ability to deliver.

6. Automate What Can Be Automated

It is no longer the era where you could spend hours trying to sort which emails to send and to whom. Today, you can automate most, if not all, of your email marketing campaigns.

Automation saves you time and has a higher conversion rate than random emails. You can automate welcome, cart abandonment, birthday or anniversary celebrations, engagement, and thank you emails.

Setting trigger conditions for each email is ideal for managing your automation. For example, you can set clicking the first email as the condition for sending a subsequent welcome email.

When automating the email sequence, you should also personalize it. Including the name or company details can make the potential customer feel special.

7. Have a Clear CTA

A call to action is a button or link that shows the email receiver what to do next. Your CTA should be short and straight to the point.

Having one or two CTA buttons is enough for an email. Too many links might put off potential customers and lower the click-through rate.

One approach that works for a call-to-action is the use of low-commitment offers.

For example, instead of “Purchase Now,” you can use ‘Claim Your Discount.” The second CTA makes the customer feel the offer is about them, not you.

The call-to-action button should be conspicuous from the other sections of the email. Therefore, you should use bright colors and larger fonts to highlight them.

Have a Clear CTA

8. Analyze Performance Regularly

Only through email marketing campaign analysis can you determine whether your marketing efforts are effective.

Most email marketing management tools provide essential metrics like conversions, revenue, click-through, and open rate.

These metrics help you to identify the most effective email marketing strategies. Through the data, you can determine the following:

  • The optimum number of emails
  • The most engaging size of email
  • Effective email types
  • Ideal CTA button positioning
  • Efficient email marketing budget.

Bringing revenue is different from making a profit. Ill-strategized email marketing ideas can result in losses for your business.

The metrics can help you balance your email marketing expenditure and income. For example, after analysis, you can realize a slight increase in your spending tremendously impacts your revenue.

9. Regular Engagement Emails

Email marketing is different from sales emails. The latter intends to close a deal, while the former is meant to engage your customers.

Although the primary objective of email marketing is conversion, it should not be the only thing. Keeping your contacts engaged creates trust and gives you authority over your competitors.

Therefore, you should send regular emails to engage your customers. These emails can include relevant tips, how-to articles, or monthly newsletters about your brand.

Avoiding a salesy or pushy approach will help you retain potential customers in your list. Allow them to ask questions and be ready to answer them.

Regular Engagement Emails

Key Takeaways

There are different ideas you can implement in your e-commerce email marketing. They range from engagement improvement to conversion maximization strategies.

Each technique will take your email marketing game from good to great. You can make your work easier through automation or identify the most effective email copy through A/B testing.

Engaging your contacts, sending regular bonuses, and having a clear CTA can also boost your e-commerce email marketing campaigns.

Shailen Vandeyar

A proud Indian origin Kiwi who loves to do BJJ and play with his pet bunny when not taking a plunge into the vast ocean of funnel design, email marketing, copywriting, conversions, and customer retention.

Recent Posts