The world of e-commerce is a vibrant, ever-changing one, filled with unique challenges and even more unique opportunities. The internet is the home of business in the contemporary era and for many, many companies, online success means success, period. Of course, achieving online success is a lot easier said than done and people pour themselves into e techniques and methods tirelessly with the hope of making some sort of breakthrough in terms of how to boost sales.
Digital marketing is the marketing partner to e-commerce, even though you can also digitally market a storefront business. It means any marketing techniques that involve the use of technology and the internet.
Digital marketing has a huge impact on e-commerce sales. One of the most well-known techniques is email marketing, which has been traditionally one of the strongest tools available to digital marketers. In recent years email marketing has been looked at by some as a bit old fashioned.
Whilst email itself is old relatively speaking, its use has not diminished in the slightest and the opportunities which email marketing presents to companies are more potent today, not less, in spite of its slightly analog form. So let’s take a look at how to effectively use email marketing to boost e-commerce sales.
Segment Your Email Lists
It has been since the advent of email marketing that data and its powerful range of applications have been fully unearthed and put into practice. As such, some people have failed to pick up on the implications that data have on the usage of email marketing. Nowadays, companies can collect an enormous amount of valuable and specific data not just about their customer base as a whole, but even about individual customers or potential customers. What this allows for is a process called segmentation, through which you group your customers by specific traits and characteristics to ensure that all material that you send to them, marketing emails included, is specific and directed towards their demographic.
Blanket emails do have their place at times, if you have some major announcement about your e-commerce company, a sale or a change of policy of some sort. But in general, you should always be trying to connect with small groups to get the strongest results for your company. Start out with simple groupings, like age or gender and then get down into the really specific stuff like browsing patterns and the whole spectrum of psychographics. It’s a very powerful way to let users feel directly communicated with your company.
Focus On Design
A lot of the effect of your emails is about their design. Design is so much more important than people think it is, in all aspects of life but particularly in business. The way that you design your e-commerce marketing emails will dictate a lot of how your audience responds to them.
- What elements to do you want to emphasize?
- What atmosphere do you want to give off?
- How does that atmosphere collide or agree with the overall aesthetic of your brand?
- Are you using text efficiently?
- How could your imagery be placed more effectively to make an impact?
Emails are no longer simply a question of a long block of text and nothing else. All sorts of images, embedded videos and the like can be sent via email, making each of your marketing emails a chance to really impress your audience whilst also driving home the point of your email. Don’t skimp on this aspect of your marketing strategy. You wouldn’t borrow someone in the office’s camera to shoot the television ad you are running, so don’t get that HR rep with the bootleg copy of Photoshop to run their eye over it. Hire a professional and make it a worthwhile investment of time, effort and money.
Use Email As The Basis For Your Rewards Club Membership
Rewards Clubs can be such powerful tools for companies and is another area that has been slightly neglected in amongst all the fancy technological advancements of the last decade. You want to make your most valuable customers, the repeat buyers and the referral champions, to feel how much you value them. You need to develop a rapport with them, to encourage them to feel like shopping with your company is a privilege and that they are a part of something genuinely special.
This is where email comes in. Email is the best method of communicating with your MVP customers, and the best method of informing them of the latest news, perks, savings or whatever it might be. This is one segment of your email list who you want to be in constant, considered communication with as they could be the most valuable for your company moving forward. Use clever, unexpected emails to surprise and delight them: offer them exclusive benefits like a gift during the holiday season or massive limited-time savings. Communicate back and forth with them as you would with a friend over email.
Always, Always Have A Call To Action
Email is a great platform for people to spring out of towards your website, or a specific service or product. It’s convenient and, usually, when they are checking their emails that is their sole focus at that moment, as opposed to an ad before a YouTube video, for example. You need to ensure that whatever the contents of the email you are sending, there is always a link included that will take them directly to your site.
Furthermore, your email should contain a phrase that verbally encourages them to visit your site or make a purchase, or a referral or whatever it is that you are gunning for. Being asked to do something directly is actually one of the most powerful tools that you have in your marketing emails.
Conclusion
All of these techniques will work wonders for your e-commerce company if you use them correctly. Email marketing is a very strong method for any company and with a little practice and imagination, anything is possible.