The Beginner’s Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing

Ecommerce email marketing is one of the most effective and efficient marketing channels that allows online stores to stay in contact with potential and existing buyers and boost their revenue, improve client retention, and build strong customer engagement. If you are just starting out selling online, or you aim to up your game and take better advantage of email marketing for your ecommerce website, we’ve prepared a short but useful guide to get you started and show you how to build an ecommerce email marketing strategy that will help your business and sales grow.

What Is Ecommerce Email Marketing?

Ecommerce email marketing lets you promote your products and/or services directly to your customers via email. It’s a powerful way to keep them loyal, informed, and engaged with your brand.

Ecommerce businesses use this type of email marketing to send promotional emails with special offers and product discounts, transactional emails, such as order status updates and abandoned cart details, and regular informative and educational newsletters.

In ecommerce email marketing the segmentation of potential and existing clients based on their interests and the personalization of the content they receive from the businesses are key factors in achieving better engagement, response, and conversion rates compared to other forms of email marketing communication.

What Are the Benefits of Ecommerce Email Marketing?

Email marketing for ecommerce is effective and efficient because it is well targeted, directly reaches the user, and has a high return on investment. Here are some of its main benefits:

Gives You Control Over Your Audience

Email is a marketing channel you fully control. You own your email list and decide the content you share. Unlike social media platforms and display ads where you rely on third-party algorithms that affect visibility of your message.

A major advantage of ecommerce email marketing is creating a space for potential and existing clients that you own. Owning your audience means you also control when and how you communicate with them. While no one can guarantee that every contact would open your email, you can be sure it lands in their inboxes.

Has the Highest ROI 

In general email marketing is more effective than other marketing channels with a higher return on investment. It claims to turn every $1 spent into $36 to $45. In contrast, Google ads generate $2 for every $1 spent.

In ecommerce specifically, email marketing tends to go into more depth thanks to the additional information stores gather about potential and existing clients, which allows them to be more specific and better personalize the messages based on the user’s interests thus achieving even better results.

Offers Targeted and Personalized Communication 

Ecommerce businesses gather email addresses through various methods – from paid campaigns and newsletter sign-ups to checkout processes and referrals. The advantage here is the ability to keep your subscribed customers organized into well-defined segments based on where and when they subscribed, their interests and intent, and the types of messages they prefer to receive. Users are more likely to engage with your emails (open, click, buy) if your content matches their interests. This targeted and personalized nature of email marketing helps you cater to the specific needs of the recipient at just the right moment in their buying journey, leading to better conversions and engagement.

Improves Customer Retention and Loyalty

In ecommerce, using marketing emails plays a crucial role in boosting customer engagement and enhancing loyalty. Regular communication through emails keeps your brand at the forefront of your customers’ minds, encouraging them to make repeat purchases from your ecommerce store. More importantly, these interactions help build a deeper, more meaningful connection with your customers, transitioning the relationship from merely transactional to genuinely long-term. 

Boosts Repeat Purchases, Win-Back and Bounce Sales

There are three key ways to grow your ecommerce business: increase the total number of customers, boost the number of purchases each customer makes (returned purchases), or raise the average order value.

Ecommerce email marketing is a powerful tool that simultaneously impacts these three growth strategies. A simple email can win-back inactive subscribers, promote repeat purchases, stimulate upsells, or recover abandoned orders and bounced sales. Having customers return is important for your business because it keeps your average cost of acquiring a customer down.

Provides Unique Insights

Last but not least, ecommerce marketing emails serve as a valuable learning tool for businesses. By analyzing how customers interact with your emails, you can gain deep insights into their interests and behaviors. This knowledge removes the guesswork and enables more effective segmentation and targeting in future campaigns.

Email Marketing for Beginners – Video Guide

How to Create an Ecommerce Email Marketing Strategy?

If you want to develop a successful email marketing strategy that reaches your potential customers, nurtures your leads and existing customers, and increases customer purchases, we’ve got you covered. Crafting a strategy is a process and we are outlining the main steps in this guide.

1. Build (and Grow) Your Email List

The first step is to identify your target audience. Who are the customers or potential customers you want to reach with your marketing emails? A good starting point is your existing customer base. Then, consider reaching out to others who have interacted with your business in some way. Here’s how.

A. Collect the Emails of New Clients

Whether you sell products on your website or in a physical store, it’s smart to start collecting the email addresses of your buyers. They’re already engaged with your brand and interested in your products, making them quite likely to engage again –  especially if they enjoyed what they purchased.

For online sales, you likely already collect emails at the checkout stage. Just ensure you’re not only recording these emails but also asking for their permission to keep in touch. You can easily ask for their consent by including a checkbox near the submit order button, clearly stating that they may receive future marketing communications from you. This step helps set expectations and keeps your communications transparent.

B. Collect Emails of Visitors with Opt-in Forms and/or in Person

Now that you’ve started gathering emails from your buyers, why not reach out to others who visit your website or come into your store? Their interest in your products or services suggests they’re suitable candidates for marketing emails.

To gather emails from site visitors, you should add sign-up forms on your website. Ideal locations include sales pages, the navigation bar, or the footer – places where visitors typically seek more information. 

The success of these sign-up forms, essential for email marketing and list-building, is to get your visitor’s attention. So make sure your sign-up offers a compelling reason for the visitor to leave their email such as exclusive discounts, early access to new products, or valuable content, and a strong call to action (CTA). For more detailed tips on how to set up your forms and grow your subscribers, check out our in-depth guide, “How to Build an Email List?“

By all means you will need a tool like SiteGround Email Marketing and our free Lead Generation plugin for WordPress to set up the forms on your website easily and start growing that list of potential clients.

C. Get Explicit Consent & Use Double Opt-in forms

Naturally, your goal is to have as many subscribers as possible to reach out to. However, you want them to be engaged and interested in your ecommerce marketing emails, which takes us to the consent issue! It is important to make users willingly subscribe to your list because: 

1. Once they’ve expressed their interest in your brand, they are more likely to engage with your content marketing emails and 
2. You become compliant with GDPR and other laws regulating the use of email and other personal information.

Exactly because you cannot get explicit consent from the subscribers, you shouldn’t buy lists. If you buy a list, you might violate GDPR consent rules and get penalized: these people won’t know you or your brand and are more likely to report you as spam, which will harm your email deliverability and IP reputation, and suffer many more downfalls.

To make sure that your subscribers really want to receive your emails – implement a double opt-in on your website. A double opt-in refers to sending a confirmation email to the subscriber after they’ve already signed up. Having such subscribers will help you keep your list high-quality and reduce email bounce rates and prevent your emails going into spam.

2. Segment Your Audience 

Another important aspect of your ecommerce email marketing efforts includes sending the right message to the right people.

To achieve this, you need to first segment your audience and then tailor your message to their needs and preferences. With list segmentation, you can group your subscribers into categories, based on common characteristics, and then craft customized content for them. 

You can segment your audience, based on geo factors (location), demographic traits (age, gender, etc.), personality characteristics (interests, opinions, lifestyle, etc.), behavioral patterns (buyer journey stage, brand loyalty, etc.), and other factors.

Let’s discuss some of the more interesting and popular segmentation criteria.

• Interests

What products have your visitors viewed or added to their cart? In ecommerce, keeping track which products your visitors added to cart, liked or added to wishlist, viewed or clicked on is fundamental for the successful conversion of a visitor into a buyer. Knowing what hooked the visitor allows you to send them well-targeted follow-up messages and eventually get them to come back and buy the item.

Think broadly about “interests”. If you sell sports equipment, for example, it’s useful to know which sports your visitors are interested in. You could add a question about their favorite sport to your sign-up form. This way, you can tailor your follow-ups: send soccer-related product suggestions to football fans and golf equipment offers to those interested in golf. This targeted strategy increases the chances of converting visitors into buyers.

• Behavior

Segmentation involves grouping your audience based on their behaviors, like purchase history, interactions with email campaigns, and click patterns on calls to action (CTAs). By tracking which pages they visit, what products they buy, and which emails they open, you can tailor customer journeys that convert general interest into repeat purchases.

For example, track how your subscribers reacted to your last email and tailor your follow-ups accordingly. If a subscriber didn’t open an email, resend the offer with a new subject line – maybe the original didn’t catch their eye, or they missed it among other emails. If they opened but didn’t buy, try sending a bigger discount or a different offer. This might address lack of interest in the initial offer or make the deal more compelling.

• Sales funnel position

We strongly advise segmenting your audience based on their position in your sales funnel, such as awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty. Are they first-time visitors, or repeat visitors, or even past clients? Based on that information, you may create different email journeys and include relevant information for the specific experience they have had with your business. 

For example, in the “consideration” stage, a buyer (a first-time visitor of your store) may want to know more details about specific products you offer, while in the “conversion” stage (a return visitor), they are likely to look for discounts and coupon codes to seal the deal.

• Geo factors (country, state, city, etc.)

Geo segmentation allows you to keep your communication relevant to the specific region, if you have local variations. 

For example, you may send marketing emails with a free shipping offer only to clients from California because you’ve managed to negotiate a deal with the local courier, which you cannot replicate in other states. 

Here’s another example: If some of your subscribers are in Australia, avoid sending them summer sale emails in June since it’s nearly winter there. Instead, target your clients in the Northern Hemisphere with those summer promotions.

• Demographic factors (gender, age, etc) 

When segmenting your audience by demographics such as gender, age, and other factors, it’s crucial to approach this sensitively to avoid offending anyone. However, this type of segmentation can be highly effective. For example, understanding whether your audience members are from Generation Y, Z, or Alpha can help tailor content that resonates with their specific preferences and life stages.

This data provides insights into which products might be more appealing, whether they’re more likely to attract younger or older consumers, or cater to specific genders. This allows you to customize your campaigns based on these demographics, ensuring that your messaging is relevant and engaging to each segment of your audience. By using this data thoughtfully, you can enhance your marketing effectiveness while respecting the diverse characteristics of your customers.

3. Set up Different Types of Email Marketing Campaigns

Once you have started building your email list and segmenting your audience, it’s vital to consider and prepare the various types of emails that ecommerce businesses could send, each serving a distinct purpose. All these emails allow you to cover your entire customer journey, providing targeted interactions that meet the needs of diverse customer segments.

In the next section, we’ll explore the specific types of emails your ecommerce business should send. But first, let’s outline the three main categories that ecommerce email marketing campaigns usually fall into:

A. Transactional Emails

These are automated messages triggered by customer actions, such as making a purchase. Examples include order confirmations, purchase receipts, and shipping updates. These emails are highly personalized, providing essential transaction-related details to individual customers. They play a crucial role in building trust and transparency between your business and its customers.

B. Promotional Emails

These emails aim to increase product visibility and sales through announcements of discounts, special deals, or product launches. For instance, promoting a new collection or a Black Friday-Cyber Monday (BFCM) sale. They are designed to attract and engage customers, driving both immediate purchases and long-term brand loyalty.

C. Lifecycle Emails

Often called ‘triggered’ emails, these are sent in response to specific customer interactions with your site. Examples include a welcome email upon subscription or a cart recovery email to address cart abandonment. Lifecycle emails are effective for nurturing customer relationships and guiding potential buyers along the sales funnel, from initial interest to final purchase.

4. Tailor Your Email Types and Content For Each Segment

After you’ve categorized your audience into specific segments and decided on the types of email marketing campaigns, you must customize your emails to address the unique interests and needs of each group. Think about the buyer’s journey for each segment and design an email series that resonates with their specific preferences.

A. Site visitors who signed up but haven’t purchased:

The information you collect from this segment comes from a simple sign-up form, typically just a name and email. While this streamlined approach is generally recommended, it limits the ability to further segment your audience. However, if you include a question like “Which sports are you interested in?” – assuming your business sells sports equipment – you can better categorize this group by their sports preferences and customize your content more effectively.

Your ecommerce email marketing strategy for this group would typically include:

• Regular newsletters to keep your brand top-of-mind and inform them about new products.
• Promotional emails offering special discounts to encourage purchases.
• Win-back emails to re-engage those who haven’t interacted with your emails recently.

In all of these emails, you can tailor the content and special offers to the specific interests of each segment. For instance, if your store offers a 10% Black Friday discount, highlight soccer gear like balls and trainers to soccer fans, letting them know they can get these items at a 10% discount along with everything else. For the same occasion you may send to your golf-loving customers a similar email where you promote discounted golf equipment instead.

B. Clients Who Started an Order but Did Not Complete

These clients should receive an abandoned cart email – a reminder to complete the order they started but did not see through. Be mindful of their privacy, as they may not have explicitly agreed to receive marketing emails, limiting you to sending only one or two reminders about their abandoned items.

C. Clients Who Made a Purchase

Clients who bought once from your shop and agreed to receive marketing emails, get to enjoy almost the full package:

• Transactional emails for order confirmations and shipping updates.
• Relationship emails to foster a connection with your brand.
• Personalized product recommendations based on past purchases.
• Promotional emails for upcoming sales.
• Win-back emails if engagement drops.

Your goal is to serve them with emails that correspond to their past choices or so to say their purchase history, encouraging them to buy more from your store.

For example, if customers bought a certain brand of lipstick from your store, you can encourage repeat purchases by offering deals on similar lipsticks or other products from the same brand. You can also send emails full of tips and content related to their purchase, such as how to match lipstick with blushes and eyeshadows, or how to apply and pair lip liner with lipstick. This targeted approach helps keep them engaged and interested in buying more.

D. Repeat Customers

Repeat customers are the best and they are great to engage not only with all of the above ecommerce emails, but also consider Loyalty programs and emails encouraging them to spend more on your site by earning more credits and discounts.

By aligning your email content with the needs and interests of each customer segment, you can enhance engagement and drive more sales through a thoughtful, targeted email strategy.

5. Organize Your Emails with a Calendar

To effectively reach different customer groups who have varying needs, plan your email campaigns using an email marketing calendar. This tool helps you schedule your emails and follow-ups, ensuring you stay organized and on track with your campaigns.

You can create your own email calendar using tools like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. When setting up your calendar, include entries such as:

• Campaign name
• Email type (e.g., newsletters, win-back, welcome emails)
• Subject line
• Product or service features/offers
• Target audience
• Calls to action (CTAs)
• Send date and time
• Status (e.g., sent, in progress, scheduled)
• Owner (the person in charge of the email)
• Goals (e.g., generate leads, welcome new subscribers, re-engage inactive customers)

This structured approach helps you deliver targeted content at the right time to the right audience.

6. Automate as Much as Possible

Depending on the shopping cart software and email marketing tool you use, you may automate some of the emails you wish to send. That way you will save yourself time and work when a new client chips in, or that client’s service is about to expire and they need a reminder. 

Pretty much all shopping carts support welcome emails, order and shipping confirmations, and reset passwords if there is client area functionality so you can enjoy these out-of-the-box. For everything else, creating custom journeys you need “if/then” commands that are privy to the marketing platform.

With such conditions, you can send emails that follow after specific action triggers happened: send recommended items that pair with a past purchase (if client buys sunglasses, send an email to offer summer hats), remind about abandoned cart items, send a win-back email after 60 days of no purchase and more.

Must-send Ecommerce Marketing Emails (+ Examples)

1. Sales and Promotional Emails

These emails aim to drive sales and usually communicate discounts and special offers. They need to be straight to the point – what’s the value of the product or service you offer and include a strong CTA. These messages should be designed to drive instant traffic to your website and boost your sales.

Here are a few subtypes to consider:

• New product or service launch

Whenever you introduce a new product or service, make sure your customers and subscribers are the first to know. This keeps your audience engaged and excited about your brand’s developments.

• Special or seasonal discounts

Make the best out of special or seasonal discounts to generate urgency. These are time-sensitive offers aligned with significant events or holidays, such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, summer season sales, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. These promotions encourage quick decision-making and boost sales during peak shopping times.

• Cross-sell emails

Send emails that suggest complementary items based on what a customer has already purchased. You should base your suggestions on their profile data, browsing history and above all – on their previous purchases. If they’ve ordered a book from a collection, let them know there are other books in this series, to spark their interest and drive sales.

• Upsell emails

Upsell emails are a chance to increase your earnings per customer by promoting premium versions of the products or services they already use, or by offering related products. Encourage your customers to pay extra for more features and convince them that they need these features. Let them know that the upgrade will enhance their experience even further.

2. Abandoned Cart Emails

Even with the best efforts to drive traffic to your ecommerce store, potential customers might hesitate at the last moment. It’s not uncommon for shoppers to add items to their cart only to abandon them later.

Abandoned cart emails are your opportunity to re-engage these nearly converted customers. These emails should be concise and to the point, directly reminding customers of what they’ve left behind.

To make these emails effective, include these three key elements:

• Personalization: Address the customer by their first name to create a personal connection.
• Visual Reminder: Include images of the items left in the cart to visually prompt the customer about what they’re missing out on.
• Call to Action (CTA): A clear and prominent CTA like “Buy Now” should be included to guide them back to their cart to complete the purchase.

Keep the email focused without unnecessary distractions. The goal is to encourage them to complete their purchase, leveraging on the connection they already have with the item.

3. Relationship Marketing Emails

These emails let you build and maintain a long-term relationship with your customers. Customize and personalize them as much as possible to strengthen your connection with each subscriber.

Let’s explore some subtypes:

• Newsletters

Sending regular newsletters helps keep your subscribers informed and engaged with your brand. Aim to maintain a balance – regular updates are good, but too many can overwhelm their inboxes. Always prioritize quality content that adds value.

• Birthday emails

Sending birthday emails not only makes your customers feel special and appreciated, but it also provides an opportunity to offer them a limited-time discount or promotion. This gesture celebrates their special day while simultaneously boosting your sales.

• Referral emails

Referral emails allow your customers to recommend your products or services in return for a discount, free shipping, or another win. These emails also make them feel special, because their loyalty to the brand brings them benefits.

• Feedback survey emails

Once a customer makes a purchase, you can send them a feedback form to rate your product or service. This approach shows your customers that you value their opinions and will use their feedback to improve your services in the future. It’s another effective way to create a connection and make your customers feel respected and involved.

4. Personalized Product Recommendations

Your secret weapon in ecommerce email marketing are the recommendation emails. In these emails, you may include product suggestions that match your customers’ purchase history, enhancing their shopping experience. For example, if your customer bought a man’s tie, you can recommend them a matching shirt, or vice versa.

Leverage what automated algorithms of your shopping cart have to offer to analyze purchase histories and tailor suggestions to individual customer preferences. This is your chance to turn customers into repeat buyers. These could be some of the most successful email campaigns, as they have the power to not only drive more sales, but also enhance your customers’ experience.

5. Win-back Campaigns to Reactivate Subscribers

If part of your subscribers has become inactive, it’s crucial to re-engage them. Create a win-back email series designed to give these inactive audience members a reason to reconnect with your brand.

Target these emails at customers who have previously made purchases from your online store or subscribers who were once engaged with your content but have since gone quiet. Automated win-back campaigns are highly effective in reigniting interest. Plan to send these emails after a specific period of inactivity, such as 30 days after their last purchase or the last email they opened. This strategic timing can effectively rekindle their interest in your brand.

6. Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are crucial in ecommerce because they confirm a user’s actions on your website. For example, you send confirmation emails when customers make a purchase, providing them with an order receipt and reassuring them about their product’s upcoming delivery.

Since these emails are expected by your customers, they have one of the highest open rates among all types of marketing emails. Their main goal is to streamline the ecommerce process, not to sell or call to a specific action, but it is a good idea to consider placing offers and related product suggestions that the buyers might find useful as a next step of their journey.

A few types of transaction emails you should consider for your ecommerce shop:

• Thank you email

Send a simple “Thank you” email to show appreciation for actions taken by your customers. Whether they’ve submitted an order, provided feedback, or engaged with your brand in other ways, these emails keep your brand top of mind and foster customer loyalty.

• Welcome emails

A welcome email greets new subscribers or first-time buyers. Usually, welcome emails include a brief introduction of your brand (products or services) and a sneak peek of what your customers can expect from you in future emails. Welcome emails are typically triggered automatically when a user joins your email list.

• Order (and subscription renewal) confirmation

An order confirmation email is sent automatically after a customer makes a purchase. These emails usually include a digital receipt, order summary, invoice, and other important details in relation to your customer’s order. They don’t need to be creative, but rather informative. That’s another way to assure your customers that your business is reliable and professional.

• Shipping confirmation

Once you’ve sent the order confirmation email and you’ve shipped the product to your customer, your next step is to inform them that their order is on its way. In this email, you should let them know the estimated delivery date and include any tracking links, if available, for their convenience.

• Reset password

If you have a client area protected via login, it is a good idea to set up a proper registration and login flow, which eventually ends up with the option to change/reset forgotten passwords. The reset password and the confirmation of the change usually goes through email. Most shopping cart software has that functionality in-built.

• Feedback request 

Encourage customers to provide feedback by asking how they like the product or service. Invite them to leave reviews on your website or social media. It’s a personal touch that shows you value their opinions and enhances community engagement.

• Subscription renewal reminders

For services and recurring subscriptions, it is fundamental to include renewal reminders in your ecommerce email marketing strategy. It is proven that renewal reminders can prevent service interruptions and keep customers satisfied, ensuring they are aware of upcoming expirations and renewals.

• Cancellation and refund confirmation

In a similar way to order and shipping confirmation emails, the cancellation and refund processing emails are quite important for the client to perceive the brand as a serious and trustworthy provider. If you fail to ensure a streamlined cancel and refund process, you might see more negative feedback on social media and review sites, along with an increase in chargebacks. This can harm your business’s reputation and discourage new customers.

Ecommerce Email Marketing Best Practices

There are many types of ecommerce emails to send, many ways to segment your audience, and various strategies to test. What works for the store next door might not necessarily work for you. That is why we recommend you to consider some of the ecommerce email marketing best practices that will help you figure out what best works for you.

1. A/B Test Your Emails

Effective ecommerce email marketing requires regular A/B testing to improve your campaigns. A/B testing is the practice of sending different email versions to subsets of your subscribers in order to find out which one works best for your audience or a segment of it. For example, you could send Email Version A to 25% of your subscribers and Email Version B to another 25%. The version that performs better could then be sent to the remaining 50% of your list to optimize results.

You can test many things. For example, you could try two different subject lines to see which one gets more people to open the email. You can also test two versions of your email content to find out which one gets more engagement. Another test could involve moving your call to action (CTA) button to different spots in the email to see which position gets more clicks.

It’s also good to test different types of emails to see what’s really necessary. For instance, decide if you need both a welcome email and a thank you email after a purchase, or if just one will do. This helps you keep your email strategy simple and effective, removing any unnecessary messages.

2. Schedule Your Emails Effectively

The timing of your emails, be it promotional or else, is crucial for improving open rates and overall engagement. To determine the best timing, you can start with some common sense and consider the daily routines and cultural context of your buyers. Think about whether your customers typically work in an office, what holidays they observe based on their countries and religions, and how these factors align with the times when your website traffic peaks. Essentially, you’re trying to figure out when your customers are most likely to be online and in a mood to shop. Here are some tips based on experience:

• Avoid sending promotional emails during the night – They will enter the recipients’ inboxes and get drowned by business emails in the morning, thus reducing the chances of your subscribers to get to them on time, if at all.  
• Avoid sending emails on weekends – Many people spend weekends away from their emails, focusing on family or outdoor activities, so they may miss your email.
• Mind the holidays – Timing can depend on your product. For example, a Christmas promotion might work well during the holidays if you’re selling gift items. But this is not the best time to promote if you are selling specific business services, such as professional house cleaning or software normally used for work.
• Mondays and Fridays are tricky – Normally if the majority of your audience are people working standard office hours, the first and last day of the week are not the best to reach them via emails. On Mondays, they are swamped with emails that came over the weekend, so they don’t have time to get to personal emails. On Fridays, they are trying to wrap up the day early and are not really in the mood for shopping. However, if your email is about something that could be enjoyed over the weekend, like a special event or promotion, Friday might be a good day to send it.

3. Consider How You Use Segmentation for Each Campaign

In ecommerce email marketing, knowing how to segment your audience is everything. However, it’s important not to overcomplicate this process by creating too many segments for every campaign. Instead, think strategically about how you segment your audience each time you prepare to send out an email.

For example, if you’re promoting a specific product from your shop, you don’t necessarily need to limit your emails to customers who have purchased similar items before. It could be just as effective, or even more so, to send the promotion to all your subscribers – the more, the better. In this case, you are avoiding any segmentation, saving yourself time and content creation work.

4. Collect the Right Data in Your Sign-up Forms

The more you know about your site visitors, the better your ecommerce email marketing outreach will be. When targeting general site visitors and subscribers, for whom we have limited information, sign-up forms are an effective means of collecting essential information. However, be careful not to overwhelm your visitors with too many questions. Aim for one or two targeted questions. The questions naturally depend on the types of products or services you sell and how that data helps you convert the client more effectively.

If you are unsure how to ask such questions, you may always start with the easiest one: What products are you interested in? And, make sure you provide only the most popular product categories in the predefined answers. This approach simplifies the process for site visitors and provides you with valuable insights into their preferences without overwhelming them with the full product catalog.

Each piece of information you collect becomes a useful tag (or label) in your subscriber database, helping you segment and tailor your marketing content more accurately.

5. Explore AI for Email Marketing

At the end of the day crafting a strong ecommerce email marketing strategy ends up with the creation of the email content and this is where many beginners struggle, while advanced users prepare for heavy lifting. This is where AI comes to help. We have a great article on how to use AI for email marketing with ready email prompts for AI models like ChatGPT and in SiteGround Email Marketing tool to streamline the email creation process. Check it out to get started and save yourself tons of work and resources!

6. Try to Stand out With Quality Content and Visuals

Even if you do everything right, the reality is that there are many ecommerce stores out there that send regular emails, newsletters and promotions. How would you stand out from all this noise? One powerful thing that you can do is focus on quality!

Make sure you prioritize quality over quantity. This goes both for your email copy and visuals as well. Your content should be meaningful and useful for your users, while visuals are crafted with precision and are relevant to the provided content.

Another important component of your high-quality email is your subject line, as this is the first thing your users see in their inbox. Craft a catchy subject line, but make sure it doesn’t sound spammy. A good subject line should be short, simple and straight to the point, while a successful subject line makes your users want to instantly open your email.

Pro tip: In terms of quality, it’s important that your emails are responsive on different types of devices, both desktop and mobile.

7. Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform 

To execute your ecommerce email marketing plan, you will need an email marketing platform. There are many ecommerce email marketing tools out there. Even though there isn’t one best email marketing tool, there are tools that would better suit your needs than others. Consider what are the most important features you need from such a tool, before making your final decision.

For example, SiteGround Email Marketing provides everything you need to create and send successful campaigns with ease. It is great to get you started, help you build an email list and put your ecommerce email campaigns into action.

With its friendly Lead Generation plugin for WordPress, you can easily build, grow and manage your subscribers’ list by automatically adding leads to SiteGround Email Marketing, using a ready-to-go unsubscribe page, filtering contacts and many more. 

On top of that, building beautiful and engaging emails has never been easier, too – customize pre-built layouts, write compelling copies with the in-built AI Assistant, add a sparkle with the ready-to-use AI-generated image gallery, and you’re ready to go big!

How to Measure Your Ecommerce Email Marketing Performance?

Imagine you’ve built up an email list of 1,000 subscribers. You engage them with a series of emails, turning them into loyal audiences and customers over time.

After a while, however, 400 of these subscribers begin to lose interest. They stop interacting with your emails, eventually stop opening them, and then unsubscribe. Consequently, your sales start to suffer.

This illustrates the critical importance of understanding and monitoring your email marketing metrics. By keeping a close watch on these metrics, you can identify both successes and challenges in your email campaigns, helping you maintain and increase your revenue through strategic email communications.

Here are the main metrics that you need to measure and analyze regularly:

• Open rates

Email open rate is the percentage of users who opened the email out of the total number of emails delivered.

A higher open rate generally indicates that your email campaigns are well-received, suggesting that your subject lines are compelling and that you have established a good sender reputation. Open rates can also be influenced by the timing of your emails, as sending emails at optimal times when recipients are more likely to check their inboxes can significantly impact your open rates.

• Click through rates (CTRs)

A click through rate measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in the email, relative to the total number of delivered emails.

This metric is crucial because it shows how engaging and relevant your email content is to your audience. A high CTR indicates that your message resonates well with recipients, prompting them to take action. Improving your CTR can involve refining your message content, using clear and compelling calls to action, and ensuring that links are visible and relevant to the audience’s interests.

• Conversion rates

Conversion rate in email marketing measures the percentage of email recipients who complete a desired action – such as filling out a form, signing up for a service, or purchasing a product – after clicking on as link in your email.

This metric is vital as it directly relates to the effectiveness of your email in driving measurable actions that contribute to your business goals. To enhance conversion rates, ensure that your emails are targeted towards recipients’ preferences and that the landing pages they link to are optimized for conversion. This could involve streamlining the checkout process, providing clear information, or using persuasive elements like testimonials and guarantees.

It’s important to choose an email marketing software that keeps track of your email marketing statistics. For example, SiteGround Email Marketing has built-in statistics for your open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, and others. Measure and analyze them regularly in order to improve your future emails.

Wrap Up

Ecommerce email marketing is undoubtedly one of the most efficient marketing channels for your online store. From boosting sales through targeted promotions to nurturing customer relationships that foster loyalty and repeat business, its benefits are extensive. 

Remember, the journey of email marketing is continuous and always evolving – stay curious, be adaptable, and keep your customers’ needs at the forefront of your campaigns.