E-commerce businesses rely on email marketing almost as heavily as they rely on the Internet’s existence. This is not a joke — without carefully targeted, segmented email marketing campaigns, e-commerce would never flourish to its today’s scale. And while it is true that social media marketing also plays a major part in any business promotion, email marketing in e-commerce and retail has the highest ROI across all industries — an average of $45 per dollar spent.
Such impressive figures are not incidental — email offers a direct and personalized way to communicate with your prospects and customers. But of course, only smart campaigns relevant for your audience can result in such high ROI. Below are nine proven examples of email marketing campaigns that boost sales in the e-commerce industry.
1 Welcome Email
It all starts with a good welcome email — the first step in building your communication with a newly registered lead. Keep in mind that these emails have the highest open rates compared to all other promotional materials. An open rate for the first-ever message from a new business usually exceeds 60% — and not just because many platforms place account verification links in their welcome emails.
A well-written welcome email is your chance to make a good impression on a lead whose interest you’ve already piqued — so do not waste this one-at-a-time opportunity. Ideally, welcome emails should include:
- Thank you for registering with the site
- A few words about your brand or product
- Link to any discounts or freebies you promised
- An unsubscribe option
The length of a welcome email can vary; for example, you can include more information about your products or features. Still, the common practice is to keep it short.
2 New Product or Feature Launch
Moving along all the decision-making funnel stages that eventually result in a purchase takes time for most people. The more expensive and multi-featured the product is (think Adobe software vs ordering kitchen supplies), the longer this pipeline transition will take. Informing your leads about new product features in advance helps to:
- Pique interest and build suspense
- Educate customers about current and upcoming product features
- Give them more time to decide
- Build more trust with your subscribers
Also, emails can enhance the feeling of familiarity with your product, even if they advertise new features. For example, when Lyft was about to add scooters to its vehicle fleet, the email campaign slogan was ‘Same Lyft, New Wheels.’
3 Cart Abandonment
Another must-have example on any email template list. The success of your cart abandonment campaigns will depend on many factors — starting from the product quality, of course. But there are other important factors that can boost campaign efficiency and win back a few customers. Pay special attention to:
- Timing — customers abandon carts before checking out for different reasons, and they may come back after a well-timed reminder;
- Email frequencies — sometimes, a single reminder is not enough, but you should not send more than three abandon-cart emails, anyway;
- Emotional appeal — you do not necessarily need to send pictures of heartbroken pandas, but it’s important to convey that you’re sad to see a customer go.
4 Cross-Sell & UpSell Emails
Upsell and cross-sell emails are another great opportunity to incentivize clients for another purchase. Practically any e-commerce business has room for expansion here. For example, Spotify, a service that started as a subscription-based music streaming platform, eventually moved on to selling concert tickets and related merchandise. This is an excellent example of how cross-selling can give your existing customers another reason to spend more money on your platform.
This type of email campaign can also advertise new partnerships and an opportunity to purchase new goods with a time-limited discount. To make the cross-selling campaigns work, ensure that emails are carefully segmented and can actually spike the recipients’ interest. For that, it’s best to target recipients on their previous purchase behavior — which leads us to another sales-boosting campaign type.
5 Behavior Triggered Offers
Email segmentation is one of the key factors that determine the success of marketing campaigns. Analyzing previous buying history to come up with personalized offers and promotions is an obvious start, but e-commerce businesses do not need to stop there.
Sometimes, customers browse sites without registering or subscribing to a promotional newsletter. Today, plenty of plugins can help you ‘spy’ on website visitor behavior — what they looked at, how much time they spent on each product, where they paused, and where they left.
Analyzing these data can help you create targeted emails based on factual user behavior, while an email locating tool can offer you the means to reach leads even if they have not shared their contact info.
6 Personal & Seasonal Promotions
This one should be self-explanatory — any major holidays, from Christmas to Easter, should offer discounts and special offers. Customers expect that — just as they expect a Black Friday sale. Companies that have access to clients’ personal data can (and should) offer promotions for birthdays — preferably based on past customer behavior.
But some e-commerce businesses go even further than that. PetSmart, for example, features discounts and free deliveries for pet birthdays, too. In a way, it makes sense — pets are the end-users of the company’s products and services. But the creativity behind this promotion logic deserves a separate mention.
7 Come Back & Retention
One more customer category to watch out for is people who have made some purchases from you but have not been back in a while. This is the whole point of email marketing — working to retain existing customers who are more important than new leads (even though those matter, too). There are plenty of ideas to win back clients — from offering an exclusive discount to informing them about new products that may better suit their interests.
8 Trending Topics & Products
Emails that inform about trending topics and services have very high open and click-through rates if written right. Here, the trick is to build a connection between the topic, segmented customer list, and your products. For example, a store selling food supplements can discuss a range of nutrition topics with targeted buyers. This is an excellent example of an email campaign where you can create a long, detailed copy and build trust with your customers.
9 Post-Purchase Flow
Finally, do not ignore all the post-purchase courtesy flow — from a thank-you for making a purchase and listing similar goods to sending out reminders about making replenishments on pharmacy goods or pet supplies. Or, think about Amazon Kindle post-purchase campaigns — a few days after someone buys a new book, Kindle always sends a “what to read after” email with new recommendations.
These campaigns are proven examples of marketing emails every e-commerce business should send. In practice, there is way more room for creativity — even within each email type listed above.
All in all, it all goes down to nurturing the relationships with your leads and existing customers — especially with existing customers. Depending on your business specifics, there could be more ideas to show clients that you care — starting from promoting the environmental sustainability of your products and partnerships and ending with various rewards for new client referrals.
