Introduction
Email marketing, just like any other type of marketing, attracts your visitors to your business and your website. However, unlike any other form of marketing, email engagement is especially important when talking about eCommerce as you can’t physically showcase the products and services you offer. It is one of the most important marketing channels when it keeps your store up to date with your current and potential customers.
If your email engagement underperforms, you could face a potential loss of revenue. As a result, it can ruin your business. Now it isn’t as plain and simple as just persuading your visitors to subscribe to your email notifications and then ignoring it. Once they subscribe, you hope them to follow your promotions, purchase your products, and become your long time customers.
This is still important even if you already have a physical store since more and more people spend their time shopping online at home instead of purchasing face to face.
Keeping that in mind, once you set up your emailing system, they don’t come with a guide or a manual as to how you’re supposed to keep your customers interested and engaged with what you’re sending them. Thankfully, there are some dead giveaways that you can pick up on. For example, there are some tools allowing you to see how many emails have been opened, how many clicks there have been, how many users completed the action requested in the email, etc.
And while all of those are pretty good at letting you know how many users are even looking at your emails, other things have to be taken into account. Users that receive too many emails in general and are too busy to keep opening them, emails that are not relevant to them, or they don’t recognize who is sending it are also a part of your statistics that can’t be taken as feedback as all you’re going to see is a low email open rate that you can’t dissect.
So, is there something you can do to improve the engagement of your eCommerce email? Of course, here are some ways you can do so, without stressing much about numbers, clicks, and traffic:
Some Tips to Improve the Email Engagement
Allowing customizable preferences on sign-up
People would like to adjust their preferences to exactly what they want to see, especially their emails. It includes setting the frequency and the kind of these emails they will get. This can improve your email marketing strategy once you have a clear view of how many people like seeing what, and you can avoid getting your emails left on “read”.
Moreover, it also ensures that your customers receive emails with the exact subjects they’ve signed up for. It means that their interest will be respected as they won’t be bombarded with unrelated information and offers. If you need support in tailoring your emails, you can take a look at these templates with examples of how you should handle them in different scenarios.
Personalize the emails you send
Using email templates is one of the most popular options in email marketing. It will save your time and effort when sending a huge amount of emails. However, take the time to check all the data you have, and personalize what you’re sending to your customers. This includes their first name, gender, location, or anything else that could relate to them and your offers. Some researches show that having personalized emails can boost revenue and email acceptance.
After all, they are receiving messages from complete strangers, and if you want to make a good impression, your approach must be tailored to their preferences. Another way you can personalize is to create a professional signature. This should include your name, title, company name, and contact information. And if you’re looking for inspiration, there are plenty of professional email signature examples out there to get you started.
Moreover, recipients are also more likely to engage with something that’s specific to them. Use this tip when you build your database, you can easily upgrade and improve the way you communicate with them.
Make them feel special
Who doesn’t like receiving a gift or a small token of appreciation from time to time? Sending special celebratory emails congratulating them on their achievements or birthdays is click-worthy material. This would lead to getting more traffics if your email contains an outside link. In addition, it would possibly increase your revenue if they accept the gift you’ve prepared for them.
Send abandonment and price drop emails
A large number of people will drop the purchase before even getting to the checkout process. Customers will decide a product is out of their price range, or they simply determine that they’ll use another store or provider to get the products they need would surprise you. It’s something that you pretty much can not control since the size of the market has expanded drastically, but having a few tricks up your sleeve is what can bring the value back to you.
Sending customers some reminding emails about an on-sale item is a good opportunity to gain engagement and win them back. Seeing the emails can pique their interest once again, and hopefully urge them to complete the purchase.
Remove inactive customers from your lists
You clearly want many subscribers, but you don’t need those who are inactive and don’t engage with your emails. Therefore, you should classify your customers that will improve your email statistics, especially since you won’t be wasting your emails.
Depending on how often you’re sending emails, you might be able to remove inactive users faster. If you remove them, you would not fall into spam conditions. To avoid spam conditions and maintain email deliverability, consider using an SPF record checker to ensure the accuracy of your SPF records, along with removing inactive users from your email list.
Find the right time to send an email
In fact, a lot of us tend to roll in bed and check our social media and emails. Clearly, it is much easier to access those who already in checking mode. Therefore, choose the right time to send your email wisely.
Google some previous statistics and research regarding how much people spend their time on devices and at what time they’re doing so. Try to understand your audience, based on your data, and adjust your sending time according to that.
Play with visuals
Humans are interactive, and seeing something that can catch their curiosity could be an excuse for them to keep on reading, clicking, and engaging with you. For big emails that you want to catch a lot of attention with, putting away some time to create a design that is eyecatching and captivating can boost the chances of your subscribers and users to go further with the clicks. This can turn into them being even more interested in what they’re seeing, hopefully boosting your sales.
Conclusion
The rate of customer engagement is a key factor in how much you can improve as a business, and keep your eCommerce store relevant and competitive to others. As we’ve mentioned, there is a lot of elements that you have to vary of, but generally small improvements will be enough for you to see a change in your numbers.
To sum up, improving email engagement is one of the most essential strategies when running an online business. If you’re doing a campaign in the near future, track the emails and content your subscribers are engaging with, and you’ll surely be on the right path.