Email Marketing: 11 Best Practices for eCommerce Stores

This article will cover the top email marketing tips and techniques for eCommerce stores to create engaging campaigns that drive success.

From segmentation strategies to compliance regulations, we'll provide actionable insights to help your business build customer trust and achieve impactful email marketing.

So, let's dive in!

Why is Email Marketing Important for eCommerce?

Email marketing is a vital component of any successful eCommerce marketing strategy. Here are a few reasons why:

• Drives Sales: Email marketing campaigns are one of the most effective ways to drive sales in eCommerce. According to a study by Omnisend, “35% of consumers who click on an automated email go on to purchase.” In addition, by sending targeted emails to subscribers, you can promote your products, showcase new arrivals, and highlight special pricing offers and promotions to drive cross-sells.
• Builds Customer Loyalty: Email marketing is an excellent way to build customer loyalty and keep customers engaged with your brand. By sending regular newsletters and automated updates, you can provide your subscribers valuable content, such as product updates, industry news, and tips and tricks. This strategy helps build relationships with your customers and keep them returning to your eCommerce store.
• Increases Brand Awareness: Email marketing is a great way to raise awareness about your ecommerce business and reach a wider audience. You can expand your reach and attract new customers by creating shareable content and encouraging subscribers to forward your emails to their friends and family.
• Provides Customer Insights: Email marketing is an excellent way to gather valuable customer data. By tracking open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, you can learn what works best for your audience and improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. You can also use email marketing to gather customer feedback and improve your new products and services accordingly.
• Delivers High Returns: Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective eCommerce marketing channels. Unlike traditional advertising, which can be expensive and difficult to track, email allows you to reach your target audience directly at a fraction of the cost. According to a 2020 worldwide study, for every U.S. dollar companies spent on email marketing, they earned 36 U.S. dollars in return – an ROI of 3,600%!

11 Email Marketing Best Practices for eCommerce

When you invest in email marketing for your eCommerce store, it's important to follow best practices to ensure you achieve positive results. 

Here are the top email marketing best practices for eCommerce stores to consider:

1. Build a Quality Email List

The first step to successful email marketing is building a quality email list. Your email list should only include people who have explicitly given you permission to email them. Permission means they have opted-in to receive promotional emails from your eCommerce store. You can collect email addresses through sign-up forms on your website, social media, and at checkout, and in some cases, send these emails via automation.

It's essential to avoid buying email lists or using scraped email addresses. These practices can result in high bounce rates, low engagement, and even blacklisting.

2. Use a Consistent "From" Name & Email Address

A consistent "from" name and email address can help build trust and recognition with your email list’s new subscribers. You should use an email address associated with your eCommerce store's domain. For example, if your eCommerce store is called "MyStore.com," you might use an email address like "newsletter@mystore.com."

It's also important to avoid using free email services, like Gmail or Yahoo, for your email marketing campaigns. This unrecommended email marketing practice can make your emails look less professional and even trigger spam filters.

3. Segment Your Email List

Your eCommerce store can send customized emails to certain subscriber groups by segmenting your email list. Segmentation is a great way to hyper-target your message to people that are ready to listen and act on your advice and offers.

This best practice can help improve engagement and increase sales. 

For example, you might segment your list based on factors like:

• Purchase history
• Warm leads vs. cold leads
• Geographic location
• Age or gender
• Interests or preferences

4. Use a Strong CRM System

A robust CRM system can help you manage your email list and improve your marketing campaigns. Your CRM system should allow you to:

• Collect and manage subscriber data
• Segment your email list
• Personalize your emails
• Automate your email campaigns
• Track your email campaign performance

Many CRM systems are available for eCommerce stores, such as Mailchimp, specifically designed for eCommerce stores. An effective CRM system can help you optimize your email campaigns and achieve better results.

5. Personalize Your Emails

Personalized emails can help improve engagement and conversion rates. You can make your emails more relevant and interesting by addressing subscribers by name and tailoring your emails to their interests and preferences.

Use personalization in your email's subject line, greeting, or body. Personalized recommendations and product suggestions can also effectively drive sales because you’re more quickly building trust and rapport, which is essential in a well-crafted sales cycle.

It’s essential, therefore, that personalization is thoughtful and doesn’t come off as robotic (especially when sending a welcome email to kick off a drip campaign). Take the time to craft personalization that shows you’ve done your homework and aren’t sending the same canned message to all the people you include in a campaign.

6. Optimize Your Email Content

Optimizing your email content can help improve engagement and conversion rates. Your email content should be:

• Clear and concise
• Visually appealing
• Mobile-friendly
• Action-oriented

For example, one way to enhance your email design is by using high-quality images. You can use image upscaling tools to improve the resolution and clarity of your images, making them more visually appealing to your subscribers.

Over time, you can further optimize marketing emails based on historical data, like open rates and click-through rates. By analyzing these metrics, eCommerce stores can tailor email content to their audience’s preferences, improve customer engagement, and drive more conversions.

7. Monitor Your Sender Reputation

Your sender's reputation is a measure of how trustworthy your emails are. If recipients frequently mark your emails as spam or your emails bounce, your sender's reputation can suffer. A poor reputation can result in email providers automatically blocking your emails or sending them to your receipients' spam folders.

To maintain a good sender reputation, you should:

• Only send emails to subscribers who have opted-in.
• Use a consistent "from" name and email address.
• Monitor your bounce rate and remove invalid email addresses.
• Monitor your complaint rate and remove subscribers who mark your emails as spam.
• Use email authentication tools, like Sender Policy Framework (SPF), to verify your sender identity and improve your deliverability.

8. Use Email Authentication Tools

Email authentication tools can help verify your sender identity and improve your email deliverability. One such tool, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), authenticates your domain's sender by specifying which IP addresses are authorized to send emails on your domain's behalf.

Another email authentication tool is DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), which uses a cryptographic signature to authenticate the sender's domain. DKIM adds a digital signature to your email headers, which proves an authorized sender sent the email.

Email authentication tools like these can help prevent email providers from automatically marking your emails as spam.

9. Test & Optimize Your Emails

Testing and optimizing emails can help improve your email campaign performance. You might test and optimize your emails by:

• A/B testing subject lines, email content, and calls-to-action
• Trying different send times and days
• Tracking open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates

You'll discover what works best for your audience and how to improve your email campaigns by testing and optimizing your emails.

10. Monitor Your Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment is a common issue for eCommerce stores, but email marketing can effectively recover lost sales and improve your bottom line. Many cart abandonment solutions are available for eCommerce stores, such as abandoned cart emails via recovery plugins for platforms like PrestaShop. 

By sending targeted cart abandonment emails, you can remind customers of items they left in their cart and encourage them to complete their purchase.

11. Encourage Customer Reviews

Customer reviews can help build trust and social proof for your eCommerce store.

You might encourage customer reviews by:

• Sending follow-up emails after a purchase
• Offering incentives, like discounts or free shipping, for leaving a review
• Using social proof, like reviews and ratings, on your website and in your emails

Elevate Your eCommerce Game With Effective Email Marketing

If you're looking to improve your eCommerce game, email marketing could be the perfect tool. Remember to follow the best practices outlined here to ensure it works in your favor and provides maximum ROI. Take these tips on board and watch your sales skyrocket from effective campaigns!