What are the benefits of email marketing for businesses? Should you consider investing in this marketing medium if your e-commerce business is yet to adopt it? The answer is yes, as email is consistently cited as one of, if not the best marketing channel that consistently delivers great ROI. Especially in a world after a pandemic.

You need to invest some time and effort upfront in setting up your email marketing automations to get the best out of them. We outline below why email marketing is seen by many as the most effective marketing channel, and the email marketing automations that will help boost your business today.

The Benefits of Email Marketing

Email marketing is an essential part of scaling your e-commerce business and can help you generate revenue.

In addition to generating revenue (and a good number to aim for is around 25% of total revenue once campaigns are optimised), you can enjoy the following benefits of email marketing:

• Telling your brand, products & services story
• Increase customer loyalty
• Keep your customers engaged while staying top of mind
• Reduce CPC (Cost Per Conversion)
• Reduce CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
• Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Easy to track ROI (Return On Investment)
• Lower costs compared to mainstream marketing channels
• Deliver targeted messages
• Drive revenue

Email Marketing Sequences

Welcome Emails

Often overlooked, this can be a great opportunity to introduce new customers to your brand ethos. This is also usually where you provide first time customers with a discount code to use on their first purchase.

A welcome email should be considered as the readers’ first impression of your business. When it comes to interacting with your customers, no email has the same high-impact and high-ROI as a great welcome email marketing strategy. On average, welcome emails produce 320% more revenue per email than other promotional emails.

Be generous with your word choice and remember that you’re not only sending an email, but creating a brand for yourself and your business as well. By thanking your audience members for joining the party and offering something in return, you’re instantly going to start building trust.

First Purchase Emails

Following on welcome emails, a first purchase email sequence allows you to continue engaging a new customer. You may think making a sale is the endpoint, but it is only the beginning of building a relationship with your new customer.

Types of First Purchase Emails:

• The order confirmation

• The thank you for your your order email

• Product review emails & Review Request Emails

Abandoned Cart Emails

Ok so you’ve implemented product recommendations, optimised your funnel, and  your email marketing content is convincing and personalised, and your traffic is growing more each month as a result.

Would it shock you to learn that you aren’t closing 2 out of 3 sales online?

Did you know that almost 75% of online shoppers leave their carts without completing their purchase – which results in online retailers losing approximately R286 Billion in annual sales revenue worldwide?

Abandoned cart emails are emails that are sent in an attempt to re-engage shoppers who left items in their cart without completing the checkout process. To get these customers back to their carts, sending reminder emails is one of the most effective tactics.

According to figures from a study by SaleCycle:

• Almost half (44.1%) of abandoned cart emails are opened.
• More than one tenth (11.6%) of the cart abandonment reminder emails are clicked.
• Almost a third (29.9%) of clicks result in an e-commerce purchase.

Timing is everything when it comes to bringing your clients back to their carts successfully. Another SaleCycle study on 200 brands determined the following:

• Emails sent within 20 minutes have an average conversion rate of 5.2%.
• Emails sent within one hour achieve an average conversion rate of 4.5%.
• Emails sent more than 24 hours after a cart has been abandoned achieve an average conversion rate of 2.6%.

Shopify’s industry average recovery conversion rate is 7%, which is a good statistic to measure by.

As you take care to create marketing materials that are compelling, attractive and responsive, you’ll need to do the same with this one.

Product Review Emails

When your customer has received their order, it’s a good idea to see how they feel about their product and sale experience. By requesting honest feedback, you’ll be able to iron out any issues with the product and experience that there may be.

Many customers won’t provide feedback if they’ve experienced a small issue with your product, and these customers are likely to not buy from you again. By actively reaching out and fixing any issues that there may be, there is a greater chance of gaining a loyal customer in the long term than if you had done nothing at all.

Product Recommendation Emails

It’s easier to sell to existing customers because you already have an established relationship with them. You can, for instance, provide products that they might be interested in based on the data you already have stored about them. Product recommendation emails can be combined with product review emails too.

With personalized recommendations, your email marketing software (if it supports product recommendations) will automatically choose the products for you. You’ll just need to determine where in the email to include the recommended products. Alternatively, you can queue up an automated email that follows up with similar or add-on products when people buy your best sellers.This is particularly beneficial when you have a smaller online shop lacking the data the more advanced email platforms need to make reliable product predictions.

Email Marketing Tools

Here are a few popular email marketing tools to use:

• Klaviyo
• MailChimp
• ConvertKit
• Constant Contact
• Everlytic
• MailPoet (WordPress)

When choosing the right email marketing platform for your business, remember to establish your goals, match the features to your goals, and pick the right plan. Most email marketing platforms offer a free tier that you can upgrade to paid plans as your needs grow.

In order to maximize your email marketing efforts, make sure you’ve got an online payment gateway that promises high conversion rates. Marketing leads ultimately need to be converted, and by partnering with Peach Payments, you can reduce customers dropping off at checkout.