If your eCommerce business has an existing email marketing strategy, it’s important to update it regularly based on industry trends. The same goes for making efficiency enhancing tweaks, based on what you’ve learned from campaign to campaign.
From creating abandoned cart email examples, to curating empathetic messaging and tracking best practices, there are various trends to consider. This article will touch on these, to help make sure that your emails are hitting the mark every time.
Top Email Marketing Trends for eCommerce
When you’re trying to build your brand online, email marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive new leads and conversions. Used wisely, the low cost, high ROI medium can also generate attention for your store over and above just reaching existing customers.
By following these email marketing trends for eCommerce, your business will be pulling away from its competitors in no time:
1) Segmentation with personalization
If you’ve been running email marketing campaigns for a while, it’s likely that you’ve accumulated a large (or fast growing) master list of subscribers. While the “spray and pray” approach to email campaigns might have been better received in the old days, it is less likely to work now. Achieving consistent results means creating and targeting specific audience segments with individual messaging.
Doing so allows you to personalize what you’re saying to your audience based on their interests. It also gives you the opportunity to unlock interaction based on how they’ve behaved previously. The more specific an email blast is, from the subject line through to the call to action, the more likely it will connect with the person on the receiving end of it.
2) Empathetic messaging across campaigns
A few years into a global pandemic, the world is still recovering from the effects of the isolation and uncertainty brought on by COVID-19. There was a big push from brands to make consumers feel like they genuinely care in the first few months. The same idea still applies now, albeit more related to the ongoing reckoning with racism, political polarization and war.
For this reason, empathetic messaging should be continued across email campaigns. The key to getting it right lies in speaking to the fears of the receiver. Skip the shock tactics and focus your efforts on spreading warmth to your subscriber base instead. Test out different messages across segments, and take note of the spikes in engagement levels for future campaigns.
3) Study best practices
If you’re sending multiple emails to multiple audience segments every month, it’s a good idea to introduce a system to keep track of best practices. Marketing automation tools (like Sendlane) and email marketing providers are great at providing detailed analytics reports, each of which can be used to learn something for next time.
Start with tracking the open, click through and unsubscribe rates. These will signal any low hanging fruit in terms of what worked and what didn’t. For a more direct approach to uncovering best practices, ask your segments for feedback on your campaigns once a year. Don’t forget to offer an incentive (like a discount on their next purchase or free shipping) to better participation.
4) Test multiple abandoned cart emails campaigns
eCommerce business owners should know all about abandoned carts, the dreaded action where a lead was so close to converting, but didn’t. In a bid to recoup these leads and encourage them to convert, your business should be curating and testing multiple abandoned cart emails across this specific segment. Done correctly, the right message can quickly generate a new conversion.
Try abandoned cart examples around price drops, special discounts, similar products or an added benefit like free shipping. Your goal should be more than just increasing sales. These emails are pure gold, as they also create an opportunity for feedback from customers which won’t have been possible otherwise.
Aware of all the email marketing trends you should be considering, you’re all set to keep your eCommerce business thriving as we head into the second half of 2022.
Remember to update your marketing strategy regularly, implementing key learnings with a view to offer your customers the best possible experience.
