In this week´s blog post we’re going to be looking at Email Marketing, a commonly overlooked marketing tool for businesses of any size, and often an untapped goldmine, especially within the e-commerce industry.
Many of you may be thinking that email marketing is something of the past, a rudimentary digital marketing tool that is no longer relevant in the year 2022… but that thought process couldn´t be more wrong, and could be costing you thousands in revenue!
Email marketing has always been an incredibly profitable form of advertising, and in recent years, has exploded into what is one of today’s most lucrative tools in terms of ROI.
Why is email marketing so powerful in terms of return on investment?
The answer is simple. Zero Party Data. Zero party data is data that a customer, or potential customer, has actively shared with you, and therefore you actually own the audience that you´re marketing to.
If we compare email marketing to any other form of digital marketing (with the exception of SMS marketing) you´ll find that it’s the only form of marketing where you´re NOT paying a 3rd party, such as Facebook or TikTok, to put your advert in front of their audience. The audience is already yours, they already know you, and as we all know, it’s much more cost effective to sell to an existing customer than it is to convert a new customer.
“Email conversion rates are 40x that of Facebook and Twitter.”
Source: Kissmetrics
So how do we go about email marketing?
Well, it all starts with consent. Without consent, your email database is worthless. Although GDPR laws vary from country to country, in most cases you could be looking at extremely heavy fines if you market to your email database without consent.
Consent is something that is explicitly given by your customers to allow you to communicate with them in this way. Usually via a checkbox on a content or sign up form that says something along the lines of “I consent to having my data used for marketing purposes” or “I wish to subscribe to X company´s newsletter”.
Once we´ve achieved this consent, we can start marketing. And what we want to start with is “flows”. Flows are automated email templates that are designed to send the right message, to the right customer, at the right moment.
Have you ever received an email from a company inviting you to return to their website to complete your purchase?
Well… that’s an automated Abandoned Cart Flow.
Likewise with the series of emails you receive when you first sign up to a website, that’s a Welcome Series Flow, and the beauty of this is that all you have to do is set up with automation via an ESP (email service provider), the only additional work is monitoring the results and testing variations until you have your perfectly designed and worded email for your client base.
When it comes to automation, there are a tonne of flows that we can build in order to keep our customers engaged. We´ve already mentioned Abandoned Cart and Welcome Series, these are the absolute basics, but we can push this much further by introducing more flows that are triggered by your customers activity.
For example, the back in stock flow, where you let customers know when their frequently purchased items are back in stock, or an upsell/cross-sell flow, where you offer a customer an incentive to purchase a similar or complimenting product to their most recent purchase.
Here we are barely scratching the surface of email marketing. There is so much more to dig into, such as deliverability, click-through-rates, responsive design, etc… And we´ll touch on those topics at a later date, but today we just wanted to give you an introduction to this form of digital marketing and to give you a little food for thought.
Are you utilizing email marketing?
Let us know how email marketing has impacted your brand and how you intend to use this platform to build stronger relationships with your audience.
We hope that you enjoyed our article and found helpful information that will help you to grow your business. Stay with us for the upcoming series of our Digital Marketing tips and in the meantime, we invite you to visit our page www.wordans.ca to discover our blank apparel offer and don’t forget to check our instagram page @wordans_canada for daily inspiration.
