Increasing eCommerce Conversions Through Email

The main benefit of email marketing is its ability to increase eCommerce conversions. This is because a well thought out email marketing campaign puts your brand front of mind.

Fundamentally, email marketing is a valuable tool for businesses, because it is typically quick, affordable and campaigns can produce high ROI. Email marketing is most commonly used by eCommerce companies looking to make an instant sale.

Having said that, the key to email marketing is engagement, therefore email campaigns can also be valuable for companies who do not have an instant online conversion offer. Encouraging reactions, interactions and advertising your brand are key elements of a successful email campaign.

“Thomas Cook Group Increased Open Rates By 50% after implementing a personalised email newsletter campaign”  ExactTarget.com

Segmentation & Localisation

Targeting groups of subscribers differently according to their location, language, actions and habits can improve both the open rate and CTR of a campaign.

The most effective emails are inevitably those tailored to the individual, yet this is a rather unpractical thing to implement due to time and monetary constraints. As a result most emails are sent out to the masses, reducing their relevance and in turn the CTR. By segmenting your groups and literally tagging your content, you can send different emails to different customer groups, making your campaigns dynamic and highly targeted, ultimately improving the likelihood of eCommerce conversions.

Personalisation

A further way to increase eCommerce conversions is with personalisation. Personalisation is perceived extremely well by customers, with 77% of those surveyed finding recommendations very useful. 33% went on to buy recommended products.

Imagine you run a restaurant and you want to target your customers with an email campaign.You know who your customers are and you know what they like to eat and/or drink. Instead of sending them an email bombarding them with information, avoid irrelevant content and impress the receiver by highlighting offers relevant to their activity.Why not email them with an offer on their favourite dish, or perhaps target them with a voucher for their favourite drink free when they dine with you this month?

By tailoring the content to the reader you are not just saying, “Hello, we are a restaurant and we are open” you are actually communicating, “ Hello Sami, we know you like our restaurant, in particular the steak, so with the incentive we have just sent you we hope to see you later in the week”.

This level of personalisation will increase your click through rate and conversions.

Re-targeting

Another way in which you can improve eCommerce conversions is by re-targeting. Identify customers who have looked and not bought or left items in their shopping cart, and target them with an incentive to complete their purchase.

A major benefit of email campaigns is that they are measurable. It is great to know that 20% of people opened your latest email and 5% of those bought, but by digging a little deeper you can find out some amazingly valuable information.

By hooking up an email campaign to Google Analytics for example you can see exactly when a customer dropped out of the buying process. This can highlight improvements for your site; do you need to improve a page, is there not enough information or do the customers need another email with a little nudge. Taking a look at the overall picture of how your email performs is very valuable. You can see what part of the email makes the readers click through; deducing what type of content engages them.  You can also see what pages they visit when on your site, highlighting what type of content they are looking for.

Consistency

Establishing a scent trail throughout the buyer journey from the email through to the landing page and checkout can improve your eCommerce conversion rate by up to 20%.

Consistency has two parts. You need to be consistent in your contact with customers, and you need to communicate consistently who you are and what you do.

Emails are a form of marketing. Even if someone doesn’t open your message, they will have still read your company name and that in itself is a powerful thing. If you are not a well-known brand a customer will remember you for around 12months, even if they have previously bought something. Scheduling regular emails is just good business sense.

It is imperative that the user experience also flows. A customer does not want a cut and shut job, they want to feel like the sales process is natural and simple. Any cause for concern can easily deter someone from making a purchase. The analytics we previously mentioned are useful for highlighting pages that are not to the clients liking.

We can help you to segment your audience and identify what types of content will engage each group of subscribers, implement personalisation and retargeting on your email campaigns as well as ensure the buyer journey is consistent.

Get in touch today to learn more about our services.