strategy

E-mails are an important part of your company’s communication. Surprisingly, they are quite often neglected as a good way to increase traffic to a website. Too often web shop owners and marketers use e-mails just because they feel they have to. This causes newsletters to become a routine rather than exciting news.

We all receive a ton of e-mails every day. I bet that deleting the biggest part of them is not your favourite way of spending free time. Time and time again you see the same type of e-mail that is shouting to you to buy something and you start to be fed up with the company that sent it. Thus, when it is your company that is sending e-mails, you want to achieve the opposite effect. You want customers to open e-mails they receive from you and to eventually buy your product or service.

E-mail marketing tools allow you to easily create your own template and even automate the sending process so you do not have to worry about sending e-mails all the time. Some of the most popular e-mail marketing tools are Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and Constant Contact.

There are three main types of e-mails that you can send to your customers: regular marketing, notification and transactional e-mails. The first type of e-mails concern informative e-mails that are sent without the receiver’s action as an incentive. These are e-mails that include information about promotions and newsletters.

The second type of e-mails that you can send to your customers are notifications. This kind of e-mail can be sent after a customer took action. For instance, e-mails that you receive from Twitter or LinkedIn concerning activities related to your account, shopping cart abandonment e-mails, birthday e-mails or feedback requests.

Transactional e-mails are sent as a direct response to a certain action taken by a customer. Examples of transactional e-mails are for instance: welcome and thank you e-mails, e-mails with invoices, order, payment and shipment confirmations. These kind of e-mails are especially important for online stores, as most of the customers look for a confirmation of their actions.

Below, you can find a list of essential rules for creating e-mail marketing campaigns for online stores.

#1 You are being repetitive and bothersome

As I have already mentioned at the beginning, sending similar e-mails and telling people to buy your products almost every day is just not the way to go. By doing so you will deter customers rather than attract them.

Try to offer your customers informative e-mails that do not always scream “buy this, it is a must have!” Of course it depends on the business and industry. Try to be original and entertaining so customers remember you and not your competitor.

#2 You do not create a clear call to action

The best recommendation when it comes to creating a call to action is to make it short and concise. Some of the best examples are those including 2-3 words, for example:

If you use more than one call to action button, try to remember to emphasize only one. The less confusion for the reader, the better. Add words like “now” or “today” to your call to action in order to create an additional incentive to engage people.

#3 You are afraid of being creative

Nobody remembers plain e-mails. In order to stand out from the ton of e-mails that people receive daily you have to create an e-mail that catches attention immediately. You can do it by adding a video (it can be yours but can be also a YouTube video), creating a new design for your e-mails or by making your e-mails interactive (present one or more of your discounted products or services).

What is equally important to the content of e-mails are the subject line and preview text. Make sure that both are interesting and humorous. This will significantly increase the probability of your customers opening the e-mail.

#4 You do not treat clients personally

Addressing people directly is a proven way to make customers feel more positive about your advertisements. Thanks to personalization people find the content more relevant and tend to engage with it more often. Personalization does not only concern addressing your customers by name but also customizing the content they receive.

#5 You forget about timing

By sending your campaign the right day of the week and at just the right time you can increase the opening rates of your e-mails. Check out one of the recommendations about the right timing for sending newsletters and adjust it to your type of business.

When you apply these rules you will not be the next web shop sending repetitive, boring e-mails. Dare to go out of your e-mail comfort zone now!