Email Marketing Strategy: How To Attract, Engage & Delight Subscribers

The right content. The right audience. The right time.

Many eCommerce marketers struggle with this concept. What was once a burden − providing the right content to the right people at the right time in the shopper's journey − no longer needs to be!

With an optimized eCommerce email marketing strategy you'll attract new leads, engage more contacts and convert them into customers in no time.

Email Marketing Strategy Tips

Attracting Prospects and Leads

Use A Lead Capture Tool

Jumpstart your email marketing strategy by leveraging a lead capture tool, such as Justuno, to convert more prospects into leads. Create pop-ups that display on your site and offer visitors the option to subscribe to emails and sign up for newsletters. Specify the rules using a lead capture tool to trigger the pop-up at only at the times you want it to. For example, exclude certain URLs, show the pop-up after a certain time is spent on a page or target users by their geographic location. There are so many different rules to set that help eCommerce merchants capture the leads they want.

Offer Incentives

Attract more email subscribers by offering incentives on pop-up forms. Incentives include anything that your target audience finds valuable, such as a special first-time discount, an entrance into a giveaway, a free downloadable piece of content like a video course or case study, a checklist and so much more.

Run a Contest or Giveaway

90% of all marketers have said that social media has increased exposure. Get your brand in front of those who you may have not otherwise reached by running a giveaway or promotional contest. Share the giveaway on your respective social media platforms, and let your followers know that they need to subscribe to your email list to be entered. This will not only earn you more email subscribers but also help increase your followers on social media.

Engaging Subscribers

Create Segmented Lists

We recommend building various lists to segment subscribers based on their interests and demographics. Be sure to take your buyer personas into consideration when creating these lists. If you don't have buyer personas, then define the behaviors of the various personalities of your target audience. How do they use your product/service? What are their intentions with your product/service? What problem does your product/service solve for them?

If you already have buyer personas established, then create various lists using your CMS so that you can later run specific campaigns and promotions tailored to each buyer persona. Also, create segmented lists for subscribers, leads and customers to tailor promotions to each of those audiences, too.

Personalize Messages

If you use a CMS like HubSpot or an email marketing tool like Klaviyo, you'll have all the features you need to personalize messages for each subscriber. With HubSpot, utilize personalization tokens in emails to send an entire list the same email while personalizing specific parts of the email − such as the recipient's first name, company name, phone number, revenue and so much more.

With Klaviyo, greet every website visitor with personalized flyouts or pop-ups using profile, segment, URL and location targeting. Also, delay pop-ups based on time on page, scroll percentage and exit intent to avoid disrupting the user's experience on your site and, rather, gain more subscribers.

Another great way to personalize messages for each subscriber is to remind customers when they abandoned their shopping cart and to offer product recommendations based on their past purchase history. This can be done through the use of an automated workflow.

Use Automation

Build flows that automatically trigger emails to contacts that meet a specific criteria. Set the criteria based on what you want to achieve. For example, if you want to send an email drip campaign to shoppers who left a product in their shopping cart without purchasing it, then set the criteria so that the abandoned cart indicator equals "yes." If you're using a Klaviyo abandoned cart flow, the trigger is "when someone Started Checkout." This HubSpot abandoned cart workflow blog provides great visuals for building out a workflow and capturing those who left something behind in their cart.

In addition to using automation for abandoned cart reminders, use automation to follow-up with customers who made a purchase or downloaded a specific piece of content, like a webinar. Tailor messages based on the content to enhance your email marketing strategy and engage your audience throughout the buyer's journey.

A/B Test Emails

Increase open rates and click-through rates by A/B testing different components of your emails. Be sure to test only one thing at a time to determine how the change effects performance. For example, increase open rates by using A/B testing to compare two of the same exact emails with different subject lines. Or test button colors, copy or CTAs to see how changing any of these elements effects click-through rate. The email that performs the best after a given period of time will then be sent to the rest of your list.

Delighting Customers

Use A Customer Loyalty Program

No matter whether you're selling consumer goods or B2B services, delight customers even after they've purchased by delivering value. Ensure your sales team is proactively asking customers how they're doing so that they can effectively cross-sell and up-sell other products or services that meet the customer's needs.

Using a customer loyalty program is a great way to encourage customers to return, too. Track points with a progress bar, and let customers know how much more money they need to spend to earn points and unlock the next reward. Reward VIP and high-spending customers with exclusive discounts and offers, and provide an incentive to encourage referrals. Reward both the new customer and the person that referred the new customer with an offer unique to them.

The idea is to build an exciting customer loyalty program that both excites the customer and subtly nudges them to spend more. This way, they'll be excited to open your emails, spend more money and return to your website or physical store to make future purchases.

Celebrate Their Milestones

Any successful email marketing strategy involves celebrating customers and making them feel special. Use data from your customer loyalty software to reward customers on their first year anniversary of shopping with your brand. Send an email with a unique discount code to entice them to make a purchase, or offer a free gift (that's affordable for your company) with any purchase. Email, like social media, is another outlet where brands should put effort into making their customers feel special.

Also, celebrate your customers' birthdays! Compared to promotional emails, birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate, a 432% higher revenue per email and a 179% higher unique click rate. If you're not taking advantage of celebrating your customers during their birthday month, you're likely missing out on serious revenue.

Send Helpful Videos

Lastly, delight customers post-purchase by sending helpful "how-to" videos when appropriate. For example, if you sell DIY goods or products that require the customer to set it up themselves, "how-to" videos come in handy immensely. Your customers will appreciate it when they realize they need additional instructions for putting together that five-star rated dinner at home.

Conclusion

Our clients have seen tremendous success with email marketing, and it's one of our favorite tools for revenue growth. If you need help attracting, engaging and delighting customers or want to enhance your existing email marketing strategy, the Groove Commerce team wants to hear from you!

From campaign creation and custom email templates to segmentation, automation, reporting and more, we partner with you to increase email performance, maximize ROI and grow online revenue. Fill out the form below to contact our team, so we can learn more about your email needs.