When we think about emails, the first thing to pop in our minds is a boring body of text that goes directly to the trash. This common misconception against email marketing is holding back businesses from claiming numerous advantages it has to offer.

• Mailchimp, a global player in email marketing service, found that eCommerce emails enjoy an average open rate of 15.68%. It means that for every batch of hundred emails, 16 people will open the email and go through its content.
• In addition to the above, Statista research outlines that almost 4.6 billion users will exchange around 376 billion emails in 2025.

Source: Statista

The above statistics are proof enough that you cannot (and must not) ignore email marketing from the overall marketing plan of your eCommerce business. But the question is — where and how to start?

A brief guide to email marketing: key steps to keep in mind

• Creating an email list

Your email marketing strategy is incomplete without an email address list. Hence the first step is to encourage website visitors to share their email addresses. The rule of today’s internet world is simple: to get something, you must offer an incentive in return. There are numerous ways of doing this, like offering a free delivery coupon or a discount coupon, which people can access by sharing their email. 

Other options can be conducting a survey or running a questionnaire aimed at solving end users’ problems. You can refer to our blog on easy techniques to build an email list for a detailed reference.

• Organizing the email list

Now that you have a good collection of email addresses, it is time to sort the emails based on the type of promotional mail you will send. 

For example, if you are selling winter clothes online, then sending promotional emails to subscribers living in hot climates will not yield results. Additionally, there are high chances of them clicking the unsubscribe button. In this case, sorting the email list based on the region and weather is the ideal way.

Other sorting criteria can be based on the purchase history, purchase recency, order value, sign-up source, etc.

• Selecting the email marketing software

Email list, check. Sorting, check. The next step is to select the email marketing software to put the message into subscribers’ inboxes. There are numerous software in the market that offer almost similar features. As per Sarvika Tech’s email marketing experts, you must ensure that the selected software has the following features:

• Enables dynamic personalization of content.
• Offers ready-to-use templates with drag and drop editing features.
• Ensures that the emails land in the user’s inbox and not in the spam.
• Maintains the server’s IP in good condition.
• Sets automatic drip campaigns.
• Makes A/B testing possible.
• Scalable to simultaneously manage multiple campaigns over large numbers of databases.

You can start with the free trials and later shift to paid. But certain features might not be available in free versions.

• Choosing the template

A welcome email to users on their first sign-up, a promotional email during the holiday season, an abandoned cart email to prompt buyers into action — different situations require different types of emails. eCommerce businesses use a wide variety of emails to reach customers and increase sales. Some of them are: account reactivation email, cross-sell/up-sell email, customer loyalty email, new product announcement email, holiday email, birthday email, etc.

The above four-step process is all that you need to start with your very first email marketing campaign. Consistency and genuine, helpful content is the key to successful email marketing strategies. Before you sign off, here is another interesting stat about email marketing: Campaign Monitor study states that for every $1 spent on email marketing, $44 is made in return. It is almost 4400% ROI. Now is the time to start working on your first email campaign!