Even though other types of marketing may have attracted more attention lately, email marketing is still a trusty tool for eCommerce site owners. Most people who run online businesses learn that having a good email list is a handy thing because other forms of advertising can get very expensive.
Typically, people who have signed up for your list are either customers or prospects, so they should be fairly receptive to your communication. However, you have to be sure that you don’t waste this valuable resource.
Target Emails To Customers
You can find marketing automation software that will make it easy to segment out different populations to target for different kinds of email campaigns. As an example, you are bound to enjoy more success if you let men know about men’s shoes than if you send them emails about women’s shoes.
Of course, just segmenting by gender may be too simple and not that productive. You may want to base campaigns on a variety of factors. These can include past purchases, customers who abandoned a shopping cart, and so on. For example, free shipping offers and promo codes are often very effective ways to get customers to return to complete their purchase after abandoning a shopping cart without paying.
Make Emails Responsive For Mobile
Do you know how most of your customers are probably checking their emails these days? They are no longer always using their desktops or laptops but are choosing to use their smart phones and tablets instead. With younger consumers, the percentage of people who use their phones is probably a lot higher than the percentage that is using traditional computers.
In any case, it’s very important to make sure that your emails have been designed to be responsive. This means that they look good and appear well on different devices. It goes without saying to be certain that the landing pages that your emails point to also look good on phones and other mobile devices.
Personalize Emails
This goes even further than segmenting out different targets. If possible, it’s great to address your customers by name within your emails. You can even use software to tune your email campaigns to each individual consumer. If a customer just purchased a jogging stroller, it’s likely that she will be interested in baby shoes or even a good pair of running shoes.
Make Emails Immediate
Some marketers call this creating an air of scarcity. For example, if you are having a sale, try limiting the best discounts to the next 24 to 48 hours for quick results. If you don’t want to limit the time, you might suggest that supplies of the special deal are limited.
Customers who use a mobile device are usually close to their phones and check emails very frequently. If you can convince your customers that they need to act fast or miss out, you should see some rapid results from your email campaign.
Try Sending Educational Tips
Even though your object is to sell, it’s usually a good idea to try to look as though you are not always selling. If a customer buys a certain product, it might be a good idea to send and email with tips about using that product and information about complementary products. This can work very well with a kitchen or home improvement store.
Include A Call To Action
If you decide to send an informational message to customers, always be sure to include a strong call to action. Typically, this would be something that would encourage them to look at a certain page of your eCommerce store. It might be the main page, a landing page or even a personalized promo page.
General Tips To Remember About Sending Emails
Your customers get lots of emails. You have to always work on providing them with value. This way, they will be likely to regard your emails as something to look forward to and not something to send to their spam folder. You can provide that value by making sure you target your message, provide good useful information, personalize your mailings, and have emails formatted for different device types!
Recover Abandoned Carts Automatically
The single most profitable email most stores can send is the one that follows an abandoned cart, because the recipient already chose the product and stopped at the last step. Set up an automated sequence rather than a one-off: a first reminder within an hour while intent is fresh, a second after about a day that handles the common objections (shipping cost, return policy, security), and an optional third with a modest incentive only if the first two do not convert. Lead with a clear image of the exact items left behind and a one-click path straight back to the cart. Treat this as the highest priority before optimizing broadcast campaigns — it recovers revenue you have already nearly earned.
Build Post-Purchase and Win-Back Flows
The buying relationship does not end at the order confirmation. A post-purchase sequence — order and shipping updates, then a few days later usage tips and a relevant cross-sell, then a review request once the product has had time to be used — turns a single sale into a repeat customer and a stream of social proof. For customers who have gone quiet, a win-back flow ("we miss you," a reminder of what is new, a time-limited offer) re-engages people far more cheaply than acquiring new ones. These flows are configured once in your marketing-automation tool and then run on their own.
Protect Deliverability So the Work Pays Off
Every tactic above assumes the message reaches the inbox. As of 2024 the major mailbox providers effectively require bulk senders to authenticate their domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, keep spam complaints low, and offer one-click unsubscribe. Practically, that means sending from a domain you own, removing chronically unengaged addresses instead of mailing them forever, and honoring opt-outs instantly. A smaller list that consistently opens and clicks lands in the primary inbox; a large neglected list trains the filters to bury you.
Judge Campaigns by Revenue, Not Opens
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates and obscures open rates by pre-loading images, so a campaign is best judged by click-through rate, conversion rate, and revenue per recipient. Test one variable at a time — subject line, offer, or send time — let the test reach a meaningful sample, and promote the winner to your new baseline. Done consistently, this turns email from a guessing game into the highest-ROI channel in ecommerce, which is exactly why it remains a trusty tool despite newer channels competing for attention.
Editorial note: the original author bio referenced a third-party SEO tool site that is no longer the relevant authority on this topic; the guidance above has been brought up to date with current email-deliverability requirements and measurement practice.
Jonathan Leger has been a successful Internet Marketer for over 11 years. He owns an SEO Tools suite at KeywordCanine.com.