Essential Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing that You Should Know

Essential Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing

Want to grow your e-commerce business without spending a fortune on marketing channels you barely control?

In this article, I'm going to show how you can increase your e-commerce sales using a channel that, unlike many others, is fee-free.

We'll talk about email marketing for e-commerce and online retailers.

Specifically, we'll cover:

• What is ecommerce email marketing
• Types of ecommerce email marketing campaigns
• Benefits of using email marketing for ecommerce businesses
• 11 ecommerce email marketing best practices
• How to track revenue from your ecommerce emails
• 10 step ecommerce email marketing strategy from basics to advanced
• 10 amazing ecommerce email template examples

Let’s dive right in.

Essential Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing: Table Of Contents

What is ecommerce email marketing?

Types of ecommerce email marketing campaigns

Ecommerce email campaigns benefits

11 ecommerce email marketing best practices

How to track revenue from your ecommerce email marketing campaigns

Ecommerce email marketing strategy – from basics to advanced

10 amazing ecommerce email template examples

How will you grow your ecommerce company?

Do you want to develop your e-commerce store more easily? Try GetResponse ecommerce email marketing software. It has all the right tools an ambitious e-commerce business needs to grow – email templates, email automation, transactional emails, web push notifications, paid ads, and live chat. Moreover, it integrates with all major e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, etc.

What is email marketing for e-commerce?

E-commerce email marketing is the strategy of using email to generate sales for your online store. It can be simple, like sending a message introducing your latest offer to your entire mailing list. Or complex, like sending highly targeted emails triggered by your customers' actions on your e-commerce site.

Online retailers use e-commerce email marketing as a common practice to grow their business and build customer loyalty. As you'll read more about in a moment, this often involves coming up with different strategies to attract new buyers, turn first-time buyers into repeat customers, and foster relationships with repeat customers.

Some of the best examples of using email marketing campaigns to increase eCommerce sales include:

• sending emails announcing new product lines and offers,
• sending coupon codes to email subscribers on special occasions,
• sending emails when shoppers abandon their shopping carts,
• cross selling and recommending complementary products in newsletters,
• sending transactional emails such as shipping and order confirmations.

To help you better understand the type of marketing communications we're talking about, check out this great example of an abandoned cart email from an e-commerce company, MCM.

Cart abandonment email from an ecommerce brand, MCM. Source: ReallyGoodEmails

Note that this email not only reminds the user of the products he has left in his online shopping cart, but also contains a list of recommended products that he may also be interested in.

We'll explain why you might want to consider sending abandoned cart emails and other eCommerce messages to your own audience a little later in this guide. Plus, we'll show you how you can do it with the right email service provider, like GetResponse.

If you want to go over the basics first, consider reading our beginner's guide to how to do email marketing.

Types of Email Marketing Campaigns for Ecommerce

Every e-commerce email marketing strategy is different, but they all have something in common: they use these three types of marketing emails:

Promotional emails

This is when you use email to let your subscribers know about deals in your store, new product lines, new collections, and more, This Includes: 

• new product launch emails
• periodic newsletters
• subscriber-only discount promo code emails
• content updates
• seasonal deals emails
• special promotions for a particular audience segment (e.g. most loyal customers)
• top of mind messages e.g. containing the latest blog posts and tips from your team

Tip: Promotional emails are usually sent by hand, as a newsletter or broadcast.

Transactional emails

These are functional emails sent to the customer with key information about a specific transaction in your store, like:

• subscription confirmation emails
• order confirmation emails
• shipping information emails
• customer satisfaction survey emails

Tip: Transactional emails can be sent directly from your e-commerce platform or through an email automation platform, like GetResponse. The latter often gives you more design capabilities but can often require technical setup using API or SMTP. Luckily, in GetResponse, we've added a new feature called Fast Transactional Emails that lets you set up essential transactional emails without any coding!

Click here to learn more about GetResponse quick transactional emails!

Lifecycle emails

Lifecycle emails are automated emails triggered by your buyer's action and based on where they are in their customer lifecycle, such as:

• welcome email series
• win-back email series
• shopping cart abandonment emails
• browse abandonment emails
• upselling and cross selling emails

Naturally, you don't need to use all of these types of messages in your marketing strategy. However, as you grow your online store, you'll want to make sure your communication is versatile and responsive to users at different stages of your funnel. If you continue to send only promotional messages, your buyers will tire quickly, they will stop opening up to your messages, and your conversion rate will drop, so it's important to sequence your emails thoughtfully.

Tip: You can send lifecycle emails using marketing automation. If you've never done this before, you can start by using pre-build automation workflows that will get you up and running in moments.

Speaking of conversion rates, let's take a look at the various benefits your business can reap if it follows a solid email marketing strategy.

Is your store built with Shopify? Find out how GetResponse can help you run Shopify email marketing campaigns more effectively today.

Ecommerce email campaigns benefits

While the benefits of using email for e-commerce are endless, here are the six most important ones to consider:

• Email supports transactions in your online store as the main communication channel with your customers - their inbox is the first place they go to check if the purchase was successful
• You can collect important feedback after every transaction, sending out surveys so customers can rate their experience and provide social proof that will help you convert future buyers.
• You can build lasting relationships with your customer base throughout their lifecycle: by welcoming subscribers to your store, guiding them through transactions, sending them thank you notes, and even birthday emails. Reinvite customers if they've abandoned a cart or reactivate customers who haven't visited your online store for a while.
• You can also reward the most loyal customers with exclusive offers and loyalty programs, sent via automated emails.
• You can grow your email list by encouraging word of mouth marketing and providing exclusive offers to subscribers who will recommend your store to their peers. This practice can increase your brand awareness among your target audience and keep your loyal customers engaged.
• But the most important benefit of e-commerce email campaigns is that they increase your conversions in a way that no other medium can – and at a fraction of the cost.

11 Email Marketing Best Practices for Ecommerce

So what can online retailers do to ensure their campaigns are successful? Here is a list of 11 tips that will improve your e-commerce email marketing strategy.

Although we're focusing on online stores here, remember to follow these general email marketing practices as well.

1. Send your emails at the right moment

One of the easiest ways to keep your email list engaged is to send your subscribers relevant information at the right time through proper email sequencing.

You can do this either with behavior-triggered campaigns in your email marketing automation workflows or with send-time optimization algorithms available in email marketing services like GetResponse.

While the first method requires the user to perform an action (for example, a visitor leaves a site without completing the purchase), the second simply requires your platform to note the geolocation of your recipient (for example, using their address IP) or looks when he ve previous engaged with your messages.

Both methods are excellent and, unsurprisingly, they yield remarkable results. Here are the average email opens and clicks for different message types, including triggered campaigns. Notice how they outperform regular newsletters? This is because they are timely and relevant.

How the email engagement rates compare for triggered emails and other message types. Data from the Email Marketing Benchmarks report.

 

And if you're wondering if using Send Time Optimization is difficult, you'll be relieved that it's just one click away. The rest is taken care of by your email marketing platform.

Perfect Timing feature automatically adjusts the send-time of your emails in GetResponse for best results

2. Personalize your email campaigns.

Don't just rely on generic emails that aren't directed to anyone in particular (i.e. email sends). Make sure that the content, arguments and incentives you use in communication are relevant to the target audience you are trying to convert.

Personalized email announcing a price drop on the product a user added to their wish list. Source: ReallyGoodEmails

Not sure what kind of data you could use to personalize your email content? Here are five ideas that would work for any e-commerce business:

• Person’s name
• Person’s location
• The product your visitor looked at and/or added to their cart
• The product or product category your customer bought from you recently
• The product your visitor added to their wish list and is currently back in stock

 And if you’ve never used personalization before, here’s how you’d add it to your email subject line:

Using subscriber name and geolocation to personalize subject line in GetResponse

3. Keep your transactional emails on brand

Transactional emails are perhaps the only type of email communication that commands even more attention than your welcome message. So why not seize this opportunity and use transactional emails to strengthen your brand and retain your customers?

To achieve this, you will need to ensure that your transactional emails are on brand – including your logo, using the same color scheme and fonts that you use in your other communications.

The hard part is that most e-commerce platforms like Shopify offer basic email design capabilities or require you to code your emails from scratch. But the good news is that in GetResponse, you can create essential transactional emails using our intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

Editing the order confirmation email template inside the GetResponse Email Creator

 This feature is called Quick Transactional Emails and allows you to set up cart abandonment emails and order confirmations. You can also use our API-based transactional messaging service for more advanced communications.

4. Make your content engaging.

If you want your brand to shine, you need to understand what type of content resonates best with your audience. Do these emails contain user-generated content like testimonials and reviews? Maybe these are your latest blog posts? Or maybe videos explaining how to use your products? Analyze your results and use the data to better engage your followers.

Patagonia Engaging email content

Explore your email marketing service's reporting dashboard and integrate it with your analytics tool, like Google Analytics. By combining the two, you will better understand your audience so that you can provide them with a better customer experience.

New Analytics dashboard in GetResponse providing you with all the insights about your campaign’s performance

New Analytics dashboard – detailed view on bounces

5. Always optimize.

Your intuition is important, but we are often biased and choose things we know best over what is best for us. The same goes for your mailings: use the data to formulate A/B tests and optimize your campaigns and win in the long run.

The best thing about A/B testing is that it's easy to set up, but it can have a huge impact on your sales results. Think about it: if one of your email subject lines performed 5% better and it resulted in 5% more clicks, how much more revenue could that mean for your business? And now multiply that for every marketing campaign you run – the numbers just keep adding up.

This is what the subject line A/B test setup looks like in GetResponse:

Email subject line A/B test setup

6. Ask customers to help you.

When optimizing your email communication, don't forget the key element behind everything you do: your customers.

Ask your customers for their feedback to learn more about what they are looking for. Use survey emails or send them a direct live chat link to get to know them better, improve their customer experience, and improve your marketing campaigns.

Example of a survey email from Timberland

And don't put up roadblocks preventing your followers from sharing their voice. Change that unanswered email address to something more human. Don't make it a marketing stunt.

Start caring more about your customers' opinions and, where possible, fix things where others have found problems. This will help you improve your brand image, attract more visitors to your site and increase your sales in the long run.

7. Use social proof to improve your conversion rate.

Once you've adopted the previous best practice, don't stop - turn your customers into brand advocates. Customer reviews and opinions are the best marketing pieces you will ever have. And when it finally does, make sure the customers who shared their opinions are appreciated and let others know about it.

 Featuring quotes from happy customers in Mahabis email campaigns

People usually seek the opinions of others before making an online purchase. So, by encouraging your shoppers to give feedback, you'll be more likely to convert future visitors to your store.

Learn how Selsey, an online furniture store, doubled their conversion rates from cart abandonment emails using customer reviews.

8. Segment your audience

Not all customers are the same, we all know that. But only a few marketers change the way they communicate in their emails based on who they're targeting. Those who do, however, tend to see impressive results.

Take submission technology, for example. This GetResponse client is actively segmenting their audience and continues to see average clicks well beyond industry benchmarks – often as high as 6-7%.

And what about those who don't segment their audience? They often do OK, but nothing close to the results mentioned above.

So if you want your business to thrive, take the time to analyze your audience. Try to identify individual segments that you can use to personalize your messaging and drive more sales from your emails.

Here are five customer segments that most e-commerce businesses would find useful:

• High spenders (people with high average order value or high lifetime value)
• Loyal customers (people who’ve bought from you more than X times)
• Trendsetters (people who’ve bought products from your newest lines without a discount)
• One-time buyers (people who’ve only purchased once and would need a bit of convincing to buy again)
• Recent buyers (people who’ve bought from you less than X days ago)

Should you treat them the same as people who only subscribed to your newsletter and never bought anything? Absolutely not!

So think about that before launching your next email program. I'm sure among your own subscribers there are people at different stages of the funnel who would be more convinced to make a purchase if you tailored your communication.

Below is a great example of an email marketing campaign that started with segmentation. Huel reviewed their current customers and identified those who have yet to try their latest product. Knowing that these customers already trust their brand, they used a simple piece of information (no purchase history of that particular item) to create an effective and personalized email campaign.

Personalized email campaign targeting existing customers who have not purchased a particular product.

Also, if you're wondering if setting up segments is difficult, it's not. Here's how to set up a segment of people who purchased a specific product from your store:

Using ecommerce data to segment your audience based on the specific product they bought.

You can read more about this topic in our mailing list segmentation guide.

9. Improve your email templates with compelling copy

E-commerce emails often focus on beautiful images and flashy design. But that's not all there is to successful email programs. Email copy is just as important. So pay attention to it.

First, start with your subject line. More than half of all email recipients base their decision on whether or not to open the email on this factor alone.

Next, go with the pre-header, header, and call-to-action buttons.

They should all reinforce your message and help drive more sales for your online store.

Magic Spoon using compelling copy throughout its message

For writing tips, consider reading this guide by Joanna Wiebe on how to write newsletters that will be read, opened and clicked. It's packed with email marketing tips that will help you write more compelling copy in all elements of your message.

10. Aim for all devices

It's been said too many times already, but I'll say it one more time.

When designing your email templates, landing pages, and ad campaigns, focus on all the devices your customers might use to access them. If just one part of this equation isn't working, you risk wasting your marketing budget and the interest of your customers.

Pay attention to the images, size and placement of your call-to-action buttons, product page, checkout process, and anything else your customers might encounter along the way. You'll want the experience to be as smooth and frictionless as possible.

This email from Kiva ticks all the right boxes.

• The logo doesn’t take up a lot of space, so the subscribers immediately see the email content.
• The headline is highly visible, short, and to the point. You know what the offer is about in a matter of seconds.
• The call to action button is right on the first screen and is surrounded by a reasonable amount of negative space. Because of that, clicking the button with your thumb won’t be a problem. And the CTA copy clearly describes what the button does, too.
• The supporting text that follows the CTA further explains the offer and clears any doubts you may have before hitting that button.

Mobile-responsive email that looks great on a mobile device from Kiva.

11. Pay attention to your sending frequency

Every once in a while we are all tempted to send just one more message. We do this with the belief that there is little harm in it and the outcome can only be good for the business.

While this may be true in many cases, the data from our study seems to tell a different story.

Before deciding to increase the frequency of your mailings, be sure to carefully analyze the data and take note of when you make the changes.

The main reason why subscribers refuse to receive emails is that they receive too many in general.

At the same time, the total revenue you'll get from the campaign may outweigh the costs of attracting new customers to replace those who churn.

Whatever you decide, make sure your long-term goals aren't sacrificed by your short-term plans.

How email engagement rates change with higher email frequency. Data from Email Marketing Benchmarks report.

Now that you know these 10 email marketing best practices for ecommerce, it's time to explore how you can track revenue from their ecommerce sends.

How to Track Revenue from Your Ecommerce Email Marketing Campaigns

The easiest way to measure your revenue from email marketing is to add UTM parameters to your messages, set goals in your analytics tool (e.g. Google Analytics), and look at rates conversion and revenue generated there.

While this is the easiest way to measure your email marketing ROI, it's not the most accurate. This is because when setting goals, you have to assign the goal conversion value yourself.

If you only sell multiple products and they have different URLs, that's not a big deal. You can define multiple goals and assign them a specific value.

The issue only appears if someone decides to purchase multiple items of the same product during a single session. Indeed, Google Analytics would count this as a single-goal conversion. This way, your email marketing programs might not get enough credit. Your revenue from this channel would only be an approximation. At the same time, measuring this way is better than not measuring your revenue at all.

The second, slightly more advanced way to track your email revenue in Google Analytics is to use the Enhanced Ecommerce Analytics plugin. This plugin allows you to track user interactions with products on your e-commerce site.

Whether they see a product, click on it, check the product details, add it to their cart, initiate the checkout process, complete the transaction or abandon it – you will have all this information in your Google Analytics dashboard.

Google Analytics report showing the transactional information from Google’s demo store. Note: Here they’ve not configured email as a separate channel so the transactions are counted along with the “Direct” channel.

More importantly, you will get accurate information on how much your customers spent on their transactions, as the value of each individual transaction will be automatically sent to GA.

And if you connect your online store to GetResponse, you can use this information to create customer segments and send targeted emails.

Whether it's abandoned cart emails, product upsell emails, or product recommendations.

Now let's go through this 10-step strategy that will attract more visitors to your store and help you convince them to buy from your store more often.

Email Marketing Strategy for Ecommerce - Basics to Advanced

Step 1. Start building an email list

Most e-commerce brands start with little or no mailing list. What they do have, however, are website visitors, social media followers, and, of course, existing customers.

To start growing your email list, consider doing the following:

• Add a pop-up form that’ll appear after your visitors entered your website (ideally on all pages or just those that get the most website traffic)
• Add an embedded signup form (e.g. in the footer), so that users can join your list even if they’ve closed the pop-up or for some reason, didn’t trigger it
• Promote your newsletter on social media highlighting the benefits and exclusive perks your subscribers get
• Run a giveaway or contest that’ll encourage your audience to opt into your list
• Run a paid advertising campaign advertising your exclusive offers (make sure the pop-up form appears on the pages you’re promoting)
• Run a referral marketing campaign where existing customers or subscribers can recommend others to join your list in exchange for a reward

Pro Tip: Offering a discount or free shipping is probably the easiest way to get people to sign up for your email list. And if you don't want to offer offers right away, you can always make the offer available only on their second purchase.

Here is an example of a pop-up form created in GetResponse that you can use on your site:

Popup form template in GetResponse.

And here's an example of a giveaway contest run by one of GetResponse's clients, Sabaton, where one of the main actions participants had to take was to sign up for the newsletter.

Sabaton’s giveaway contest where one of the action’s you can make is to opt in to their email list

To dive deeper into this topic, read this article on building an email list from scratch.

Step 2. Automatically welcome new subscribers

Now that you've started collecting new email subscribers, it's important to onboard them with a welcome email.

A welcome email is the most engaging email you can send – it has an average open rate of over 80% and a click-through rate of over 20% according to our Email Marketing Benchmarks study.

A great welcome email can serve many purposes. It can help you:

• Set the tone for the relationship you’re starting to build with the subscriber
• Express the appreciation for entrusting you with their email address
• Bring visitors back to your website
• Motivate new subscribers to make their first purchase (e.g. through a discount code)
• Present your different product categories and other key information, e.g. about the delivery costs, refund policy, or ways to reach you

There is also another key benefit that welcome emails can help you achieve: excellent email deliverability. This is because unlike email sends sent to your entire email audience, welcome emails are sent to individual subscribers by your email automation platform.

This steady stream of highly engaging emails shows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail or Yahoo that you're a solid email marketer and your emails should be filtered through the mailbox. , avoiding the spam folder.

Here is an example of a simple marketing automation workflow that would automatically send the welcome email for you.

Welcome email workflow built with GetResponse Marketing Automation.

Keep in mind that you can develop this workflow even further and turn your welcome message into a full series. This is especially useful if you offer a wide variety of product categories and don't send promotional/sales emails often.

This is the approach that one of GetResponse's customers, Landcafe, took when developing an entire educational series for their new subscribers. Their series of six emails not only helps tell the brand story and guides their customers through a variety of different coffees they sell, but also helps them generate revenue. In fact, 54% of their sales come from their onboarding sequence.

The visual below shows what their educational email series looks like:

Landcafe welcome email sequence.

Step 3. Start sending regular promotional emails

Once you've completed the first two steps, it's time to get into the habit of sending promotional emails to your audience.

While you don't want to overwhelm your subscribers with too many posts, you need to make sure they remember your business and visit your website. Best practice is to send at least one email per month, but ideally you'll consider a weekly or bi-weekly schedule, depending on the versatility and engagement of your content.

Most email marketing services come with ready-to-use email templates that you can fill with your own copy, images, and colors to match your branding. Building your marketing messages this way won't take too much of your time and will help you drive more sales from your online store.

Here is a sample email template that you can find in GetResponse that was designed for e-commerce businesses.

Email template available in GetResponse.

And here’s a walkthrough video that shows you how you can build an email from scratch using our new Email Maker.

Step 4. Send Reminders to Those Who Didn't Convert

Once you start sending your emails more regularly, you'll probably notice that not all of your recipients will open all of your messages. And that's natural - our inboxes get cluttered or our schedules get too hectic.

Given that newsletters get an average open rate of just over 22%, that means around 80% of your email list won't open your message. This is still a great score compared to other marketing channels, but sometimes you might want to pitch your offer to those who didn't open the first time, one more time.

To do this, all you have to do is choose another email subject line and leave the content of your message as it is. After all, they haven't seen it yet 🙂 Once you've done that, you're ready to send the message to those who haven't opened your first email.

Now, depending on the email marketing service you use, there can be several ways to launch such a message.

In GetResponse, you can do this in three ways:

1) By selecting those who didn’t open the message directly in your email analytics report.

2) By looking up those who received your email and didn’t open it, and then saving them as a segment in Search Contacts.

Like this:

3) By setting up a marketing automation workflow that will automatically send your reminder message after e.g. 48 hours from your first message.

Like that:

Keep in mind that this tactic shouldn't be used too often because you risk sending your messages to recipients who really aren't interested in your brand anymore. And if you find such contacts among your segments, you'll want to try to reactivate them with a win-back campaign.

Step 5. Segment your audience and personalize your communication

As your email marketing list grows, you'll want to make sure to keep your audience engaged. The best way to do this is to segment your recipients and tailor content to the needs of those individual groups.

With the right approach, you can help your customers move more efficiently through your marketing funnel, which of course will lead to increased customers and sales.

A moment ago, I introduced you to five customer segments you'll probably want to implement in your email marketing department. These are high spenders, repeat customers, trendsetters, one-time buyers and recent buyers.

In addition to that, here are several other segmentation criteria that are particularly useful for e-commerce brands:

• Gender
• Location
• Preferred brand or category (e.g. based on their clicks or buying behavior)
• Product size
• Price sensitivity (e.g. buys only when there’s a sale)
• Date of last purchase (e.g. within last 30 days, 30-90 days)
• Lack of purchase (newsletter subscriber only)

Here's an example of how Submission Technology tailors their email content to target men and women, individually.

Again, getting started with email segmentation is super easy. Here's an example of how you would set up a segment of people who haven't purchased anything from your store and signed up in the last 30 days.

Step 6. Recover lost sales with abandoned cart emails

Finally, it's time to optimize your conversion rates. Since you've already invested a lot in bringing visitors to your site, it's only natural that you want to maximize the chances of them completing their order.

A simple email reminding users of the product they left in their cart can help you achieve this. To set it up, you'll need to integrate your e-commerce platform with your email automation tool and create a workflow like this:

The whole workflow just waits for the signal from Shopify, Magento, PrestaShop or whatever other platform you are using that a user has left the website without completing the transaction. When we receive this signal, we launch the message or sequence of messages you added to your workflow and help you win the customer back.

In GetResponse, there is also another way to set up your cart abandonment emails, which is currently only for Shopify. It uses the previously mentioned feature called Fast Transactional Emails. All you need to do is integrate your Shopify store with GetResponse, customize your email template layout using our email builder, and hit "activate".

Related: The best marketing automation software for Shopify

Once again, you can use an email template to build your message and launch it to your audience in no time.

GetResponse eCommerce email template available.

Step 7. Reactivate subscribers with winback campaigns

Over time, some of your followers may become disengaged and reluctant to open your messages. While this is expected, it's not something you want to leave unattended.

Unengaged subscribers not only cost you money (they use up space in your database), but also affect your email deliverability. Their lack of activity shows ISPs that your content isn't engaging and you're not keeping your list hygienic. These signals are then used to filter your messages and place them in the mailboxes of other subscribers.

This is where winback programs come in. Their purpose is to not only try to win back those who might still be interested in your brand, but also to ward off "lost cases". Recipients that you have failed to re-enable multiple times should ideally be moved to another segment that you won't be communicating with regularly, or deleted altogether.

While letting go of your inactive subscribers may seem daunting at first, it's a process that can have a huge impact on your deliverability and revenue.

Again, the process of setting up a winback campaign is simple.

Here's what your segment might look like if you used the GetResponse Engagement Score feature to identify people who signed up for your newsletter more than 60 days ago and the engagement score of 1 indicates they're "disengaged" .

And here is the workflow that would first wait 90 days, then check if the recipient is present in the inactive segment, then send them an automated reminder. If the recipient ignores the reminder message, they will be assigned a "stale customer" label.

Step 8. Ask buyers for their feedback

I've already mentioned why social proof is important and how you can use it in your email marketing program. Now is the time to encourage your buyers to provide feedback so you can use it throughout your marketing communication.

The process is simple, all you have to do is create a workflow that would send an automated message some time after someone made a purchase. It can take a week, two or maybe a month, depending on how long it takes to deliver your product and get a good feel for it.

Here is a workflow you can use to ask your buyers for feedback on your products:

Step 9. Send recommendations based on buyer behavior

I'm a huge fan of Netflix and how they use recommendations to bring me the best movies and shows based on what others like me have enjoyed. If you're like me, you'll be happy to know that you can use the same approach in your email marketing program.

Once you've connected your store to your email marketing service, all you need to do is set up a workflow and prepare a message with your product recommendations with GetResponse Email Creator.

And here is the workflow that would send the product recommendation email to your recipients two weeks after buying from you:

Step 10. Take advantage of transactional emails to build customer loyalty

Last but not least, you'll want to leverage transactional emails in your email marketing program.

In GetResponse, there are two ways to configure them:

• You can design them in GetResponse Email Creator and send them via Quick Transactional Emails feature
• Or you can set them up using our transactional email service via API or SMTP

The latter solution gives you more flexibility, while the former is quick, easy, and requires no coding. Whichever method you choose, transactional emails are worth sending.

Transactional emails not only provide assurance that the transaction was handled correctly, but they also give you the opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customers.

Take this example from MeUndies, an online retailer selling underwear. Doesn't this email sound fun and nice? Even though it's just a transactional email, it shows the brand's personality and sets the tone for the long relationship they're trying to build with their audience.

Fun transactional email notifying the recipient that the product has been shipped. Source: ReallyGoodEmails

Finally, let's take a look at some great examples of eCommerce email templates you might want to take inspiration from.

Read other industry guides:

1. How to promote your Shopify store

2. Hotel email marketing guide

3. Email marketing for non-profits

4. Retail email marketing best practices

10 Amazing Examples of Ecommerce Email Templates

We just discussed how email marketing can be used by e-commerce brands to facilitate their customer journey.

Now let's take a look at the best e-commerce email examples – those that can help you build stronger relationships as well as those that aim to sell more products.

1. Welcome Email

Here is an example of a welcome email from Adidas. Notice how it makes you feel like part of a community and brings you back to the site to shop for your new favorite clothes.

Welcome email containing a discount code – from Adidas.

2. Onboarding campaign

The goal of a series of onboarding emails is to familiarize your new recipients with the brand and the full range of products and services you offer. Here's a newsletter that delivers on that premise from Huckberry, an e-commerce brand that backs up its products with inspiring content.

Onboarding email showing the various product categories available in the shop from Huckberry.

3. Flash sale campaign

Flash sales are designed to help you achieve short-term results. They create a sense of urgency, inspire your customers to act quickly, and generate revenue quickly. Here is an example from Casper that follows this approach and does it very well:

Flash sale message from Casper.

4. Cart Abandonment Email

Although the emails aren't sent very frequently, they are for visitors who are *so close* to buying from you. And since many customers expect to receive abandoned cart emails, they often get average open rates of 40-50% and CTRs above 15%. Here is an example of an abandoned cart email from American Giant that is particularly good.

Cart abandonment email from American Giant offering you an easy way to return to the checkout.

Learn how BeautySleep achieves 25% sales rate with 6-email cart abandonment series.

5. Browse Abandonment Emails

The idea is similar to the one above. The only exception is that they cater to people who haven't added the product to their cart but have shown interest in it (e.g. by clicking on it in another email). Here's how Timberland uses this approach:

Browse abandonment email featuring the product you saw plus recommendations from Timberland.

6. Product Recommendation Email

Product recommendation emails are powerful, and you can send them even if you're targeting new users. All you have to do is select your store's bestsellers and feature them in an email like this from MVMT:

Promotional email featuring best selling watches from MVMT.

7. Review emails

Asking for advice from recent buyers? Here's an example of how Target asks their audience to write anything positive or negative about their latest purchase:

Survey email asking users to rate their last purchase Source: ReallyGoodEmails

8. Transactional Email

Here is a great example of an activation email that asks the user to confirm that they want to create an account with their email address. What's worth noting is that it carries the same branding that the company uses in all of its email marketing campaigns.

Email confirming the setup of a new account in the Huel’s shop.

9. Email Campaign Using User Generated Content

User reviews, testimonials, and even social media posts can make your email marketing more authentic and impactful. Here's how MeUndies uses Instagram posts to drive more engagement with its marketing communication:

MeUndies using Instagram quotes to make their email communication more authentic.

10. Recommendation Email

Turn those customers into brand advocates? Here's how Huel proceeds in his onboarding sequence. Note: The email was originally in Polish, but I translated it to English so you can get a better idea of ​​its content.

Referral email marketing message from Huel offering you 50 PLN discount for recommending the brand to your friends.

Want to see more e-commerce newsletter examples? Here's a step-by-step guide that explains what email marketing automation is and shows over 30 examples of automated emails that will work great for your business.

How are you going to grow your e-commerce business?

Now that you've seen how email can help your e-commerce business grow (even if you're mostly physical!), it's time to answer this simple question:

What's the first step you're going to take?

If you're going to follow the example strategy I outlined above, you'll probably want to use a tool that will help you achieve your lofty goals.

And if you are looking for an email marketing service provider, I strongly encourage you to try GetResponse.

You can use it FOREVER FREE and you don't need to provide your credit card details. And besides emails, it has many other tools that will help your store grow.

So go ahead, connect your online store to GetResponse and start your first email marketing campaign today.

Article Source: https://www.getresponse.com/blog/email-marketing-ecommerce?a=WAyqMpfpaW

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