Last updated on June 10th, 2024 at 12:28 am
Email marketing can be an incredibly effective way to grow your eCommerce business – it can help you increase customer lifetime value, revenue, and profits.
That’s why today we are going to discuss seven keys to Shopify email marketing success!
- #1: Choose the Right Software
- #2: Create a Lead Magnet
- #3: Use Email Pop-Ups
- #4: Send Automated Abandoned Cart Emails
- #5: Send Personalized Product Recommendation Emails
- #6: Send Time-Sensitive Broadcast Emails
- #7: Build a Lead Generation Funnel
- Bonus Tip: Make Sure That Your Emails Look Good!
- Want to Learn How to Write Emails That Convert?
#1: Choose the Right Software
First things first:
You will need email marketing software. But there are so many options out there. Which app should you choose?
It’s probably safe to say that most popular email marketing solutions have eCommerce features.
However, generic solutions typically offer less functionality than specialized ones, which is why we recommend going with email marketing software designed specifically for eCommerce.
One of the options that you might want to consider is SmartrMail.
It includes all key eCommerce email marketing features:
- Email newsletters
- Welcome emails
- Winback emails
- Abandoned cart emails
- Browse abandonment emails
- Product recommendation emails
There’s also a library of email templates, a pop-up functionality that includes various types of pop-ups, email automation functionality, smart segmentation functionality, and more.
SmartMail’s main strength is its product recommendation engine – it allows you to send personalized product recommendation emails similar to those that you get from Amazon.
On top of all that, there’s also an SMS marketing functionality, which can also come in handy, especially for time-sensitive promotions such as sales.
Their Standard plan starts at $19/month and their Unlimited plan starts at $99/month for up to 1,000 email subscribers.
Meanwhile, at 18,000 subscribers you’d be paying $1361.50/month for the Standard Plan or $1849.00/month for the Unlimited plan.
Beyond that, you would need to reach out to the company to get a quote.
Another option that you might want to consider is Drip.
It offers powerful email marketing tools, allows you to create pop-ups, and has advanced segmentation capabilities.
There’s also a powerful analytics functionality that enables you to collect data, analyze it, and then make data-driven business decisions.
Drip only has one pricing plan that starts at $39/month for 2,500 subscribers and goes all the way up to $1,899/month for 170,000 subscribers.
Beyond that, the price varies and you would need to reach out to the company to learn more about how much it would cost you.
Both SmartrMail and Drip have free trials so you can sign up for both apps, try them out, and see which one you like more.
Also, they both have Shopify integrations, so connecting them to your Shopify store should be easy.
#2: Create a Lead Magnet
Okay, so in order to make money with email marketing, you need to have an email list, to begin with. But how can you build one?
The reality is that no one is going to give you their email address just because. Those days are long gone!
That’s why the most effective approach to growing your email list is creating a lead magnet – a freebie that you offer to potential customers in exchange for their email addresses.
But what can you use as a free offer?
Discounts
The most obvious type of eCommerce lead magnet is discounts.
You can simply offer the potential customer a 10% discount in exchange for their email address.
The best way to do that is to present this offer by displaying:
- A welcome pop-up when the potential customer arrives on your website.
- An exit-intent pop-up when the potential customer is about to leave your website.
There’s also a more advanced approach that can be extremely effective:
Displaying a triggered pop-up after the potential customer has spent a certain amount of time on a product page with a 10% discount for that particular product.
Say, if the potential customer is looking at a pair of shoes, that’s the perfect opportunity to offer them a 10% discount for those shoes.
This might not only get you their email address but it might also help you nudge them toward making the purchase.
Note that we are using 10% just as an example – the higher the discount, the more appealing it will be.
You might want to look at the math to see what is the highest discount you can offer to get someone’s email address while still remaining profitable in the long run.
Giveaways
One potential problem with using a discount as your lead magnet is that it might damage your brand image if you are a high-end brand.
In that case, holding regular giveaways for your email subscribers might be a better approach.
For example, Android Homme, a luxury street footwear brand, used to offer potential customers a chance to win $500 store credit.
This can work well because that way your lead magnet still revolves around saving money on your products while not posing a risk to the luxury brand image.
That being said, Android Homme has since moved to use a classic discount lead magnet and offers 15% off of your first order in their welcome pop-up.
So it’s worth considering that the brand damage risk might be overblown – even high-end brands might benefit from the strategic use of discounts, especially when it comes to growing their email lists.
Exclusive Sales
You can also offer access to exclusive sales that are only available to your email subscribers.
Android Homme used to do that as well:
Email Course
Using a discount as a lead magnet is extremely common in the eCommerce industry – pretty much everyone is doing it at this point.
However, what’s much less common is offering helpful content in exchange for the potential customer’s email address. This seems to be an underutilized approach.
Consider what helpful information related to your niche you could offer – it should provide a solution to a problem that the potential customer is struggling with.
Then create a free email course that teaches the potential customer what they need to know over a series of emails.
Finally, once the potential customer completes your free email course, pitch them a relevant product or a product kit, ideally with a discount.
Say, if you sell skincare products, you could offer a free email course that teaches people the basics of skincare.
Then at the end of it pitch them a basic skincare starter kit so that they could begin implementing what they just learned.
Newsletter
Entrepreneurs who want to use Shopify email marketing to grow their online stores must solve this conundrum:
On the one hand, you need to regularly email potential customers to stay top of mind with them.
On the other hand, you can’t email them too frequently because that might alienate them – no one wants to be bombarded with endless sales pitches.
The best way to solve this problem is to launch an email newsletter that gives you an excuse to email potential customers on a weekly basis.
But what should you include in your newsletter?
Here are some ideas:
- Links to interesting content (articles, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, etc.)
- Helpful quick tips
- Original content
You can also let potential customers know about upcoming sales, product launches, events, and so on.
Keep in mind that the purpose of this newsletter is to:
- Build trust by continuously providing free value.
- Stay top of mind with potential customers so that they think of you the next time they want to buy the type of product that you sell.
It’s okay to include links to your products and end each issue with a call to action but your newsletter should be an actual newsletter, not a sales pitch masquerading as one.
We don’t recommend using pop-ups to promote your newsletter – you should reserve them for discount lead magnets.
Instead, use newsletter opt-in forms, such as this one by Beardbrand:
#3: Use Email Pop-Ups
We have already mentioned email pop-ups, but now it’s time to discuss them in more detail.
Here are the three types of email pop-ups that we recommend using in your Shopify store:
- Welcome pop-ups are displayed when the potential customer arrives on your website.
- Triggered pop-ups are displayed when the potential customer does something to trigger them.
Triggers can be either time-based (e.g. spending 30 seconds on a product page) or event-based (e.g. scrolling past the midway point of your homepage). - Exit-intent pop-ups are displayed when the potential customer is about to leave your website.
In general, it’s best to use pop-ups to present your most appealing free offer, which in the case of eCommerce stores is usually a discount.
However, if you are using several pop-ups on your online store, you need to make sure that they work well together.
Say, if you present the exact same free offer in your welcome pop-up, your trigger-based pop-ups, and your exit-intent pop-up, you might end up annoying the potential customer. Why?
Because you made them decline the same free offer at least three times. They are not interested. Take the hint!
That’s why it makes sense to use different pop-ups to promote different lead magnets as opposed to endlessly badgering the potential customer with the same free offer.
You also want to make sure that once a person subscribes to your email list, you stop showing them email pop-ups altogether.
While eCommerce email marketing apps such as the previously discussed SmartrMail and Drip typically have an in-built pop-up functionality, you might want to consider investing in a separate solution designed specifically for creating pop-ups.
Sumo is probably the most popular choice among eCommerce entrepreneurs when it comes to email pop-ups.
There’s a free plan that you can use to check it out. Meanwhile, the paid plan is $49/month. You can also get a 20% discount if you pay annually.
#4: Send Automated Abandoned Cart Emails
Cart abandonment is a phenomenon where the potential customer puts products in the shopping cart but then leaves the online store without finalizing the purchase.
According to Baymard Institute, the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.99%.
Meanwhile, according to Forrester research, cart abandonment costs eCommerce businesses a staggering $18B in lost potential revenue annually.
You are almost certainly losing tons of money in lost potential revenue due to cart abandonment. But what can you do about it?
The first thing you should do to reduce your cart abandonment rate is set up automated cart abandonment emails that remind potential customers what they have in their shopping cart.
Here’s a sample cart abandonment email with the subject line “Quick heads up…” from Beardbrand:
Note how:
- The subject line piques curiosity. When people can immediately tell what the email is about from its subject line, they can also reject the offer without opening the email. But a subject line such as “Quick heads up…” makes them curious. When they open it to see what’s it about, you get your opportunity to bring them back to your store.
- The copy is short and to the point. Cart abandonment emails don’t require much copywriting skill in the body copy because the potential customer has already put these products in their shopping cart. All you need to do is remind them about it.
- There’s an element of scarcity. Scarcity is a sales psychology principle that says that the less available something is, the more we tend to value it. You might want to consider letting abandoned carts expire in 72 hours. This gives you enough time to send three abandoned cart emails but also introduces the element of scarcity that might nudge the potential customer toward finalizing the purchase.
- There’s a photo of the product. Here that classic writing rule “show, don’t tell” applies literally – show them product images! This not only helps the potential customer remember what they put in their cart but also invokes the desire to own those items.
- Call-to-action button. You want to end the email with a call-to-action button that the potential customer can click to go to their shopping cart.
#5: Send Personalized Product Recommendation Emails
When it comes to eCommerce, it’s Amazon’s world – all other eCommerce businesses are just living in it. Why?
Because due to its insane popularity, “the everything store” sets the standards that consumers then come to expect from all online stores, from big brands to small solopreneur ventures.
One such standard is sending customers personalized product recommendation emails based on their browsing history.
Say, if you have been recently browsing books on Dark Ages Britain, Amazon might send you an email recommending a popular title on this subject:
Needless to say, personalized product recommendation emails tend to perform much better than generic product recommendation emails.
After all, you are recommending something that you know the potential customer is likely to be interested in.
Moreover, when your product recommendation emails are personalized, potential customers might come to appreciate them if they are genuinely useful.
Meanwhile, generic product recommendation emails might not only annoy people but also offend them if they are based on demographic traits such as age, gender, and ethnicity – no one wants to feel stereotyped!
That’s why your Shopify email marketing needs to include automated personalized product recommendation emails that are based on the customer’s browsing history.
Both SmartrMail and Drip have functionalities that allow you to set this up!
#6: Send Time-Sensitive Broadcast Emails
Broadcast emails are one-off emails that you send to your email list manually.
They are typically used to share time-sensitive information regarding:
- Product launches
- Seasonal sales
- Special offers
…etc.
You don’t want to overdo it with broadcast emails because sending them too frequently might annoy your email subscribers.
That being said, you should include them in your Shopify email marketing strategy because they can be a great way to increase sales.
You might also want to consider coming up with humorous special occasions relevant to your niche that you can then celebrate with special offers.
For example, a cat food store Cat Person once sent out this email with the subject line “How much do you really know about your cat?” to celebrate International Cat Day:
#7: Build a Lead Generation Funnel
The fastest way to grow your email list is the lead generation funnel:
- You create a lead magnet
- You create a landing page for that lead magnet
- You drive traffic to that landing page
Lead magnets that offer a solution to a problem that potential customers are struggling with work best here – email courses, video courses, eBooks, etc.
Once you have your lead magnet, you should create a landing page for it. We recommend starting with a simple squeeze page.
Squeeze pages are the most basic type of landing page.
They need to have these three key elements:
- A headline that conveys what your free offer is all about.
- An opt-in form where the potential customer can type in their email address. It can be either displayed immediately or shown once they click the call-to-action button.
- A call-to-action button that encourages the potential customer to get the lead magnet.
You can also experiment with adding a sub-headline, more copy, and social proof.
Typically, adding these elements increase the conversion rate, but you can never know for sure until you A/B test them.
Here’s a simple, yet effective squeeze page that we are using for our “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” lead magnet:
Once your lead magnet landing page is ready, it’s time to start driving traffic to it with paid advertising.
All major social media platforms allow you to run ads:
- YouTube
- TikTok
You should choose the platform that makes the most sense for your niche.
Set up a small daily budget, start running your ad campaign, and see what happens. You will probably need to make some tweaks.
Only start scaling your campaign once you figure out how to run ads profitably.
Note that establishing profitability with lead generation campaigns isn’t always straightforward – you need to wait and see whether those leads convert into paying customers.
That being said, if you do this right you can build a large email list really fast.
We also recommend promoting this lead magnet on your social media, YouTube, TikTok, etc. – in the long run, you’ll likely make more money doing that than you would by promoting your products directly.
Bonus Tip: Make Sure That Your Emails Look Good!
Plain text emails that look like regular emails people send to each other can work well for email marketing. We use them in our campaigns!
However, HTML emails that are beautifully designed and include company branding, relevant images, and product photos are likely to work better for eCommerce businesses.
That’s why we recommend investing in email design – you can either use eCommerce email templates or hire a graphic designer that specializes in eCommerce email design.
Also, if you need inspiration, Really Good Emails features a huge database of marketing emails, including emails from popular eCommerce brands.
Want to Learn How to Write Emails That Convert?
Copywriting is what makes or breaks email marketing.
So how can you write copy that converts if you don’t have any previous copywriting experience?
Our friend Jim Edwards wrote a book called “Copywriting Secrets” where he shares everything that you need to know to get started.
If you apply his advice correctly, you should see immediate results, which is what matters the most when you are trying to get a business off the ground.
So don’t hesitate and get a free copy of “Copywriting Secrets” today!
