Email Marketing – Are You Keeping Your Customers Engaged?

Corey Husfeldt

Welcome to our last edition of the MyCommerce “tips and tricks” newsletter. This three-part series has included proven best practices and techniques on a range of topics to help your business maximize your revenue. Today’s edition is focused on three best practices regarding email marketing.

Email marketing is another good way to establish customers, communicate to customers and provide new information on your products and offers. Before we jump into these best practices the first thing you need is an email list. If you do not have one, you need to establish one, as well as maintain and grow it over time. If you have an email list already, try to keep it clean by ensuring the list contains only valid email addresses. Let’s jump into our email tips!

Item 1: Make It Easy To Sign Up And Receive Emails

In the first edition of the MyCommerce “tips and tricks’ newsletter, step 2 was “Make it easy. Make it Obvious.” The same is equally as true when it comes to getting people to sign up for your email list. Here are some items to remember:

• Add multiple areas to signup on your site that are easy and visible.
  
• Offer compelling reasons to sign up. You don’t have a lot of space to dedicate to this on your site, but make sure the reasons stand out:
  
  
  
  • Emails for new product releases.
    
  • Future offers and discounts.
  
  
• Provide a special offer for signing up today (ex.10% off first order, etc.)
  
• Send newsletters on a regular basis that are more informative, but also provide a secondary offer to keep people engaged.

Item 2: Email Optimization

Having a clean and optimized email is equally as important as your clean and optimized website. Your emails are intended to drive sales so make sure it is optimized to keep people engaged. In the first and second editions of the MyCommerce “tips and tricks” newsletter, all of those tips can should be utilized when it comes to sending emails. Let’s quickly review and show how they apply.

Here are the tips from the first newsletter:

1. Optimize Clicks to the Cart — The same rules apply to your email as your website, there should only be one click to the cart. You don’t want potential purchasers navigating away from the email and your shopping cart.
   
2. Make it Easy. Make It Obvious — Make it very clear on how to buy with a ‘Buy Now’ button that is visible.
   
3. Clean Up Buttons and Links — Display a prominent ‘Buy Now’ button which goes to the shopping cart with one click and a secondary ‘More Info’ link that allows customers to get the additional info they need first before they purchase.

Here are the tips from the second newsletter:

1. Home Page Merchandising — While the email is not your home page, this tip still applies. Make the message clear and have the offer stand out with ‘Email Merchandising.’ This is the area your customers eyes should be drawn to.
   
2. Above the Fold — Have your most important and relevant info at the top of the email. A new product announcement should highlight the product name, image, a 2-3 bullet point description, price (regular price and sales pricing) and of course a ‘Buy Now’ button that goes directly to the cart.
   
3. Too Much Text — Be sure to provide as much info as you can without making it too text heavy. Use bullet points to illustrate key points. Use referring links to go to additional pages, but keep the focus on being able to buy.

Item 3: Send Regular Emails and Newsletters

Sending emails and newsletters on a regular basis will help keep customers engaged and opted-in to your email list. You should email your list 2-3 times per month to stay relevant with your contacts. You don’t want people to forget who you are and why they are getting emails from you.

Send a mix of emails:

• Email – announcing a new product or a discount offer. The discount offer should have an end date to give customers a sense of urgency.
  
• Newsletter – keep these more informative in nature with articles about your company, upcoming events and industry news
  
• Remail – offer that was sent prior to remind people of the offer. Typically the initial email offer will have steam for the first 4-5 days. After a couple weeks, send a remail to remind customers of the offer and that it will be expiring soon. These types of emails may actually outperform the initial email because they create a sense of urgency. Be sure to exclude people who have already taken advantage of the offer to not hit them again with an offer they already purchased.
  
• Send ‘Flash’ emails where the offer only lasts a short period of time. Make sure it is a ‘compelling’ offer that catches their attention. Try to not send these offer the same time each year as customers will be conditioned to wait for your annual sale. These could be used to boost sales during seasonality periods.

These are three best practices practices for Email Marketing and keeping your customers engaged. Do you have any other best practices that you would like to share? Please leave a comment below letting us know what worked for you! We look forward to hearing from you.

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