One of the biggest challenges in running an ecommerce is the lack of in-person interaction with the customer.
Fortunately for you (and for the rest of humanity), email marketing exists, allowing you to overcome this obstacle and build meaningful customer relationships through continuous communication.
But there is no use sending emails to your customers if you don't have a plan.
Establishing an email marketing strategy in E-Commerce requires time and attention to be successful. But do not worry, in this article, I'm going to expose 9 email marketing tips for E-Commerce that will allow you to get the most out of your customer relationships:


1. Personalize Your Promotional Campaigns

It's no secret that personalization can improve engagement rates. But this concept goes much further than just including the name of your client in the email greeting.
Sending emails with content tailored to the recipient is a sure way to keep your readers happy and, therefore, get them to make a purchase.
So, you may be wondering: how can you implement this in your email marketing strategy?
Using emailing tools like Sendinblue, you can start by segmenting your list into groups with similar needs or interests, such as:

 Gender: If your clients' grosso are women, they may not be interested in your latest menswear collection, and vice versa. Sending emails based on established gender preferences is a good starting point to make your emails more attractive.

 Interaction with previous emails: As we will discuss later, it is good that you have prepared a message and a different offer for customers depending on how they have interacted with your emails in the past, for example.. how often do you open your emails.

 Purchase History: Using past purchases to find out what type of products your customers might be interested in will generate more compelling emails.  In the end, if a customer buys a certain type of product, they are likely to be willing to buy complementary or similar products in the future.


2. Optimize Subject Line And Preview Text

Subject lines and preview text create the first and most important impression of an email. Think of them as the dress you wear for job interviews - you want them to look good on you and make a positive first impression so they can later see how amazing you really are for that position. Consider the following aspects:

Capture The Reader's Attention

If you want your open rate to increase, the subject line of your emails is the starting point to get it.
Subject lines have to be seductive enough to spark a reader's curiosity without sounding like spam.  They should be used to capture attention with an original and relevant text that hints at what your email is about.


Convince Them To Decide To Open It

Once you have the reader's attention (thanks to the subject line), the text that appears in the preview can act as a trigger for a customer to decide to open your email.
If you're not familiar with marketing jargon, the preview text is the first words in the email that are visible in your inbox. Many marketers forget about this part, but optimizing the preview text can make a big difference when opening or not opening an email.

 Consider using email marketing tools like Sendinblue, which allow you to get reports and statistics, such as the open rate. This rate reflects the percentage of recipients who opened your emails, and is a good indicator to assess the effectiveness of the subject line.


3. Reward Loyal Subscribers With Exclusive Discounts

No business would survive without loyal customers.  Therefore, you should always do everything possible to foster relationships with these customers so that they continue to return to your page.

 To achieve this, you can create a loyalty program and invite customers who have already interacted with your emails in the past. In this way, you can further develop these relationships and bring them to your page through exclusive offers.
In Sendinblue, for example, you can create automated workflows, which allow you to send promotional emails to all those who have made more than 3 purchases, or what you consider as criteria to consider a loyal customer.


4. Take Advantage of Special Occasions

Seasonal email marketing campaigns can attract additional customers to your page.
In fact, E-Commerce sales during November and December (Christmas time) typically account for almost a quarter of total annual sales. Much of those sales were the result of email promotions.
So be sure to take advantage of these seasonal opportunities. From Sendinblue we make it easier by providing seasonal templates for users' newsletters, thus allowing you to send fun emails that your customers like and entertain.
You have no more excuses to skimp on your email marketing strategy for the next vacation.

5. Allow Your Customers To Receive Notifications 

If a popular product is out of stock, but you know that you are going to replace the stock soon, do not remove the product from your website. Instead, it lets customers "subscribe" to updates on that product's inventory.
This makes customers happy since you keep them updated on the products they really want.
Once you have their email address, you can use it to notify them (expecting it to lead to a sale) and / or ask them if they want to receive your newsletter or other promotional emails later. In this way, you continue working to bring them to your page through regular email communications.


6. Don't Forget About The Design In Your Transactional Emails

Transactional emails have much higher interaction rates compared to regular emails, as these are expected by customers. Being so easy to send default transactional emails, why not get the most out of them? If you don't, you will be wasting valuable opportunities to connect with your customers.
Instead of simply including the minimum information, you should take advantage of the high rates provided by this type of email to achieve your other marketing objectives.
To include transactional emails in your overall email marketing strategy, we recommend that you include:

 • Your brand and a style similar to that of your website or other emails you send to offer a smooth and light experience to your readers.

 • Special offers from your store to attract customers to buy again (for example, "get a 15% discount on your next purchase if you place an order within the next 30 days").

 • Recommendations for similar or complementary products that the customer may need.

7. Use Marketing Automation

Online marketing is about having meaningful communication on a large scale, and the best way to do this is through automation.
Using email marketing automation in E-commerce allows you to build better customer relationships by sending important messages at the right time.  Some email marketing tools like Sendinblue allow you to do one of the following examples:

 Send emails to customers when you see that they have abandoned (to their luck) the cart (come back, because you're already gone and I'm full ... lalala)
Notify customers when an item they viewed or added to their cart goes on sale.
Ask those customers who have been inactive for some time if they still want to receive your emails through a re-opt-in email.

8. Reward Customers For Recommending You

The most desired marketing channel for all of us dedicated to this is word of mouth.
The reason why it is so powerful is because, out there, there are potential customers who can reach your business through a referral from a friend-relative-acquaintance-coworker-anonymous person who talks about your business in the subway.
These people will be much more receptive to the idea of buying in your company in front of those visitors who come from an Ads, since someone they trust has recommended it.

 Therefore, you should take advantage of your current customer network to try to attract new high-quality customers.
A good way to do this is to give a discount to customers who recommend you. In this way, you not only encourage referrals, but also encourage customers who recommend that they come back and make a purchase with that discount.
You can even go one step further and offer discounts to both the sender and the recipient of the reference. This will provide a small additional incentive for new visitors to make their first purchase.


9. Offer Them Opportunities To Subscribe To Your Email

As we mentioned in the previous tip, getting potential customers to want to be on your email marketing list is the best way to build relationships.
Therefore, you should never miss an opportunity to get leads to subscribe to your emailing list. You may be familiar with the standard email opt-in strategy: include forms in the sidebar, footer, or pop-ups on your page. But there are other places where you can also “catch” potential customers.

 Capture Customers During Checkout Process:
The checkout process is one of the times when customers are most likely to sign up. Right after deciding to buy something, the value of your business is already undeniable for them. This is why this is the perfect time to ask them if they also want to receive promotional emails or your weekly newsletter.

Don't Forget Transactional Emails:

Remember before we mentioned that transactional emails have great potential to achieve your marketing goals? Getting new subscribers to your emailing list also falls into that category.
 Although it may not seem like much, giving customers the option to subscribe to your list from transactional emails is a good way to ensure that they don't miss out on any potential benefits that may arise.