A Guide to Email Marketing

Marketing with a great ROI

If you’re reading this post, chances are you’re thinking about taking the plunge into the world of email marketing, or you’re already there and you’ve come to a bit of stopping point.

Email marketing is an easy way to reach new and existing customers, but crucially, it's a really low-cost marketing exercise. The ability to target customer groups (segments), as well as the chance to measure the effectiveness of each campaign, can give retailers a fantastic return on their investment.

We understand that starting out can seem a tad daunting, and even experienced hands can get stuck from time to time, so we’ve rounded up some tips and tricks to help you on your way.

Email marketing with IXO Commerce

Email marketing is an essential part of 21st century retail. Are your business systems helping or hindering your efforts?

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So what is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is the process of sending bulk emails to customers and potential customers, usually to advertise special offers, products or events. Unlike Pay Per Click marketing campaigns, you know you're marketing to people who are interested in your product. Simply put, if someone has subscribed to your mailing list, they'll have done so because they are interested in you and your products.

Mailing lists can be built in many ways, but the most fundamental rule is that members have to choose to sign up; they need to give positive consent (see the GDPR for more details). The most crucial thing is that you need to work to grow your audience.

Once you have your mailing list, you can start emailing your potential customers, encouraging them to place an order.

How many emails are too many?

Build a marketing plan that works for you and your customers

Pick a model that works for you and capitalise on it. It’s pointless setting unrealistic targets of weekly emails, if you’re time-poor. Start small, reach out monthly, and create a 6 month plan. Have a sale coming up? Great! Planning a big giveaway with online orders? Fantastic, jot them down! It’s all relevant and all worth your customers knowing. But be wary of your valued content vs. your customers' valued time. No one likes receiving emails if they bring nothing to the table, especially if they're arriving every single day.

Be mindful when using certain trigger words such as: Clearance, Cheap and Order Now. A poorly written subject line is possibly the fastest way to end up in someone’s spam folder. It’s also important to keep your subject lines short, ideally lower than 50 characters.

Often subject lines are cut off (particularly on mobile devices), so be sure to bear that in mind! Our advice; get creative! Use questions, create a sense of urgency, include puns and numbers where relevant; and more importantly tell your customers what’s inside! Don’t keep them guessing by being coy. If your software allows for it, consider A/B testing too! That way you can utilise multiple subject lines, to see which ones get you the best results.

Purchasing a database can be an expensive mistake

It’s the quickest way to tarnish your business name and create a whole host of enemies, one being your email provider (who may block you). We get it, you’re human and when offered a quick fix, you’re going to be tempted by that list of ready to pest potential’s.

However, they are far from potential customers. I promise you! Often these lists are jam packed with irrelevant contacts, who will swiftly unsubscribe or bounce back! Not only is this a huge waste of your time and money, it’s not worth the negative backlash and poor response rates. Not to mention, it’s just poor etiquette to spam people!

How could a marketing integration help you?

Simply pressing send and hoping for the best won’t get you far. Monitor your response rates often and always be thinking of smarter ways to better them; the best marketing platforms come with tools to help you with this, and eCommerce tracking is an essential part of any marketing integration.

If you're already using an email solution, it might be worth talking to us to see how we can make the most of automation to make your life easier. These can reduce labour intensive data entry, ease compliance with GDPR and provide your marketing teams with considerably more data. An integration with Mail Chimp, for example, not only exports newsletter signups and contact preferences, but customer interests, purchase history and more, all allowing marketing automation and enhanced segmentation.

We already work with a wide variety of great companies, so just get in touch!

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25th May 2019