Hey there business owner, did you know 99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day? 79% of B2B marketers find email to be the most successful channel for content distribution. Email marketing is nothing new, it has been there for 40 years since it started in the 1970s! Surprising, isn’t it?
It’s 2022 and email marketing continues to rule the world. Even to this day, 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months (July 2022). If you’re a store owner who hasn’t deployed Shopify Email Marketing yet, these statistics are enough to give you a nudge that you’re missing out on an integral part of your marketing strategy.
Still apprehensive? Here’s another fun fact: For every $1 spent, email marketing gives you a return of about $36 — implying 36x returns!
Shopify email marketing offers a comprehensive, personalized, and quick way to get your brand out among potential buyers. Since we humans are wired to check our emails every day, chances are high that your email catches the eyeball of just the right user(s).
If you’ve been wanting to deep dive into Shopify Email Marketing but are not sure where to start, we’re here to help every store owner like yourself.
In this blog post, we will start from the very basics – what is Shopify email marketing, why do you need it, how to get started and key metrics you need to know.
Why Shopify Email Marketing is Essential for Your E-commerce Business
Email marketing is the holy grail for increasing sales, building brand awareness, and creating a more transparent, two-way communication channel between (potential) customers and business owners. These are just a few of the many benefits that email marketing brings to the table. Some of those many are:
It is cost-effective
This is the most important reason why business owners like to go with email marketing to boost sales and revenue. At the same time, it allows store owners to interact with thousands of potential customers and generate leads (and even convert!).
It increases sales
From a conversion standpoint, email marketing is by far the most ROI-generating marketing strategy. For example, Twitter has an open rate of 0.5% while the same is 3% for email. As we’ve explained in the beginning of this article, most people check their emails ritually.
Improves visibility for your brand
The reason behind this is simple: people like to read emails. According to MailChimp, the average email open rate for all industries we analyzed is 21.33% – For every 100 emails sent, around 21 of them are actually opened by the recipients.
Email marketing has the highest ROI
According to DMA 2019, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you get a return on investment worth $42. Most business owners are concerned about ROIs and that’s why email marketing is their favorite way to communicate and generate leads. It costs you much less to reach out to your audience via email.
It positions your brand as a trustworthy business
Would you rather shop from a brand that is MIA from the internet or one that regularly updates you about the latest offers, sales, and discounts? We believe, the latter. Shopify email marketing ensures constant reinforcement of your brand among your target audience. Every week (or month) they’ll be reminded of your business or the service you give. In fact, 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month
It gives your potential customers a way to reach out to you
People love brands that care about them. Email marketing on Shopify can be a sure-shot way to tell them that you’re listening to them, you’re approachable, and you care about their pain points. Sent out periodic Newsletters to your target audience, but that’s not it. Make sure you respond to genuine queries that you receive. And feedbacks? Think of them as your holy grail.
It boosts website visits, increases chances of cross-selling
According to Campaign Monitor, you’re 6 times more likely to generate organic traffic via email marketing on Shopify than social media. Heard about Click-Through Rate? It’s what we’re going to explain in detail in the later part of the blog post. Email campaigns that have higher Click-Through Rates mean more percentage of people are actually clicking on the emails to go on your website. More visits to the website mean more traffic, and more traffic means more sales!
Types of Customer-facing Emails
So now you know why you need a robust Shopify email marketing strategy for your store. But, do you know how many types of emails you can send to get the necessary traction?
As a part of your email marketing strategy, you can send many types of emails to your target audience to promote your product/service, keep them engaged, and update your existing customers about recent developments, discounts, and offers.
Here are some of the most popularly used email marketing campaigns:
Promotional email
Promotional emails are a part of your newsletter campaigns. These emails are sent out to your existing or acquired data of potential customers to market your products, services, or any latest offers. These emails include direct CTAs that appeal to your potential customers to click on your website and make a purchase. The essence of these emails is to attract customers via product features, discounts, or an offer.
Engagement email
Engagement emails are for the ‘awareness’ stage of your buyer’s journey – making them aware of a problem that exists and telling them about the ‘solution’ that your product brings to the table. Some of these emails can be downright educational and not salesy. Such type of campaign is used to establish your brand’s thought leadership in your respective industry.
Automated email
Apart from promotions and education, it is also important for Shopify store owners to keep their customers updated about their order status. You can set up automated emails for customers who make a purchase on your website. Keep them updated about their orders for details including shipping charges, estimated delivery date, delays, abandoned carts, etc Customers are more likely to shop from a brand that maintains regular communication than one that doesn’t.
Quick Tip: Abandoned cart messages are the most likely to convert into sales in e-commerce businesses.
Shopify Email Marketing Strategy: How to get started
Build an email list
Bring your data of potential customers, existing customers, and past customers into one place. To collate this list, you can add a ‘Sign Up’ button on your website so that interested users can sign up for receiving email updates about your brand. Alternatively, you can use data collected by paid ad campaigns for your email marketing campaigns.
Build content assets
So now you know your target audience, now what? Now build out content assets – email campaigns to be sent out to your email list. Make sure that you understand your customer’s pain points and answer their queries via your email. Don’t make your emails too salesy. Rather, try to add value to your customer with your content.
Get an email service provider
You need an email service provider to send emails to a large group of people. There are thousands of email service providers out there, but not every one of them will suit your business requirements. The best way is to try and make a decision. And the good news here is most of the email service providers give free demos or trial period for you to make an informed decision. Some of the most popular email service providers are Mailchimp, Mailmodo, Klaviyo, SendGrid, Lemlist, and HubSpot.
Track KPIs
Your job is not done when you send out emails to your list. It is important to track the progress of your campaign and use the data to optimize your future campaigns as well. There are certain KPIs including open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, etc. that indicate how successful your campaign was.
Optimize the campaign on the basis of data
You can try A/B testing in your email marketing strategy to check out what works and what doesn’t. Try creating multiple templates with variants of subject lines and send them out to different audiences. Check which one received the most clicks and conversions. This will help you to optimize your future campaigns for maximum conversions.
Key metrics to measure the success of the Shopify Email Marketing Campaign
One of the biggest benefits of Shopify email marketing is that it is easily tracked. The email service providers have a tracking dashboard that will provide you with the data to gauge the success of your campaign.
These are the KPIs you need to keep an eye on.
Open Rate
Open Rate tells you the number of emails out of your campaign that are opened by your recipients. Higher open rates mean good subject lines. So you need to have very catchy subject lines to have your recipients open the emails.
Click-Through Rate
Click-Through Rate or CTR depicts the number of clicks your email campaign has received. Good copy and engaging graphics ensure that your CTR is high.
Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate tells you the number of undelivered emails. It has two sub-categories- Soft Bounce and Hard Bounce. Soft Bounce means the recipient’s inbox is full so the email is undelivered. Hard Bounce happens when the recipient’s email id is invalid or incorrect.
Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate is the ultimate matrix that defines the success of your campaign. Conversion Rate is the number of users who clicked through the link in your email and made a purchase on the website.
Unsubscribe Rate
Unsubscribe Rate gives you a percentage of people who opted out of receiving your emails any further. An Unsubscribe Rate of more than 1% requires content scrutiny to make it more appealing and valuable to the customers.
Delivery Rate
Delivery Rate gives the percentage of emails that have been successfully delivered to your email list. It is the total number of emails sent minus the bounced emails.
Closing Notes
So now you know how to use Shopify email marketing for growth and learned some bits of Shopify email marketing strategy. What’s next? It’s time for you to get started. Jump into the waters already.
Also, follow this space for some more easy-to-digest, effective, and simple-to-do Shopify email marketing tips to position your brand better for success.
