This is a guest post from Tatiana Podus at Promodo.
The advantage of email marketing is its low cost and high efficiency, especially when looking for a tool to attract active traffic. And depending on the size of your list, investments in email marketing can start at a very low price.
This is a win-win when considering the incredible ROI that email offers. Not to mention, email has a 2.5% conversion rate, ranking first among the best-performing marketing channels.
7 Ecommerce email tools to improve conversions
In today’s data-driven world, simply sending the same email to your entire list isn’t enough. Subscribers are fed up with generic emails: They’re far more selective and demanding than they used to be.
Read on to discover 7 advanced ecommerce email tools to help you make your email marketing campaigns truly effective and get a competitive edge in the market.
1. АМР for email
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a technology designed to make web content load faster on mobile devices.
In email marketing, it enables you to create interactive emails—ones your subscribers can interact with in a variety of ways, such as: browsing through a gallery, placing or modifying an order, filling out forms, and completing surveys.
According to Litmus, mobile devices account for up to 42% of email opens. This means that almost half of the opens can be converted into orders directly from within an email, without visiting the website.
And, with the help of AMP, you can modify the emails that have already been sent to your subscribers.
For example, let’s say you send an email with discounted items, but the items that were showcased in the email sell out quickly. In this case, you only have to change a few lines in the code to replace the sold-out items with available ones.
And this even works in emails that have already been sent.
It is important to note, however, that at the time of this publication, AMP pages are only supported in Gmail and Mail.ru.
But this shouldn’t stop you from sending emails to other email clients. If the AMP version isn’t supported by an email client, it will be replaced with a regular HTML email.
Soon, this technology will likely be introduced to Outlook and Yahoo Mail.
2. Geomarketing, geo-targeting, and geofencing
Geomarketing is a way to send email and Viber messages, as well as push notifications, based on the subscriber’s real-time location.
Why is localization important? Find out here.
Currently, one of the only tools actively used in geomarketing is geo-targeting, though geofencing will soon be available for implementation. Let’s take a look at the key differences between the two.
Geotargeting is used to send notifications to subscribers based on their geographic location (country, region, or city). The subscriber’s location data is obtained based on the actions they take. It can be recorded when a user opens an email or clicks a link. If the user’s location changes, the data in the system will be updated, too.
Take, for example, a contact has changed their location and moved to another area of the country. A business could send them notifications about the nearest gas stations or diners in the updated location.
Geofencing is also used to send automated notifications to subscribers based on their current location. The difference is that users will only get notifications when they’re within a radius of 1-2 km from a gas station or a diner. This allows businesses to deliver maximum value to customers, as well as improve brand awareness and brand loyalty.
This format is perfect for businesses in the service sector, such as beauty salons, gas stations, or car repair shops.
For example, if you run a food delivery business, you may want to share a discount on pizzas on a Friday night in a particular residential area where sales are low.
Geofencing will enable you to target your customer engagement efforts only at this particular area, without having to segment your database manually.
What’s more, you’ll be able to save your marketing budget by narrowing the target audience for sending.
3. Advanced segmentation
Advanced segmentation is an email marketing staple, but it’s also one of the most important ecommerce email tools, allowing you to send targeted emails to users based on the dynamic data about their behavior.
You can learn more about segments in the video below.
With the help of advanced segmentation, you can track the following:
- Basic data: the data imported from a user profile or a contact list
- ESP data: the data about subscribers’ interactions with emails
- CRM data: the internal sales performance analytics data including the data about offline purchases
- External data: the data about user interactions with the website or mobile app
With a special script placed on each page of the website, you’ll be able to obtain and process more information about the actions of your subscribers in real-time, and then automatically insert content in emails depending on the level of detail of the data you have.
Advanced audience segmentation allows you to offer your subscribers related products based on the actions they take, which will help you increase transactions and email-generated revenue.
For example, say a subscriber has purchased a vacuum cleaner. This data can be processed so that the next email would contain information about the purchased product and a content block with related products: a bag, additional nozzles, etc.
Now let’s say another user has only viewed vacuum cleaners on the website. In this case, an email would contain information about this vacuum cleaner, as well as special-priced cleaners or more functional counterparts.
4. Hyper-personalization in email and push notifications
Content personalization refers to creation and distribution of messages targeted directly at a specific group of users.
By segmenting your audience into such groups, you’ll be able to send them emails depending on their specific characteristics and the objectives of your business.
Hyper-personalization implies creating individually customized emails based on an analysis of subscriber behavior. According to SocialMediaToday, personalized emails generate up to 14% more revenue and help improve open rates by 29%.
This personalization guide will take your emails to the next level.
In email marketing, hyper-personalization enables marketers to make individual offers to each individual subscriber based on the history of their purchases. For example, you may receive replenishment emails when you’re out of your favorite product.
Push notifications can also be based on user interactions. These push notifications may include reminders of products that users have added to their favorites or abandoned cart notifications.
5. Gamification
Gamification is an effective eccomerce email tool that grabs reader attention and increases user loyalty through interactivity. When applied to email marketing, gamification can help drive engagement of new subscribers and activate dormant ones.
Such interactive elements aren’t designed for direct sales, but in the end, users should be able to use the rewards to get discounts or bonuses for their purchases.
There’s a variety of different puzzles and games, such as:
- rebuses
- puzzles
- crosswords
- lotteries
Some of these interactive elements can be implemented directly within an email, while others may require a separate page or publication.
Gamification in emails shouldn’t be too complicated, because the primary goal is to entertain readers, not to make them anxious.
Just make sure that the conditions for participation and claiming an award are clear and transparent.
6. Omnichannel and multichannel marketing
Omnichannel and multichannel marketing approaches are often confused with each other.
However, recently, the term “omnichannel” has been getting increasingly higher rankings, in terms of popularity among search queries, and, the demand for omnichannel marketing is likely to grow even more in 2020.
Multichannel marketing allows you to communicate with users using multiple communication channels, including email, SMS text messages, social media networks, search engine marketing, and so on.
At the same time, multichannel marketing implies that these channels aren’t synchronized with each other: They have separate sales workflows, and customers who are attracted through each channel may be treated as separate entities.
Omnichannel marketing also means that marketing experts connect with users using multiple channels. The difference is that these channels are connected into one single, holistic user-centric structure.
This makes it possible to get as much information about customers as possible. And with that information, you can provide them with the best, most comfortable way to make orders, ask questions, and communicate with a company in every possible way across all channels and devices—from the very first touchpoint to repeat purchases and beyond.
Advantages of omnichannel marketing:
- All communications are maintained via channels that are convenient for each particular user at their most convenient time.
- Omnichannel marketing reduces the risk of losing a subscriber by leveraging multiple channels in a seamless experience.
- All data about subscribers’ interactions with emails is stored in a single place.
- Omnichannel marketing provides for a more detailed analysis of customer lifecycle and lifetime value (LTV) based on comprehensive data across all customer touchpoints. As a result, you’ll be able to send more relevant information to each individual subscriber.
Omnichannel marketing has a huge advantage over multichannel marketing, as it makes it possible to analyze each channel in conjunction with others.
Plus, you can set up a unified user service system, increase customer loyalty, and provide an opportunity to establish individual and personalized communication with users.
However, the omnichannel marketing approach has one significant disadvantage: the difficulty of implementation from the technical perspective.
That’s because you’ll need tools that’ll allow you to collect data from different marketing channels and combine this data into a single source of information for your marketing campaigns.
Learn how to combine email marketing and social media.
7. Email marketing analytics
Analytics is the right thing to do if you want to develop your marketing strengths.
Conducting an analysis of your email marketing efforts will enable you to see the whole picture, measure your current marketing performance, and make informed decisions for the future.
Email analytics allow you to monitor the success of your email marketing efforts and make timely adjustments.
In order to keep an eye on your email marketing performance, pay attention to the following indicators:
- email open rates
- click-through rates
- conversion rates
- number of unsubscribes
- delivery errors
To increase some of the metrics and reduce others, you should conduct A/B testing for your emails, apply a deeper segmentation, and automate your workflows in general.
Analytics can help you make objectively reasonable forecasts, for example, for a year in advance, as well as set goals and achieve them by applying the tools you need in email marketing.
Get the introduction to email insights and reporting here.
Wrap up
Email marketing is one of the most efficient channels for business communications. Not only does it drive good engagement and conversion rates without significant investments, but it also has great automation capabilities.
We hope that the ecommerce email tools described in this post will help you improve your email campaigns, making them easier to read and more useful to your readers.
If you’re having any difficulties setting up your email marketing campaigns, it’s best to contact experienced email marketing specialists.
Tatiana Podus is a marketing manager digital marketing agency Promodo.