5 Ways Retailers Can Use Email Marketing to Boost Conversions 

Email messaging can deliver strong results, especially for retail businesses. With the ability to segment your email lists, target specific customers and offer enticing offers, you can dramatically increase conversion rates and sales. It’s also worth noting that it costs barely anything to send an email. Far less than traditional advertising, email marketing delivers solid ROI and cannot be overlooked.
As your retail business develops an email outreach strategy, there are a few things to keep in mind. Some of the information we will discuss today is obvious but crucial. Hopefully, you will pick up some new information to enhance your current strategy.
Personalize Your Emails Based on Buyer Activity
Sending out mass emails to everyone on your subscriber list is a wasted opportunity. Instead, segment your lists and send highly targeted messages to the appropriate groups. Not only do relevant emails have higher opens but also higher clickthrough rates.
Let’s say that your brand sells home decor. Your goal is to boost sales for the fall, so you segment customers into groups based on buying habits.
Customers in Group A haven’t made a purchase in some time and are sent an email with a 20% off We Miss You offer. Loyal customers in Group B are sent a different email, thanking them for their continued support. Included in their email is a 15% off coupon code plus double loyalty points.
As you can see, these emails are more personalized and show the recipient that your brand understands their shopping habits. Don’t forget to follow good email marketing practices such as by creating fun subject lines, including compelling calls to action and breaking up copy in bullet points.
Segment Your Audiences According to Interests
Let’s talk a bit more about segmenting your customers and why this is important.
With segmentation, you’re able to divide your subscribers into groups that make sense. This way, when you send out emails, the messages are highly relevant. You can use any bit of information to segment your lists such as age, location, interests, purchase history, browsing activity and more. The goal is to send out timely, appropriate emails, so any information in classifying your customers is helpful.
Let’s imagine that your home decor company sells many items, and one of your hot sellers is soy candles. You want to introduce your new fall scents, but you know that not all customers like candles. Sending out a mass email announcing these candles wouldn’t be necessary. All the people who don’t like or buy candles would not be interested, so your email would be deleted.
The better approach is to target the customers that enjoy using candles and have bought them in the past. You could gather this information from browsing habits, previous orders or surveys. Then, segment your lists and send out an email to those who will be most interested in your new products, along with a creative headline and special offer.
Automate Emails to Reach the Right People
Sending out emails would be tiresome if you had to do it manually! Fortunately, today’s email marketers have automation on their sides. Marketing automation helps retailers by connecting them with the right customers at the right times. If you’ve had a bad experience with automation before, it was probably because it was used incorrectly. As wonderful as automation is, it needs to be set up and executed properly. So, give it another try, if you haven’t yet.
Using automated emails helps you deliver highly relevant, targeted messages to the right people in the right moment. When used correctly, automated emails can generate 320% more revenue! To be successful, avoid manually creating and sending every email campaign. Keep your subscriber lists updated and organized, so that you can easily segment lists and target specific groups. If you’re new to automation, we highly suggest reading Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Automation.
Optimize Emails for Mobile Devices
All emails you send out should be optimized for mobile devices. To help with this, use a mobile-friendly email template. If you assume that your email is automatically mobile friendly, you might be in some trouble.
Because more people open emails on their smartphones and tablets around the holidays, now is the time to optimize your holiday email marketing strategy for mobile. Imagine all of the holiday promotions you can take advantage of – Thanksgiving, Black Friday, early Christmas and more. Creating fast-loading, beautiful emails for mobile is a way to win over on-the-go customers.
Gather Data to Improve Campaigns
With the data that can be gathered these days, there’s no benefit in assuming anything about your customers. The more information you collect, the better you can send highly targeted emails to the people who want to receive them. Important data to gather includes birth dates, purchase history and interests. Using this information, you can send out special offers.
For example, if you obtain the birthdays of your email subscribers, you can use marketing automation to send out birthday offers on each customer’s big day. Use a creative title, a bright, colorful message and a 10% off coupon code for the month. This is a great way to show customers that you pay attention to the details and value them as customers.
One thing you never want to do is use purchased data. If you don’t do the appropriate research, you could end up sending the wrong information to the wrong person. Instead, use third-party apps such as Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce to collect data.
Conclusion
Successful retail marketers use email marketing to target the right customers, increase brand awareness and measure the outcome. By following the tips above, you too can use email marketing to boost conversions and sales for your retail store. Well, what are you waiting for? Call WSI Net Advantage at 510-687-9737 and let’s put together an email marketing strategy that WORKS!