7 Ecommerce Email Hacks That Will Help You Sell Better

Ecommerce Email Hacks : As an E-commerce player, I don’t have to tell you the importance of Emails in your E-commerce business. According to a research data by DMA 2015, Every $1 invested in email marketing generates a revenue of about $38! And in case your online business is not doing that, it’s time now to start incorporating these quick and easy hacks in your daily emails.

Now emails just don’t mean your daily promotional emails. There goes a lot in this emails if you care to study a bit.

1. Re-sending Mails with better Targeting

So you sent your email and it got a good open rate. But have you optimized it to its maximum

potential?

Recently, I had a talk with my friend, I was chatting with my friend Puja from PhotoWhoa. PhotoWhoa is a deal site curated especially for Photographers. I was surprised at her conversion rates. So I decided to have a closer look at her email strategy.

Here’s what I inferred from my discussion with her:

1. She sends out a mail to her target audience

2. Two days later she analyses the mail activity with respect to open rate, click rate and conversion

3. At times, if the open is high, but the click rate is low, implies that she did get the attention of her audience but her mail content was not appropriate. So she comes up with a new mail content and re-sends the mail to people who did open the mail but did not click it

4. In case the open rates are pathetic, she waits for a few days (let’s say 2 weeks) and sends the mail again with a different subject line to people who did not open the mail.

5. If the open rate and click rates are good, implies that the product is an “in-demand” product. In this case, she takes a feedback on the product and sends out the mail to all her audience with client specific reviews

Things you can do:

– Resend your mail with different subject lines to people who never opened the mail.

– Resend your mail with a different pitch to the people who opened the mail but did not click it.

– DEFINITELY, send out a mailer to the people who clicked the link but did not buy your product.

2. STOP targeting on increasing ONLY Open Rates

I remember, once I read a mail with a subject line “I was wrong…” Now surely, the subject line curiosity piquing and the open rate did shoot up. But the click rate? The click rate was dismayingly low. Reason? In the mail, They had promoted a product which not everyone might be using. But what if, they had used a subject line which said what exactly was inside? Obviously, the interested people only would have opened it.

This will make sure you target only the interested people and get them to open your mail. This way, your mail also need not be generalized, but targeted.

There can be a debate here on, “If they open my mail then they might be tempted enough to buy” Which would be right in some cases, especially when the prices are low. But, nevertheless. This is a topic for next article may be?

Things you can do:

– Check your email subject lines for Spam test.

– Run them through this Advance Marketing Institute

– Make sure your subject line denote what they sell! Avoid misleading subject lines unless you have a story to tell.

3. Can this be read by a human?

These days, most of the people read emails on their phones. According to a data research by Kahuna, 86% of emails were opened in Mobile in the 1st quarter of 2016. With the changing email trends, a lot of emails, these days will have only images with embedded texts. In such scenarios, it becomes increasingly important that your text is readable.

See the image on the left? What do you make of it? What is it selling? No idea, because the text is not visible to the naked eye! And see the banner at the right. The text is bold and highlighted. Serves it purpose in just one image right?

Less is better. Make your emails shorter, visually appealing and to the point!

Things you can do:

– Simple. Make people test your emails!

– You can also try Litmus Testing to test your emails for a better performance.

4. Make Unsubscribing DIFFICULT!

A lot of subscribers might hit me for this, but this one works! Mind you, make it difficult for the subscriber not impossible! Apart from the frustration of the subscriber, it’s completely illegal to do so.

Here is one difficult unsubscribe option by Bookatable

You’ve to actually opt-out of 4 different types of mailing lists. Also, this helps your subscribers in choosing their preferred criteria’s as well.

Here is another example. My personal favorite Unsubscribe option form from Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce store.

Things you can do:

– Take your unsubscribe link to “Manage Subscriptions” and give them an option to change their preferences. Also, make sure you have the unsubscribe button available too.

– Ask feedback on why they want to unsubscribe

5. Stop sending too many emails!

Like really, stop sending them emails every now and then. You’ll just end up on their spam list.

According to a survey on “What is the biggest turnoff while getting an e-mail in your mobile”

We found that maximum people complained of “Too frequent emails”

See why I was stressing on “Small font size” ? Same goes for too many emails! No one likes being bombarded by your product emails.

6. Make your Coupon Codes Copy Pastable.

You send out coupons and promo codes now and then. Fantastic. But if they are not copy-pastable, then it makes no sense to embed them. Seriously, people had enough learning in their schools to do something like memorize a code and then write it down while checking out process.

Especially when you have generated difficult codes like the above one from Groupon! Make things for your customers as easy as you can.

7. Opening pitch of Emails is Crucial.

Many-a-times while writing emails, you tend to promote the product in the pitch. Instead of that, you should make the reader aware that why this product is going to be beneficial to him.

Remember: Do not sell your product to the reader. Sell the NEED of your product for the reader.

Consider, you are selling a shirt. While many people will start with,

Is it warm already? Why don’t you check out our summer special shirt to make you feel light throughout the day?

Instead.

So what does [Some Celebrity] do during outdoor shoots in Summer? What do they wear? [Actually find if he wears your type of shirt]

We have something similar for you!

BAM! Once people know that this is credible, they will certainly buy it to try it 😀 .

Another such example of clean and simple mail is of Paypal.

See their CTA buttons also don’t have any cliched words like Buy This Now, Buy Now or not even the normal Learn More.

Things you can do:

– Try to keep the mail short and sweet.

– Avoid using words like Buy, Order, Purchase, Free, etc.

– Include relevant images, but don’t overdo it.

At the end of the day, no one has the magic wand to create the best emails, but we all learn through extensive trial and errors and learn from other’s mistake. Try the above methods and let me know if they work for you. Also, let us know if you know any other methods that worked for you in the comments.

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