Best practices for welcome emails that are effective in eCommerce industry

Your e-Commerce store site usually gets all kinds of visitors on daily basis. The online traffic includes new customers, returning customers and online users who are simply browsing your website. Out of all visitors, some online shoppers make a purchase and some don’t but there is a completely separate segment of online visitors who sign up for your email list. This segment of visitors are usually interested in learning more about your store, what products / discounts you have to offer and how signing up your email list can benefit them.

Today, online businesses are making use of all possible channels to market their store sites and attract more customers. Email marketing continues to be one of the top marketing channels that every retailer likes to use. Some retailers think that email marketing was killed by spam, Facebook, twitter and blogs. If emails are kept short, interesting, and relevant by providing the customers (recipients) an option to unsubscribe, it does bring the revenue.

A welcome email is like beginning of a new friendship and an opportunity for any online store to make a great first impression. A customer usually sign up for your email list with some expectations and as an online business, it is your duty to meet those expectations.

Make sure that your online sign-up process sends out the welcome email immediately

Most of the customers usually expect the welcome email right after signing up for your email list. If your sign-up process does not grab the opportunity of sending the welcome email right away, you can easily see a drop in the open rate for welcome emails that were sent a few hours later as compared to email that were sent right away.

It is very important to grab the attention of your customer towards your store site and sharing what you have to offer by greeting them immediately. Open rates for welcome emails are higher than any other typical email. New research from Experian Marketing Services suggest the welcome email you send as part of your email marketing strategy can produce open rates four times higher than other promotional mailings.

Source: http://mobilestorm.com/digital-marketing-blog/research-welcome-emails-have-open-rate-four-times-higher-than-other-mailings

Greet your customers with a personalized experience

Greeting your customers with a personalized experience is not only going to improve the first impression but it will also set your e-Commerce store apart from the competitors in the your business industry. There are several ways to personalize the experience of your customers such as:

• Subject line should say something like “Thank you for choosing ABC Store – Here are the ways to explore our store site”
• Always try to make your customers feel safe by letting them know in your email that their personal information is safe with you
• Let your customers know that they are part of your business community by sharing other customer’s stories in the email
• Clearly mention in your email what to expect next (if they will be receiving offers, discount coupons or more emails etc.)
• Ask customers to join your network on different channels like social media and how they it can be beneficial to them

Trigger emails “immediately” based on customer’s actions

One of the best ways to get the customers back on your store site is by sending out triggered emails “immediately” based on customer’s action. The key word is “immediately” because it is easier to motivate your customer to place an order if he/she is reminded right away when browsing any particular product is fresh in customer’s mind. Amazon has perfected this strategy by sending out emails according to all kinds of behavior like last viewed, item in cart and similar / recommended items based on last purchase. Similar email marketing strategy can make your customers to spend more time on your website and increases repeat orders as customers will be reminded by your triggered emails.

Shopping cart abandonment type triggered emails are quite common and many e-Commerce stores follow this kind of email strategy. This kind of email reminds your customers to return to the store site and finish with the order process. Every business owner’s target is to get better conversions, more sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment and these kind of triggered emails are beneficial to retailers as it decreases the shopping cart abandonment.

nopCommerce allows your customers to subscriber to newsletters. nopCommerce also offers a tool for creating your own custom newsletters and email campaigns. It can also be integrated with third-party newsletter services (e.g. MailChimp).

Author: Lavish Kumar