Email marketing – if we were to make a comparison with marriage – is the promised eCommerce groom. Without email marketing, the customer loyalty process is unlikely to be successful. 

The success of any online business depends on an assortment of factors. Still, most of all, it depends on the customer’s return to the online store, which must be constant but above all linked to an ever greater willingness to purchase. If a customer visits the online shop only once a month, he is not a good customer, but it also depends on how we manage the relationship.

Customer loyalty is never a process that is extinguished only post-purchase. Thank you for a message on the same site, but it is a process that starts from very far away, that is, the first visit to the online shop.

Seven emails should be structured to ensure that ours is the customer’s favorite store.

• Welcome email, immediately after the first visit;
• Promotional newsletter to send discount coupons in series;
• The newsletters during the holidays, written in a personalized way to customers;
• The emails that are defined as “upselling,” since they are those that must be sent to buy related products;
• The emails that are sent to customers who abandon the cart to entice them to return to the online shop;
• Post-purchase emails to request reviews from customers;
• If a user unsubscribes, an email requesting confirmation of the cancellation, used mainly to convince the user not to abandon us.

But how should all these emails be structured from the point of view of content?

Personalization is the keyword—both in the contents – product sheets and description categories – than in email marketing activity.

Emails must always be written quoting the recipient’s name, avoiding creating too complex and unintuitive layouts. 

A well-written text, but placed within an unclear graphic layout and full of icons and symbols that distract or slow down the reading, is a disadvantage of your e-commerce.

Let’s see the essential points chronologically to consider to do a good email marketing content activity.

1. Emails are always differentiated according to the purpose, and this means that even the tone of communication must gradually become more and more personal;
2. The subject of the emails is the lifesaving anchor: you have to build it artfully;
3. The emails must not be too long, and both the choice of font and font size must be studied. We need experimentation in this case; we need to try and evaluate through the analysis tools how much users hold back in reading and where they stop;
4. The conclusion of the emails is as important as the subject since it must convince to take any action;
5. The choice of any images must be evaluated solely and exclusively based on actual utility. Otherwise, nothing is better.

The analysis activity, for example, can also be beneficial in this case, since if we know the customer and his purchasing or visiting habits on our online shop, we can identify the most suitable communication for him.

For example, if a user often visits the category of sneakers, running, or trekking shoes, it would be ideal for writing emails that stimulate interest with photos of sporting landscapes or perhaps with the stories of other customers who have chosen. that particular brand for running or trekking. This reasoning would have to be done on a group of users since differentiating the emails for each user would be an almost impossible job for e-commerce to do.

These could be defined as review emails, and references in general always work very well. From this point of view, it could be interesting to use storytelling well or, in any case, make use of a resource that masters it artfully.

And what about the choice of the program to send the newsletters?

We now come to another critical point, namely the choice of the program for sending the newsletters.

The most used and known are:

• Mailchimp
• Mail
• Sendinblue

Most of those who carry out email marketing activities do so with Mailchimp. 

If you want to learn more, read Salvatore Aranzulla’s article on the best newsletter programs for email marketing.

If, on the other hand, you don’t like entrusting your email marketing activity to “ready” software, you can always structure your layout with the professional help of a graphic designer. However, many prefer to write the emails themselves and also structure the visual aspect in a personalized way.

Of course, this activity requires more effort, but it is also a way to personalize communication further. Considering that people want to feel pampered and unique, personalization is undoubtedly a necessary solution to be adopted, both in content and graphic choices.

What is the ideal cadence for email marketing?

A final important aspect is the frequency with which to send mail. There are supporters of an email a week, those who believe that the user is not too pressured, and therefore sending emails twice a month is sufficient, and those who believe that an email a day is necessary.

The secret of a good email marketing activity is consistency – there is no doubt about this – but it is also necessary to realize that communication must be studied. The truth is that no one has the time to read an email a day – or even want to – but everyone reads emails about a topic that interests them or an attractive discount/offer. 

The secret is to involve and entice our user, starting from the object. Keep in mind that emails are sent when there is something to say, not to bore the reader. In the list I mentioned above, I specified that there are seven necessary emails, including those that are sent only once, that is:

• The welcome one;
• The one to unsubscribe.

Eliminated these two types, the others relate to the constancy of the user’s e-commerce visit. At the basis of this reasoning, once again, as you can see, there is a severe process of analyzing user behavior.

Online communication is like a thin thread that can be easily broken if you use it poorly or stress the reader. For this reason, we must learn to do it carefully, and it is not enough to write a text effectively.

Dealing with content is not just about writing an effectively written text. Still, it also means studying how you need to communicate and the difference you need to make from one purpose of communication to another. For example, insurance email marketing is part of content marketing, essential for e-commerce, which must never be missing.

On the other hand, if you think about the staff who work in the bars and welcome customers every day. Calling them by name and never forgetting their preferences and choices of breakfast or coffee, one realizes that the loyalty process is just a matter of attention to detail and study of the person we relate to.

The same must happen in e-commerce.