If your online business uses Shopify as its retail platform, reaching out to new customers, and keeping existing customers engaged, will be a vital part of your marketing campaign.
The traditional advertising approaches such as print media, leafleting and signage, no longer play the role in marketing that they used to.
So by implementing an automated email marketing system, you will keep your business foremost in the minds of your clients, encourage repeat business, and help your customers complete their purchase journeys.
There are plenty of effective strategies you can employ to create the best email automation for Shopify.
Let’s say, for example, that you roast the finest coffee the planet has ever tasted. You want the world to know about it…and you want the world to come to your online roastery to buy it. But to do that, you have to tell people about it, make it easy for them to buy it, and encourage them to come back for more.
So let’s run with the coffee metaphor and extract a few tasty strategies and best practices for you to employ to create the finest automated email campaign for your Shopify business.
The Best Email Automation for Shopify Users
It costs a lot of money to attract new customers, so once you have them you want to make sure that you retain them. Email automation is a perfect mechanism for managing your marketing campaign for all sorts of reasons.
For example, email automation can:
- Nurture and encourage leads
- Increase awareness of your brand
- Save your marketing team time and effort
- Allow you to target specific segments of your customer database
- Provide you with valuable metrics and feedback
- Keep existing customers engaged
- Allow you to plan and implement targeted strategies.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You can’t grind the coffee before it’s roasted to perfection. So for starters, the best email automation for Shopify begins with taking a look at your website, to ensure that it is operating in an optimum manner.
These are some of the prerequisites to running a successful Shopify email marketing campaign.
Make your website “bounce proof”
There’s no point encouraging people to visit your site if it crashes or is complicated to navigate.
To optimize your website, make sure that:
- Your site’s pages load fast
- Your checkout process is streamlined and simple
- Your Calls To Action are compelling
- Your site’s design is pleasant and uncluttered.
Make your product pages pop
All of your email marketing efforts will be in vain if your customers are turned off by a website that doesn’t have oomf!
The aroma of coffee will entice customers into a café, but the decor and service will be what keeps them coming back.
It’s just the same with your Shopify website. Your product pages should be attractive and concise, contain videos if possible, and include comprehensive product descriptions.
Be open and honest with post-sale information
Once your customer has hit the Complete Purchase button, it shouldn’t be the end of your job. Keep them informed about delivery times, your exchange and return policy, and be proactive in answering questions and addressing complaints.
OK…now that you’ve given your website a good roasting (so to speak), it’s time to go over some of the best practices to consider when you set up an email marketing campaign for your Shopify store.
Email Automation for Shopify: Best Practices
Attracting customers to your online shop, encouraging them to buy your stuff, and then keeping them engaged so that they come back and buy some more, is the raison d’être for your automated email marketing campaign.
Manage your subscriber lists
- Offer a sign-in option. Let your customers choose to receive emails rather than just sending them will-nilly.
- Review your subscriber lists. Make sure that you’re not sending emails to out-of-date emails or generic email addresses that don’t have an actual person on the other end.
- Segmentation. Create groups of customers to target with specific emails, such as regular customers or customers who buy certain products at specific times.
- Take out the trash. Don’t waste your time on customers who don’t engage. Purge them from your lists and move on.
Know what to include
- Welcome emails. If you have a new or even a potential customer, send them a welcome email to make them feel like they have joined an exclusive club or a family. Don’t be afraid to stroke your customer’s ego…they love it!
- Your preferences. If you are new to email marketing and can’t quite figure out what to include, have a think about the sorts of emails that you engage with, then tailor your business’s automated emails to match.
- Include a link. The whole point of this automation exercise is to get people to visit your online store. So don’t forget to include a link to your homepage.
- Social Media. If it ain’t on the ‘gram, did it really happen? All of those pics and videos of coffees that you post on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and TikTok are a valuable part of your brand’s image. So make sure you talk them up in your automated emails by also including icons linking to your business’s super cool SoMed accounts.
Timing is key
- Maintain engagement. Keep your customers engaged by sending them an email at least once a month.
- Test, test, and test again. Try different subject lines, images, videos, and layouts to figure out what works best.
Best Email Automation Strategies for Shopify That Really Work
Let’s face it, the best email automation for Shopify users is the one that works best for their particular situation.
There’s no “one size fits all” email marketing strategy that can be shoehorned into any business model.
The trick is to develop a strategy that works for your business, and then constantly refine and tweak it until it functions like clockwork.
Consider the software
If you are just starting out with email automation you’ll need to keep things simple.
Choose marketing automation software that is easy for you to learn how to use. You can always upgrade to more sophisticated versions later on once you and your marketing team are up to speed.
Don’t be “that” company
No one likes to be spammed by automated emails that are obviously sent out en masse by a computer somewhere.
So make sure your automated emails are perfectly tailored to directly address each segment of your customer database.
Brag about it
Highlight how your product or service can benefit the email’s recipients by using testimonials from happy customers, products that appeal to their specific desires, and aspects of a product (such as all-natural ingredients or Fair Trade sources) that will appeal to them.
Optimize for the small screen
These days, a large amount of online shopping is done using mobile phones. So make sure that your automated emails look good when they’re being read over a coffee!
Good Advice is Close at Hand
Given that email marketing can generate a significant Return On Investment, the effort involved with setting up and running an automated email marketing campaign is well worth it.
There are plenty of experts out there in the big world of e-commerce marketing who can help you decide which is the best email automation for Shopify purposes. You can get in touch with one of them right now if you like. But first…order another latte!
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