Tips for eCommerce Email Marketing Success

Despite the rise in popularity of social media in eCommerce, email marketing remains one of the most powerful eCommerce marketing tools to engage prospects and customers. In fact, according to Custora, email marketing accounts social media marketing campaign for approximately 7 percent of all eCommerce user acquisitions, making it second only to search (15.8 percent). If you want to capture more leads, keep more prospects in your sales funnel, turn them into customers, and increase sales, you’ll want to take a closer look at these 8 things that will determine the success of your email marketing efforts in 2015.Successful eCommerce email marketing begins with segmenting your customer lists. One communication or promotion is not going to resonate with all of your customers. For example, if you sell both male and female clothing, blasting an social media marketing degree email promotion for a sale on men’s dress shirts is going to alienate half of your list. Worse, women who open the email may assume that your promotions aren’t for them and will stop opening them altogether. A study by the email service provider MAILCHIMP found that sending segmented, promotional emails to specific list segments increased open rates by 14 percent and improved click-through-rates by approximately 15 percent. Segmentation also reduced bounce rates, spam report rates, and unsubscribe rates. According to LITMUS, 53 percent of emails are now being opened on a mobile device. This number is only going to rise, making it critical for you to incorporate responsive design into your eCommerce email marketing strategy. Simply put, responsive design is design that adapts itself to whatever device is being used to view your email. Regardless of whether a prospect or customer opens it on his laptop, tablet, or smartphone, the user experience social media marketing los angeles needs to be consistent. When you consider the EXPERIAN study that emails using responsive design show an increase of up to 63 percent in click-through-rates and 18 percent in transaction rates, you simply can’t afford to ignore it.
One of the most effective ways to use email for eCommerce marketing is to leverage the data you collect from the behavior of your website visitors. For example, if a visitor seems to be about to pull the trigger on a purchase social media marketing strategy template but abandons the shopping cart, this action can trigger an email that re-engages him. If he doesn’t return and make a purchase after the first reminder, you can add him to your lead nurturing campaign to keep him in the sales funnel. Personalizing emails is one of the easiest and most effective ways to grab the attention of your prospects and customers. With so many emails overloading their inboxes everyday, yours is likely to get skipped over if you don’t stand out. ABERDEEN GROUP reports that personalization improves click-through-rates by 14 percent and conversion rates by 10 percent. social media marketing resume Personalized subject lines and calls-to-action are especially compelling:Subject Lines: Emails with personalized subject lines have 26 percent higher unique open rates than non-personalized emails. (EXPERIAN) Calls-to-Action: Personalized calls-to-action (CTAs) have a 42 percent higher view-to-submission rate than CTAs that are the same for all website visitors. (HUBSPOT) From quickly attracting prospects to convincing them to click-through to your offer, personalizing your emails can be the difference between you or your competitor making the sale. It is critical that restaurants embrace Internet marketing and cultivate a presence online. While “online” is the theme for many of the restaurant marketing tips I’ve listed in the next section, there is still much you can (and should) do offline to promote your business.Don’t expect your (Internet) marketing company/team to do all the work. For instance, we pride ourselves in taking 99% of the work social media marketing campaigns load off of our restaurant clients’ hands, but that 1% is more important than you might think. Whether you have an internal marketing team or you outsource your marketing activities, you must take some responsibility for the successes and roadblocks that happen along the way.

Make Automation Work For You

Use marketing automation to continue to nurture leads through your email marketing campaigns. This enables you to methodically stay in contact and send targeted content to your different customer lists wherever they are in the customer lifecycle. social media marketing service Ultimately, you want to automate as many interactions as possible, providing prospects with relevant content when and how they want to receive it. Three of the most popular ways to use marketing automation are to send. Ask local food bloggers to review your restaurant in return for a free meal. The outside link will help with rankings, and the positive review will help your reputation.You live or die on your reputation, so pay close attention to what people are saying about your restaurant online. This is where your offline visitors can tell the online world about their (hopefully positive) social media marketing conference experience at your restaurant. Thank visitors for positive reviews and respond to and respectfully resolve negative reviews. Invite your customers to make a reservation on sites like OpenTable. You need an online restaurant reservation tool to make it easier for your customers and easier on yourself. And sometimes people just don’t want to pick up the phone – they’d rather make their reservation in just a few clicks.If you compare to direct marketing, email marketing is more efficient, environmentally friendly and a faster way to keep your customers in the know. Promote your e-newsletters through social media, on your website, and inside your restaurant. You will need to decide what will work best for you.Strengthen your word of mouth marketing with an interesting, interactive social media presence. This gives you the ability to engage your customers 365 days as year, represent your brand and enlist customers to share their stories.effective social media marketing That’s priceless.The online world is always changing, so it’s important to keep your eye out for new marketing ventures that have the potential to stick around. Foursquare, for example, isn’t as well-known as Facebook, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t ample marketing opportunity for restaurants.
This social platform enables restaurants to offer a variety of deals (for free) that users must check-in to take advantage of. This – along with the fact that users can earn “badges” for checking-in so many times – makes Foursquare social media as a marketing tool a viable marketing option for restaurants. Give your patrons incentive to follow you on social media channels or to come into your restaurant, and make it simple for them to do so. If you constantly put up your restaurant specials on Facebook, your fans will lose interest. Mix it up, don’t be afraid to have fun, and be a part of the local community. This is a great way to reward social media fans, grow your fan base, bring in more customers, and promote loyalty. Give customers a chance to win a great prize and you’ll give them another reason to come back again. Send out e-newsletters social media marketing pricing to those who sign up to be in the program, highlighting exclusive deals. Promote your loyalty program offline and online.If you already have a great design that works well, this may not be necessary. If you have a boring or outdated menu, however, customers may think your food is not enticing as well.Ask your regulars and loyal fans offline to ‘Like’ you on Facebook, follow you on Twitter and Pinterest, and help spread the word. Send an email, call those you have a good relationship with, and walk right up to their table while they’re enjoying what they love about your restaurant. Review sites have become an integral part of a business’s reputation, and negative reviews have the potential to harm your business. Too many negative Yelp reviews, whether true or not, social media marketing blog will turn business away. Asking happy customers to write you a review, as well as responding personally to any negative feedback, is the best way to maintain a positive online reputation.

Harness the Power of the Subject Line

Email subject lines are literally on the front lines of your eCommerce email marketing efforts. Depending on how you write them, they will be either the first or the last thing a prospect or customer sees. Generally speaking, subject lines need to be short and descriptive. Make sure they’re personalized and targeted to the needs and desires of the segmented lists receiving the email. Reinforce social media marketing experts Your Message With Imagery In addition to capturing the eye of your readers after opening an email, images help tell the story of your offer or reason for communication with them. Images sell as much—or even more—as the copy in your email. Make sure they reinforce one another to compel a prospect or customer to click-through to your website. And remember to make the images clickable as well. Have a Compelling Call-to-Action After spending so much time, money, and effort on a marketing email, many eCommerce businesses fail to include a strong CTA—which ultimately defeats their purpose. Use your subject line, images, and copy to communicate a single, compelling CTA. Multiple CTAs can quickly frustrate a reader in the few seconds they’re looking at your email, social media marketing articles so avoid confusion by making their desired action crystal clear. It may be time to dust off your restaurant marketing plan and take a closer look at current trends and case studies of other successful businesses. This is where you will learn a bulk of the restaurant marketing strategies out there and, more importantly, what works and what doesn’t.I’m here to let you know some tried and true marketing strategies that have worked for restaurants in the past and present. Before I get to the restaurant marketing tips outlined in this blog post, I think you’d like to take note of a few interesting statistics relative to the food industry.Restaurant marketing isn’t the same as it has always been.
Restaurants don’t use the yellow pages as much as they used to, and for good reason: people have moved to the Internet to find what they’re looking for. They use search engines and consumer review sites to find local restaurants and decide which they should give their money to. They want to see the restaurant’s menu before visiting and they favor those that have a strong online presence over those that haven’t embraced the Internet.As a restaurant owner or manager, you shouldn’t be all of your faith into traditional advertising and word of mouth marketing. By all means, do NOT skip those methods, but DO take advantage of all the opportunities that the Internet presents.Do a Google search for your type of restaurant and location to see what results you get. social media marketing dallas Where do you rank? Do you even make it to the first page? Considering your competition, will potential diners choose your restaurant from that search? Rather than giving your competitors all the business, think of ways you can market your restaurant online. Keep yourself up to date on current statistics, trends, facts and figures that can help you analyze your restaurant marketing plan. Should you make any tweaks to how you market your restaurant? Should you position your restaurant differently?Can local customers find your restaurant online? Make sure they can with a well-optimized website that does what you want it to do. The key is to get them to your website before they find your competitors. You can create a food blog, list daily specials and direct visitors to your social media profiles and online review sites.Websites aren’t just for big companies; now more than ever, small local businesses are realizing the importance of having a website and implementing an Internet marketing strategy. Since 72% of all searches are related to a search for local content, you should be 100% sure that your website will show up for those searches relevant to your restaurant.