There are many reasons why email marketing is an excellent tool for eCommerce businesses. Here, we look at how your company emails can build brand awareness, ultimately leading to an increase in website traffic and sales.

The awareness stage

As the first stage of the customer lifecycle, it’s very important to get your eCommerce email marketing right during the awareness stage. At this point in their journey, potential customers are finding out about your company, the products you offer, and your own unique brand identity. 

This provides you with the perfect opportunity to send them an email that will help them to discover all they need to know about your business. For example, you can introduce them to your best selling products and their benefits. This could include a welcome offer or a friendly note from your CEO if relevant.

Most of the time, people are looking to buy a solution rather than a product. So, make sure that you let them know what your business offers that others don’t through highlighting your USPs. This will ensure that your brand and business stay at the top of their minds above your competitors.

Email content that builds brand awareness

Although sharing information about your top products can help potential customers understand what you offer, your eCommerce email marketing shouldn’t be too salesy when you’re trying to introduce your brand. Your aim should be to provide value, engage, and start to build what will hopefully be long-lasting customer relationships.

Welcome emails to new customers often have some of the highest open rates, so it’s important to get yours right. Your first couple of emails to a new lead could include links to content on your website, such as a variety of articles. Not only will this show customers that you’re providing them with useful information, but tracking what they click on can provide valuable data that can be used for audience segmentation.

Testimonials are another great content type for building brand awareness in eCommerce email marketing. Reviews and feedback are very important to new customers, and seeing positive comments will promote trust in your company – a very important element for any business.

Tips for branded email campaigns

If you’re just starting your email marketing journey, or are looking to refresh your current eCommerce email strategy, the following tips will help you to create successful branded campaigns:

• Be creative – Building brand awareness is all about being memorable. By standing out from the crowd, potential customers will remember your brand and products when it comes to purchasing decisions.
• Choose a strong subject line – Your email subject line is the first thing that people see, so it’s vital that you choose a strong option that will encourage people to open your communication.
• Use consistent branding – Consistent branding is vital when it comes to brand awareness. Creating email marketing templates that become synonymous with your company will ensure that people instantly recognise your communications when they hit their inboxes.
• Include strong CTAs – Typically, the point of sending eCommerce emails is to increase website traffic and sales. This means that strong CTAs are a must when it comes to successful brand building campaigns. Keep information to a minimum in your emails to encourage people to click through to your website for more details.

Best practice eCommerce email templates

We’ve mentioned how consistency across your emails is important and that creating templates can help with this. Here are some things to consider that will define your brand:

• Font – If you have a website, it’s highly likely that you have a chosen font. This font should be used across your emails to ensure that it flows seamlessly through to your landing pages when users click on your CTAs.
• Colours – As with your company font, the colour palette used in your email templates should match your website and any other marketing material you have. Try to stick to two or three colours to avoid templates that overwhelm readers.
• Tone of voice – Using your company’s tone of voice in your email marketing campaigns is another way to ensure that readers recognise that the email is from you. Tone of voice doesn’t only help with consistency but enables you to share your character with audiences too.
• Logo – Your company logo is very important when it comes to brand awareness, so it should always sit at the top of your emails. This helps people immediately identify your communications.
• Company details – In addition to your logo, your company details should also appear on your marketing emails. Including this information will ensure that people understand who the email has come from and how to contact your business should they wish to.
• CTAs – Clear CTAs are integral for email templates as these lead people to your products or information that will help with their purchasing decision. Buttons are a great option as they stand out from the rest of the content and can be easily seen when scrolling through an email.
• Social media buttons – Your social media accounts provide a great way for new customers to find out about your eCommerce business and products. Include links to your channels on your email templates so that people can find them easily.

We hope that we’ve helped you to understand how you can use eCommerce email marketing to build brand awareness. We’d love to help you create email campaigns that speak to your customers and showcase your brand and all you offer.

For information about how we can support you and your eCommerce email marketing activity, contact us today.

To discover more about the different ways in which eCommerce email marketing can positively impact your sales, take a look at our News page.