Looking to create brand advocacy with email marketing? You’re not alone. Positive word-of-mouth can be one of the most powerful growth tools for your e-commerce business, but it doesn’t happen by accident. That’s where your brand advocates come in.

There are many ways to build brand advocacy, and email marketing is one of the most effective channels for it. With the right strategy, you can nurture loyal customers, encourage referrals, and turn everyday shoppers into passionate brand ambassadors.

In this guide, we’re sharing actionable tips to help you leverage eCommerce email marketing to build brand advocacy and strengthen your customer relationships.

What Is a Brand Advocate?

A brand advocate is someone who genuinely supports your business and actively promotes your products or services through word-of-mouth marketing. These advocates can be your loyal customers, dedicated employees, or even trusted partners, or anyone who believes in your brand and is willing to share their positive experiences.

While some brand advocates naturally promote your business without incentive, you can also engage them strategically — for example, by offering early access, exclusive offers, or free samples in exchange for reviews or user-generated content.

Why Brand Advocacy Matters for eCommerce

Brand advocates play a crucial role in boosting the visibility and credibility of your e-commerce business. Their honest reviews, social shares, and referrals help you attract new customers and build trust with your audience, all while keeping acquisition costs low.

Strong brand advocacy also fosters community. When customers feel connected to your brand and part of a shared experience, they’re more likely to engage, return, and recommend. This sense of loyalty and belonging is invaluable, especially when planning future product launches, gathering feedback, or growing long-term customer value.

Building advocacy through email marketing

eCommerce email marketing is a simple, cost-effective way to distribute information and create your very own brand advocates. There are a lot of ways to implement this, so you can choose the options that best suit your brand.

Here are some ways to ensure that you can get the most out of your emails when it comes to building brand loyalty and encouraging people to spread the word about your company.

Provide value

As with all e-commerce email marketing, every communication you send must provide value. This can be achieved in many ways. Firstly, share information that your subscribers won’t be able to get anywhere else. This could be new product details, engaging company updates, or exciting industry news.

Providing value in your emails will help you to build brand advocacy as customers appreciate useful information, and no one likes just being sold to, so make sure your content is a mix of value and sales. By giving something to your subscribers rather than consistently trying to sell to them, you’ll be seen as a credible company that people will be proud to advocate for.

Gather feedback

Asking your email subscribers for their feedback shows that you appreciate their opinions, which is another effective way to show them that they’re valued. Plus, gathering feedback will help you to highlight what you’re doing well, what you could do better, and anything new that your customers would like to see from you.

There are lots of ways to ask your customers for feedback as part of your email marketing strategy. You could provide a link to a form, create a poll that appears in the email, or direct people to a review page or one of your social media channels to leave their feedback. Positive responses can then be used as part of your wider marketing plans.

Refer a friend

Sharing a refer a refer-a-friend program is a good way to encourage your subscribers to tell their friends, families, and social media followers about your brand. You don’t need to offer a huge incentive. It could be an increasing discount based on how many friends they refer, a voucher when they’ve referred a certain number of people or an entry into a monthly prize draw for every person they refer.

Refer a friend is something that you can promote across your email campaigns to ensure that you reach as many people as possible. You could have a dedicated footer highlighting the scheme, or a link to a refer-a-friend landing page on your website. Don’t forget to be clear about how they enter and how their referrals are tracked.

Share testimonials

Positive testimonials are priceless for any e-commerce company. Individuals are more likely to trust a testimonial from a loyal customer than they are a marketing message, so it’s important to gather as many as possible. Testimonials could be about one product in particular, the customer service you offer, a great eCommerce shopping experience, or even your company values.

You can ask for testimonials in your email communications and share them via this channel too. If you have a company newsletter, testimonials are a great feature to include, especially if you’ve been sent a customer photo to accompany their kind words. Photos help to break up email text, but also add a layer of credibility.

We hope that you’ve found our guide to creating eCommerce brand advocates using email marketing helpful. We’d love to support you in building email campaigns that gather information from your subscribers and help you share the positive feedback, reviews, and content you receive.

For information about how we can support you and your eCommerce email marketing activity, contact us today. We can help you build email campaigns that gather information from your subscribers and help you share the positive feedback, reviews, and content you receive.

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