As an eCommerce business, personalised email marketing can help you not only increase sales, but also build customer relationships, enhance email engagement,  improve your open rates and most importantly, build brand loyalty.

Here, we share our tips for personalising your eCommerce email marketing.

What is email personalisation?

Email personalisation involves using data you’ve collected to tailor emails for specific customers. This could include data on previous purchases they’ve made, products they’ve viewed on your website, and where they are in their customer journey. ECommerce emails can also be personalised using a subscriber’s name and location.

Benefits of email personalisation for eCommerce companies

Personalising your eCommerce emails comes with a range of benefits.

Valuable customer relationships

Perhaps one of the most obvious benefits of personalising your eCommerce emails is that it will make your customers feel special. It can be difficult to form a relationship with people when all sales are completed online, but tailoring emails to individuals shows that you appreciate them and have taken the time to identify their needs. Personalising your sender information, adding subscribers’ names to your subject lines, and announcing a personalised promotion based on their past purchases are just a few ways to show your subscribers that you care. 

Higher open rates

It’s not only the body content of your eCommerce emails that you can personalise, you can customise the subject line too. By customising your email subject line to include a customer’s name or a specific product they’ve shown interest in, you can help your communication to stand out in their busy inbox. This increases the chance of them opening it and taking an action, such as clicking through to your website.

Enhanced customer engagement

If you can deliver relevant content directly to your email subscribers, you’re very likely to see increased customer engagement. Rather than scanning through your email, or not opening it at all, the individual’s attention will be caught due to the inclusion of products or services that they’re interested in, personalised discounts, or relevant new offerings.

Increased sales

As a result of personalising your eCommerce emails, building valuable relationships, achieving higher open rates, and enhancing customer engagement, you’ll enjoy an increase in sales too. Your subscribers are not only more likely to click through to your website and convert from a personalised email, but there’s a higher chance of them returning to make repeat purchases too. This all leads to increased revenue, which is sure to be one of your main goals for email marketing.

Tips for successful email personalisation

There are many things you can do to personalise your emails, with many being easy to implement depending on the customer data you collect.

Data segmentation

The first stage in personalising your eCommerce emails is segmenting your data. This involves splitting your customers up into different groups, or segments, based on the information of your choice. For example, you could create groups based on products bought, location, or how often they make a purchase. This will help you to decide who should receive which communications. Perhaps you could send a product offer to everyone who has bought that product in the past. Or send a loyalty discount to subscribers who have made multiple purchases over the last few months.

Abandoned cart emails

Abandoned cart emails are a good example of email automation, where personalised communication with products the customer left in their cart is automatically sent out when someone adds something to their online basket but doesn’t complete their purchase. This reminder will prompt the individual to come back and convert. It provides an easy way for them to do this by simply clicking directly through to where they left off. 

Tip: If you know your website’s Average Order Value, segment your abandoned cart flow for low-value baskets and high-value baskets. You could then include a code for a small discount, free delivery, or another incentive to help the higher-value baskets convert better.

Recommended products

You know your products better than anyone, so you’re perfectly placed to make recommendations based on what people have bought in the past. This type of email will show customers that you’re taking their personal preferences into account before sending them a newsletter. It could be that you’ve released a new product in a particular range and want to inform those who have bought something from that range before. You could also inform people if a product they’ve previously bought has gone on sale or dropped in price.

Birthdays

If you collect customer birthdays when they make a purchase, you can send them a celebratory email when their special day comes around. This could be a simple happy birthday message or might include an offer or a freebie. Whatever you decide to send, your customers are sure to be pleased that you’ve thought of them. You can send out emails for other special occasions, such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Easter too, although these are likely to be less personal. Including the customer’s name can help to make these more universal emails feel bespoke.

Re-engagement emails

Re-engagement emails enable you to get in touch with previous customers who haven’t visited your website or made a purchase in a while. Depending on the products or services you offer, it might be that you’d expect customers to return after a certain amount of time. For example, if you sell make-up, you might see people return after a couple of months, so you could send a re-engagement email with an offer should that time pass without a purchase. 

We hope that we’ve helped you understand how personalising your eCommerce email marketing can help increase your sales and revenue. We can help you create email campaigns that are tailored to different audience segments and make suggestions about how you can achieve the best results for your business.

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.