As marketers, you constantly have to struggle in explaining the value of what you do. You have to justify all your actions and goals in ways that other departments don’t have to worry about because the results of your work are gradual and not always instant.
Executives want to know the outcomes of the time and money the business has invested in various marketing tactics.
In order to make a convincing case for marketing investment, you need to focus your recommendation on the ultimate results a certain strategy will generate.
E-commerce email marketing is one of the tactics that gets pushed back from executives because its value is not traceable right away.
Yet, it accounts for over 7% of all e-commerce transactions which makes it the second most effective e-commerce marketing channel subsequent to the search engine.
And with the innovative developments in ways to segment customers and target them with more finesse, e-commerce email marketing is only continuing to grow in its effectiveness.
Regardless of all the positive statistics you provide your boss, convincing that email marketing should be his priority usually is an uphill battle. Especially when you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of email marketing ?
Give your boss a good reason why it makes sense to proceed and convince him that email marketing can only be an asset for his business. Here are only a few reasons:
Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is essential to the growth of your business. Word of mouth is essential, satisfied customers that have enjoyed their products, love to tell their friends about them and even promote them on social media.
Loyalty is built upon customers having consistent, positive, high-value experiences with your brand that exceeds their expectations.
Email is an intimate channel where your company gets to talk directly to their customers with a message that reaches each individual.
Your customers are special and you need to send them information that is catered specifically to them, they don’t want mass emails.
Email marketing can do wonders in boosting customer loyalty. You can use segmentation to divide buyers based on their buying habits and then deliver messages that are pertinent to the customer, saving your company both time and money.
Set Triggered Emails
Triggered emails are automated messages sent in response to the actions of a customer. For example, if a customer signs up for your newsletter or adds a certain item to their shopping cart but doesn’t purchase it, they could receive a triggered email.
This creates a huge opportunity to capture new customers and build customer loyalty. That’s because very few companies out there (and probably your competitors too) use action-triggered email messages. Actually, less than 24% according to study by MarketingSherpa.
Triggered messages could be used much more effectively. Priceline.com puts triggered messages to work well to their advantage.
A great example, after customers book a trip, they are sent a welcome-back email when their trip is over that includes a discount towards their next trip.
These emails could also be used to send customers info about coupon redemption, requests for feedback, invitations to VIP programs, and more.
Active/ Inactive Customers
Email campaigns can also help you to activate lapsed customers. Subscriber data can show you which customers have been deleted.
For the most part, a majority of customers that you may have lost touch with can be coaxed back to your site and into a purchase by using relevant, personalized emails.
You can ask customers to review products they have bought in the past, offer discounts based on products they’ve previously purchased, and target them with campaigns relevant to their last purchase.
It’s often more profitable to focus on reactivating these dormant customers than focusing on active ones.
A/B Testing to Improve Click Rates
Part of email marketing innovation lies in not having to send out blind emails and hope for the best. With A/B testing, you can turn email marketing into a science.
It can help you figure out which emails are performing well and getting your visitors to click and open your messages. You can even track actual purchases from the campaigns e-commerce analytics.
What better way to prove to your boss that the work you’re doing is worthwhile, a successful email is always an email that converts to sales.
The ability to track emails is part of what makes them so effective — you do not have the ability to do the same testing with a print campaign or marketing on other types of media.
With A/B testing, you can figure out which subject lines are your highest performers, which offers stimulate more sales etc.
ROI
Email Just Works. This marketing tool is more powerful than most people give it credit for. The ROI of email marketing is 4,300%!
That’s double the amount of any other digital channel. Plus, it’s a platform that pretty much most of your customers are using anyway, 94% of people check their inboxes on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
And the average office worker checks their email 30 times an hour! It’s one of the few marketing channels where customers opt-in to hear from you: it often becomes an obsession on checking what new messages will pop up in their inbox, giving you a tremendous influential meaning of communicating a message and producing big results.
Wrap-Up
If you’re having a hard time convincing your boss that e-commerce email marketing will benefit your business, contact us! We can help provide you with more data and research that proves how effective email marketing can be.
