The 6 Best Email Marketing Tools for your E-Commerce Business

In 2017, 269 billion emails were sent and received every day. That’s an incredible amount of emails. Some of these were no doubt sent by your venue, to your customers, because, after all, email is still the most effective marketing channel. DMA’s Marketer Email Tracker 2018 reports that every $1 US spent on email marketing returns $32, while data confirms that 81% of small to medium sized businesses rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel, and 80% use email for customer retention.

Businesses are increasingly making the most of email marketing software too. Of the 69% of all businesses that spend time and money on email marketing, 51% of companies already use marketing automation, and 52% of B2B businesses plan to adopt the technology.

So if you have a product and want to build up a loyal customer base, increase sales and grow revenue, email marketing is essential.

You may find that your campaigns are not always a success. This could be because the email is poorly designed, or because you send emails at the wrong times, or because you are running your campaigns manually and not taking advantage of the tools on offer to your venue. However, by employing an industry-specific e-marketing and CRM tool like Rezcomm Engage, you can realise the full potential of your marketing messages.

The 6 Best Email Marketing Tools for your E-Commerce Business

1. Automated workflows
Automated email workflows are really important when it comes to inbound marketing, whether you’re nurturing leads or increasing brand awareness. Less likely to be subject to errors than manual campaigns, they save time, money and allow your sales team to focus on customer service.

An automated workflow keeps track of the customer’s journey and sends personalised messages at key stages. These might be to remind a customer about items left in their shopping cart, to welcome a new customer or to reengage someone who hasn’t visited your website in a while.

While some businesses only send occasional emails to their database of contacts, email workflows are carefully planned and have one clear goal, meaning each message you send is relevant and has a purpose.

With the automated workflows in Rezcomm Engage you can automate the entire marketing process. It’s possible to send emails to everyone in your database at once, and to schedule each message to be sent at a specific date and time of your choice.

Check out our previous post, Ideas to Grow Your Business with an Automated Workflow for more tips…

2. Personalisation
Personalisation is a key part of the customer experience. Intelligent use of data allows marketers to create unique, highly individualised experiences that hold customers’ attention and generate loyalty.

Marketers are becoming sophisticated when it comes to data collection, and an industry-specific CRM system can integrate data from any source or system, converting it into a common, map-able language.

In fact, it is perhaps due to more businesses integrating CRM and automation into their email marketing that personalisation is only considered to be the top strategic priority for 7% of businesses in 2018, while 20% of organisations rate content management as their number one focus.

In line with this trend, the Econsultancy Digital Trends 2018 report also reveals that more businesses are focusing on personalisation in terms of training and investment, with 24% targeting personalisation and 55% planning to increase spending on personalised marketing for 2018.

And customers want personalisation, not just on a basic level such as use of first names to address the email, but in the form of personalised offers and discounts. According to Infosys, 31% of consumers actually wish their shopping experience was more personalised than it already is, and Salesforce says they’re willing to exchange their personal data for shopping recommendations. Marketers now need to personalise products and service offerings to meet customer expectation too. A whopping 62% of consumers now expect companies to send personalised offers or discounts based on items they’ve already purchased (SalesForce).

To effectively personalise emails you have to know your customers. Integrated CRM and e-marketing software like Rezcomm helps you do just that. The customer intelligence capabilities will analyse how customers are interacting with you at every touchpoint, enabling you to design hyper-personalised email campaigns that drive conversions and loyalty. Personalising email means you can cross-sell and up-sell products, improve the customer experience and increase spend.

3. Segmentation
An integrated CRM and e-marketing system like Rezcomm Engage allows you to segment your customer database in as many ways as you like. You can segment visitors to your website according to attributes, behaviours or purchase history, meaning you can essentially personalise communications for targeted groups of people.

According to Mailchimp, this is an effective strategy: Segmented campaigns attract 14.64% more opens and 59.99% more clicks.

The simplest segmentation is based on customer demographics. Details such as age, gender, location and income can tell you a lot about a person’s needs and interests. However, it can be tricky to ask too many questions at sign-up stage without putting people off.

Luckily, there are plenty of other ways to deepen segmentation. You can connect with people via customer surveys, look at their email engagement, buying history, the amount they spend in your e-commerce store, their position in the sales funnel, the frequency with which they visit your website, what they browse when they’re there, and so much more.

4. Dynamic content
Dynamic content is another facet of personalisation. It’s content that can be triggered to display based on user data, for example, whether a customer is male or female. When dynamic content is set to display according to gender, appropriate gender-based merchandise will display in certain frames of the email.

These customisable blocks, which can be set into email templates within an automated workflow, result in a sense that ‘this company understands me,’ leading to a stronger relationship with the customer and ongoing brand loyalty.

5. Visual impact
With the number of emails sent and received every day, it’s important that your campaigns stand out. The way the email looks can be crucial to how it is received and interpreted, to whether it catches the reader’s attention and to whether it reinforces your branding.

Choose an e-marketing software that offers user-friendly email templates and you’ll be able to easily create visually appealing, brand-matched campaigns. Rezcomm Engage features customisable email templates designed by professionals who understand the needs of your venue.

For more ideas about what you can do to make your email stand out from the crowd, read our post, Creative Email Trends Parking Companies Should Use in 2018.

6. Knowing when it works
However much effort you put into designing your email campaigns, the only way you will optimise their effectiveness is by tracking the results. Rezcomm Engage offers in-built marketing reports. You can use these tools to consolidate essential marketing data from any channel, not just email, giving you a top-level overview of all your digital marketing activity in one simple dashboard. This dashboard updates in real-time, ensuring that you have an up-to-the-minute picture of engagement and revenue. You’ll be able to see which of your campaigns achieves the highest click-through and conversion rates, and adapt new campaigns to capture the same success.

These six tools are all valuable assets as you work to grow your e-commerce business. No single strategy will provide the ‘silver bullet’ that guarantees a successful campaign, but with a wide variety of capabilities you can work towards optimising email marketing and building customer loyalty.

Rezcomm Engage is the first combined data warehousing, business intelligence (BI) and customer relationship management (CRM) system specifically designed to perfectly suit a venue’s unique business needs. If you would like to speak with the team about optimising your venue’s e-commerce email marketing, get in touch today!