This post is a chapter from our e-book Getting Started With E-Commerce – The Beginner's Guide to Starting an Online Shop.
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Why do email marketing?
Email marketing is a way of sending a branded email with graphics and photos. A proper email marketing system is useful for sending email to a large database of addresses. Avoid using your own email account, as there’s a risk that your emails will be classed as spam. An email marketing system provides a simple means for people to unsubscribe from your list and offers a number of other benefits, like reporting on open rates and click-through rates.
Email marketing might not be necessary if your product is particularly social media-friendly. But if your product isn’t likely to create much of a following on social media, email marketing may be a better alternative. When people buy from your online store you can have a checkbox inviting them to sign up to your email database. Then you can send emails to that database to generate more purchases from those previous customers.
How to do email marketing
There’s a few ways email marketing is used in ecommerce:
- You can promote special offers.
- You can educate your readers by linking to posts on your blog.
- You can tell them about new products, and...
- You can showcase featured products.
Ultimately, the two main goals of email marketing are to: One, drive your database back to your website for repeat purchases; and Two, simply to remind them you exist, so that when they’re ready to make another purchase you’re at the forefront of their mind.
