Email Marketing for eCommerce Part 1: A Perfectly Designed Welcome Email

Nicole Dean

Believe it or not, there is actually a difference between eCommerce email marketing and regular email marketing. eCommerce email marketing is all about using email to generate sales from your store, not just trying to get new, general traffic to your site. The trick to actually getting your emails to work effectively is using them to build relationships and trust with your customers. Email marketing introduces new subscribers to your brand and keeps them engaged. It also drives a predictable stream of sales, if you do it right.
There are two ways of sending out emails that work with email marketing, automated and manual emails. Both are equally important to your strategy. Automated emails would be something like an abandoned cart workflow or different campaigns working together to generate more sales. Manual emails are more for special promotions, segmented email blasts targeting a specific group of subscribers or reengagement campaigns.
Every single interaction that you have with your audience needs to be solely focused on building and keeping your relationship with them. That includes emails. Considering eCommerce email marketing is all about generating sales from your store, you’d think that the focus of these emails would be, well, making sales. But if you think about it, have you ever had a company email you every single week with big, bold letters saying, “BUY MY PRODUCT, IT’S AWESOME!!!!” and you instantly get turned off? There’s a reason for that. No one likes to be sold to. If I get three of those emails one week after another, I instantly hit the “unsubscribe” or “spam” button. People don’t mind being told about different sales every once in a while. If you look at email marketing for online retailers with the perspective of building relationships, you will create better promotions that sell more product, nurture your subscribers, which will lead to more long-term sales and segment your database more effectively, which will also generate more sales.
Once you’ve decided to take the plunge and start using email marketing to gather customers and generate sales, you now need to decide what you want to go into your emails. The first email that you want to start with is the most important email – the “welcome” email. You don’t want to overlook this. This is the first email that they’re going to be getting from you once they subscribe. Keep in mind that the potential customer has already made the decision to get emails from you and hear about your sales, etc. You don’t want to disappoint them with a poorly designed and poorly thought out welcome email to make them change their mind. In fact, you want to do just the opposite. You want them to get that welcome email and not only feel welcomed to the family, but also excited to hear from you in the future.

THE PERFECT ECOMMERCE WELCOME EMAIL CHECKLIST

From Name – Business Name
From Email – Business Email
Subject Line – Compelling enough to get clicks
Pre-Header/Preview Text – Use this to expand on your subject line
4-Second Test – Keep your subject line short, sweet, and to the point – you only have 4 seconds!
Body Copy – Make sure your email is as personal and welcoming as possible
Email Design – Keep it simple, don’t overdo it and don’t go all crazy on the design elements
Mobile Compatibility – Can it be viewed on a phone? Does it still look awesome?
Images – What will it look like if the images were disabled?
Personal Send-Off – The best way to make your welcome email personal

“FROM” NAME

The “From” name should really be your brand or company name as opposed to a personal name. Some companies try the personal name approach to make them come off as more of a personal brand. The problem with this is, especially if you’re a newer company, people might not always remember who you are so if they get the email and your brand/company name isn’t shown at all in their inbox, they’re less likely to open the email. You can still make the email personal or look like it comes from a person by adding a personal send off – more on that later.

“FROM” EMAIL

The “From” email should be from a business email that your customers can respond to, rather than sending an email from a “no reply” address. The main reason for doing this is because you will look more welcoming and approachable. You’ll also be able to get more customer feedback and be more successful as a result. By using an email address that people can reply to, you can ask people to reply to your emails in various campaigns.

SUBJECT LINE

The subject line is not something that you want to look over. The famous David Ogilvy says, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.“ Come up with a few compelling subject lines and test them out. The more compelling the subject line, the more chance you’ll get clicks.

THE 4-SECOND TEST

You only have just a few seconds to catch the reader’s eye before they hit delete button. Once you’ve written your subject line, look at it carefully and see if it gets you hooked within four seconds. If not, scrap it and come up with a new one. Try to get it down to as little seconds as possible. One big no, no in subject line writing is using sales words like, free, help, percent off, or reminder, etc. Even if your email is about an actual sale, still avoid these words. It’ll set you apart from the crowd and with eCommerce email marketing, that’s a great thing to be. The last tip for the perfect subject line and keeping under the 4-Second Test is keeping your subject line under 50 characters. If you’re not sure if your subject line is juicy enough, ask your co-workers or friends if they’d open your email. If you’re still unsure, try evaluating your subject line using a tool like SubjectLine.com.

THE PRE-HEADER

This is the preview text that your subscribers will see directly following the subject line. You may not think that it does, but it actually plays a big role in determining whether they’ll open the email. Think about your pre-header text as a continuation of your subject line. Use it to expand on your subject line and build up the curiosity and emotion that is already being portrayed in the subject line.

BODY COPY

Because this is the very first email that your new subscribers are going to see from you, it’s extremely important that you make them feel as welcomed as possible. For the subject line, it’s important to acknowledge that it’s a welcome email. Keep it simple by saying something like:

Welcome to the family! (Please Read)
Welcome to [COMPANY NAME HERE]!
Hello, from [COMPANY NAME HERE]!

Before you say anything else, be sure to say hello to them by simple saying, “Hi” or “Welcome”. After that, it’s time for the brand indoctrination and your unique selling proposition. This is simply where you introduce yourself and what makes you special. Do this in just a few bullet points or a few sentences. Don’t give them anything too long to read or they might get turned off already. Focus on these points:

What makes you different?
What makes you special?
Why should they shop with you instead of your competition?
What ideal result will shopping with you bring about?

In the next section, you want to go over a few things like how often they should be expecting to hear from you. Will you be emailing them every day? Weekly? Will you be sending them videos? When do you have sales? Things like that. Fill them in as much as possible so they know what to expect from you. Now comes the fun part, making an irresistible offer.
Whether you’re offering anything in exchange for their email address or not, you should make them an offer in the welcome email. Give them free shipping, a free gift, or some amount of points if you don’t want to give them a discount. Just give them something and make sure you communicate it clearly in the email with big, bold text and a button that stands out.
Last but not least, include your social media profiles at the very end of the email. You don’t have to link back to your social media profiles but you at least want to show them where on social media they can find you. These should ideally stay at the bottom of your email rather than the top because they’re not a key feature in your welcome email.

EMAIL DESIGN

With eCommerce email marketing, specifically, less is definitely more. You want fewer images, less fancy design elements and less crazy layouts. Now, I’m not saying that it shouldn’t have any design to it at all. I’m just saying that you can still get your message across without all of those flashy images. If your email is all text and no imagery or branding whatsoever, there’s a high chance that your email will get marked for spam because people won’t know whom the email is from. On the other hand, if you go too over the top with images and use crazy layouts, there’s a good chance that your email will be sent right to the promotions tab or folder. That’s something you want to avoid because no one really enjoys looking through those emails getting “screamed” at to buy their products. You have to find the perfect balance between the two. Simple enough that your email still feels personal and fancy enough to get their attention without triggering the promotions tab or the spam folder.

MOBILE COMPATIBILITY

I feel like this one is a no-brainer at this point in our day and age but you’d be surprised at how many companies still don’t optimize their emails for mobile. If you notice through your data that your customers seem to be opening your emails more on mobile, it really proves that it’s better to keep them simple.

IMAGES

If you plan on having images in your email, you must keep in mind what your email will look like if your subscriber has their images disabled. Take a look at your email and remove the images. Would it still make sense? If yes, you’re good to go. If no, then you have some work to do. Instead of leading with a large image, use HTML for the text and the image for the background. This way if the image doesn’t appear, at least the reader will be able to read your headline. Always be sure to send a test email. Send one to yourself, a few co-workers and to a specific account that has images disabled and see how they look.

PERSONAL SEND-OFF

As we mentioned earlier, some companies like to have their “from” name be a real person rather than having the email come from the company. They fear that if they don’t have a real person sending it that it won’t look personal enough. Don’t worry, there’s still a way you can make your emails personal! Include a personal send-off. A personal send-off is where you’d include an image of an employee, their name and job title and saying something like, “We hope you enjoy [COMPANY NAME HERE]!” Using the CEO or President of the company is a great employee to use in the send-off because it shows that he/she is making personal contact with the subscriber. You can’t get any more personal than that!

Now that we’ve gone over the checklist for the perfect eCommerce marketing welcome email, let’s take a look at some great examples.
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