As a Shopify merchant, it can sometimes feel challenging getting your store’s name out there -especially when you are a small business. You could have a variety of great products, but it doesn’t matter if no one knows about them. Therefore, it is extremely important to begin marketing your Shopify store and products – especially if you are looking for growth. One key way to market your store is through email marketing as it is extremely effective at generating sales. Shopify data has shown that email marketing had the highest order conversation rate (source: Shopify).
However, like anything else, you will need to follow best practices when conducting email marketing for your campaigns to be effective. Nothing is worse than spending time and resources setting up and sending an email marketing campaign just to have it end up in someone’s spam or junk folder. To make the most out of your marketing campaigns, there a several key best practices you should follow.
Ensure customers accept email marketing
This can be the most important best practice to follow when sending out email marketing campaigns. You will want to ensure your customers have opted in to receive these emails, so they don’t send them to junk when they receive an email from an unrecognized sender. They can opt in to receiving email from you through several ways. This can include signing up to a newsletter on your Shopify store, verbally letting you know, etc. If someone opts in to receiving email marketing from your Shopify store, Shopify will automatically update this customer in your customer list on the admin page. You can also manually edit a customer’s status to accept email marketing, but it is not recommended to do so unless someone has given you permission.
Email your customers regularly
Sending emails on a regular basis keeps your products and store top of mind for your customers. If you only send an email every couple of months, you risk your customers forgetting who you are. If this happens, it increases the risk of customers unsubscribing or sending your emails to spam.
You want to make sure you stay in consistent contact with your customers through engaging communications. That said, you also do not want to send out too many emails to customers and you should always be adding value in your emails. Irrelevant or too frequent emails can annoy your customers and increase the likelihood of them sending your emails to junk or unsubscribing.
Create high quality emails
If your emails look like spam, they will most likely be sent to spam either by your customer or by a spam filter. Emails that are written with a lot of typos can be flagged by spam filters and automatically moved to the junk folder. You can avoid this by always proofing your emails to ensure there are no errors. It is also best practice to avoid spammy subject lines as spam filters will look for spam trigger words in the subject line and automatically send those to junk.
Notice how the above include titles with all capital letters, several explanation marks, etc. You want to make sure to create a compelling subject while avoiding the common subject line mistakes. There is not one approach that works for everyone so it will be important to test and track how your subject lines are preforming.
Finally, you want to make sure you are being honest in your emails. For example, using “FW’ or “RE” in your subject like will destroy your credibility with your customers. You also do not want to send deceptive emails to your customers. You should not try to trick people in your subject line just to get them to open your emails and then have the content be completely different. Building trust with your customers is key for a successful email marketing campaign.
Remove abandon emails from your email list
Another method spam filters use to identify spam emails is to look at how many of the emails you are sending to are actually active. If your inactive email percentage is too high, the filters will flag your email as spam. To avoid this, you want to make sure you remove any inactive emails from your mail list. Some emailing platforms will tell you how many inactive emails you are sending to. Also, if someone hasn’t opened your email in a long time, it is probably a sign that they are inactive.
Make it easy to unsubscribe
Providing an easy way for a customer to unsubscribe to your email is extremely important when avoiding the junk folder. By doing so, it helps build trust with your customers and shows confidence that the emails you are providing have real value. It is recommended to include the unsubscribe link in the footer of your email. If a customer unsubscribes to your marketing emails, Shopify will automatically update your mail list so you do not have to worry about doing it manually.
Ensure content is relevant
You never want to send emails to your customers for the sake of sending emails. Email content should provide real value to your customers whether it’s informing them of a new discount, announcing a new product, etc. Emailing customers for the sake of sending emails can cause customer abrasion and become annoying. Customers are then more likely to unsubscribe and/or send the emails to their junk folder. Remember, your goal should always be to add value to your customers – only then will customers actively engage with your campaigns.
Have a clean sender address
Your customers will receive your marketing emails from your sender address. It will appear in the “From” field when a customer views your email. Spam filters also check this when identifying spam emails so you will want to make sure you avoid using random numbers, words, etc. You should include either a person’s name or your store’s name in the sender address. You should also avoid frequently changing your sender address once you set it. You don’t want customers to not recognize you if you are constantly changing the address they are receiving emails from. You need to build a good reputation from this email address so changing it will cause you to start from scratch each time.
We hope this article helps you create successful email marketing campaigns and grow your Shopify store.
For more information about how Connections can help market your Shopify store, check out the Connections landing page on the Shopify App Store.
