Email marketing has been around for a long time. You might believe that its time has passed, especially now that alternative marketing tactics, such as digital marketing, have gained popularity. However, this is not the case with email marketing, which is not only effective but will remain relevant for many years to come. It's still going strong, and you should incorporate it into your Shopify marketing strategy alongside social media advertisements and content marketing.

We've put together this short article to dive into the basics of Shopify and email marketing, how you can use the two to create powerful campaigns, best practices, as well as some tools to make all of it happen.

Choosing a Shopify Email Marketing App

Investing in email marketing for your Shopify business requires having the appropriate tools in place to make the most of it. So how do you choose the best email marketing apps for your business? Finding the right app can be tricky-there are so many to choose from! Before you settle on one, consider these factors:

Ease of use and integration. Simplicity and ease of use make any good product great. Plus, connecting it with your Shopify website should be intuitive to lessen any complications. It's best if the app can also provide documentation outlining the process.

Customer support. When you're setting up a new application on your Shopify store, or looking for ways to optimize its functionality, having someone there to help you is vital. The last thing you want is to run into problems later on only to find out that no one will answer your questions. That's why it's so important that the app developer offers customer support through live chat or email, along with a searchable knowledge base with answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).

Automated email campaigns. This is going to be your lifesaver. Automated email campaigns are an absolute necessity. It's almost like having an extra member of your team that works around the clock, whether you're at a meeting or fast asleep.  You won't even have to think about it because they send emails automatically based on particular actions your subscribers take. Some common automated emails are welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, purchase follow-ups, and customer winback emails.

Customer segmentation. If you're not segmenting your list and sending personalized emails, you'll struggle to grow your traffic and sales through email marketing. Most good apps offer these features as standard but make sure they do before signing up! Segmentation is where you break up your list into smaller parts (for example, by customer type) so you can send them more targeted emails. Personalization is when the content of the emails changes based on information that you know about your subscribers (e.g., their name). This makes it more likely that they'll open the email and engage with it.

What are some of the best email marketing apps on Shopify?

Omnisend: This is a powerful platform for synchronizing all your customer-engagement channels. It allows for retargeting through Facebook and Google ads, along with push notifications on different devices. With flexible customer segmentation and the ability to create automated sequences, there’s no need to log into multiple dashboards or recreate the wheel dozens of times.

Privy: Looking to grow your email list? Privy is a trusted app that can help. It's integrated with Shopify and Shopify Plus, enabling you to create an account within seconds and get your first campaign live almost immediately. It has User Behavior Triggers that can help you launch exactly the right campaign for the moment. You can also use Exit Intent popups and banners to transform visitors into leads, build better relationships with your customers, and grow your business.

Automizely: Automizely is the platform for Shopify brands that are looking for more than just an email marketing tool. Its powerful email automation features help simplify your marketing and keep your customers engaged all while helping you sell more at higher margins. It's got over 30 sales & conversion tools in one place so you basically have everything you need to generate leads, automate email marketing, and drive more conversions.

Email Marketing Best Practices

The importance of email marketing can’t be stressed enough. In fact, many Shopify store owners have managed to gain a significant boost in sales thanks to effective email marketing campaigns. This proves that if you use the right strategy, email marketing could lead to amazing results for your business.

We're going to walk you through some of the best practices that can help you improve your email marketing strategy while also helping your Shopify business grow in the process.

Identify your target audience.

Before you get started with writing any email, be sure to define your audience so you can write email campaigns that will successfully target the right people. In order to make this work, you need to know who you are writing to and what your relationship is with them. This is an important step before even composing your emails. In this way, you can design an email marketing plan that engages your audience, boosting your chances of really profiting and expanding your company instead of it becoming spam and something they won't bother reading.

What kind of customers do you want to market to? Are they web-savvy? Do they have a lot of information technology savvy? Do they have disposable income? If you do not know who your audience is, as an example, then how can you possibly design a customer-focused email marketing campaign?

If you want to reach certain consumer segments with your email marketing campaign, you should consider creating numerous emails for different audiences. For example, if an email is intended for parents who are going to buy their children their first smartphone and have already decided what phone to buy but want to get offers from several providers for the phone and related accessories, it would be best to prepare multiple emails for different price points and send them all at once to maximize the number of recipients.

Grow your email marketing list.

This means you'll need to collect email addresses from both the most engaged members of your audience and those who already trust and use your products. The more updated and detailed it is the better your communication will be with your audience.

You can expand your marketing list in a variety of ways. One example is the "subscribe to our newsletter" box on your website. Another technique is to have a pop-up with a limited-time offer for new members. If you have a blog, you could also utilize your blog entries to encourage users to sign up for your newsletter.

Don't forget about CTAs!

Call-to-action (CTA) buttons and links can be used for a variety of purposes, such as inviting your email subscribers to your online store, signing up for the newsletter, or even sharing the email on social media. This can help increase engagement and also simplifies the shopping process because it can redirect them to do a specific action or go to an area on your website.

However, when incorporating CTAs into your email marketing campaigns, it’s good to keep these best practices in mind:

• Keep it short and straightforward!
• Make sure that your CTA buttons are noticeable and easy to click on.
• Test out everything! It's always better to check how your CTA buttons look and function on different devices.

Make sure to use only images that add value.

Images can help convey a message. However, if there are too many they can slow down email loading speeds and create formatting difficulties on mobile. Use graphics only when and where they actually add value to the email—when an image delivers your message better than words.

It's always best to use small file-size images. Most email marketing companies advise using images under 1 MB. You should always provide alt text to photos since some email providers restrict images from senders, not in a subscriber's contacts. This lets recipients know what the picture is about and click to see it if they want.

Write a compelling body copy.

So, how do you write copy that gets your subscribers to take action? Writing effective body copy is one of the hardest, but most important, parts of creating a successful email marketing campaign.

Your body text is equally as important as the headline.  It's really more essential since it has to persuade readers to take action on the prompt or call to action presented in your email, all in a very short period of time. You can accomplish that by establishing a purposeful hierarchy of information: placing the most key information (the main reason for the email) first and then providing more detail later on.

Email copy should be formatted in a way that makes it easy for the recipient to scan through it.

Highlight social proof.

Using social proof in your email marketing can have a significant impact on the success of your campaigns.

Social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are essential for email marketing. Prove to your subscribers how popular your items are and how amazing they are with reviews and words from actual customers! This approach performs especially well for lifestyle brands.

Here are some ways you can use social proof in your emails:

- Include the number of social followers and fans that you have, and the number of people who have liked/shared a particular post.

- Promote your email campaign on social media, to get more people to subscribe to your newsletter.

- Share information about how many people have downloaded your eBook or signed up for a webinar.

Send campaigns at the best possible time for your customers.

Picking the right time of day to send your email campaigns can have a huge impact on their success. That’s because different subscribers are in the best frame of mind to open and engage with emails at different times of the day. And for many, this means spending more time engaging with emails in the evening right before bedtime.

While sending an email blast around noon may seem like a smart idea, it may not be if you don't understand how your customers interact with emails. Using real data from your own company is a great place to start.

You could use a behavior-triggered campaign or trigger based on your customers' preferences or past behavior. Next, you’ll have to figure out the frequency.

How often do you plan on sending emails? Will it be daily, weekly, or monthly? If you want to send emails more than once a day (which is rare), you should consider segmenting your list so that each email only goes out to a portion of your recipients. This approach will help make sure you don't overwhelm subscribers with too many emails in one day while still allowing you to reach out regularly.

Personalize whenever possible.

Consider segmenting your email list into groups that have common interests, then send more targeted messages to those groups. This will help increase engagement with subscribers who care about that topic because you're sending them something particularly relevant to them at that time.

While email segmentation appears to be a bit intimidating, it actually just entails dividing your email subscribers into smaller, more focused groups. Furthermore, most email marketing apps like the ones we've mentioned prior make segmenting your list simple.

Wrapping Up

The truth is, email marketing is a powerful channel that provides you with a way to connect with your audience/customers in a personal manner. It’s easy to overlook this channel, and more importantly, it’s easy to misunderstand how it works. To ensure your success, you need to pick the right email marketing tools for your business first. What’s more, you need to better understand how email marketing can be the best digital marketing strategy available to you. In this post, we’ve provided you with some best practices that will help you expertly execute your email marketing tactics and run an effective email campaign. We hope they will come in handy!

https://designmodo.com/email-marketing-shopify/

https://www.shopify.com/ph/blog/email-marketing-best-practices

https://www.convertcart.com/blog/shopify-email-marketing-the-complete-guide

https://www.privy.com/email-marketing/shopify-tools

https://www.mageplaza.com/blog/best-shopify-email-marketing-apps.html