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4 Reasons Why Your Retail Business Needs Email Marketing

Email is one of the most powerful marketing tools available today. It’s used by all manner of brands across the globe, from small businesses to multi-national B2B companies.

As a retailer, you don’t want to be an exception to that. You can have a wide variety of channels in your marketing toolbox, but you need to allocate significant resources to email marketing if you’re going to succeed.

 

Don’t believe it? Here are four data-backed reasons why your retail business needs email marketing.

1. Email’s ROI is unrivaled.

Email has an ROI of 44x your investment. For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can generate up to $44 of revenue for your retail business. No other marketing channel offers marketers this level of return.

By leveraging the power of email marketing for your retail business, you’ll achieve the results you need to grow. You can maximize your ROI further by sending different types of emails.

Welcome emails generate 320% more revenue per email compared to other emails. Meanwhile, transactional emails such as cart abandonment notifications and purchase confirmations generate six times more revenue than any other type of email.

2. Email allows you to communicate with your customers on a personal level.

Email is an online method of communication, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be personal. In fact, email is an excellent way to connect with both prospective and existing customers on a deeper level, especially when you send personalized messages to your subscribers.

If you plan on incorporating email into your overall marketing strategy, you absolutely need to personalize your messages. Email personalization can increase your transaction rates by up to six times. In addition, targeted emails can help you generate 58% of all your revenue.

Before you can start on your personalization efforts, you’ll need to segment your email list. Take a look at your list and categorize your customers based on the information you have available, like their gender, age (or age range), location, and purchase history. Even campaign history, showing which types of content your categories of subscribers are into.

Once you’re satisfied with the segments you’ve created, you can start sending targeted and personalized emails to each of your segments.

For example, say you’re a retailer of sports gear, and you have a segment of customers that have bought athletic shoes at various times in the past. You can send these customers special offers on shoes or update them if you have new shoes arriving.

Of course you can personalize your emails using custom fields, so that your customers’ names are included in the subject lines and message texts of your emails. But using the power of personalization to create unique, deeply-relational experiences with your audience will go an extremely long way.

 

3. Email allows you to reach more people.

Customers like being updated on a regular basis, whether it’s regarding a new product, an upcoming sale, or an exclusive offer. In fact, 72% of consumers prefer receiving promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media.

This is the perfect opportunity for you to expand your customer base through email. If you operate a brick-and-mortar store, you can use email to bring in more people to your store—even the ones who may not have known about you prior.

If you have a sale coming up, you can let your subscribers know about it via email. Encourage existing customers to bring a friend, family member, or colleague by offering a discount if they bring an additional person with them to your store.

Another way you can widen your reach through email is by including social sharing buttons on your messages, particularly product promotions and special offers. When customers share your email content on their social media pages, it’s perceived as a badge of trust by people who are not familiar with your brand. They’ll proxy trust from their friend, and will feel more inclined to purchase from you.

Just ensure that the social sharing buttons in the body of your emails are highly visible and clickable across all types of devices. This way, it’s much easier for your customers to share your content.

 

4. Emails reinforce your brand.

Emails are an extension of your brand. Whenever you send emails, you remind your customers about your unique brand identity, from the brand logo and colors you include right down to how you choose to craft your subject lines.

Over time—especially if you don’t skip a beat when it comes to sending emails—your subscribers will know that the email is from you without opening your campaign. Your branding is what makes customers feel secure and trust you enough that they will choose to purchase from you and not some other brand.

 

Designing emails for your retail business

Now that you understand the importance of email marketing in your retail business, it’s time to learn how to design emails that will not only help you communicate with customers, but also boost your revenue.

Here are three tips to get you started.

 

1. Create emails that are easy to read.

Adults have an average attention span of eight seconds, so build your emails with this in mind.

Avoid lengthy emails that contain walls of text. It’s virtually a guarantee that your customers won’t read them. Instead, keep text to a minimum and design your emails in such a way that reading guides them to the email’s call to action (CTA).

You can achieve this by using the inverted pyramid style of content. Essentially, your email should have a short headline at the top, a few sentences of text in the middle that explains what the email is about, and then a CTA at the bottom.

 

 

2. Use large images.

Generally speaking, the images you use should span the full width of the email, regardless if it’s being read on a desktop device or a mobile device.

When you use large images to promote your products, readers will be able to clearly see what the product looks like. This simplifies their decision-making process, and they’ll be more inclined to make a purchase.

 

3. Design for mobile.

With more than 53% of all emails being opened on a mobile device, optimizing emails for mobile is no longer an option. It’s a requirement.

From smartphones to tablets to desktop computers, your emails should look great on all devices.

Fortunately, designing mobile-friendly emails is no longer the hassle it used to be. You can now create emails using templates that are already optimized for mobile.

Wrap up

Email marketing should be your top marketing priority. When you use email marketing the right way, you’ll be able to develop better relationships with your customers, increase awareness for your brand, and of course, boost your revenue.

 

Kaitlin Westbrook is a content writer for Campaign Monitor. She covers business, email marketing, and creative content.


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