With the rise of social media, many people consider email marketing to be dead. However, if you run an e-commerce site, ignoring email marketing would be to ignore one of the most effective tools at your disposal. 

Ready made mailing list

As an e-commerce site owner, you have a ready-made email marketing advantage: all of your customers have already provided you with their email address.

Of course, you can’t just start randomly emailing people, but if you implement some sort of opt-in or out at your checkout, you have the most effective way of building a mailing list. Even better, they will all be people who have already bought from you, so are more likely to again.

Special offers

So you’ve got your mailing list of willing customers. What do you say to them?

The most obvious answer is special offers. Need to get rid of some stock? You’ve got a whole load of people who like your product and your shop – someone on your list is bound to be interested in whatever is on your clearance list.

Got a new product coming in? Create a time limited introductory offer for your mailing list. Not only will it get word of your new product out there, you’ll increase customer loyalty by rewarding existing customers.

Product been featured in the media? Send a brief mail out reminding customers of the story and linking to the product page. Give an exclusive discount code to give an added incentive to buy.

The newsletter approach

Some retailers go as far as a regular mail out highlighting not just products and special offers, but features and interviews; perhaps the best from the blog over the past month.

This style of mail out draws people back to your website more than simple product specials and gives you a chance to promote content that people may have missed from your Facebook and Twitter feeds.

More than social

Most of the above can be applied just as well to social media. But there are a few fundamental advantages to email marketing:

• More receptive audience

The bulk of your mailing list will be existing customers. Social media followers are more often picked up from blog content or competitions.

• Content won’t be missed

It’s easy to miss a post on Facebook or Twitter. An email stays in your inbox until you read it or delete it.

• Wider audience

Not everyone has a Facebook account. Everyone on the internet has an email address.

Are you using email marketing to is full potential? Do you have any questions you’d like to ask? Please comment below – thanks.

Image Credit: s349142

This entry was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2011 at 7:43 am and is filed under E-commerce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.