Many eCommerce brands don’t think twice about spending thousands on paid ads, but neglect one channel that quietly delivers the best ROI of any digital marketing tactic. Email marketing. Look at any paid ad account now, and you’ll see click spend is going up, bid strategies are unpredictable, and margins are getting crushed. But, email
Many eCommerce brands don’t think twice about spending thousands on paid ads, but neglect one channel that quietly delivers the best ROI of any digital marketing tactic. Email marketing.
Look at any paid ad account now, and you’ll see click spend is going up, bid strategies are unpredictable, and margins are getting crushed.
But, email marketing for eCommerce only works when you do it right.
Generic email blasts that send the same offer to everyone on your list won’t work. But with some research and effort, eCommerce email marketing can become a reliable source of profit,
repeat sales and brand loyalty.
This blog shows you how to use email marketing for your eCommerce brand in a way that delivers results.
eCommerce email marketing is the practice of sending targeted campaigns to a list of customers to increase sales, engagement, and retention. Think of it as a sales assistant who knows
when to approach a customer, what to say, and how to keep them coming back.
Unlike email campaigns in B2B, which often nurture leads over months, eCommerce email is aimed at getting a customer to browse today, buy tomorrow, and reorder next month. The difference is immediacy.
One of the best things about email marketing in eCommerce is that you only have to get a customer to give you their email once. Compare that to PPC or paid social, where you have to keep paying for ads even to get returning customers.
The best email campaigns work because they hit the right person with the right message at the right time.
The most effective types include:
By mapping each of these email campaigns to the customer lifecycle, you have the chance to influence a buying decision from first contact to the point where old customers need to be brought back.
Email marketing works because it covers the full customer lifecycle. From acquisition to engagement, conversion, retention, and reactivation. There are no other forms of marketing that can target every stage with the precision of emails.
The key to all this working is personalisation and segmentation. Personalised emails can create up to 6 times higher transaction rates, according to a study by Experian.
No email campaign is ever going to be the same, but the process you follow to create them is. The best campaigns we’ve created are built with intent, tested for impact, and refined over time.
Here’s the process we use:
The highest-performing email marketing comes from consistent testing and refining. There are no big one-off hacks to suddenly make an email successful.
To succeed with eCommerce email marketing, we recommend you:
Don’t just look at demographics:
Say you’re a fashion brand. You wouldn’t just send the same discount code to everyone if you’ve segmented your list properly. Instead you’d create offers and incentives aimed at new buyers, with exclusive, higher-end offers for VIPS or loyal customers.
Personalisation in emails is more than “Hi [First Name].” I think most of us know these emails aren’t written to us personally.
Instead, personalise using dynamic product feeds and behavioural triggers. Show running shoes to someone browsing running shoes, not winter coats.
Try to keep subject lines under 50 characters to avoid them being cut off. When it comes to the copy, combine curiosity with clarity and constantly test messaging and styles to see what works.
For example, in a cart abandonment campaign, you could test “You left this behind…” against “Your cart is waiting…” to see which message works and adapt it.
Be careful with spammy words that can get you caught in junk. Things like “FREE!!!” can seriously harm the deliverability of your emails.
How many emails should you send is a common question for eCommerce brands. Send too many and your audience can switch off. Don’t send enough, and you risk them forgetting who you are.
Frequency comes down to testing. Send regular emails (a couple of times a week) and monitor unsubscribes. If unsubscribes are low, plan a few more emails in. If unsubscribes go up, pull back.
It’s all about finding a balance.
Just like web views, most emails are now opened on mobile. So design and write your emails for a smaller screen.
Keep copy scannable. Put CTAs above the fold. Use whitespace strategically.
Document every result. Build a playbook of insights. Continuous testing compounds performance.
The real measure of email isn’t opens. It’s revenue and retention.
Industry averages for open rates or CTR are useful if you’re just starting out with email. But your own campaign history is the real benchmark. And remember to benchmark the right things. Even if your open rate is low, your emails could still be a success with a high RPE.
All the data you get from emails should be used to improve future sends. If a re-engagement campaign flops, rework the offer or timing. If abandoned cart flows bring in an extra £30 per email, prioritise testing them.
Measurement isn’t about proving email works. It’s about scaling what works best.
Email marketing isn’t a side channel for eCommerce. It’s a source of sustainable growth. Ads can drive spikes. Email steadies the business.
It captures new buyers, turning them into repeat customers, and reactivating them when they drift.
Start with an audit. Do you have welcome, cart abandonment, post-purchase, and reactivation flows live? If not, fix that first. Then layer on segmentation, testing, and measurement.
Email will shift from a marketing channel to the growth engine that funds everything else. If you need help improving your results from emails for your eCommerce brand, get in touch with our email marketing agency for a free strategy review.
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