Email marketing for e-commerce: guide to the different types, techniques, tips and tools

Email marketing feels like a curious channel to me:

• It does not require a big investment (quite the opposite, really).
• It does not require deep technical knowledge.
• It can be applied to most digital projects.
• It only asks us for a small effort: thinking about what might interest our audience and building the routine to execute it.

And yet, it is used surprisingly little.

It certainly does not have the fame of other channels, especially in e-commerce, where Google Shopping, remarketing and social media always dominate the conversation.

The thing is that it is a very profitable channel —it is right up there fighting for the throne with SEO—especially if you use all the types of email at your disposal.

Shall we take a look?

Example of an email flow for a real e-commerce

Before we start, and so you can find your way through the guide, here is the complete email scheme of a real e-commerce.

I think seeing it visually can help you more easily understand the ones you are already applying in your store and the ones you could start using.

Download it in high resolution here:

Now then, let’s begin.

#1. Transactional emails

If we are talking about e-commerce, the emails I call transactional will be the first ones that come to mind.

They are the ones we send with each step that brings us closer to a transaction. They would therefore be:

Registration and account creation email

This is the email the customer receives when they register their account in our store.

It is the typical welcome message where we introduce ourselves and try to make the customer like us. We can add links to the most relevant sections of the site (new arrivals, offers, customer area, etc.).

In reality, this may be the second email the user receives from us if your e-commerce requests a double opt-in, since the first one will be an email with a link to verify the registration.

As is logical, if you have guest checkout enabled on your website, the user will not receive it.

Payment completed successfully

When the customer pays for their order, it is normal to send them a confirmation indicating that the transaction has been completed successfully, to reassure them.

Order placed successfully but not paid

Depending on the payment method, there are a couple of cases where the order is placed correctly but not paid for.

I am referring to bank transfer, cash on delivery and payment on collection.

If you have these payment methods available, the email your customer receives will be different from the previous one:

• In the case of bank transfer we will send the amount and the account details where they must make the deposit or transfer. It can be repeated after a few days, if the transfer has not been completed.
• If it is cash on delivery payment, we should tell the customer which payment methods the courier company will accept.
• If we offer payment at our premises we will also tell them that they will receive an email from us when they can come and collect the order, along with opening hours and available payment methods.

Order shipped

Once the order leaves our warehouse, we will send the customer an email letting them know.

What it needs to include:

• The shipment tracking, so they can see how their order is progressing.

You know, that link that takes you to the transport company handling your delivery.

Order delivered

And you might say, why would we send the customer an email telling them we have delivered the order if they have already received it?

The answer is that, in many cases —more than you imagine— it is not the customer who receives the order. It may be:

• Their partner
• Their child
• The building concierge
• The reception desk at their workplace
• A neighbor
• The business across the street
• …

Yes, all of those possibilities happen. That is why it is better to send this email confirming that their order has been delivered.

What it needs to include:

• We will use this email to send the invoice in PDF.
• Optionally, a feedback request about the purchase process and/or the carrier.

Order cancelled

The customer may change their mind and cancel an order that has not yet left our warehouse. If they do, it makes sense to let them know.

What it needs to include:

• Confirmation that the cancellation has been completed successfully.
• Information about when and how they will receive the refund of the purchase amount.

Password change

There is not much to say here. The typical email you get when you change the password on any account.

What it needs to include:

• A notice of the password change. Just in case the user did not request it, you know.

Abandoned cart

Careful with this one.

Legally, we are only allowed to send this email if:

• The user has given us their explicit consent.
• We believe there may have been a technical error that prevented the user from completing the purchase.

What it needs to include:

• The excuse for why they are receiving the email. A word to the wise…
• The product list that they had in the cart.
• A link to the checkout point where they left off.

Request for ratings and reviews

The UGC (user-generated content) is useful in all kinds of digital projects, but I would say even more so in e-commerce.

And at several levels:

Product reviews and ratings

I do not think I need to tell you that the little stars and product comments are a (very) powerful conversion tool.

In addition, these little stars can be shown in Google snippets , increasing SEO CTR:

So, getting users to give us their vote is a must.

And the best way to do that is to ask them. And doing it through an email a week after they have received their goods is a very good option

What it needs to include:

• Request for a rating.
• Optionally, a reward. You know, that thing of "leave your review and you will be entered into the draw for…".

Company reviews and ratings

Really, this can be an independent email or be part of others, such as the order received email or the product rating.

What it needs to include:

• Links to the review platforms. Today, mainly:
• Google.
• Trustpilot.
• Facebook.

Okay, so with these feedback emails we finish the most common emails of this type. If we leave aside the abandoned cart email and its ambiguous nature, we are allowed —and even required in some cases— to send these emails.

No matter how much a user does not want to receive any more emails from us, if they place an order, we will have to send them their invoice, for example.

#2. Informational emails

These types of emails are more common in service companies, where conditions change and you have to notify the customer with a certain amount of notice.

However, in e-commerce they can also happen, for example by informing customers about the opening of a new physical store where they can collect orders, or a change in the company name or corporate identity.

In short, about information that cannot be considered “commercial”. And for this reason, because it is not considered commercial, we are also allowed to send it without needing consent.

One last type of informational email that I hope you never have to send is when there is a security breach in your e-commerce and certain user data may have been exposed.

In these cases, you are obliged to inform people within a short period of time (72 hours as of today).

#3. Customer service emails

These do not need much explanation either. They are the emails we send in response to a customer question that comes through the contact form on the website or when they write directly to our public address.

A couple of tips:

If your communication tone is formal, keep it that way here.

If, on the other hand, it is more informal, be careful with the tone you use in these emails. Someone who is having an issue with their order may not like you being too casual right away.

Personally, I prefer using a formal tone, especially in the first interactions.

On the other hand, be careful if the customer has contacted us through another channel (such as social media). The replies must be identical, because giving different answers to the same question damages credibility.

#4. Commercial emails

Well, I have written almost fifteen hundred words and we have not started with the real stuff yet. With emails considered commercial.

Before we begin, I want to warn you that you can only send this type of email to users or customers who have given you their explicit consent. A little further on I will explain a couple of ways to obtain it.

Newsletters

Previously they were also known as bulletins (today you do not hear that term much anymore).

In e-commerce, this type of email is a little different from the one used by service businesses. What is usually done is a list of the products promoted in a given period.

This period can be repeated with a specific frequency, for example, a week —which makes it very similar to the supermarket leaflets left in our mailboxes— or fit into a specific date: Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day…

The advantages of newsletters

• Ease of execution: if I already have next week’s offers and their prices selected, I only have to add them, and this can be done from a CMS module, without touching HTML code.
• I choose the products I want: that is, I can promote the ones I am interested in for whatever reason, without taking the customer’s behavior into account.
• It is a very easy format to sell to brands: it is not hard to agree with a brand on the promotion of a specific newsletter and, for example, for the brand to give our customers a certain product with the purchase of some others. Those others are the ones I will add to the bulletin, resulting in an exclusive brand newsletter, without products from other brands.

But they also have some disadvantages

• Almost certainly, this type of send will go to the promotions tab of Gmail, because of the high volume of images and links it contains, reducing its impact.
• In addition, from my point of view this model is a little outdated and has less and less effect. At least the recurring-frequency send (a one-off send during sales or Black Friday still works very well). It needs to be complemented with another format that takes user behavior into account. I will comment more on that now.

Daily email

In recent years, especially in businesses that sell services, a format has become popular that consists of sending at least one email every day (sometimes more than one).

It is a different style from newsletters, based exclusively on text —no images— and Storytelling, a copywriting technique that approaches sales through telling stories.

Although it is relatively easy to approach for selling services —just ask Isra Bravo or Luis Monge, true masters of this technique— for e-commerce it may be a little more difficult.

At Yo pongo el hielo we approach it as follows:

• An email from Monday to Friday.
• Talking about a specific product or brand .
• We tell something we think may be interesting. The idea is never to bore people because, with a daily frequency, if the email is boring, unsubscribes would skyrocket.
• In many cases we add a flash offer to the product, lasting until 23:59 that day. It is the way to encourage a sense of urgency and FOMO.
• The length ranges between 300 and 500 words.
• One or two links and nothing else.
• We add an image at the end of the text. I think that, in our case, it is necessary for the product to be seen (it is very possible the customer does not know it, and this gives them a better idea).
• Generally, the approach is from the brand, although some of the emails are approached from the writer’s point of view, to give the subject a tiny bit more variety.

Advantages of the daily email

• The power of repetition. One of the most powerful weapons in sales, when it comes to placing yourself in your customer’s top of mind when they think about buying what you sell.
• It has many chances of going to the inbox, not the promotions tab, which increases reach.

Disadvantages

• It can require quite a lot of preparation time. Especially at the beginning, while you get the brand’s tone, the system and the angles on which to base the emails. Idea to counter this: create the daily email right after writing the product page. The total time spent on both tasks will be less than if you do them separately, with a time gap between the two.
• It cannibalizes the newsletter to some extent, if the frequency of the latter is weekly. If you go from sending one email a week to one a day (while keeping the weekly one), although there will be an increase in sales, not all the daily-email sales will be incremental; some will take a bit of effect away from the newsletter.

Emails based on user behavior and characteristics

Well, so far in the formats we have talked about, technology was almost transparent:

• In transactional emails, the triggers come by default with the CMS.
• For informational and daily emails, writing is enough, and any email marketing tool will do.
• For newsletters you have two routes:
  • Create them manually using a template from an email marketing tool.
• Look for a module or plugin for your CMS that helps you create it simply by selecting the products you want.

But there are certain technological tools that allow us to go one step further and create personalized emails for each customer, based on their characteristics, tastes and behavior.

We move to a next level, because we are talking about tools that, unlike the previous ones, not every online store has implemented.

We mainly find two types.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management.

Or the platform that stores all the interactions between customers and our store.

It is used for much more than email marketing. In fact, it is most common for the department that mainly uses it to be Customer Service.

But since it stores all user data, both Sales and Marketing will make use of it, allowing personalized queries, promotions and emails.

Let’s look at some examples:

Birthday email

One of the most typical: sending an email on the customer’s birthday (or a few days before), congratulating them and also giving them some kind of discount coupon.

I think its virtues are clear, so I will not go on about it.

Cart recovery

Okay, within transactional emails we mentioned abandoned cart.

In reality, whether you call them that or cart recovery we are referring to the same thing: emails that remind you that you have products in your basket that you have not purchased.

The difference lies in the fact that, as I mentioned, legally you are only allowed to send an email if you believe there may have been a technical error in the process.

Sending four emails for the same thing can no longer be considered transactional email but commercial email, and you need the user’s consent for it.

In addition, with the right tool you can set up a small funnel like this:

• Email one hour after adding products to the basket without purchase.
• Email after 24 hours.

And, in the case of new customers, add these sends:

• Email after 72 hours.
• Email after one week with an incentive (discount, free shipping…) with a deadline for use.

Obviously, the moment a purchase is made, the email flow would stop.

This is, without a doubt, the email that will give you the most incremental sales, so if you are not using it yet, you are already late implementing it.

Similar products

If you know the products a customer has viewed or added to the basket and not purchased, it is not a bad idea to send them an email with the best sellers, the highest rated or the cheapest ones in that product category.

Apart from reminding them that they still have not bought it (at least on your website), you offer them other possibilities that may be more appealing to them.

Complementary products

Although this is not valid for all product categories, it is true that there are some that allow upselling very simple.

Think, for example, of a customer who bought dog food from you in April. At this time they will also need an antiparasitic, so you can send them an email with the offers you have available for their type of dog (which you can infer thanks to the food they bought).

I am sure you can think of similar correlations in your business.

Product price change in the cart

When the customer has a product in the cart and the product’s price drops, sending an email notifying them can be the final incentive to close the purchase.

Stock available

Each online store manages stock in a different way:

• Allowing orders for out-of-stock products because they will be coming in soon.
• Notifying that there is no stock and not allowing orders.
• Notifying that there is no stock, not allowing orders, but allowing the customer to leave a contact email so we can notify them when it comes back in.

Second-order email

I have read that when a customer buys three times from the same store, it becomes fixed in their mind as a valid option for the future.

Well, for there to be a third purchase, first there has to be a second one, and that is what we aim to achieve with this email.

Each business will set the rules, but, for example, we have it configured so that if a customer has not placed a second order thirty days after receiving the first one, we send them an email with a small discount to spend within a week.

In this way we achieve two things: a new impact on the customer and encouraging a sense of urgency.

And it works quite well for us.

Emails based on RFM

There is a method of clustering customers that is used quite a lot in e-commerce because it fits very well.

It is the RFM method (Recency, Frequency, Money), meaning we classify customers into different groups based on:

• The date of the last order.
• Purchase frequency.
• The money they bring us. Historically or per order.

Based on those three variables we can create countless emails. Here are a few examples:

Customer recovery

If a customer used to buy from us every three months on average and six have now passed without a purchase, it may not be a bad idea to send them an email with an incentive to come back.

Loyal customer maintenance

It is common to have customers who buy from us every month and spend a certain amount, and the normal thing is that we do not want to lose them.

Keeping them can be as simple as, from time to time, sending them an email saying that their next order comes with a gift.

That’s it.

A small detail that may have a negligible cost but that the customer will appreciate.

Exclusive offers

Those customers who buy premium products —in the case of Yo pongo el hielo there are several who do not mind spending €700 or more on a bottle— are very likely to be interested in knowing that you have added a new reference of this type to the catalog.

So you can tell them by email, and they will surely appreciate knowing.

However, you are not going to send that email to customers whose average purchase is €25.

You get the advantages of segmenting with this model, right?

The biggest difficulty is really thinking up the rules for each segment; applying them afterwards is not complicated with the right email tools.

Automatic tools

They are similar to CRMs, but go one step further, bringing a series of preconfigured rules where you only have to choose the sending frequency, the priority among the different rules and the weekly limits.

Basically, you tell it:

• I want to send a maximum of three emails a week to each customer.
• The priority will be as follows: Abandoned cart. Birthday email. Customer recovery. Complementary products. Second-order email. Weekly newsletter. New arrivals in their favorite category. Best sellers in their favorite category.

• Email cumpleaños.

• Recuperación de cliente.

• Productos complementarios.

• Email de segundo pedido.

• Newsletter semanal.

• Novedades de su categoría favorita.

• Más vendidos de su categoría favorita.

• …

You add as many types of email to the list as you are interested in, knowing that the customer will receive a maximum of three and that they will be based on their behavior (whether or not they have placed an order that week, whether they have added any product to the basket, whether it happens to be their birthday, or that it has been more than three months since they bought from us…).

And, in addition, not only will the sends each customer receives be different, but the products shown in each of them will also be personalized based on their tastes.

You give it the rules and the tool does everything.

To give you an idea, they are the kind of emails Amazon, AliExpress or Ebay sends you, and to me they seem like the perfect complement, or evolution, of weekly newsletters, since, being based on user behavior, conversion probabilities increase.

If I were starting with email marketing in an e-commerce business, I would start here without a doubt.

Buying databases

It is tempting to get access to a database of one hundred thousand emails for a modest price.

Especially when you are starting out and your list consists of you, your partner, your cousin and your friends.

But it is a mistake.

Throwing money away.

For many reasons, but the main one is that it will not be profitable for you.

Whatever they offer you, do not even consider it, seriously.

Comarketing

You can run a campaign with another company in which, through contests or giveaways, both brands receive subscribers’ emails.

Or they send an email of yours to their database and you send one of theirs to yours.

Meh.

When I have done it, I have not had great results, although it has not been a disaster either. In any case, I cannot state categorically whether it works or not because I have not done it enough times for that.

That said, I would consider it as a complement once I already have the pillars of my strategy set up.

Email marketing tools for your online store

There are many.

Loads.

That is why I am not going to mention them all, only those I have worked with directly and my opinion of them.

MailRelay

Perfect for newsletters, daily emails and welcome sequences.

It has a huge free plan that will allow you to cut your teeth in email marketing as long as you limit yourself to sending newsletters or daily emails.

Or you apply segmentation with business rules somewhere else and then dump it here manually or via API (including the automation tool Make, formerly known as Integromat).

It is a (good) tool for sending emails. No more, and no less.

Sendy

Another good tool for sending emails, although in this case the configuration is more complex and a technical profile is needed for it.

Neither the tool itself is free (a very affordable one-time cost of $69), nor are the emails, which are sent through AWS (Amazon Web Services), and their cost is tiny.

If MailRelay falls short for you, it is a natural next step.

ConnectIf

Another automation tool with good website personalization capabilities, besides emails.

When I used it, it had a slightly complex learning curve, but I did like its capabilities.

We did not end up implementing it after the test because much of what it offered we had already developed ourselves, so we were not going to get the necessary value from it, but it is another one I would consider hiring for new projects, especially to avoid depending too much on the IT team.

In addition, I found it affordable for everything it offered.

Cartsgurú

At first, when we used it, it was a tool for recovering abandoned carts by email. Over time it has evolved into an automation tool with many more features.

In any case, when we tested it, the results were similar to those of our recovery sequence. Neither better nor worse.

If you do not have your own sequence, you can try it.

MailChimp

It was very successful in its day because it was one of the first to offer a decent free plan and knew how to promote itself well.

Even so, I have used it in several projects and it has not convinced me. Not its usability, not its capabilities, nor its price when you need a certain sending volume.

Despite its fame, it is not for me.

Hubspot

It is a very complete Inbound Marketing platform.

Very convenient, easy to integrate and easy to use. It could be the heart of an agency or a service company.

It has a free CRM up to a huge customer volume (one million customers) and also offers you free chat, forms and integrations with Facebook and WhatsApp.

We use it at Yo pongo el hielo to manage customer service, but we do not use its emailing service because the free plan is too small (2,000 sends per month) and, although it allows automations, I see them as very focused on selling services and working with leads, rather than e-commerce.

Probance

I have not actually tried this one; it has only been presented to me, but it looks so good that I decided to include it here, since it is possible we will test it later this year.

Of all the tools I have mentioned, it is undoubtedly the most advanced for an online store.

It allows all kinds of automations, personalizations and rules and I see it as highly compatible with our daily email routine plus weekly newsletter.

In addition, unlike the others, the cost is not based on the number of contacts or sends, but on a CPA model, meaning you pay a commission for each sale generated.

That said, because it is a solution that uses a lot of big data behind the scenes, it is aimed at medium-sized stores. If you have few products and little traffic volume, the results will not be as optimal as in larger projects.

Consent

I have mentioned it a couple of times throughout the article, but I will say it one last time: legally, you cannot send commercial communications to customers who have not given you their explicit consent.

And what does this consent consist of?

Basically, that they have agreed to receive commercial communications from you. And that you have a way to prove it.

Ways to collect it

There are different ways, but at Yo pongo el hielo we collect it in three different places.

When creating the account

We ask the user for it when they create their account, and we explain what they are going to receive and how often:

At checkout

Before completing each order, if the customer has not previously given it to us, this checkbox will appear:

If they have already given it to us before, then it does not appear.

Subscription footer strip

It does not create an account in the CMS; it simply signs the user up to a list in our email marketing tool.

We show the subscription form in a footer strip across the entire website:

And also on the blog:

And ways to revoke it

Of course, consent must be revocable if the user no longer wants to receive more emails from us.

I also recommend that you make it easy for them, because it is much better for them to unsubscribe themselves than to mark you as SPAM in Gmail, since that seriously harms the reputation of your sending server.

That is why it is advisable to add an Unsubscribe link in all commercial sends.

At the bottom, but clearly visible:

In addition, I recommend that you also give them the option from their customer area:

As you can see, at Yo pongo el hielo we allow users to subscribe or unsubscribe from the different types of emails, which would be daily emails, newsletters and personalized ones (CRM emails).

We are happy with the unsubscribe results, honestly, especially considering our high sending volume and frequency.

Email marketing analytics

I do not want to close the guide without giving you a couple of tips on how to analyze the performance of your campaigns.

Relevant KPIs

There are many and everyone will have their favorites. Personally, I only look at:

• Number of sends: that it keeps growing.
• Traffic: that it keeps growing.
• Number of transactions: that it keeps growing.
• Revenue: that it keeps growing.

This is what I look at in each type of email (newsletter, daily, CRM and transactional, basically).

If I could see it easily, I would also look at deliverability by ISP, but it is not easy, so I do not look at it.

Honestly, I look at open rate and click-through rate very little, if at all.

Campaign tagging

That said, to be able to see that data, you need to tag all the links in your sends correctly.

You know, the utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign from Google Analytics.

Generally, tools do this for you with minimal configuration, but it does not hurt to add this tagging to transactional emails (which CMSs usually do not include out of the box) and to the informational emails you create yourself.

With that, you will be able to see the evolution of each campaign in Analytics.

Closing

That is the guide. I hope it has been very useful to you.

Of course, we could go deeper into the topic, talking about deliverability by ISP, more tools, the ratios that are considered good…

But I think that, to start implementing, this is more than enough.

In any case, if you want to improve email marketing in your e-commerce and you think this guide is not enough help, you can always take a look at my email marketing course for e-commerce, or also we can talk and see how to approach the strategy in yours.