Why Choose an Email Marketing Agency Specifically for Ecommerce?

Now, it may seem obvious for me — a marketing enthusiast — to be recommending that you invest in a marketing agency. You may even be rolling your eyes at my suggestion to find a specialized ecommerce marketing agency!

“Of course,” you’re probably saying, “the email marketing cheerleader wants me to spend my marketing dollars!”

Of course I do, but it’s not for me. It’s for you, and I’m going to tell you why.

The overall reasoning is simple: every business needs an audience, especially small business owners! After all, you’re just starting out. You probably have your ecommerce business set up and ready to go, but you need to find a way to engage with new customers.

However, ecommerce businesses are at a disadvantage. Unlike regular retail brands, online store owners don’t usually get the opportunity to put their products in front of consumers. Ecommerce brands are constantly competing with both each other and traditional in-person retail stores.

To remedy this problem, many small businesses will need to enlist the help of a skilled ecommerce marketing agency.

Now, if you’ve landed on this page, then it’s safe to assume that you’re looking for helpful tips for choosing the digital marketing agency of your dreams. And! Guess what? I have plenty of those ready!

So, buckle up, start scrolling, and let’s dig into some of my top tips for finding an e-commerce marketing agency that will deliver the results you need.

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Why Should My Ecommerce Business Use Email Marketing?

I’ll start off with the broadest issue.

Why should ecommerce businesses utilize email marketing campaigns?

Email Marketing Campaigns Are Super Effective

I’ll cut straight to the point: when you’re plotting out a new marketing strategy, you want something that’s effective. Of the many marketing channels, email campaigns are some of the most powerful marketing tools that a business can have in its toolbelt.

I’ve already talked about the massive benefits of email marketing, but I just have to gush a little more about the power of a well-designed and fully optimized email campaign.

Here’s the raw data:

• A solid email marketing strategy has an ROI of roughly 4,800%
• Over 64% of all small business owners use promotional emails to boost sales
• Properly segmented email marketing campaigns can yield up to 760% more revenue
• Purchases from email campaigns tend to rake in three times the profit of equivalent social media marketing transactions
• There are over 4 billion daily email users, all of whom are potential customers

Email Marketing Services Build Customer Relationships

Every business — regardless of its size — needs to have a strong customer acquisition strategy to survive. That’s where other marketing channels are useful. Social media marketing, search engine optimization, and paid ads are valuable marketing tools for ecommerce stores.

However, in my years of experience as a marketer, I’ve seen too many amazing ecommerce brands sink because of a simple mistake! Small businesses need to remember to invest in a way to build customer relationships.

Fortunately, email marketing is a powerful, cost-effective way to ensure loyal customers become repeat customers.

I can’t give away all of our secrets, but I can say that one of our most important tools is the retention email. These marketing emails use a laser-focused subject line to reach their target audience, — namely, your existing customers — and keep them up to date. This marvelous email strategy is the perfect way to strengthen relationships, and it’s one of the most effective ways to turn previous customers into repeat customers.

Email Marketing Is One of the Most Flexible Ways to Drive Sales

As much as I love to gush about the benefits of having a full service email marketing team, that’s not the real point of this article. So, to save both you and me some time, I’ll wrap up my email marketing hype by highlighting its real strength: flexibility.

With a skilled marketing agency, any ecommerce brand can use email marketing automation to:

• Boost ecommerce sales
• Build brand loyalty
• Engage with new leads through email marketing
• Promote new products and services to current customers
• Reach new customers
• Reconnect with previous customers
• Redirect or even avoid customer service phone calls
• Supercharge brand recognition
• … and more!

It may sound too good to be true, but it’s all real! The best email agencies are fully equipped to turn a lackluster email marketing platform into an expansive network of optimized email marketing campaigns.

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What Makes Ecommerce Email Marketing Unique?

Now that we understand why it’s so important to find a team of amazing email marketing experts, like the one you’ll find at The Email Marketers, it’s time for me to dig into the second half of the title.

It’s time for our second question!

What makes ecommerce marketing different from all of the other digital marketing strategies?

After all, you’d assume that every email marketing agency is the same, right? It’s a common assumption, and it’s my job to debunk it!

Ecommerce Companies Work Differently

I’ll start out with the biggest problem that a company will face should it assume that every business can use the same marketing strategy.

Ecommerce companies are run differently! That’s it! It’s the title of this section, and it’s knowledge that absolutely every ecommerce business owner needs to know. Regardless of what you’re selling, — a good, service, software, or something entirely different! — your ecommerce brand will need its own unique marketing strategy to survive and thrive.

When you sit down and really think about it, it makes sense. The products stocked by an online store aren’t on full display at a supermarket. Customers don’t get to touch, see, or handle the items that they’re buying. This presents ecommerce brands with a unique problem, which only the best ecommerce email marketing agencies can truly and fully handle.

Ecommerce Brands Rely on Digital Exposure

What are the exact ways that an ecommerce company will differ from any other business?

Once again, I’ll start out with the biggest difference: brand recognition.

While a retail brand will enjoy direct in-person exposure to potential customers, online stores rely on digital marketing. To become a true phenomenon, an ecommerce brand needs to find innovative ways to drive sales. Achieving this goal means a few different things, such as:

• Boosting website traffic
• Improving email marketing clickthrough rates
• Investing in SEO to increase discovery through search engines
• Maintaining a stable ecommerce platform
• Optimizing accessibility and usability on ecommerce sites
• Optimizing conversion rates
• Utilizing various web design strategies to improve the customer experience
• Verifying mobile compatibility for both the online store and email marketing materials

Now, many of these tactics will rely on a skilled web development team. We’re just scratching the surface, though! Once an ecommerce company has its platform up and running, it still needs to find ways to reach its target audience.

The Importance of User-Generated Content (UGC)

If you ask a dozen different email marketing companies how to drive sales, you’ll get a dozen different answers. Each of these responses will be right for somebody, but only one is truly optimized for ecommerce companies: word-of-mouth advertising.

Remember how I said that ecommerce brands have a harder time reaching customers? A well-versed ecommerce marketing agency knows this, and it also knows the importance of user-generated content.

I could honestly write an entirely new post about the amazing benefits of UGC and its impact on the ecommerce world, but I’ll exercise some restraint! Instead, let me summarize its key points.

For starters, UGC is any kind of marketing strategy that relies on content that is created by existing customers. Reviews, social media posts, and testimonials all fall under the umbrella of user-generated content.

Unlike the sort of corporate designs and lingo that will frequently be espoused by a marketing agency, user-generated content is backed by trust. Customers tend to buy things based on the experiences of others, which means that backing your brand with plenty of glowing customer reviews is a major perk.

Ecommerce Brands Need Different Marketing Activities

In addition to utilizing the inherent power of brand loyalty, improving your ecommerce sales will require different metrics. A traditional marketing agency will focus on factors like views, social media marketing hits, and utilizing more conventional marketing channels.

A specialized ecommerce marketing agency, however, will know which marketing channels will work for you and how to maximize the impact of your budget. Some of the unique considerations that an ecommerce-focused marketing agency will look into are:

• Activity in the online store
• Email campaign engagement
• Mobile device engagement metrics
• Optimizing mobile compatibility
• Optimizing web development
• ROI on content marketing
• The number of email subscribers you have

Ecommerce Relies on Customized Marketing

Another unique quality of ecommerce-focused digital marketing is its reliance upon customized messages.

Because potential buyers are unable to physically interact with the products sold in an online store, ecommerce marketing must rely on personalization to draw in customers. These unique targeted advertisements are important for a variety of reasons, but it’s the results that matter.

Customers love personalized messages. Now, it’s worth keeping in mind that this approach to email marketing is not necessarily unique to ecommerce, but it’s particularly important. Personalization is one of many email marketing solutions that have the ability to dramatically amplify customer relationships.

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How Can an Ecommerce Email Marketing Agency Make a Difference?

“Okay,” you may be saying, “you’ve gone through the importance of email marketing and the benefits of a specialized ecommerce email marketing agency. What does that mean for me? How can I apply that knowledge?”

These are perfectly valid questions, and I’m already on it!

Now that we’ve reviewed the importance of email marketing and hiring an ecommerce specialist, it’s time to put the two elements together. I’m super excited to get to this part, so I’ll jump right in with our next question…

What can an ecommerce email marketing agency do for my ecommerce brand?

An Ecommerce Email Marketing Agency Knows Its Audience

No matter where you go, — whether it’s a full service email marketing agency or one of many focused email marketing companies — you’ll find plenty of great email campaigns. However, it’s not enough to have a well-designed email marketing campaign!

If you’re an ecommerce business owner, you’ll want to find a marketing agency that truly understands your audience. This means you’ll often be consulting an ecommerce email marketing agency. There, you’ll find plenty of superbly informed individuals, all of whom will know about some of the marketing strategies that are unique to the ecommerce world, such as…

Taking Advantage of Strong Customer Relationships

Remember what I said about the importance of word-of-mouth marketing? (It’s also called WOMM, which sounds a little weird!) Well, when an ecommerce brand taps into the expertise of a specialized ecommerce email marketing agency, it also gains access to the full potential of its fanbase.

Let me make it a little clearer: everyone has fans. It doesn’t matter what you sell, — apples or shaving cream, email marketing strategy advice or a subscription box — you have fans. You have an army of loyal consumers who are willing and eager to tell others about their experience.

While it’s definitely possible to engage with these clients without an email marketing agency as an intermediary, it’s much, much, much easier to enlist some professional help. Backed by a team with an amazing email service provider, your brand can easily create, send, and monitor as many email marketing campaigns as you need.

How Do Marketing Agencies Engage With Eager Customers?

I still have a few more benefits that I want to talk about, but I want to quickly discuss how a specialized ecommerce email marketing agency is able to optimize an ecommerce brand’s WOMM potential.

While many modern-minded folks may assume that the secret lies in automation and email marketing software, this approach is all about strategy!

In order to engage with customers, email marketing agencies rely upon a mix of skilled wordplay and incentives. The amazing strategists within a marketing agency will create an email campaign, and that campaign will focus on cultivating strong customer relationships.

A few examples of how clever email marketing campaigns can gather usable reviews and feedback are:

• Creating a brand-specific hashtag for customers to use
• Developing an engagement-driven email marketing strategy
• Encouraging email subscribers to post to Instagram or Twitter with a branded hashtag
• Including legal disclaimers so that any feedback is available for commercial use
• Providing a unique discount code when customers leave a review

There is, however, a little bit of email marketing software magic behind this process. The best email marketing services will be able to utilize a blend of segmentation and automation to create an ideal target audience.

A Good Email Marketing Agency Will Know How to Use the Right Data

When dealing with email marketing, it should go without saying that there will be a lot of data involved. Email marketing software is capable of tracking and monitoring dozens of data points, but not all of this data is relevant. In fact, the vast majority of this information is unimportant!

And this — the ability to pull the right data needles from a haystack of information — is what sets an amazing email marketing agency apart from all the others. When creating an email marketing campaign, a superb marketing agency will know what information to track and what data to disregard.

There are, of course, plenty of traditional marketing agencies that know how to handle data. However, you’ll have a much harder time finding an experienced team of ecommerce email marketing experts at a standard marketing agency.

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How Can I Find Amazing Email Marketing Agencies?

So, what does all of this mean for you, as a small business owner?

Everything that I’ve said rounds back to one point, and that point is the importance of a skilled email marketing agency that fits your individual needs. Regardless of what you’re selling, if you’re doing business through an online store, you need a specialized ecommerce marketing agency.

There are so many ways that an email marketing agency can help you, but I just don’t have enough time to go over all of them! I can, however, give you more advice. There are plenty of fantastic ecommerce email marketing agencies, and I’ve gone over some of them. I’ve even written some tips about how you can sort through the many email marketing agencies find the perfect agency for your brand!

If you’re on the lookout for a new email marketing agency to help you expand your business, then join me! Be sure to check my blog regularly, because I’m constantly posting new updates. My passion is marketing, and I love keeping everyone up to date on the latest and greatest email marketing tips and tricks.

Need even more help developing your email marketing strategy? Don’t worry! I have you covered!

Don’t be afraid to get in touch with me, and I’ll see how I can help you with your email marketing woes!