Is Email Marketing still Powerful in 2021?

Is email marketing still powerful? Is it effective? Let’s find out.

The key to any successful business is to magnetize clients and customers to either buy your products and services or do business with you. Everyone is finding ways to lure new customers and clients as the pandemic has made it harder for businesses to survive. This is why everyone is willing to try various marketing aspects to create a strategy that works magically for them.

Amongst all the latest and advanced digital marketing strategies, email marketing might seem like an old-school technique. But that’s not the case. If done right, email marketing is still effective and can bring in customers too. You can also consider hiring email marketing services by Abstract Digital to get the most out of it.

And let us tell you that email marketing still has the highest ROI to offer. And sadly, many businesses have overlooked the idea of using this method as it seems too old to them. But that is where they are going wrong.

Is Email Marketing effective?

Several surveys have been carried out to judge whether or not the email marketing is important for businesses these days. And surprisingly, a whopping 79% of people consider it important or very important for a successful business.

If you are not convinced yet; it is okay. We have summed up some reasons why email marketing is still a big thing in 2021. And we don't think that it will subside in coming times either because it is a helpful marketing tool.

• Emails are used by Everyone

The key to successful marketing is to use platforms that already target the market you want to capture. And as everyone uses emails, it is a helpful marketing technique or medium to spread the word. The stats show us that more than 3.5 billion people use emails around the world. So no matter what, your audience will check their email.

• If done right, it is very effective

Everyone hates companies or brands that spam them with emails. And if you don't do that; you are good to go. Instead, you need to focus on sending emails that have helpful or useful content that provides them with value. They will certainly engage with good emails. Just make sure that you don't spam the audience or else, they will unsubscribe from your newsletters.

• Affordable

The biggest reason why many small businesses opt for this marketing medium is that it is affordable and can be opted for, even when you have a tight budget.

CONCLUSION

If you ask, whether email marketing is effective or not, then we will certainly state that it is. The only issue that people face is that they are unable to derive effective email marketing strategies. But if you hire a professional for this, you can easily manage to gain high ROI and get amazing outcomes too.

Email Marketing Automation Strategy for E-commerce store

Email is the highest performing marketing channel for return on investment. That's the reason 89% of marketers perceive it as a leading medium for generating leads. So, if you want to get the customer's attention, all you need to do is optimize your email marketing strategy.

This is where email marketing automation can come in handy. After all, marketing automation increases qualified leads by 451%. Moreover, 51% of companies are already using marketing automation. Hence, if you wish to have a competitive edge over your competitors, incorporating automation for your E-commerce business is imperative.

What is email marketing automation?

Before we go ahead and explain the role of email marketing automation for your E-commerce business, let’s find out what email automation is all about?

Email automation gives you the ability to send targeted messages at scheduled times based on specific user action. It helps in building personalized relationships with past, present, and future customers. Simply put, it is the most effective way of engaging with your subscribers. It lets you use analytics to find the right strategies for your E-commerce business, thereby helping you keep your brand on the top of your customer's mind.

Benefits of email marketing automation

Email marketing automation can assist you in creating the perfect message for each of your subscribers. In short, it ensures that you send the right message at the right time to the right person. Further, you can even leverage the data from each of your email campaigns and find out what works best for your customer base. Let's take a look at its various benefits.

• Helps in creating drip campaigns

You can automate your outreach through email automation tools. It will keep your business on the top of the prospective customer's mind. These are such customers who are interested in your product but are not ready to buy it yet.

• Facilitates a personalized approach

Email automation makes use of demographic, social, and transactional data to assist you in creating a personalized email for your customer base. It can give you a clear insight into your customer's behavioral pattern along with their purchasing habits.

• Maintains brand consistency

Since automation takes care of scheduling and segmenting an email to each of your specific audience, you can concentrate more on creating the perfect email copy while maintaining your brand consistency throughout your customer base.

Email automation strategy to make your E-commerce store top-notch

Here's a look at the various email automation strategies that can help you increase your sales and expand your customer base while enhancing customer retention and being more profitable.

   1. Provide a personalized shopping experience

Personalized emails have the ability to drive 600% higher transaction rates. So, if you want to stay ahead in the competition, you must make personalization your key marketing strategy. As mentioned already, email automation keeps a check on the behavioral data and purchasing history of the customers, thereby helping you provide a customized approach to your customer base. Simply put, marketing automation allows you to tag your customers according to their buying behaviour. Such data can help you serve your customer in a better way the next time.

According to Accenture, 75% of consumers prefer buying from a retailer that recognizes them by name, gives recommendations on the basis of past purchases and keeps a record of their purchase history. Therefore, it becomes imperative to make good use of email automation. You can even make use of machine learning to show relevant product recommendations to the customers who visit your website. It will take your personalization strategy to the next level. We love how Uncommon Goods have made good use of personalization in its recommendation email template.

Take a look.

Source: Really Good Emails

   2. Work on proper segmentation

Understanding the buyer's journey and offering them products and services that's relevant to their needs can help your business grow. That's why it is important for E-commerce marketers to segment their audience base for better marketing and engagement. After all, marketers who leverage segmented campaigns for their business witness a 760% increase in their revenue.

Email automation allows marketers to create highly segmented email lists. It lets marketers use subscriber activities and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data such as new customer onboarding, purchase history, last purchase, sales funnel stage, lead stage, and so on. In addition, marketers can also leverage highly targeted automation workflows to maximize the sales and engagement.

Take some inspiration from the welcome email template design of Glossier. See how it is onboarding the new customer by giving them a detailed idea about the brand.

Source: Really Good Emails

   3. Convert abandoned shopping carts

With 69.23% of shoppers abandoning their carts, it has become imperative for marketers to identify the reasons behind it and fix the issue. Here's a look at the various cart abandonment reasons.

Source: Baymard Institute.

Once you have the data regarding the cause of cart abandonment, you can determine the weak points of your business and take corrective measures for it. Further, you can also offer special compensatory offers to entice your customers to complete the purchase. See how MACK WELDON makes good use of fear of missing out (FOMO) for its cart abandonment email template by telling the customer how the product might sell out soon. They even go a step ahead and try to build the customer's trust in their brand by giving them the option of sending a different size of the product or refunding them.

Source: Really Good Emails


Email automation can help your E-commerce business to send personalized abandoned cart email to boost your revenue. In fact, you can create a whole sequence for sending out such emails. Do you know sending three abandoned cart emails results in 69% more orders than a single email?

Take a look at how ASICS sends out two emails in their cart abandonment series to ensure better cart recovery.

So, go ahead and make use of marketing automation to simplify the whole cart abandonment email process. With marketing automation software, all you need to do is fill the criteria and content assets. The email will be sent automatically in accordance with the customer's action.

   4. Facilitate smooth communication between teams

It is critical to ensure that all the teams within a business communicate and collaborate with each other seamlessly. Remember, you can extract the benefits of customer data only when it is distributed amidst the team in the right way and at the right time.

Marketing automation allows all the departments in your business to be in sync with each other. It will give them a better insight into leads and customers. To put it in other words, marketing automation syncs the communication within the team in real-time. This, in turn, gives accessibility of your consumer data to all the teams in your business, thereby making it easy for teams to stay connected and deliver better results.

   5. Pay special attention to loyal customers

You should treat your loyal customers differently from others. After all, such customers have a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) and can work wonders in driving revenues and generating user engagement. Hence, it is important to convert your loyal customers into your brand advocates and evangelists. You can do so by giving them special tokens, discounts , exclusive membership and so on. Here's how Fabkids does it by giving its VIP member $10 free to spend during a special sale.

Source: Milled

Such customers can be identified through. marketing automation by automatically tagging and segmenting them. You can also send automated emails to such customers regarding product launches, updates, deals, and more.

Wrap up

With machines being less likely to commit mistakes, the efficiency of automated email campaigns is certainly high. Do you know 36% of marketers use marketing automation to reduce repetitive tasks? You can do the same and spend your time on higher-value work while planning your E-commerce business strategically.

All in all, email marketing automation has great power and it is high time E-commerce stores start leveraging its power. Take some cues from the above-mentioned strategies and see how it does the trick for your business. You can even take the help of MailChimp experts and Marketo Certified experts and use their pre-built email templates and automation software respectively. Now, go ahead and reap the benefits of email automation.

Author Bio:

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.

What Every SMTP Email Hosting Needs

One of the most beneficial services accessible on the internet is Email. The transfer of a message from one user to another within a few seconds seems easy. However, there are several procedures behind this technology. There are various internet systems involved in transferring of emails. The majority of them use SMTP as a mean to transmit email between sender and receiver. SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol acts as a postman. Through smtp email hosting, the messages are collected by the server, and they are delivered to the recipients.

Requirements for SMTP

Before setting up a hosted SMTP, it is essential to know its prerequisites. You are required to attain the following information from your email service provider or mail administrator such as:

• Host Name: This is the main hosted email platform for your SMTP server. In other words, you have to choose a specific service like Gmail, Yahoo or Microsoft Outlook.
• Port: You have to select a port to give access to your mail server to create a two-way communication. There are three main ports (25, 465 and 587), which supports SMTP.
• SSL and Authentication: You have to decide whether or not your SMTP server will include SSL connections and authentication (SSL and authentication is recommended).
• Username and Password: Finally, you need to have a unique username along with a password for the mail account.

Setting Up an SMTP Connection

Following is the standard procedure for setting up an SMTP connection:

1. Choose “Account Settings” option from the “Tools” menu of your hosted email service.
2. Select the “Outgoing server (SMTP)” option
3. Click the “Add…” button in order to create a new SMTP. Once clicked, you will see a pop-up window
4. Simply fill all the details, such as

• Description: An informal name to identify the server (recommended using names of the email hosted services like Yahoo or Gmail)
• Server Name: Server specification of SMTP
• Port: It could be any port (25, 465 or 587)
• Connection Security: It is recommended to use SSL extension
• Authentication Method: Keep password as your authentication method
• User Name: Enter your email address.

Once you successfully configure SMTP, you can build your mail server.

How does SMTP work?

Through SMTP hosting, your email is delivered to one or multiple recipients in the following steps:

1. Email from sender’s device is transferred to the SMTP server
2. From the SMTP server, the email is then moved to the domain server
3. Once it is reached to the domain, the email is then passed to the POP/IMAP server
4. Finally, the POP/IMAP server delivers the message to the end-user (recipient)

SMTP email hosting plays an essential role in creating fast and rapid bilateral communication through email. This is why it is important to follow all the conditions in order to set up SMTP with accuracy. There is no rocket science involved in fulfilling the needs of the SMTP server. Follow this guide for best results.