8 Essential Emails to Increase Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Email is a vital tool for connecting with your customers to increase your ecommerce conversion rate.

• Over 3 billion people use email worldwide.
• Fifty-nine percent of consumers prefer to receive marketing material through email over other channels like text and direct mail.
• Sixty-nine percent of customers prefer to hear from brands post purchase through email over other channels.

Plus, email marketing gives you plenty of insights, tools, and automation features to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Unlike social media, you have full access to all the email audience analytics you need to personalize your messages.

Read on to discover some of the essential automated emails for boosting your ecommerce conversion rate, along with some statistics and examples.

Automated emails to increase your ecommerce conversion rate

Email makes it easy to create automated campaigns based on triggered events, so you can connect with your customers with relevant content at the perfect time. To increase your ecommerce conversion rate, the following emails are essential.

1. Welcome email

Nailing down your welcome email strategy is essential to starting the conversation on the right foot because they deliver a staggering 91.43% open rate, on average—four times the average rate of a standard campaign.

Start out with a conversational tone, links to your best-selling products (with images), and a coupon to encourage a purchase.

Lush knows that their products are visually stimulating, so they made sure to include a small selection of their top items inside this welcome email. Plus, the videos help new subscribers understand more about what Lush is all about as a company.

Source: Really Good Emails

Good Eggs gets right to the point in this welcome email. Warm images show their product in action, while a sweet $25 off and free gift entice subscribers to make a purchase.

Source: Really Good Emails

2. Replenishment email

If you sell any consumable goods, replenishment emails are vital for keeping your customers out of the arms of competitors.

Not every customer is comfortable subscribing to replenishment programs that automatically charge them and send out the product. However, they may be more likely to replenish on their own through your brand if you give them a nudge at the perfect moment, which can increase your ecommerce conversion rate.

Chewy understands. The ecommerce pet store sends customers an email just as they suspect products are about to run dry based on either the customer’s past behavior or standard lifespan of the item.

Notice how every item in this email is personalized, based on purchases the customer has made through Chewy, along with a few additional suggestions.

Source: Milled

3. Abandoned cart email

Statistics say that up to 70% of all shoppers who add items to their cart won’t follow through with the purchase.

While it’s important to remove all hurdles that may be weighing down your mobile checkout process—like registrations and long drop-down menus—email is also important for reining in those previously lost causes.

Consider your subscriber’s specific state of mind as you design your abandonment emails. We’ve found that including social proof with embedded reviews can increase ecommerce conversion rate from abandonment emails by 12%.

Saatchi included a discount coupon here to push customers over the edge. A little discount can go a long way to recovering those abandoned carts.

Source: Really Good Emails

You could also take a more subtle approach to abandoned carts like Canopy did here. The customer received a personalized email about products they’ve previously viewed or added to their cart that are now on sale.

Source: Really Good Emails

4. Transactional email

When someone makes a purchase, sets up an account, completes a return, or resets their password, they’ll receive a transactional email.

Emails like these tend to have eight times higher open rates and engagement rates, so optimizing the transaction experience is critical to increase your ecommerce conversion rate.

Ulta gives in-store shoppers the option to receive an email receipt, which the makeup giant attaches to the email in a Google Doc, so they can fill the body with a survey button and other CTAs.

5. Re-engagement email

You don’t have to wait to send re-engagement emails until after your loyal customers disappear. Keep their attention in between purchases and away from competitors with personalized product recommendations and content.

Amazon always sends awesome personalized engagement emails. The customer in question had just browsed low-cost workout supplements and had purchased this brand in the past, so Amazon sent her personalized recommendations.

Blue Apron gets right to the point with their re-engagement email. A nice, comforting image sets the vibe and the copy highlights benefits and features like saving time with 20-minute meals and natural ingredients.

Source: Really Good Emails

6. Birthday email

Birthday emails are gold mines to increase your ecommerce conversion rate. They deliver:

• 481% higher conversion rates
• 342% higher revenue per message
• 179% higher unique click rates

Remember when we mentioned that 84% of customers want to feel treated like humans rather than statistics? Personalized birthday messages are the key to connecting with your subscribers.

If you can offer a free gift, go for it. If not, a nice discount and some personalized messages or product recommendations will do. Just make sure you help your subscribers feel special.

Not sure when your subscriber’s birthday is? Send out an email like Brooks Running did to collect birthdays for future campaigns. If they enter a year, you can also further personalize product recommendations.

When the time comes, take notes from Sephora here. They let the subscriber choose from two free gift packages that she could redeem either in-store or online. Who doesn’t love treating themselves on their birthday? Sephora also hand-picked relevant splurge-worthy products for this birthday email.

7. Feedback requests

The fact is 90% of all customers read online reviews before making a purchase and 88% trust them as much as a personal recommendation, so developing a feedback strategy is crucial to increase your ecommerce conversion rate.

Not only that, but reviews help solidify brand loyalty among current customers. If someone takes the time to write a review, they’re more likely to return to your business for future purchases.

Bellroy sent this email 30 days post-purchase after the customer had a chance to really get to know the item they bought. The feedback request is simple: “How likely are you to recommend Bellroy to a friend?”

Make the review process as simple as possible and don’t ask too much from your customers, and they’ll be more likely to complete the review. If you can collect the feedback directly within the email without forcing the customer to navigate to a landing page, even better.

Source: Really Good Emails

8. Thank you email

You could (and should) include a thank you message with your transactional purchase-related emails. However, you can also send an individual email after a customer buys something or completes an action that thanks them for taking the time to engage with your products or site.

Hertz sent this email after the subscriber entered in a contest. It includes a simple image and two CTAs encouraging the subscriber to book or join their loyalty program.

AT-A-GLANCE knows that daily planners and calendars by nature are kind of robotic and devoid of much emotion—but they don’t have to be. With more and more companies offering lifestyle and productivity planners, classic AT-A-GLANCE knew they needed to kick their ecommerce marketing up a notch.

Look at the warm conversational tone in this promotional email; it feels like a one-on-one personal message. Not only does it offer a human touch with the VP of marketing’s signature, but it also offers the subscriber a customer-only discount.

Wrap up

Customers expect relevant content from ecommerce brands, with giants like Amazon really setting the standard with their personalized product recommendations. Fortunately, email makes it easy to surpass these expectations and increase your ecommerce conversion rate.

• Include personalized recommendations based on abandoned carts or on-site browsing behavior.
• Engage your customers and leads through each step of the journey with welcome and birthday emails.
• Connect with once-loyal customers who vanish through personalized re-engagement campaigns.

With email, even small businesses can create customer email journeys on par with the ecommerce giants.

CM Commerce offers awesome built-in features for supercharging your abandonment recovery emails, like integrated reviews, pre-built recipes, and templates.