Email marketing is a tried and true way to engage with your customers. In fact, it’s one of the most successful forms of digital marketing out there. But even if you’ve been using email for quite some time now on your website or blog, you may not be leveraging email marketing to its full potential for your Amazon channel. In this post, we’ll share a few ways you can leverage email marketing to send out eCommerce offers, newsletters, blogs, or messages to drive additional traffic and sales on Amazon.
Roadblocks to Email Marketing for Amazon
Email marketing has a remarkable return on investment (ROI), generating an estimated $36 for every $1 spent. You can boost your revenue and maintain relationships with existing clients by taking a few simple steps toward collecting customers’ emails.
There’s one caveat, though. Amazon has stringent rules when it comes to sellers communicating with buyers. Although the platform allows you to send an automated email to buyers to request a review, collecting buyer emails for your email list is against Amazon’s Communication Guidelines.
You cannot send out reminders to your visitors, even if it helps them get to your products by using special offers, applicable discounts, or wish lists. Well, you can’t do it on the Amazon Marketplace or through Amazon’s message centers.
Amazon doesn’t like when sellers send out personalized emails. They call them “one-to-one” emails. This means you’re not allowed to send messages that are customized and tailored in any way based on information about a specific customer. For example, if you have their name or email address, you can’t say something like, “Hi, John! We have an exclusive offer for you. Just click here to claim it!”
Is there a way around it? Of course! The best way to use the power of email marketing to boost your Amazon sales is to build a mailing list off of Amazon. The best way to do this is through email opt-ins on your website or running ads on Google, Facebook, and other platforms.
Build an Email List That Amazon Doesn’t Own
Since you can’t really build a list from Amazon customers, you’ll need to focus on potential buyers before they find your products on Amazon. For example, instead of running a Google Ad that goes directly to your Amazon listing, you could attract interested customers with discounts or special offers if they join your newsletter or mailing list. Once a potential customer is on your mailing list, you can send them their discount code along with a catalog of your products on Amazon. Sure, there’s an extra step involved, but getting those small yeses will add up. The best part of this strategy is that you’ll know that your email subscribers are your customers. Amazon won’t own or be able to use the information you collect.
It’s also important to note that Amazon allows sellers who send out emails through their own websites or from an email address that is not linked to their seller accounts to include a “click-through link” in the emails they send. Amazon says this can be done so long as the link isn’t used “for any purpose other than submitting orders,” and it must redirect customers directly to pages on your website where the product or products are listed for sale on Amazon.
You can use an email management service that allows you to collect emails from buyers who have opted in for a specific offer. In addition, it helps if the service offers pre-written marketing templates and automated follow-up messages, so you don’t have to do all the work yourself. Email marketing providers, such as MailChimp, AWeber, Hubspot, and Constant Contact have built-in forms, banners, and content that make it easy to collect emails on your website or through ad campaigns. You can also create your own opt-in forms on an email marketing platform of your choice by embedding shortcodes in the description box or other places on your website.
Plan Your Product Promotions
Newsletters, promotional emails, and other types of email campaigns are a great way to increase sales and profit margins. Email marketing is still one of the most cost-effective digital marketing techniques because there are free and low-cost email marketing platforms.
To optimize your business’s interactions with its customers, you need to plan product promotions and sales. There are three steps to a simple promotional email campaign.
- Start with a pre-sale announcement to let customers know that a new product is coming or that you’re about to have a sale. Your email could incentivize customers to purchase before launch with early-bird offers.
- Next, send an email on launch day to remind customers. For best results, send a series of reminders for the duration of the sale to create urgency.
- Finally, send a post-launch email thanking customers who bought and asking customers to join your waitlist, so they are ready for the next promotion.
A promotional campaign can last anywhere from 10 days to 6 weeks. For a five-week promotional campaign, use the first four weeks to build your email list through content marketing, social media ads, or Google Ads that offer an early-bird special or invite potential customers to join a waitlist so that they will be notified as soon as the sale or launch happens.
In week five, send a series of emails to announce your sale along with the duration, date, and a click-through link. You could also include a countdown timer in your emails to show the time left until the promotion ends.
In week six, send another series of emails announcing the end of the promotional period and an incredible deal on remaining inventory.
Use Email Automation
Email automation can make your life a lot easier. It allows you to follow up with your clients whenever they hit a certain sales figure, identify an issue, or simply sending a monthly newsletter featuring products.
If you want to make sure that you’re reaching your clientele, implement a welcome sequence to create excitement around your newsletters. You’ll need to spend some time and put together an email template that works for your product and your brand. Once you’ve received an email, the next best thing you can do is thank the customer.
Track Your Email Marketing Data
As with everything in marketing, data is essential. There are a few key data points to track in email marketing: open rates and link clicks. The open rate tells you which customers opened the email, and the link clicks rate tells you what percentage of readers clicked your promotional link in the email. Email marketing platforms, like Mailchimp, track your data automatically, so you can generate daily, weekly or monthly reports.
You can also optimize your email to get higher open rates:
- Write attention-grabbing subject lines to stand out from the crowd
- Use names to personalize the email
- Add quality photos of your products to entice readers to buy
- Create a sense of urgency
- Ask for reviews once customers have purchased one of your products
If you email shoppers a discount code for Amazon, you may not be able to tell which specific shoppers converted. While Amazon has the sales data, your email marketing service provider may not. If there isn’t a way to identify shoppers who purchased on Amazon using your discount code, you need to send your thank you message and review request through Buyer-Selling Messaging in Amazon Seller Central.
Use Email Marketing Platforms
Email marketing is a powerful and cost-effective way to reach customers. However, many companies don’t have the budget to hire an email marketer or developer. Thankfully, there are platforms that allow you to send beautifully designed emails at an affordable rate.
One of the best ways to completely dominate Amazon with email marketing is to use email marketing platforms that allow you to create and manage lists that can be distributed across the eCommerce website. Sending out mass emails can be a great way to reach people who want your product or service. However, if you don’t use an email marketing platform, you could face some significant problems. For example, whenever you send out a mass email and do not have permission to use the recipients’ addresses, it is considered spam mail and will go directly to the spam folder. The same goes for any emails that are sent from unrecognized domains or not opened in 24 hours. Businesses are also required to give subscribers the option to unsubscribe.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a powerful and cost-effective way to reach customers. It helps you build a relationship with customers and allows for more personalized interactions. It is one of the most effective ways to reach customers and grow your business. Emails are an easy way to stay connected with your audience. They can also be used to increase your customer retention rate. However, not all email marketing platforms are created equal. You want a platform that will let you create beautiful emails and send them quickly and easily.
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