If you’re selling jewelry online, eCommerce email marketing is a must. This article will cover how to increase sales with jewelry email marketing and essential eCommerce marketing best practices.
Why Email Marketing is Critical
An effective B2c email marketing strategy is vital for any eCommerce company’s success. Here’s why:
- You Own Your Email List. You can do a lot more with an audience you have total control over. You can enrich your data, build up more complete customer records, and know exactly who you’re reaching and how they’re responding.
- Email is a Direct Line of Communication. Unlike Facebook and other platforms, no algorithm will stop you from reaching subscribers on your email list.
- Customers Prefer Email. In the US, most customers (about 72 percent) would prefer to hear from you through email.
If you haven’t prioritized email marketing yet, here’s how to get started.
How to Build Your Jewelry Email Marketing Strategy
There are a few steps you’ll need to take before you can begin sending jewelry email marketing campaigns, but it’s a straightforward process.
You’ll need:
- A way to send emails
- A list of subscribers to send emails to
- A way to automatically send personalized campaigns
Choose an Email Marketing Platform
One essential eCommerce marketing tool is your email marketing platform. There are many options, and there’s really no wrong answer. If you use Shopify, you can use its built-in email marketing features. There are also other platforms built with eCommerce in mind, like Klaviyo.
But free platforms like Mailchimp will work just as well.
Build Your Email List
Once you have a way to reach your subscribers, you’ll need subscribers to reach.
B2C lead generation tends to be easier than B2B lead generation, but it can still be slow-going if you’re just getting started. Here are a few ways to speed things up:
- Offer an Incentive. Free products, free shipping, and discounts can all work to get people to sign up for your email list.
- Require an Email to Add to Cart. If you make shoppers submit their email addresses before they can add something to your cart, then you have a way to market to them in the future. It’s also easier to follow up with people who abandon their carts if you have their email addresses. It has drawbacks (e.g., some people may leave instead of adding an item to the cart), but it’s worth trying if you have a high cart abandonment rate.
- Use Website Visitor Identification. Website visitor identification identifies your anonymous website visitors and sends their email and mailing addresses to your CRM so you can send them email and direct mail campaigns—even if they don’t convert on your website.
Segment Your List
Audience segmentation helps make sure you send the best campaigns to your subscribers based on their attributes. Here are the primary ways to segment your audience:
- Geographic segmentation is location-based.
- Behavioral segmentation is generally based on a subscriber’s website activity.
- Demographic segmentation is based on characteristics like gender and age.
- Psychographic segmentation is based on psychological characteristics.
One of the best ways to get the data you need for audience segmentation is website visitor identification software. It includes geographic information, and you can supplement that with other details like:
- phone number
- automotive data
- household income range
- age range
- education level
- gender
- homeowner status
- length of residence range
- net worth range
- marital status
- presence of children
Personalize Your Campaigns
The reason it’s crucial to segment your audience is to enable eCommerce personalization. Shoppers want to receive relevant campaigns personalized to their needs and interests. By segmenting your audience, you can make sure you’re sending the right emails and offers to the right people at the right time.
Set Up Marketing Automation
Marketing automation tools enable you to automate emails based on factors like:
- Subscribers’ website activity
- Audience segments
- Subscribers’ email engagement
It makes it easier to personalize your emails, segment your audience, and deliver advanced campaigns (e.g., abandoned cart recovery campaigns).
Choose a Marketing Automation Platform
Depending on your email marketing platform, this might be the easiest part. Many platforms, like Klaviyo and Mailchimp, include marketing automation features. If yours doesn’t, it might be easier to switch to one that does instead of cobbling together a solution.
Build Your Automation Workflows
Once you have the software, you’ll want to set up a few campaigns by default.
- Welcome Emails. A welcome email or sequence of emails offers you a way to show subscribers the value you’ll provide right away.
- Abandoned Cart Recovery. Every eCommerce store has to contend with shopping cart abandonment, and an abandoned cart recovery campaign is one way to win those shoppers back.
- Cross-Sell Recommendations. Cross-selling is a great way to increase revenue. Recommend complementary items based on jewelry pieces your customers have purchased in the past.
- Promotions. Use personalization to offer relevant promotions to each audience segment. For example, you might send a Mother’s Day promotion to subscribers in a specific age range. Also, consider highly personalized campaigns, like a birthday offer.
- Win-Back Emails. If someone hasn’t purchased in a while, a win-back campaign can help get them back on board.
- Email Retargeting. Email retargeting campaigns work like retargeting ads, but they use website visitor identification software to deliver emails right to shoppers’ inboxes instead of hoping to catch their attention with an ad.
Here are five eCommerce email templates to get you started.
Follow the Rules
We won’t go into the laws and regulations that apply to jewelry email marketing, but you can read our CAN-SPAM compliance checklist and GDPR email compliance checklist to make sure you understand the basics.
Don’t Be Afraid to Go Old School
This article is about jewelry email marketing, but don’t sleep on print. Harvard Business Review reports that catalog response rates increased 170 percent from 2004 to 2018. Direct mail catalogs are a great way to improve the performance of your email campaigns.
That’s why companies like Nordstrom, Patagonia, Crate and Barrel, and even eCommerce stores like Wayfair, Bonobos, Birchbox, and Amazon now invest in direct mail.
How Catalogs and Email Marketing Work Together
HBR partnered with a U.S.-based jewelry eCommerce store to test the performance of direct mail catalogs. The store was 100 percent eCommerce, with annual revenue of $60 million ($12 million in profit).
Email Increases Sales, Catalogs Are a Force Multiplier
Compared to a control group that didn’t receive emails or a catalog, email marketing increased sales by 28 percent and inquiries by 77 percent. The group that received emails and catalogs had a 49 percent increase in sales and a 125 percent increase in inquiries.
The combination led to a direct ROI of 600 percent.
How to Get the Data You Need
Of course, the store in HBR’s study had a mailing list of about 28,000 customers. Your database might not be that large yet, but you can use website visitor identification to collect email and mailing addresses as part of your email acquisition efforts.
Increase Sales with Jewelry Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach new customers and keep current clients engaged with your brand. It is also one of the most cost-efficient ways to increase sales since it requires a lower budget than digital advertising and traditional marketing campaigns. So whether your jewelry store is online, brick and mortar, or both, focus on email marketing to improve performance.
And, if you need to build up your email list, try website visitor identification. You can get 100 free leads when you sign up today.