Benefits and Drawbacks of E-commerce Email Marketing Integrations

Did you know that email marketing is 50 years old? The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in 1971. Since then there has been so much water under the bridge, and email marketing has evolved.

Even though some of the marketers consider it as a relic of the past and is meaningless in terms of business promotion, that’s not really the case. Email marketing is still the point of interest for various e-commerce entrepreneurs, as it remains one of the most efficient marketing methods for any business type until today.

However, to unlock the full potential of email marketing and run profitable campaigns, it’s necessary to integrate proper mail software into an online store. It helps merchants to automate newsletter creation, send more compelling emails, boost their email open rate and click-through rate, and more besides.

Let’s discover how you can take advantage of mail integrations and what pitfalls you may face while implementing these tools.

Advantages of mail integrations

The biggest benefit of email marketing is the ability to keep in touch with all of your subscribers with a single click. Other benefits include:

Cost-efficiency

According to Litmus, email marketing has a Return on investment (ROI) of 3600%. With each 1$ you invest in an email marketing campaign you can receive 36$. In fact, it sounds like a very good result, as Google estimates the ROI of other paid advertising as 200$.

Comprehensive analytics

Email marketing integration enables you to collect, process, and interpret big data volumes across multiple sales channels. You can keep track of the number of subscribers that opened your email, followed a certain link, and completed a certain action, as well as the number of unsubscribers. This metric also says a lot regarding the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign and may bring insights on what needs to be reconsidered in the approach to your clientele.

Personalization

Modern features different email marketing services provide allow dividing target audience into groups and subgroups. Once you analyzed what your clients prefer and expect from the online shopping experience, you are able to use this data to form tailored emails, engage and retain your customers, and build your brand loyalty.

Disadvantages of mail integration

While there are many advantages of email marketing, there is also a couple of drawbacks:

The need to have a solid clientele database

To start your email marketing campaign, first, you should make sure you have a sufficient and, what is not less important, legit list of customers who will be sincerely interested in your company updates. This will reduce the risk of unsubscriptions and emails marked as junk.

To increase your database, you can do the following:

• Add signup forms on your website;
• Motivate your customers to enter their emails by offering them some valuable information: free guides, infographics, etc.;
• Additionally, you can engage your customers by launching loyalty programs.

Emails must have a responsive design

The times of HTML desktop emails are over. Nowadays nearly half of the internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Another challenge is to adapt your email marketing campaigns to mobile users. You should ascertain that your recipients can easily open your emails and fully access all information, images, links, or any other content included there.

You should know how to use email marketing correctly

Email marketing is a rewarding investment, but you need to know how to use these tools responsibly to justify efforts. Extra time will be required to learn new skills on how to hit the target with the right mail integration and a properly organized email marketing campaign.

Conclusion

No doubt, any sustainable e-commerce business should have a personalized email marketing solution. Newsletters can be used in a broad range of situations: to inform clients about upcoming sales, remind them about abandoned orders in shopping carts, etc.

The benefits of mail integrations are obvious, and the pitfalls are avoidable. All you need to do to start using email marketing the way it’s meant to be used is to hire a reliable team of e-commerce professionals who will assist you in it.