Email is one of the highest converting forms of e-commerce marketing. Every e-commerce business should be sending regular mails.

If you haven’t already got one, you should make building your mailing list a priority. Following that, you should start to build your e-commerce email campaigns.

To get you ready, we will take you through the four top performing types of e-commerce emails and how they can work for your e-commerce business.

1. Order confirmation

Order confirmations acknowledge a customer’s purchase.

Why is this email type important?

This type of email is automatic with Shopify and BigCommerce stores. Merchants often overlook the potential for it, seeing it as just a delivery email, a common courtesy.

But, everyone looks at the order confirmation email. So it’s a golden opportunity.

Firstly, you can up sell. The order confirmation is acknowledgement that you’re working to deliver the customer’s order as promised. So, it’s a positive moment between you and the customer. It’s the perfect moment to suggest they do more with you. You can suggest they sign up for a free give away or purchase a subsequent product.

Secondly, it’s an opportunity to cement their decision to buy. Refunds are a fact of life, but it’s amazing how following up well reduces customer uncertainty and returns.

Finally, the confirmation email is just another opportunity for you to get your message across, give value, and warm customers to your brand.

By putting the time and effort into confirmation emails, optimising them to increase conversions, you can increase sales and reduce returns.

2. Abandoned cart reminder

What is an Abandoned Cart reminder email?

Abandon Cart reminder emails remind people who abandon their online shopping carts to go back and complete their purchase.

The purpose of this email, often used in a short series after a cart abandonment, is to convince the person to go back to their order and complete it. Normally, the email contains a link which takes the person back not just to your website, but to the basket they abandoned, with all of the products they were close to buying.

All major marketing campaign and automated email service providers allow you to set up emails like this. Being bespoke to the person and the products they were buying massively increases the mail success rate.

It’s also worth noting that abandoned cart emails are not only used for items already in the basket. For returning customers, you can have emails triggered by browsing.

Why is this email type important?

You’ve already done the majority of the work to get existing contacts to buy . Now you just need to go back and give a little more encouragement.

Your rate of success, will of course vary depending on your optimisation. But typically, you can expect between 15–20% of your abandoned carts to be completed as a direct result of these emails.

These emails are the perfect way to complete sales. They address doubts and cement the benefits of your products and store.

Remember, customers are busy. And as a result, they often abandon carts unintentionally. Customers can lose connection, or be distracted and forget about what they were doing. Sending these emails is a professional and often appreciated courtesy.

3. Value add email

You can use this email as a way of generating awareness and stand out over competitors. Value emails should be sent more often than any other type of email. This is because they keep contacts interested and opening your mails. In this way, they supplement the success of all of the others.

A value email characteristics:

• Links to free, valuable videos which are not easily accessible elsewhere or copied directly from competitors
• Free expert advice which is not easily accessible elsewhere or copied directly from competitors
• A friendly, warmly written email with no pushes towards anything other than sharing with them

This email shouldn’t be sent more than once a week. You should only send this email if you have no other type of email to send.

The aim is to be interesting, so try to keep it fresh. Create exclusive content just for mailing list members and don’t repeat the same content too often.

Why is this email type important?

You’re unlikely to see any direct or short-term benefit to your conversions when you optimise this email. However, there are many other benefits.

You can increase brand awareness and build trust by optimising the emails. And, the more people who open this email, who take the value from them —  the more return you’ll end up with in the long term.

People are much more likely  to open your sales email a few days after receiving some valuable content from you. More sales email opens equals more clicks, which means more conversions.

4. Sales email

What is a Sales email?

This is perhaps the most commonly sent and received email ever. The main purpose of this email is to (surprise, surprise) sell. But the sales email is not limited to the promotion and call to purchase. It can be used to promote and call the recipient to action for any conversion you value.

The main uses of sales emails:

• Direct sale of a particular product or collection
• Encourage newsletter subscription, or  follows on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Tell subscribers about something new — a website, product range, etc.
• Speaking to a smaller audience of people who have already bought or converted for something —  up selling them to something relevant to just that audience
• A combination of several of these. For example; direct selling a product, with testimonials and 10% offer if they buy today and follow you on Facebook.
• The combinations and uses are endless but the main purpose is to call your audience to action.

Why is this email type important?

There is clear value in spending the time and money testing and optimising sales emails.

The more people you can get to notice your email, the more will open it, the more will read through, the more will take the action you call for, the more will convert.

Also, the more who convert, the more you can up sell!