Opening a BigCommerce store is just the first step. You’ll then need to promote it to attract visitors and potential customers. BigCommerce email marketing is one cost-effective way to do that.
However, running successful BigCommerce email marketing campaigns is not without its challenges. Without the right strategies, you may encounter low open rates, leading to a lack of engagement and underwhelming conversion rates.
To build a successful BigCommerce marketing strategy, you need a combination of knowledge and the right marketing automation tools.
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Stop leaving money on the table. Your emails can win back customers and grow revenue. Learn the essential messages that attract and retain customers, and stand out from the competition.
In this article, we’ll discuss five email marketing tips and tools to enhance the performance of your BigCommerce store and boost subscriber engagement.
BigCommerce email marketing involves engaging prospects and existing customers via email to achieve marketing goals, such as boosting sales.
Since BigCommerce doesn’t offer built-in email marketing capabilities, you need to rely on third-party integrations. The platform offers seamless integration with numerous email marketing platforms, including Omnisend.
You can use email marketing to send abandoned cart reminders, promote sales and discounts, or to drive traffic to your store.
5 BigCommerce email marketing tips for beginners
BigCommerce email marketing follows the same principles as email marketing for other platforms, and so the tips and recommendations are similar. The key is to understand the basics, then build on them to create successful campaigns.
Here are 5 helpful tips for creating an email marketing strategy that enhances your BigCommerce store’s performance.
1. Create a professional email address
First thing’s first: you need to create a professional email address. Using a free domain email address such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo is bad practice. Those email addresses are for personal use and not for commercial purposes. Most internet service providers will automatically spoil your campaign results by marking your emails as spam.
An official email address helps with credibility to both your subscribers and spam filters that may otherwise block you. It’s also crucial for building a good sending reputation for your domain.
How should you create a BigCommerce email address for your business?
BigCommerce used to provide email hosting. However, they changed their email settings in 2015 and now recommend using a third-party email service such as GoDaddy.
Services like this make it easy for you to create your professional email address, provided you have your website up and running and have chosen an appropriate domain name first.
2. Find an email service provider that fits your needs
Whether your business is big or small, you’ll need an email service provider for email marketing. Here are some reasons why:
Email deliverability: General email marketing practice shows that approximately 5%-10% of subscribers never receive the emails that businesses send them, even campaigns sent from a professional email address. Due to a better online reputation, an email service provider has a higher deliverability rate, somewhere between 90% and 99%. For example, Omnisend delivers more than 99% of all emails.
Email bounce rate: This is one of the most important metrics to monitor when you’ve launched an email campaign. You can read more about bounce rates here.
Mobile readiness: A mobile-ready or responsive design is crucial for BigCommerce email marketing. Using responsive email templates that adapt to your subscribers’ screen sizes will ensure that your recipients see precisely what you want them to see.
Analytics: Detailed statistics about your campaign are one of the most significant benefits of an email marketing service. Open and conversion rates are standard data for most email marketing software but you can dig deeper to see which CTAs your recipients respond to, what devices they use, and more.
You should pay attention to the main focus of your chosen email marketing platform. Does it provide all of the features needed for a successful BigCommerce marketing strategy? At a minimum, it should offer:
A variety of signup forms and the ability to track their performance
Other options include exit-intent popups, which appear when a visitor is about to leave the site, plus dedicated landing pages that provide a focused and easy signup directly from your ads or social media campaigns.
It’s always useful to add incentives to your signup forms. These could be anything from simple discounts and free shipping, to giving free access to an online course, event, or ebook. Offering these kinds of gifts in return for a signup can be the difference between a one-off visitor and a loyal returning customer.
4. Work smart, not hard with BigCommerce automated emails
Marketing automation is a powerful tool that helps businesses reach their goals faster. Its timely nature and personalization potential also provides a better shopping experience for consumers.
BigCommerce automated emails are marketing emails that are automatically sent to customers of your BigCommerce store, based on their behavior.
For example, when they sign up to your list, browse a product, place an order, or abandon a shopping cart. This kind of email can help you onboard, educate, and retain customers, as well as upsell products and wish them a happy birthday.
The stats for automated emails are impressive. For example, recent Omnisend research found that automated emails performed 4x better than campaign emails, with an open rate of 42.1% and a click rate of 5.5%. Not only that, but 41% of all email orders come from automated messages, even though they comprise only 2% of all email sends.
Even if you are a beginner at email marketing, you should start sending the following automated emails to boost your revenue on autopilot:
BigCommerce welcome series
Welcome emails have an impressive 2.74% conversion rate, among the highest of all automated emails.
Image via Omnisend
Welcome email workflows perform even better if you send a series instead of a single email. The main benefits are as follows:
You can tell your story and better introduce your brand
You build credibility, trust, and anticipation
You can quickly convert new subscribers into customers and make sales
This kind of email automation is one of the easiest ways to take your marketing tactics to the next level.
Abandoned carts are a huge challenge for ecommerce brands, with only 3 out of 10 shopping carts ending up with successful checkouts.
Automated abandoned cart emails go a long way towards solving this issue by reminding customers that they’ve left items in their cart. This is usually done with a series of carefully-timed emails that provide a direct link back to the cart, include a photo of the product, and offer incentives to seal the deal.
See the example below:
Abandoned cart automations are one of the easiest and most effective ways to boost your bottom line. They should be a top priority when creating your BigCommerce marketing strategy.
You can use Omnisend’s pre-built cart abandonment workflow to automate straight away. Simply add your content and branding to the BigCommerce email templates of your choice.
Order/shipping confirmation emails
Customers need reassurance that their purchase was successfully completed and that their order is on the way. Order and Shipping Confirmation automated emails are effective ways to provide this, and even offer the chance for upselling.
Now, some email marketers also include similar product recommendations in their confirmation automated emails, as well as discounts and other incentives to make a repeat purchase. This is an excellent way to make extra revenue and one that is often overlooked by retailers.
Although marketing automation is becoming the main focus of your BigCommerce email marketing strategy, BigCommerce newsletter campaigns are still a useful way to provide brand communication. You can send them on a regular schedule, such as weekly or monthly, or when you have special news or updates.
Let’s run through a quick checklist for your BigCommerce email newsletter campaign. Before clicking the “Send” button, make sure that:
Your test email looks good in your inbox on both desktop and mobile phones
Key takeaways
Don’t let your email marketing efforts go to waste by not using the right strategies. The good news is that the strategies are time-tested and simple to follow. Here’s a brief overview of the tips we covered in this article:
Create a professional email to make your business credible to both your subscribers and spam filters
Enable email marketing automation. The first on your list should be high-converting welcome series, abandoned cart emails, and order/shipping confirmation emails
Send regular newsletter campaigns that are in line with your brand identity and provide value to your community.
With deep BigCommerce integration and all of the features you need to quickly grow your ecommerce business, Omnisend is the natural choice for BigCommerce users. Get started for free today and start driving sales autopilot with pre-built automation.
Get started with Omnisend today & drive sales on autopilot with pre-built automation workflows
Bernard is the Sr. Director of Communications & Creative at Omnisend, with a passion for good research, helping ecommerce businesses with their marketing automation needs, and beating absolutely everyone in Mario Kart 64.
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These are the Omnisend features that can help you get the results mentioned in the article.
