There was a time when marketers thought email marketing was dead. But here we are in 2025, still discussing the industries where it thrives. Email marketing will continue to be an essential strategy in this digital age. It has become effective in connecting with and building customer relationships. It can promote products and services, build brand visibility, build customer loyalty, and connect with potential buyers.
Email marketing strategy benefits many businesses, including e-commerce, retail, and B2B. While other digital marketing channels can be used to promote e-commerce and retail, which we’re focusing on today, email marketing plays a key role in the retention of customers. It can also be used to generate personalised engagement. These and more are why e-commerce and retail top the chart of email marketing. Let’s discuss further below.
Why email marketing strategy is important to e-commerce and retail
Over the years, email marketing has been an impactful marketing tool for e-commerce and retail businesses. It has helped e-commerce and retail in many ways, such as retaining customers, improving sales, promoting business, and communicating directly with customers. Here’s a breakdown below:
1. Retention of customers
With email marketing, e-commerce businesses can get customers for repeat purchases. This powerful tool can be used to create strategies that allow customers to become returning customers, such as loyalty programs and promotions. It allows businesses to communicate with clients and build trust and relationships over time. E-commerce and retail businesses use it to distribute educational content and send follow-up emails. It has proven effective in sending personalised emails targeting the customer’s preferences and getting the desired feedback. Statistics show that 57% of consumers prefer email as their pre-purchase contact method, with 75% liking to receive discount offers via email.
2. Improve sales
Email marketing also offers high conversion to e-commerce and retailers. Data show that email marketing in e-commerce boasts a significant return on investment, about $36 for every dollar spent. That is why these businesses are in love with email marketing! It helps build trust and connect with buyers on a personal level. This is why most (over 80%) of top online retailers utilise email marketing to engage with customers. Around 36% of retailers invest more than 11% of their digital marketing budget into email marketing. It’s a highly cost-effective way to reach a large audience directly, personalise messages based on customer data, drive sales by promoting new products or deals, nurture customer relationships, and ultimately achieve a high return on investment (ROI) compared to other marketing channels.
3. Business Promotion
With email marketing, retailers can send targeted messages straight to customers’ inboxes, bypassing the need to rely on social media algorithms or other intermediaries. When it comes to using social media to target customers, you have to rely on algorithms to help your target customers notice your business. However, with email marketing, you can communicate with them directly, track the metrics, and control the communication because you have the target email list, which improves the chance of your customers receiving your message.
E-commerce and retailer businesses use email marketing to promote their goods and services strategically, create email campaigns, add CTAs, and offer discounts. They also use email marketing to drive more subscribers to their websites.
4. Send Personalized Deals
Retailers tailor messages to specific customer demographics, interests, and past purchase behaviour by segmenting their email lists, leading to more relevant content. This increases customer engagement, conversion rates, and customer loyalty. Retailers use email marketing to offer their customers more relevant shopping experiences by tailoring offers directly to individual customer preferences and past behaviours, leading to a greater likelihood of repeat purchases.
5. Automation and abandoned carts in e-commerce and retail
Automated messages have improved the user experience, increased sales and built relationships. Some customers leave e-commerce stores for one reason or another, but with the automated message that acts as a reminder, they can complete their purchase. E-commerce stores have systems that can detect abandoned carts and have a scheduled time to send an automated message to the customer, which can help convince them to buy.
Best way to use email marketing to target customers
The best way to use email marketing to target customers is to segment your email list based on demographics, interests, and purchase behaviour, then send personalised emails tailored to each segment with relevant content and calls to action.
This ensures your messages are highly targeted and resonate with each recipient, maximising engagement and conversion rates. A brand that targets individual customers builds strong relationships and efficiently engages with them. Read how to optimise your email marketing to have better insight.
The Role of trust and loyalty in deploying email marketing strategy
Trust and loyalty play a crucial role in email marketing success by enabling businesses to build strong, long-term customer relationships through consistent, relevant communication. This leads to higher engagement, increased conversion rates, and repeat purchases, ultimately driving more significant revenue and brand loyalty.
Email marketing helps e-commerce businesses establish and build relationships with customers. Newsletters, for example, can help build trust with customers if you regularly communicate value through them.
Challenges that come with email marketing and how to overcome them
Email marketing has its downsides, including tempered delivery (sometimes emails end up in spam), a low click-through rate, and the difficulty of attracting new customers via email.
1. Low delivery rates
Low delivery rates mean a low percentage of the email reaches customers. A low delivery rate in email marketing can be caused by several factors, including a poor sender reputation (due to high bounce rates or spam complaints), a bad IP reputation, and using a purchased email list. Sometimes, it can result from sending irrelevant content, ineffective subject lines, poor email design, lack of email authentication, and not properly managing your subscriber list by removing inactive users. This is a challenge that needs to be addressed.
How to overcome this challenge
To solve a low delivery rate in email marketing, focus on building a good sender reputation by using double opt-in to build your list, regularly cleaning your email list, avoiding spam trigger words and content, providing easy unsubscribe options, and consistently monitoring your deliverability metrics to identify areas for improvement.
2. Low click-through rates
Click-through rates measure the number of customers who click through an email in relation to the email sent or delivered. A low click-through rate means that customers are not taking action. Ineffective subject lines, confusing, misplaced, or uninteresting CTAs, lengthy email copies, and a lack of personalisation can cause this.
How to overcome this challenge
If your call to action is unclear enough, customers will avoid clicking through it. It is also essential to consider the timing of your email, know your customers, and study the right time they will be willing to take action. Lastly, make your visual content appealing.
Conclusion
E-commerce and retailers primarily use email marketing to send customers personalised messages about new products, special offers, and promotions. They build customer loyalty by providing relevant content based on browsing behaviour, purchase history, and other data to drive sales and increase website engagement. Email marketing helps them offer personalised product recommendations, send customers reminders about abandoned carts, get customer feedback, announce new products, and more.
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