Beginner’s guide to email marketing for e-commerce

A version of this article was first published here in March 2022

When running an e-commerce store in 2025, marketing remains essential—not just for attracting new customers but for building lasting relationships. Ecommerce email marketing plays a crucial role in driving sustainable growth for online stores by delivering targeted, value-driven messages that foster customer loyalty and optimise the shopping experience throughout the customer journey. With evolving consumer behaviour and new digital trends, businesses need smarter strategies to stay ahead. Email marketing continues to be a powerful tool, but success now relies on personalisation, automation, and data-driven insights. From AI-powered recommendations to hyper-targeted campaigns, staying updated with the latest email marketing trends can help you drive traffic, boost conversions, and strengthen customer loyalty.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing involves communicating with your customers through email to generate more sales for your business. This includes ecommerce email marketing campaigns that deliver targeted messages to foster customer relationships and enhance revenue growth. These emails can be customised to reflect purchasing habits or strengthen existing relationships.

Email marketing provides a personal touch

For small businesses, email marketing has the potential to be even more powerful thanks to personalisation. Email marketing automation can enhance personalisation and customer engagement through timely and relevant communications. People like to shop at small businesses as they feel valued and get better customer service – email marketing can achieve that same feeling.

It’s a unique strategy because it gives you a direct line to your customers. Being able to reach out to your base, through promotions, business updates or order information means you can nurture the relationship you have with your customers – and retain them too.

Define your goals

Setting clear objectives for your email marketing efforts

Defining clear objectives for your email marketing efforts is crucial to measuring success and driving revenue growth. A well-defined goal helps you focus on what matters most to your business and ensures that your email marketing strategy is aligned with your overall business objectives.

When setting goals for your email marketing efforts, consider the following:

• Increase brand awareness: Establish your online store as a thought leader in the industry by sharing valuable content and insights.
• Drive website traffic and boost sales: Use targeted promotional emails to attract customers to your site and encourage purchases.
• Nurture customer loyalty and retention: Develop personalised email campaigns that make your customers feel valued and appreciated.
• Improve customer engagement: Encourage repeat business by keeping your audience informed and interested through regular communication.
• Enhance customer experience: Build trust and satisfaction by providing timely updates and helpful information.

By setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals, you can create a roadmap for your email marketing strategy and track progress towards achieving your objectives. This approach ensures that your email campaigns are purposeful and contribute to the overall success of your online store.

Understand your audience

Identifying and segmenting your target market

Understanding your audience is critical to creating effective email marketing campaigns that resonate with your target market. By identifying and segmenting your audience, you can tailor your email content to meet their specific needs and interests.

To understand your audience, consider the following:

• Demographics: Gather information on age, location, job title, industry, and other relevant factors.
• Psychographics: Explore your audience’s interests, behaviors, and preferences to create more personalised content.
• Purchase history and behavior: Analyse data on purchase frequency, average order value, and product preferences to identify trends and opportunities.
• Email engagement: Monitor open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to understand how your audience interacts with your emails.

By segmenting your audience based on these factors, you can create targeted email campaigns that speak directly to their needs and interests. This approach increases the likelihood of conversion and drives revenue growth for your online store. Tailored content not only enhances customer experience but also fosters stronger relationships and loyalty.

Customer lifecycle and email marketing

Email marketing is most effective when aligned with different stages of the customer journey.

A well-rounded ecommerce email marketing strategy is crucial in supporting the customer journey through targeted and data-driven approaches.

How email marketing supports each stage:

1. Acquisition – Welcome emails introduce new subscribers to your brand and offer incentives to make a first purchase.
2. Engagement – Regular newsletters, product recommendations, and personalised offers keep customers interested.
3. Conversion – Limited-time offers, cart abandonment emails, and tailored promotions drive purchases.
4. Retention – Loyalty programmes and post-purchase follow-ups encourage repeat business and enhance customer relationships by providing personalised messages, expressing gratitude, and recommending related products.
5. Re-engagement – Win-back campaigns target inactive customers with special offers or product updates.

Understanding how email fits into the customer lifecycle helps you deliver the right message at the right time.

Retention is better than acquisition

For small businesses, focusing on nurturing relationships with loyal customers to convert subscribers into repeat buyers is a much more effective solution – in terms of costs and resources. When it comes to the cost of winning sales, 82% of businesses agree that customer retention is cheaper than acquisition. For small businesses who don’t have access to infinite resources and funds, this can make all the difference to your profits.

The figures agree with this too – research shows that increasing customer retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25% - 95% and email marketing can get you there.

Plus, attracting new customers is a time-consuming process that isn’t guaranteed to pay off. Getting your customer acquisition strategy right requires a lot of detailed research into market segments and consumer buying habits – and doesn’t even take into account the huge competition you’re likely to face in the online world.

But focusing a portion of your marketing efforts on customer retention is a much more cost-and-time-effective choice.

The value of an email list as a business asset

Unlike social media followers, building and engaging with a targeted list of email subscribers is crucial for successful email marketing strategies. An email list is a business asset that you own and control. Social platforms can change algorithms, limit reach, or increase advertising costs—but your email list remains a direct, reliable channel for customer engagement.

Why your email list is invaluable:

• Direct communication – No intermediaries or unpredictable algorithms.
• Higher conversion rates – Emails have an average ROI of £36 for every £1 spent.
• Stronger customer relationships – Personalised emails increase engagement and brand loyalty.

By growing and maintaining a quality email list, you can build a long-term asset that drives consistent revenue.

Choose the right marketing tools

Selecting tools that align with your strategy

Choosing the right marketing tools is essential to executing your email marketing strategy effectively. With so many options available, it’s crucial to select tools that align with your business objectives and audience needs.

When selecting marketing tools, consider the following:

• Email marketing software: Choose a platform that offers automation, personalisation, and analytics capabilities. Tools like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign are popular choices for their robust features.
• Customer data platform: Select a platform that integrates with your email marketing software and provides a single customer view. This helps in creating more personalised and effective campaigns.
• CRM tools: Opt for a tool that offers sales, marketing, and customer service capabilities. A good CRM can help you manage customer relationships and streamline your marketing efforts.
• Analytics tools: Choose a tool that provides insights into email performance, customer behavior, and revenue growth. Analytics are crucial for measuring the success of your campaigns and making data-driven decisions.

By selecting the right marketing tools, you can streamline your email marketing efforts, improve efficiency, and drive revenue growth. The right tools will enable you to execute your email marketing strategy effectively, ensuring that your campaigns are well-targeted and impactful.

Email marketing in practice

For small businesses that don’t have huge followings online or the resources to pay for prime advertising space, email marketing is a great way to create more sales for an ecommerce store by either:

• improving relationships with existing customers who’ve already purchased from your site or signed up to your emails.
• capturing customer emails in exchange for an introductory discount and establishing a relationship with them, known as list building.

Once you have customer’s contact information, you can implement different email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing strategies:

• transactional emails
• promotional emails
• relationship marketing emails.

Transactional emails 

The first type of email that you’re likely to send customers are the ones regarding their order or account. Unlike in a physical store where customers can find, purchase and leave with their items in one trip, buying products online is a longer process. Once they click ‘buy now’, they don’t know if the order has gone through or is coming to them, unless the business they purchased from tells them.

Considering how important it is to keep customers in the loop about the process of their order, transactional emails include:

• welcome emails: The welcome email is crucial as the initial point of contact with new subscribers, setting the tone for future communications and establishing a positive relationship.
• order confirmation
• shipping confirmation
• refunds or returns
• review or feedback requests.

Promotional emails

Aside from your customers’ orders, you can also use email marketing to entice them to make another purchase with your company. These kinds of emails are known as promotional emails and include:

• sales announcements 
• personalised deals or discounts
• product launches
• stocking statuses.

These are email marketing tactics that most closely align with traditional marketing methods, using promotional offers to incentivise customers and boost chances of securing sales.  

Relationship marketing emails

Email marketing can be a powerful tool for developing customer relationships. And this can only be done through creating a connection with them, often outside of just your product or service offering. 

Emotion plays an important role in shaping your customers’ attitudes towards your brand, and businesses can elicit emotions through marketing strategies like email newsletters. By making your customers feel valued and cared about, they will return that to your business in the form of recommendations, reviews or repeat purchases. If you do email marketing well, you’ll be rewarded with all three of these. 

Sending your email list relationship-building newsletters allows you to:

• Show off your brand personality. Your customers will get to know the human side of your business from your tone of voice, the subjects you touch on and the points you make. 
• Add value to the products or services you provide. Teach your reader about a topic, offer unique insights or elicit an emotional response. 

These types of emails can cover:

• business updates
• industry-specific information 
• commentaries on topics that reflect your brand values 
• behind the scenes content.
• They can also be sent out to customers enrolled in loyalty programs as an added benefit of creating an account with you.

Detailed breakdown of email campaign types

1. Abandoned cart emails

Nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. Ecommerce email marketing campaigns play a crucial role in recovering lost sales through targeted follow-up emails.

Best practices:

• Send the first reminder within a few hours.
• Use product images and a clear call to action.
• Offer incentives, such as free shipping or a discount.

2. Post-purchase emails

Following up after a purchase builds customer trust and reduces returns.

Examples:

• Order and shipping confirmation emails.
• Product usage tips and how-to guides.
• Requesting feedback or reviews.

3. Product recommendation emails

Leverage customer data to send personalised product suggestions.

Effective strategies:

• "You might also like…" emails based on past purchases.
• Bestsellers and trending products in their category.
• Limited-time deals on items they previously viewed.

4. Re-engagement emails

Win-back campaigns help reactivate dormant customers.

What works best:

• “We miss you” messages with exclusive discounts.
• Showcasing new arrivals or business updates.
• Offering a small incentive to encourage engagement.

5. Seasonal campaign emails

Holiday promotions and time-sensitive offers create urgency.

Ideas:

• Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals.
• Christmas gift guides.
• Limited-time flash sales.

6. Loyalty and rewards emails

Encourage repeat purchases with a point-based rewards system.

Example emails:

• Points earned and redemption updates.
• VIP access to exclusive discounts.
• Referral programme invitations.

7. Back-in-stock and price drop emails

Notifying customers when an out-of-stock product returns or when prices drop can boost conversions.

Why they work:

• Customers have already shown interest in the product.
• Scarcity and urgency drive quick purchases.

Email marketing as a cost-effective alternative to paid ads

Digital advertising costs continue to rise, making email marketing for ecommerce a strategically important and sustainable option for online businesses to reduce reliance on costly ad platforms. Unlike paid ads, where you pay per click or impression, emails allow you to market to an engaged audience at virtually no extra cost.

Email vs. paid advertising:

• Lower customer acquisition cost – No bidding wars or escalating costs.
• Predictable ROI – Email marketing consistently delivers higher conversion rates than social media ads.
• Long-term engagement – Paid ads only capture short-term attention, while email nurtures ongoing relationships.

Focusing on email marketing can help you reduce reliance on costly ad platforms while still driving significant revenue growth.

Building an email marketing strategy: step-by-step guide

1. Define clear goals – As part of a well-rounded ecommerce email marketing strategy, set measurable targets, such as increasing email-driven sales by 20%.
2. Segment your audience – Group customers based on demographics, behaviour, and purchase history.
3. Select the right tools – Use platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign for automation.
4. Create automated workflows – Set up abandoned cart, post-purchase, and re-engagement emails.
5. Optimise for mobile – Ensure emails are mobile-friendly with clear CTAs.
6. Use A/B testing – Experiment with subject lines, layouts, and send times.
7. Monitor performance – Track open rates, conversions, and customer engagement.

How ecommerce email marketing benefits e-commerce efforts

Email marketing has the potential to bring more success to ecommerce stores by effectively nurturing and funnelling traffic to your website, automating abandoned cart reminders, and providing performance reports. In doing so, there are a lot of other benefits to reap.

Creates engaging customer experiences

Crafting a seamless customer experience is a crucial part of e-commerce operations, including the point after purchase. The time between placing an order and receiving it is a vitally important period where businesses need to keep customers informed if they want to create a high-quality experience for their audience. 

Boosts customer retention

By focusing on customers who are already on your website or have purchased from you before, you’ve a much higher chance of making a sale. This is because they’re further down the sales funnel than completely new customers you’re trying to attract from search engines or social media. 

Drives traffic to your site

Whether you let your customers know you’re having a flash sale or remind them to use up their loyalty points, email marketing helps to keep your business in your customers minds. This added visibility means that they’re more likely to think of your business and visit your site. 

Tailors services and offerings

Email marketing opens up a real opportunity for small businesses to customise their services. Campaigns can be specifically targeted for customers who:

• exhibit certain purchasing habits
• buy a particular product
• put items in their basket but don’t check out (cart abandonment)
• haven’t made a purchase in a given amount of time 
• are part of your loyalty program.

Provides unique insights 

Having an email list of your customers presents another opportunity: to harvest information and data from them. You can create short surveys designed to record rich data, or simply ask for a sentence or two of feedback to use to better your services.

A/B testing for email optimisation

Testing different elements of your emails, such as email subject lines, helps improve performance.

What to test:

• Subject lines – Test different wording styles (e.g., curiosity-driven vs. discount-focused).
• CTAs – Experiment with different button colours, placements, and wording.
• Email design – Compare image-heavy vs. text-based emails.
• Send times – Find the best time of day and day of the week for your audience.

Compliance with email marketing laws

To maintain trust and avoid legal issues, follow these regulations:

• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) – Ensure users explicitly opt in before receiving marketing emails.
• CAN-SPAM Act – Include an easy opt-out link in every email.
• Data security – Protect customer data and avoid sharing email lists with third parties.

Using social proof in emails

Incorporating customer feedback increases trust and conversion rates.

Effective social proof tactics:

• Customer reviews – Feature high-rated products.
• User-generated content – Showcase customer photos and testimonials.
• Expert endorsements – Include mentions from industry influencers or media outlets.

Email list hygiene and management

Keeping your email list clean improves engagement and deliverability.

Best practices:

• Remove inactive subscribers – If they haven’t opened an email in six months, send a re-engagement campaign or remove them.
• Use double opt-in – Ensure subscribers confirm their email address to reduce spam complaints.
• Monitor bounce rates – High bounce rates affect your sender reputation.

Best times to send emails

Timing can significantly impact open rates and conversions.

General trends:

• Morning (8-10 AM) – Customers check emails before starting their day.
• Afternoon (1-3 PM) – Lunchtime and mid-afternoon breaks boost engagement.
• Evening (7-9 PM) – Shoppers browse while relaxing at home.

Testing your audience’s behaviour will help pinpoint the best times for your specific business.

How to integrate email marketing with e-commerce platforms

Using email automation tools can streamline your campaigns.

Recommended platforms:

• Klaviyo – Best for data-driven personalisation.
• Mailchimp – Ideal for beginners and small businesses.
• ActiveCampaign – Advanced automation and CRM integration.

Using predictive analytics in email marketing

AI-driven email marketing tools can analyse data to:

• Predict the best time to send emails.
• Recommend products based on browsing history.
• Automate personalised campaigns with AI-driven insights.

FAQs about e-commerce email marketing

1. What are common mistakes to avoid?

• Sending too many emails too frequently.
• Failing to personalise content.
• Not segmenting your audience.

2. How can I prevent my emails from going to spam?

• Use verified email domains.
• Avoid spam trigger words in subject lines.
• Ensure recipients have explicitly opted in.

3. What’s the best email marketing software?

• Klaviyo for advanced personalisation.
• Mailchimp for beginner-friendly automation.
• ActiveCampaign for CRM and sales automation.