In this interview with an email marketing expert, we decided to dive deeper into the intricacies of preparing email campaigns for eCommerce brands. As a leading email conversion strategist for SaaS and eCommerce brands, Samar Owais is the go-to problem solver for companies like HubSpot and Pinterest. Through her Emails Done Right newsletter, Samar challenges industry norms and offers invaluable lessons on email strategies to marketers and copywriters alike.
In this interview with Stripo, Samar shares her profound insights into the key components of a conversion-driven email marketing strategy, the common pitfalls eCommerce brands should avoid, and the importance of personalization and localization in campaigns. Here’s what she had to say.
Interview Expert
Email conversion strategist for SaaS and eCommerce brands, founder of Emails Done Right
Building a conversion-driven strategy
Stripo: What invaluable insights can you share about the key components of a conversion email marketing strategy for eCommerce brands?
Samar: There are a ton of key components that go into creating a strategy for an eCommerce brand. My one advice is to establish your business goals first.
What business goals do you want to accomplish through your emails? And yes, increasing email revenue is a given. But how do you want them to increase?
- Do you want more first-time buyers?
- Do you want to increase your average order value?
- Do you want predictable recurring revenue for your brand?
- Do you want to increase your repeat customers?
- Do you want to increase your profit margins?
Your goals depend on where your business faces the biggest block.
Some brands have everything dialed in, but their profit margins are low. Others have a large pool of subscribers who never become customers, or most of their customers never return for a second purchase.
Your strategy needs to solve or address your business blocks. Start from there, and everything else will fall into place.
Avoiding common mistakes and key performance metrics
Stripo: What mistakes in email marketing do you encounter most often when working with eCommerce? How can they avoid them?
Samar: The most common mistakes in email marketing when we talk about eCommerce projects are as follows:
- lack of focus on customer experience;
- lack of personalization;
- too much focus on the brand and not nearly enough on the customer.
When I say customer experience, I mean paying attention to where customers come from. What ads, offers, or messaging they’ve seen, and whether the conversation that started before they landed on our email list is continuing with our emails.
If you’re adding people to your list through a quiz and your welcome email does not mention the quiz or their quiz results, that’s a massive missed opportunity.
When it comes to personalization, consider sending the right message to the right person at the right time.
As for focusing on the customer, when sending emails, ask yourself, “Why are we sending this email, and why should our subscriber/customer care?”
Stripo: What are the leading performance metrics you use for eCommerce projects, and are they the same across all strategy areas?
Samar: The more I work with brands, the more I believe that we give too much importance to email metrics. We’re usually trying to achieve a business goal for our clients. For example, our goal is to increase email revenue by 10% to 15% over the next 90 days.
The focus should always be on “How do we do that?”
For example, we can ask ourselves:
- Do we leverage our existing customers to buy more?
- Do we focus on getting subscribers to make their first purchases?
- Do we focus on increasing the average order value?
- What is going to move the needle the fastest?
So, in terms of performance, I’m always thinking about the end goal.
But if we’re talking about email metrics, the first thing I check or ask a brand to check is its email deliverability. After that, the one performance metric I focus on above all else is engagement.
Engagement comes in many forms—open rates, click rates, purchase rates, unsubscribe rates, and replies to our emails. But my focus is usually on click-to-open rates.
How many of the people who opened our emails clicked through? This metric gives a clearer picture of how our emails are performing. It also tells us when we need to improve our subject lines.
Challenges in personalization, localization, and gamification
Stripo: What are the challenges in implementing personalization in eCommerce email marketing campaigns, and how can they be overcome?
Samar: My biggest challenge with personalization is convincing brands to look beyond first-name personalization.
As mentioned earlier, my definition of personalization is “sending the right email to the right person at the right time.”
Now, there’s the usual:
- sending the welcome email to someone who just signed up;
- sending a post-purchase email to someone who’s just bought;
- sending an abandoned cart email to someone who added items to their cart but didn’t finish checking out.
But I always want to go beyond surface-level personalization. Who’s been buying your products regularly? Tell them about your subscription offer! If someone’s been buying shirts, send them a “This will go really well with…” email.
Your customers’ shopping patterns tell you a lot about them. Use this information to your advantage, and personalize your emails and offers accordingly.
Stripo: How important is localization in eCommerce email marketing, and what are the key considerations? What strategies do you recommend for creating email campaigns tailored to different regions and cultures?
Samar: Love that you asked this question.
Localization is important because you wouldn’t send a Christmas email to customers of a brand in a Muslim country. You’d find out when certain countries celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and make sure you send those campaigns at the right time for each location.
But when it comes to religions and cultures, I’m a big advocate for celebrating them all. The world has become incredibly multicultural. Just as we don’t segment Christmas emails, we don’t need to segment Eid, Hanukkah, or Holy emails.
Everyone knows what those are. Everyone knows someone who celebrates those events. We can always use preference centers to get people to opt out of these emails.
Stripo: What do you think about using gamification and interactive emails for eCommerce? What gamification mechanics have you found to be most effective in engaging customers?
Samar: I love gamification and finding ways to make clicking fun for subscribers. Gamification doesn’t need to be complex. You don’t have to custom code emails, use different tools, or sacrifice email design for the sake of gamifying an email.
Gamification can be as simple as asking subscribers which color they like best and featuring the same product in two different colors, asking which shirt goes with which pants, or featuring three products and asking them what they’d take with them on a road trip.
Wrapping up
We are grateful to Samar Owais for sharing her expert insights and practical advice on optimizing eCommerce email marketing strategies. Her approach to email strategy, personalization, and localization provides a clear path to achieving better results for any brand.
Here are some insights into email marketing trends and strategies that we have obtained from this interview:
- Start with business goals: Focus on solving your brand’s biggest challenges, and let your email strategy follow from there.
- Prioritize customer experience: Ensure your emails maintain the conversation started before customers join your list, and always focus on their needs rather than just promoting the brand.
- Engagement over metrics: While email metrics matter, prioritize engagement, especially click-to-open rates, to gauge the true impact of your campaigns.
- Go beyond basic personalization: Leverage customer behavior and shopping patterns to create personalized, relevant emails that resonate with your audience.
Following Samar’s advice, brands can craft email marketing campaigns that convert and build long-term customer relationships.
