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Email Marketing For Your Boardsports Store: Cheap, Fast & Effective

Forget social media. In the online marketing quiver, email is still the most powerful way to reach your audience. If you have obtained permission, of course. Here’s how to engage customers and drive sales with inexpensive email marketing in this edition of Retailer Help.

It’s not the latest fad in customer engagement (are you on TikTok yet?!), but email marketing remains the trusted workhorse for retailers. A whopping 80% of retail professionals named email marketing as their greatest driver of customer retention.

Cheap, fast, and effective, email marketing provides access to a select audience. Most of all, an audience of people that actually buy your stuff (not always a given on social media). According to recent stats, 30% of subscribers for retail emails list have actually bought from a store whose email they subscribe.

Sounds like something you would like for your boardshop?

Well, let’s start by pointing out that connecting to consumers has become a bit harder recently in light of enhanced consumer data protection measures like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in the ‘States (see below). And spam filters are more vigilant than ever, as 455 billion spam emails are sent each day!

But on the other hand, the design and customisation options for what used to be a humble HTML newsletter have evolved significantly. And even tools like artificial intelligence and automated product recommendations have trickled down to the SME level. With that said, let’s jump right into Email Marketing for Your Boardsports Store: Cheap, Fast & Effective.

THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF DATA PRIVACY

Over the past few years, online marketing has become more tightly regulated by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It places more emphasis on consumers’ data privacy rights and provides legal guidelines for marketers looking to reach their audiences.

Penalties can be heavy, so make sure to read up on the rules and how they apply to you. As a primer, here are some do’s and don’ts for email marketing and data protection:

Always get explicitly stated opt-in (permission) from consumers to receive email marketing.
Don’t email your entire customer list, only opted-in recipients.
Use best practices like double opt-in (first on website, then confirm welcome email).
Provide an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email; unsubscribe should be possible without logging in and with just one click.
Don’t pre-select the option ‘I want to receive more marketing’ (pre-ticked box) on your checkout pages, customers need to click it themselves to indicate consent.
Host a Preference Center where email subscribers can control their marketing content.
Keep email marketing consent separate from other agreements (like terms of service, etc.).
Store information about who consented to marketing and when they consented in a safe place (in case someone asks or complains).

BUILDING YOUR EMAIL RECIPIENT LIST

As stated above, shops can no longer hammer-email anyone who’s ever made an online purchase on their site. They need to build a list of consenting email recipients, sometimes from scratch.

Here are some ideas to obtain first-party customer data and email opt-in:

Install a pop-in window on your website offering a 10% discount for newsletter subscribers.
Include the option to subscribe to your newsletter and email marketing during checkout.
Send personalised gift vouchers and discount codes to your list.
Run a giveaway/raffle for all new email subscribers.
Offer attractive privileges only to email subscribers, like early access to new product drops, invites to demos and video premieres.
Don’t buy email lists! You need to trust that subscribers are first of all, real people and also opted into your marketing.
Explicitly state the benefits/perks that come with email subscription on the sign-up form.

DELIVERABILITY AND SENDER REPUTATION

Not every email automatically makes it to the recipient’s inbox. Some may end up in the spam folder or get flagged as suspicious. Behind the scenes, a tight network of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Email Service Providers (ESPs) maintain Sender Scores/Reputations to measure if your sender domain and email address are trustworthy.

It’s a complicated process, better read a primer on that subject as well. Plus, there are blacklists of undesirable email addresses – maintained by services like Spamhaus and Spamcop – that are effective all across the internet. But basically, your sender reputation will affect the deliverability of your emails. Here’s what to keep in mind:

Start by checking whether your email address is blacklisted by spam blockers. You can use one of these tools.
In case your shop’s email address is indeed on the blacklist, consider using a new email for marketing purposes (tips on building a subscriber list above).
Also make sure that your email address is associated with your online shop domain, not your Yahoo or Gmail.
Ideally, set up a specific email address for email marketing, e.g., [email protected]
Perform regular email list hygiene and always remove emails that bounce (undeliverable).
Removing undeliverable mails is crucial because they can turn into spam traps (online watchdogs monitor who keeps sending mail to these ‘dead’ emails, assuming it must be bots. Straight to the blacklist!).

credit @Campaign_creators

EMAIL CONTENT AND FREQUENCY

Now that you’ve secured your reputation and audience, it’s time to think about your messages and send frequency. As far as the latter is concerned, don’t feel pressured to email too much (also annoys customers). But settle into a recognisable rhythm/marketing pressure, so your audience knows when to expect to hear from you.

In terms of frequency, think about sending a newsletter every Friday with the latest product releases and specials available in your shop. Also consult sales data from your online shop to identify times of day, days of the week when you land the most sales. Target those time slots with emails to use that momentum.

When it comes to content, here are some ideas:

Spend some time on your email templates to ensure a consistent/attractive look that is on-brand with your shop’s CI.
Make sure the newsletter is personalised automatically to the recipient’s name (clean up your subscriber list beforehand to ensure profiles are complete).
Rely on brands to hook you up with product images, videos, action photos, logos, infographics and all that good stuff.
Maintain word length and paragraph spacing for web writing, use subheads to make text easy to scan.
Include buy buttons that link to your online shop.
Don’t go overboard with images (load times!) and optimise image formats for mobile delivery.
Actually, optimise and preview your entire email for mobile screens!
Send welcome emails to new subscribers (can be automated), because these emails generate 320% more revenue than any other promotional email.
Include your social media accounts in the email footer for synergies (see below).
Remember the big rule of email marketing: ABA (always be testing)! Test different versions of copy, images, and subject lines and use what performs best. Also test several times of day to see when your audience is most engaged. You can get these metrics from an app.

APPS AND EMAIL MARKETING PROVIDERS

As your subscriber list grows, you don’t want to keep sending those emails manually. There are plenty of apps that will help automate the process, plus they also offer significant perks. What perks? Using an app like Mailchimp will also help with your deliverability, provided that your sender address is verified and trustworthy.

Professional apps also let you automate send times and send behavioural triggers for sending an email (for instance when a known customer abandons their shopping cart). You can also integrate with your product selection to send automatic product suggestions to customers based on purchase history and current intent if you use the right app and maintain your inventory online.

Apps also offer considerable synergies, for instance when your online shop is hosted by an ecommerce platform like Shopify. In that case, your customers and actual email subscribers are already stored separately on the backend.

Shopify offers plenty of plug-ins and apps to put that subscriber data to use. For starters, you can try the Shopify Mail app, which lets you send up to 2,500 emails to your customers for free per month (and minimal charges above that rate). On Shopify, you can also activate pop-in windows that invite email opt-in to grow your list and automatically add subscribers to your owned list.

While we are speaking of synergies, your email marketing also puts rocket boots on engagement across other channels. Email subscribers are three times more likely to share content on social media than prospects addressed through another channel.

And looking ahead, Apple is restricting data tracking by the likes of Facebook, while Google will nix third-party cookies from Chrome browsers in 2022. So with that in mind, building and maintaining an audience for your email marketing will definitely pay dividends in the future and lets you stay in touch with your customers. Easy, cheap, and efficient!