Clearly, there’s no one-size-fits-all recipe to nailing your eCommerce email marketing. Still, there are some key best practices that every eCommerce business should keep in mind:
Email copy & design best practices
All emails are not created equal.
Every brand has its own color theme, tone of voice, and selection of images, but there are some general best practices.
Here they are.
Copy best practices for eCommerce emails
1) Use power words: For instance, here’s a list of 401 power words you can use in your emails.
2) Avoid spam words: Here’s another list of 500+ spam trigger words to not use in your emails.
3) Use short paragraphs: Keep them between three and five sentences to better maintain your audience’s attention.
4) Make the subject line personal, engaging, and relevant (and use humor if it fits your brand)
5) Don’t use all CAPS in the subject line: It’s bothersome for the eye and it can also trigger spam filters.
6) Add an emoji to make your subject lines stand out — because who doesn’t like a bit of color in their inbox?
7) Subject lines should be 65 characters long: Anything longer than that will be cut off by email clients.
8) Optimize the preheader or preview text to be more engaging: Preview texts can help you tell your story and attract more people to click the email.
Design best practices for eCommerce emails
1) Use dynamic content: Like this email from Adidas that displayed different content based on the gender of the recipient.
2) Use the inverted pyramid layout, where all of your content visually leads the user to the CT
3) Email width should be 640 pixels maximum, don’t go beyond that
4) Make images 600-640 px wide
5) Always use alt text, as it helps people with disabilities understand the images used.
6) Use a single-column layout with at most two columns for easier readability on mobile devices.
7) Make sure your CTA is clear and visible, don’t let it get lost in the design.
8) Use white space strategically to make your email more visually appealing.
9) Keep branding consistent throughout all your email communications.
10) Use images to describe the content better, not just to fill the space.
11) Optimize all of your emails for mobile – keep the subject line short, use preheader text, minimal copy in the body, use only one clear CTA button, increase the font size to 16 px if it’s too small, and make sure your custom font and the images look right.
Let’s say that you’re sending emails but they’re not getting the sales you’re looking for. What do you do? Do you frantically redesign everything and re-write all the copies? Nope.
You might have a lot of good elements in your email already, that you would want to keep.
The first thing you should do is to rule out these fatal errors:
- Emailing your list too often – are you sending too many emails?
- Bad email list – how good is your list? Maybe you should check your list health, deliverability issues, spam rating, etc.
- Overly promotional content – are you constantly sending out promotions? How much do you educate your customer on your brand and product value? Educational content can help you build trust, rapport, and loyalty — so make sure you include it in your email marketing plan.
Once you checked all the boxes above, let’s look at each of your emails.