Email is one of the strongest media for sharing information and guiding potential customers toward your ecommerce store. It goes without saying that effective email copy for ecommerce sites can only improve the value marketers glean from email campaigns. If you’re already working hard to build quality email lists and content, crafting attention-catching email copy for ecommerce sites may turn an email reader into a shopper. 

Effective email copy never exists in a vacuum. Email copy that works for one audience may fail with another. Coupled with segmentation, personalization, email best practices and community-generated content, your email has a chance to shine through these five crucial ecommerce tips.

1. Mimic Language From Customer Reviews

Great email marketing copy is often simple and easy to understand — and resonates with consumers in your industry. Collecting and analyzing Ratings & Reviews can help you determine what language your customers are using to talk about your products. The benefit of this is twofold; not only can you adapt their language to your email copy, but you can identify keywords and key phrases used repeatedly by customers to include in other places on your website.

Community Q&A, the frequently asked questions section of ecommerce product pages, can also aid when it comes to email copy. Brands that implement Q&A can see exactly what kinds of questions shoppers want the answers to, and what words and phrases other customers use when responding to those questions.

Adapt the language satisfied, passionate customers use when leaving your brand positive reviews, and you’re guaranteed to drive more traffic from emails to your website. You can also feature reviews within your emails like Converse does, adding an element of social proof to their email subject, copy, and body content.

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2. Create a Sense of Urgency

Ever receive emails from a brand announcing a sale ending soon, or other limited time offers that you don’t want to pass up? This type of email copy creates a sense of urgency, creating a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) that drives recipients to join in on a deal. 

Contests and giveaways are a great way to combine social proof, urgency, and enticing shopping opportunities in your emails. If you’re running a social media contest asking users to enter by sharing user-generated content (UGC), you can feature existing entries within your emails like swimwear brand FINIS does. We’ll get into UGC more in the next tip.

Email copy creating urgency shouldn’t be aggressive or threatening. Phrases like “limited time only,”  “ending soon,” or “last chance” can inspire customers to act on your emails promptly. Remember to keep your copy brief and understandable, and always include a call-to-action (CTA). Check out these tips for creating a sense of urgency in email copy for ecommerce sites.

3. Feature Visual User-Generated Content (UGC)

Social UGC can help instill trust in your brand and show recipients you have an active, passionate community that loves your products.. It is also very time-saving considering that you can source it from many places, and you don’t have to create it from scratch. 

Customers might rave about your product on social media, or you might get it from contests you shared with your target audience. With a UGC platform like Pixlee TurnTo, you can automatically collect UGC from multiple sources and build customized email displays in-platform to show off your community. Pixlee TurnTo userssee a 2.9% increase in click-through rates as a result of this. 

Consumers find this type of content to be far more authentic than branded content. Just as they are more likely to trust influencers than broad promises, they are more likely to trust other users that already used the brand.

When you feature visual UGC in ecommerce emails, it can be helpful to orient your written copy around that content. Using words like “community” and “fans” in your copy and praising your existing customers will encourage email openers to join your engaged community of buyers.

4. Segment your emails

Your email copy will only work for a limited number of people. Not everyone in your audience is the same. Some customers will like one approach and others will dislike it. You shouldn’t necessarily promote the same products to everyone, or use the same copy for every customer you have.

This sounds like a lot of work, but if you segment your audience properly, it is not. That being said, let’s consider some different types of emails that you should create and send to the specified audience segment.

Abandoned Cart Email Copy

These messages are used on repeat customers and new leads that logged in to your website, put something in their basket, but then changed their minds and left your ecommerce store. In this situation, use copy to remind that consumer what they’ve left behind and emphasize why it would be beneficial to purchase. 

In 2021, such emails had a 43.76% open rate. This means that, by sending out such emails to people who left the cart, you have a high chance of getting the lost revenue back. Businesses have recovered hundreds of thousands in making sales thanks to such messages.

According to Bluecore’s research, cart abandonment emails have the highest conversion rate on average compared to any other triggered emails in e-commerce.

Cross-Sell and Upsell Email Copy

Another segment that you should consider is customers that purchased something from your store already. The idea here is to send them other products, framing them through copy as recommendations based on their previous choice. 

You could promote items that are related to their previous purchases or send follow-up messages that confirm their purchase and include similar products. Even receipt purchase messages have proven to be effective for this. People will open their email to get the receipt and see some offers and discounts you sent them, or some recommendations based on other customers’ purchases.

Promotions and Discounts Email Copy

People love discounts and special deals and, even if you have a dedicated page for these on your site, you still need to let them know that you have something new added to it. Maybe you have a new product that you want to promote, or you want to put a discount on existing products?

If this is your goal, you should segment your audience base based on the following criteria:

• Discount customers. This group is for the people that typically purchase from your site only items that are discounted. In this case, you should send them emails about sale items and highlight that they’ll save money on those products. 
• High AOV customers. For these customers, you can send out subscription boxes, various product recommendations, and promotional bundles. 
• Face value customers. These people don’t want your discounts but are very likely to purchase products that are exclusive and have great ratings. Send them the first-access promotions to your new product line and make sure to take advantage of reviews and UGC in emails to them.

5. Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform

Email marketing platforms can do wonders for your copy. They can automate and optimize the process, and can help you identify what types of copy generate the best open and click-through rates. Email tools like Mailchimp, or more cost-effective Mailchimp alternatives, can help you build your email lists with ease, engage with the audience, and even customize templates to get ready, amazing emails within minutes.

Even when you’ve created your emails, automation platforms can still help you greatly. You can use them with your team to work on the email marketing strategy and group your audience with the segmentation functionality. 

Trends might change over the years, but due to the wide use of email, this is a constant in the world of marketers. Proper email copy is even more important for businesses that operate strictly online, such as ecommerce sites. Hopefully, this list will help you boost your strategy and get more leads and conversions!