How Can E-Commerce Companies Create Nurturing Campaigns

4 min readNov 20, 2020

For e-commerce companies, creating a nurturing email campaign is just as important as it is for lead generation or any other type of marketing initiative. The difference is that with e-commerce, you have numerous products, various potential audience segments, and campaigns happening at any given time. That’s why it’s so important that you nurture the customers and prospects no matter what stage of the buying process they’re in.

Segment for Buyers at Different Stages and Product Types

This advice is going to depend on how many products you have and how many stages your buyers typically go through before they take action. As it’s different for every e-commerce business owner, you’ll want to take the time to map out your typical customer journey, as well as different segments of products they may be interested in.

As every customer is different, it’s impossible to have a “one size fits all” approach for every customer and prospect segment and product type. You know your audience best, so take the time to do this — you can always refine it later.

Don’t Rush to Convert

One of the biggest missteps that many e-commerce businesses make is that the moment a user signs up for their mailing list and gets their freebie, every subsequent email is a sales pitch. You wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of constant sales announcements from every email list you’ve ever subscribed to, so it’s a pretty sure bet your prospects wouldn’t either.

The good news is that this is precisely what a nurturing campaign is designed to do.

There are lots of different paths you can pursue — consider having additional content created that helps the user reach the next step of their journey, such as comparison charts, white papers, checklists, gift ideas, curated collections and more. Use that content to help nurture and build up a good business relationship with them that in turn reflects and communicates your brand and tone.

Make Sure Every Email Has a Single Goal

This is a common mistake that’s often overlooked even by the best and most cohesive email marketing campaigns. Keep in mind that the overall goal isn’t just to “sell things” but rather “increase conversion rates by X% while increasing AOV (average order value) by $Y.

Having concrete goals like this will help you determine whether your email campaigns are hitting the targeted goals or if they need further refinement. And if they do need further refinement, that’s not a problem, because email marketing is an ever-changing beast and what worked last year or even last month may not work as well now. Which leads us to our next point…

Test, Evaluate and Optimize Every Message

Every message you send is an opportunity — not necessarily to sell but to continue nurturing and showcasing your business in such a way that your products are the best possible solution to the prospect’s needs or wishes. If they can already visualize themselves using or enjoying the benefits of your product, then all that’s left is to encourage them to naturally take the next step. This is where low inventory notifications, limited time offers and especially free shipping can finally seal the deal.

Look at every message. Split test subject lines or other facets of your email, evaluate where you can improve and then optimize and refine them. Your emails aren’t (and shouldn’t be) set in stone. Even in not so uncertain times, products change, focuses change, business goals change, so it is imperative that your emails should change along with these factors.

As you continue to optimize your messages, you’ll find certain things that truly resonate with your audience, and other things which don’t have the effect you had anticipated. This is all part of the nurturing process — learning what works, what’s relevant, and how to continue fostering positive responses from your customers and prospects alike.

Still Have Questions About Creating an E-Commerce Nurturing Campaign?

It’s understandable to have questions about creating an e-commerce nurturing email campaign, since every product and audience segment is different and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed, confused and lost.

Fortunately, help is just one click away. With Workdom’s on-demand marketing talent, we can leverage our extensive e-commerce and email marketing experience to create and cultivate nurturing campaigns for every phase of your funnel. Talk to our senior advertising and marketing professionals today so we can get started working together to formulate a plan that works for your business goals, resonates with your audience, scales your brand, boosts your business’ growth, and so much more.

Originally published at https://www.workdom.io on November 20, 2020.