A Guide to Email Marketing for Growth-obsessed Ecom Stores

Creating a comprehensive ecommerce email marketing strategy means implementing several key automated campaigns. Each serves a specific purpose in your customer journey and together they form a powerful engine for driving sales and building customer relationships.

#1) Welcome Email Sequences

Welcome emails see an average open rate of 91.43%—making them 4x more likely to be opened than standard promotional emails. For any online store, welcome emails are a crucial opportunity to start the customer relationship strong.

Why welcome emails work:

• They reach email subscribers when interest and engagement are at their peak
• They set expectations for future communications
• They provide immediate value to new subscribers

Components of an effective welcome sequence:

Campaign Monitor’s journey builder makes it easy to create automated welcome emails that are triggered immediately when a subscriber joins your list.

#2) Abandoned Cart Recovery Emails

Cart abandonment is a massive challenge for e-commerce stores, with average abandonment rates hovering around 70%. However, automated email strategies, such as abandoned cart emails, can recover approximately 10-20% of this lost revenue by sending timely reminders to customers.

Key statistics:

• Cart abandonment emails have a greater than 10% purchase rate.
• Sending three abandoned cart emails can generate substantially more revenue ($24.9 million) compared to sending just one ($3.8 million)

Effective timing strategy for abandoned cart emails:

#3) Transactional Emails

Source: ReallyGoodEmails (https://files.reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-coffee-is-on-the-way.png)

Transactional emails are triggered by specific customer actions and typically have the highest open rates of any email type—often 4-8x higher than promotional emails. These operational emails represent significant revenue opportunities when optimized properly.

Use Campaign Monitor’s Unified Email Builder to design transactional messages that are not just on-brand, but also mobile-ready!

#4) Product Recommendation Emails

Source: ReallyGoodEmails (https://files.reallygoodemails.com/emails/we-noticed-you-noticing-us.png)

Product recommendation emails leverage your customer data to suggest relevant items, increasing average order value and repeat purchases.

Product recommendation email framework:

#5) Re-engagement Campaigns

Source: Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/pin/44121271344404697/)

Re-engagement emails can win back dormant customers before they’re gone for good.

Identifying inactive customers:

• No opens or clicks in 3-6 months (depending on your purchase cycle)
• No purchases in 2x your average purchase cycle
• No website visits or other engagement

Re-engagement strategy framework:

Winkelstraat.nl implemented automated re-engagement emails through Campaign Monitor to revive dormant subscribers, contributing to their impressive results that 24.51% of their total conversions are attributed to email marketing.

#6) Seasonal and Holiday Campaigns

Source: ReallyGoodEmails (https://files.reallygoodemails.com/emails/up-to-60-off-our-favorite-spring-finds.png)

Seasonal campaigns capitalize on shopping holidays, seasons, and special occasions to drive timely purchases.

Key shopping periods to target:

• Major holidays (Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day)
• Seasonal changes (summer, winter collections)
• Industry-specific events
• Company anniversaries or milestones

Use Campaign Monitor’s countdown timer block to add real-time urgency to limited-time offers, making your seasonal promotions more compelling.

#7) Loyalty and Retention Emails

Source: Pinterest (https://i.pinimg.com/736x/95/81/b4/9581b4903ed5488e94785650ac088ada.jpg)

Acquiring a new customer costs 5x more than retaining an existing one. Loyalty emails focus on keeping your best customers engaged and purchasing repeatedly.

Loyalty email flow:

#8) Referral Email Campaigns

Referral programs turn your existing customers into brand ambassadors. These campaigns leverage the trust between friends and family to acquire new potential customers at a fraction of traditional acquisition costs. Research shows referred customers have 16% higher customer lifetime value.

Read Next:

• What Every Small Business Needs to Know to Beat Cart Abandonment
• 8 Best Practices to Encourage Customer Reviews Through Email
• 9 Emails Every Marketer Should Be Sending

Implementing the right email marketing strategies can transform your ecommerce store, turning casual browsers into loyal customers and one-time buyers into repeat purchasers. Let’s explore actionable tactics that drive measurable results.

#1) Growing your list strategically

Building a quality email list is the foundation of successful e-commerce email marketing. Without a steady stream of engaged subscribers, even the best email marketing campaigns will fall flat. Focus on attracting high-intent subscribers who are genuinely interested in your products rather than simply chasing large numbers.

• Optimize your signup forms – Place them strategically at checkout, in the footer, and as exit-intent popups to capture visitors at different stages of engagement
• Create irresistible lead magnets – Offer a discount (10-15% is standard) or free shipping on first orders to incentivize signups
• Add signup opportunities at checkout – Make it easy for customers to join your list during purchase with a prominently displayed opt-in
• Run targeted social campaigns – Create dedicated lead-generation campaigns on platforms where your audience spends time

Campaign Monitor’s custom form builder allows you to create responsive signup forms that match your brand’s aesthetic—adjusting colors, fonts, and fields without any development work needed. Their landing page forms also make it easy to collect customer data directly while maintaining a consistent brand experience.

#2) Segmenting your audience for maximum impact

Generic, one-size-fits-all emails are a thing of the past. Today’s consumers expect relevant messages that speak to their specific needs and interests. Segmentation allows you to deliver more targeted messages that drive significantly higher engagement and conversion rates.

• Segment by purchase history – Create groups based on products purchased, categories browsed, and average order value
• Divide by engagement level – Separate highly engaged subscribers from those who rarely open emails to tailor frequency and content
• Group by customer lifecycle stage – New subscribers, first-time buyers, repeat customers, and VIP customers should all receive different messaging
• Segment by browse behavior – Track product views and category interests to send targeted recommendations
• Create geographic segments – Tailor promotions based on location, weather, or regional preferences

Campaign Monitor’s advanced segmentation tools let you group subscribers by location, interests, and behaviors. You can even create custom segments based on your contact’s unique activity like their total spend, loyalty point accumulation, or a specific purchase made.

#3) Personalizing your emails

Modern e-commerce email marketing leverages customer data to create truly individualized experiences that make subscribers feel understood and valued. Personalized email campaigns drive significantly higher engagement and revenue.

• Recommend products based on browse history – Show items similar to what customers have viewed but not purchased
• Create replenishment emails – For consumable products, time emails to arrive just before customers need to reorder
• Personalize send times – Deliver emails when individual subscribers are most likely to open them based on past behavior
• Customize content blocks – Use dynamic content to show different images, products, or offers based on subscriber data
• Tailor messaging to purchase history – Acknowledge and reference previous purchases to create continuity in the customer relationships

Alongside Campaign Monitor, Brands that love making money should send SMS cart recovery texts and answer customer questions via SMS marketing apps like TxtCart.

Campaign Monitor’s dynamic content blocks allow you to show different content based on customer preferences without creating multiple versions of the same email. The helps deliver tailored product suggestions with no manual efforts!

#4) Designing Mobile-Friendly Email Campaigns

Mobile optimization is no longer optional for e-commerce email marketing. With over 60% of emails now opened on mobile devices, ensuring your campaigns look and function perfectly on smartphones is essential for driving conversions. Poor mobile experiences lead directly to lost sales and increased unsubscribes.

• Use responsive templates – Ensure your emails automatically adjust to any screen size
• Keep subject lines short  – 41 characters is the optimal length for a subject line
• Make CTAs large and tappable – Buttons should be at least 44×44 pixels with plenty of white space around them
• Use larger fonts – Body text should be at least 14px, headlines at least 22px
• Optimize images for quick loading – Compress images and include descriptive alt text
• Test across multiple devices – Check how your emails appear on different phones and email clients before sending

Campaign Monitor’s drag-and-drop email builder makes it easy to create professional, mobile-optimized emails without any coding knowledge. You can also choose from the library of responsive templates, which are fully mobile-optimized out of the box.

#5) Automating your email marketing campaigns

Automation is the secret weapon of successful e-commerce email marketing. By setting up triggered email sequences, you can deliver the right message at exactly the right moment in the customer journey, driving conversions while saving countless hours of manual work. These “set and forget” campaigns generate revenue around the clock.

• Welcome series – Create a 3-5 email sequence introducing new subscribers to your brand, products, and unique selling points
• Abandoned cart recovery – Trigger a series of 2-3 emails when shoppers leave items in their cart, with the first email sent within 1-2 hours
• Browse abandonment – Send targeted emails when customers view products multiple times without purchasing
• Post-purchase sequence – Follow up with shipping updates, usage tips, cross-sell recommendations, and review requests
• Re-engagement campaign – Win back inactive subscribers with special offers or compelling content before removing them from your list

Campaign Monitor’s journey builder makes it easy to create automated journeys and behavior-triggered workflows that deliver timely, personalized messages. The automation features allow you to trigger cart abandonment emails and set up automated post-purchase sequences or even welcome series that drive repeat purchases without ongoing manual effort.

#6) Measuring and optimizing

The most successful e-commerce email marketers are relentlessly data-driven. By closely tracking performance metrics and continuously testing new approaches, you can identify what resonates with your audience and steadily improve results over time. Even small improvements in key metrics can translate to significant revenue gains.

Campaign Monitor’s analytics dashboard allows you to monitor campaign performance in real-time with full engagement reports for metrics like opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. And the A/B testing engine makes it easy to optimize results by testing subject lines, content blocks, or CTAs based on real user behavior.

Read More:

• 17 Email Marketing Metrics Every Marketer Needs to Know
• Email Design: The Best Practices Guide (+ Bonus Checklist)
• The Power of Email Personalization to Reach Humans (Not Just Inboxes)