10 Best E-commerce Email Marketing Strategies You Should Start Using Now

There are plenty of e-commerce marketing channels available to grow your business, such as social media, PPC, SEO, and network marketing.

Successful e-commerce business owners, though, know that email marketing is one of the most profitable channels available.

Let’s take a look at “what is e-commerce email marketing?” and why e-commerce businesses should use it.

Finally, we’ll delve into the 10 best e-commerce email marketing strategies that you can implement immediately for great results.

What Is E-Commerce Email Marketing?

E-commerce email marketing is a marketing channel that enables you to send marketing messages to current and potential customers. 

The strategies you use can be simple, like sending a weekly email blast with featured products, or complex—with multiple automated email series for cart abandonment, customer re-engagement, and exclusive membership deals.

Either way, the ultimate goal is to increase customer engagement and drive conversions.

Why Should E-Commerce Businesses Do Email Marketing?

As an e-commerce business owner, you’ve probably heard the sales pitch for just about every marketing channel there is. 

You may even dabble in email marketing currently, but perhaps you don’t understand just how valuable a tool it is to your sales strategy.

Email marketing is a unique process in that, unlike social media or SEO, you own every piece of the funnel. Most importantly, you own the email subscriber list.

Why is that so important? With 4 billion daily email users (which will climb to 4.6 billion by 2025), you can’t afford to miss this incredible opportunity.

Through email marketing strategies, an e-commerce business can benefit from brand awareness, customer engagement, and high-intent customers. We also can’t ignore the conversion rate boosts that e-commerce businesses see when they implement a solid email marketing strategy, with the best ROI when compared to other marketing channels. 

With an average of $36 earned for every $1 spent, that’s a whopping 3,600 percent ROI!

How to Do Email Marketing

While much of this article will focus on email marketing strategies for active marketers, we understand that not every e-commerce business is yet set up for email marketing. 

If that’s you and you are completely brand new to email marketing, here are the steps you should take first:

  1. Set realistic and sustainable goals to grow your business, such as building an email list or improving customer retention by X percent.
  2. Select an email marketing software like MailChimp or Constant Contact.
  3. Map out your initial campaigns (e.g., welcome series, abandoned cart series, or new product launches.)
  4. Decide how you’ll collect email addresses. Many e-commerce companies offer a small coupon in exchange for email addresses.
  5. Set up landing pages as needed for campaigns.
  6. Set up campaign tracking with your chosen analytics provider.

Take the time to establish a firm foundation and you’ll be off to a better start than even many seasoned e-commerce businesses.

Best E-Commerce Email Marketing Strategies

Whether you’re new to email marketing or you’re looking to optimize your current setup, our best e-commerce email marketing strategies will provide you with a solid foundation to build your email marketing empire.

1. Start With a Welcome Series

For the best impression with new subscribers, establish a welcome email series. This gives you a chance to share your brand story, highlight your best products, and even offer a discount to drive sales.

Beyond that, a welcome series drives serious engagement. With an average open rate of 68.59 percent and an average click-through rate of 16.05 percent, a welcome series is a great part of your larger email marketing campaign.

Why?

First and foremost, a welcome series implies more than one email. Two or three emails is the sweet spot and anything beyond that is considered “spammy” and may scare off new subscribers.

With two emails, you have the chance to welcome the customer and invite them to connect. With three emails, you have the chance to do the previous two while also getting to know the customer more personally.

Take, for example, the NewEgg welcome series below which welcomes the customer and then invites them to connect with the mobile app:

Best E-Commerce Email Marketing Strategies - Start With a Welcome Series
Ecommerce Email Marketing - newegg welcome email

Whether you choose two or three emails, you want to be sure to include a few key elements in each email. 

The initial welcome email should:

  • thank the subscriber
  • welcome them to the brand
  • let them know what to look forward to in future emails

If you made a promise upon sign-up, like a discount, that needs to be included as well. 

The second welcome email should then:

  • give subscribers a further way to connect through mobile apps or social media
  • focus on the value you or your products can provide to their lives
  • tell them why they should purchase

2. Be Sure to Include a Clear Call to Action

What do you want your subscribers to do? 

Whether that’s reading your latest blog post, watching a promotional video, or buying your newest product, your customers should know exactly what you want.

A call to action, or CTA, is a prompt given to users in a newsletter, on a website, or in a video. The prompt is usually a button or hyperlink that will help the user to achieve the goal.

According to Unbounce, including just one clear CTA in emails boosts clicks by 371 percent and sales by 1617 percent.

When it comes to effective CTAs, clear and concise is the way to go.

Create a compelling call-to-action for your email marketing campaigns by:

  1. Knowing the end goal.
  2. Using action-oriented words.
  3. Addressing your audience in the first person.
  4. Keeping your messaging short and snappy.
  5. Adopting a conversational tone.

You should also A/B test your calls to action regularly. 

This means testing variations of your most used calls to action to see what elements your users respond to best. This includes verbs, button shape and color, length, and word order.

Unbounce saw an increase of 90 percent in their click-through rate just by changing “Start your free 30-day trial” to “Start my free 30-day trial.”

3. Use Personalization to Segment Your List

When is the last time you received an email that was specifically tailored to you? 

If you’re like most people, that email had a greater chance of compelling you to act. 

In fact, personalized promotional emails lift transaction rates and revenue six times higher than non-personalized emails.

Personalized marketing has three categories: contextual, demographic, and behavioral.

  • Contextual personalization utilizes where a customer is in their journey. For example, just beginning to research the topic or being ready to make a buying decision.
  • Demographic personalization utilizes demographic information such as age, gender, location, and household income level to inform recommendations.
  • Behavioral personalization is the use of past purchases or website behavior (e.g., abandoned carts). Consider this email from Etsy that advertises products based on past purchases:
Best E-Commerce Email Marketing Strategies - Use Personalization to Segment Your List

Depending on the size of your email list, you can even combine these categories to create intersections. Try combining past purchases with new location-based recommendations.

As your segmentation becomes more specific, the marketing campaigns will become more personalized and, more likely than not, successful.

4. Automate What You Can

Campaign Monitor found that automated emails create 320 percent more revenue than non-automated emails. 

Therefore, automated email campaigns can be an invaluable tool in your overall marketing strategy. 

From welcome series to cart abandonment to transactional emails to re-engagement campaigns, automated emails for e-commerce can level up your email marketing strategy.

Any email marketing software worth its weight will publish advice to help you automate your emails. 

Klaviyo, for example, has various blog posts on topics such as automation flows to consider. It also has an automation user guide so you can set up your flows successfully.

5. Create a Dynamic Cart Abandonment Series

A cart abandonment series can be one of your most profitable series. 

With an average open rate of 41.18 percent and a click rate of 9.50 percent, abandonment emails have a great opportunity for conversion.

When creating one, consider:

  1. The number of emails in the series: Three or four emails typically work best.
  2. The frequency of and intervals between each email: Try sending one email an hour after the cart abandonment, another the day after, and your final one three days later.
  3. Discounts to offer: If you want to secure a sale, try offering a discount code on the products they have in their cart.
  4. Subject lines: Subject lines strongly influence the CTR of your cart abandonment series, and can make sure your audience opens their email and reads the information you’re providing.
  5. Calls to action: Your CTA needs to convince your prospective customers to return to their carts. 

Additionally, your cart abandonment series can be a great place to personalize. The obvious one here is to include the products left behind in the cart like Chewy does below:

Best E-Commerce Email Marketing Strategies - Create a Dynamic Cart Abandonment Series

6. Perform Split Testing

How do you know whether your email campaigns are as effective as possible? 

Without split testing, you don’t!

Split testing (sometimes called A/B testing) is a marketing strategy that pits two or more similar variations of an element against one another. 

For example, a split test may test the efficiency of two CTA buttons, one black with white text and one white with black text. 

The goal is to find the best variations of common email elements to ensure that your emails have the greatest return on investment—such as testing user experience design elements. 

This can result in better conversion rates of up to 400 percent. 

Try to test:

  • subject lines
  • preview text
  • product imagery
  • layout 
  • image size
  • font size
  • font color
  • button color
  • send day and time
  • copy
  • pricing and discounts
  • social media icons

When it comes to running successful split tests, there are some ground rules to follow:

  1. Stick with one variable at a time.
  2. Identify your goal.
  3. Know your “control” and your “challenger.”
  4. Split your groups equally and randomly.
  5. Decide significance parameters.

Once you have statistically significant (as determined by you) results in hand, it’s time to implement changes if necessary.

7. Use Email to Encourage Engagement

We’ve touched briefly on engagement in the welcome series section. However, engagement emails don’t need to be reserved only for welcome email campaigns.

Email newsletters offer a unique opportunity to capture your audience. This is especially true if open rates are high but click-through rates are lacking.

Segment your audience according to their engagement, and deliver appropriate messages accordingly.

Subscribers who have previously converted, for example, are 74.7 percent more likely to do so again. 

Here, you would want to capitalize on brand trust. Ask yourself: 

“Why did the customer buy from me before. Why should they do so again?”

This would be a good opportunity for a product recommendations email based on their previous purchase. 

If it’s a consumable product, then a subscription offer email is easy enough. If it’s a non-consumable product, then a complementary product email is a safe bet.

For subscribers yet to convert, focus on building brand trust and offer discounts to make a purchase less risky.

8. Offer Exclusive Experiences and Rewards to Loyal Subscribers

Segmentation makes it easier to personalize emails and reward loyal customers. 

By segmenting your email list by longtime subscribers or the greatest money spent, you can provide an exclusive experience that makes them feel valued by your brand.

Notice I say experience and reward as opposed to discount. 

Can a discount be a reward? Absolutely. However, discounts do have a downside. In particular, they can cheapen your brand’s value, especially in the eyes of loyal customers.

A loyal customer knows the value of your product. 

Instead of a discount offer, consider an experiential reward. This is also backed by millennial spending habits. After all, 78 percent of millennials would rather spend their money on an experience than a product. 

  • Give away once-in-a-lifetime trips.
  • Offer meet and greet events with brand ambassadors.
  • Make a brilliant rewards program.
  • Design a top-tier social media group where you host virtual events.

9. Set Up Back In Stock or Wishlist Emails

We’ve touched on the importance of automated emails, and we’ve even covered two automated campaigns in particular:

  1. A welcome series.
  2. A cart abandonment series. 

The next on our list to highlight is the back-in-stock (or “wishlist” emails.)

With recent constraints on the supply chain, more brands than ever have had item stocking and inventory troubles. 

You can either waste an opportunity by removing temporarily unavailable items from your website, or you can capitalize on customer wants with back-in-stock emails.

As the name suggests, back-in-stock emails alert customers when a product they expressed interest in is back in stock and available to purchase. 

Depending on your platform, a back-in-stock email option may be a product page feature or it may require additional configuration (and add-ons like an app). 

However much effort it takes on your part, the return is worth it!

According to a study by Barilliance, back-in-stock emails had the highest open rate (65.32 percent) when compared to alternative post-purchase emails.

10. Utilize Dynamic Content

We already know that personalization drives conversions. 

The same can be said for a subset of personalization known as dynamic content, which has been shown to increase email ROI by 100 percent!

So, what is dynamic content?

Dynamic content is personalized content generated based on user signals:

  1. Product recommendations based on past purchases or previously viewed products.
  2. Calls to action tailored to the user’s browsing behaviors. 
  3. Free exclusive offers (such as ebooks and white papers) for someone in the “research” stage of the buyer’s journey.

With most major email marketing software companies, dynamic content will be an impressive addition to most e-commerce email templates. 

E-Commerce Email Templates

Here are a few e-commerce email templates to help you build your e-commerce email marketing campaigns.

1. Welcome Email Template

This welcome email template combines clean lines combined with pops of color to be striking and eye-catching. When customizing it, make sure to use the large “featured image” space for a friendly brand image or a featured product lifestyle relevant to you.

Ecommerce Email Templates - Welcome Email Template

2. Abandoned Cart Email Template

The creative, clean design of this abandoned cart email template is great for any e-commerce site. Stylized text and a large product image make it easy to read, drawing attention to the humorous copy.

Ecommerce Email Templates - Abandoned Cart Email Template

3. Discount Email Template

Make your big sales event known with this beautifully stylized email template. Featuring bold text and modules for product imagery, your customers will easily see the value in your offer. 

Ecommerce Email Templates - Discount Email Template

4. Product Recommendations Email Template

Let your product recommendations do the talking with this image-heavy recommendations email template. The faux navigation also adds a standout touch that makes your readers feel as if they’re shopping your website.

Ecommerce Email Templates - Product Recommendations Email Template

5. Follow-Up Email Template

With a clean, streamlined design, this follow-up email template is ideal for soliciting post-purchase feedback from your customers. 

Ecommerce Email Templates - Follow-up Email Template

E-Commerce Email Marketing Frequently Asked Questions

How much should I make from e-commerce email marketing?

What you earn from e-commerce email marketing is relative to what you invest. With an average of ROI $36 earned for every $1 spent, you’re likely to earn more from e-commerce email marketing than most (if not all) other marketing channels.

How does e-commerce use email marketing?

E-commerce relies heavily on email marketing as a way to connect with both current and prospective customers. It’s used as a way to promote new products, communicate exclusive offers and deals, and engage with the target audience.

How do I start e-commerce email marketing?

To start e-commerce email marketing, all you need is an email marketing software, some e-commerce email templates, and one or two fully fleshed-out campaigns. The rest will fall into place as you grow your subscriber list.

How important is email marketing for e-commerce companies?

Email marketing is a critical part of any effective e-commerce marketing strategy. Without email marketing, you could be leaving tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.

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Conclusion: E-Commerce Email Marketing

Whether you’re a new or seasoned e-commerce business owner, email marketing should have a large part to play in your overall marketing strategy. 

It’s not difficult to get started, and once you do you now have the best strategies in hand to make your campaigns a success. 

To recap, the 10 strategies you should implement in your e-commerce email marketing strategy are:

  1. Start with a welcome series.
  2. Be sure to include a clear call to action.
  3. Use personalization to segment your list.
  4. Automate what you can.
  5. Create a dynamic cart abandonment series.
  6. Perform split testing.
  7. Use email to encourage engagement.
  8. Offer exclusive experiences and rewards to loyal subscribers.
  9. Set up back in stock or waitlist emails.
  10. Utilize dynamic content.

With these strategies in place, you’ll know that you’re doing everything you can for boosting engagement and conversions.

Which of the above strategies are you most excited to implement in your email marketing strategy?

How to Use Transcription Services to Repurpose Your Content

Keeping your audience engaged with your content is a full-time job in itself. You must constantly evaluate your current content’s engagement metrics while also anticipating the needs of your growing audience.

With this in mind, new and updated content is crucial to any successful digital marketer’s strategy. How can you generate new content without spending more time than you have available? With transcription services.

In this guide, I’ll explain what transcription services are and what they can do for digital marketers. This will include a look at one particular use case—repurposing content—to give you an idea of just how valuable these services can be.

What Are Transcription Services?

Transcription services are business services that transcribe audio to text. The audio is most often pre-recorded and is then transferred to transcription professionals, who are trained in shorthand. They are able to quickly and accurately transcribe audio from many different sources.

You also have the option of AI-powered transcription tools, such as Otter and Rev. These services combine AI with trained professionals to deliver a top-notch experience.

From podcasts and videos to workshops and live speeches, a transcription service can help you to preserve your audio in text format. This can later be used for reference or, as I’ll outline below, as a way to repurpose your marketing content.

When are Transcription Services Used

Transcription services are most often used by physicians, scientists, researchers, and other technical professionals. Their spoken notes are transcribed into written notes and reports that can be used for reference or recordkeeping.

When you think of transcription, you may also think of court proceedings and police investigations. These, too, are used for recordkeeping (often public record) and as a way to make the proceedings accessible to all.

However, transcription can offer great benefits to digital marketers, too. One of the most effective ways to use transcription is to repurpose content and create high-value content in multiple formats.

5 Ways to Use Transcription Services to Repurpose Your Content

There are plenty of benefits transcription services can provide to digital marketers, and repurposing of content is just one. Here are five ways you can use transcription to expertly repurpose your content.

1. Turn a Video Into a Blog Post

Whether a new or established digital marketer, I can safely assume you never feel as if you’re hitting your weekly or monthly blog post targets. By transcribing your videos into blog posts, you can get that much closer to reaching your goal.

How many posts should you publish a week? According to HubSpot, the sweet spot can be anywhere from one post to five posts per week.

how often should you blog graphic for transcription services to repurpose content

However, this will depend on the size of your website and what you hope to achieve. For a small website with a goal of maximizing organic traffic, for example, three to four new posts per week is recommended.

Another benefit of turning videos into blog posts is accessibility. While many digital media platforms offer closed captioning, they aren’t always the ideal way to digest content. By turning videos into blog posts, you can ensure all of your traffic has access to your content in multiple ways.

Of course, you should aim to bulk up these blog posts in ways that benefit the readers. These include using visuals (e.g., images, infographics, charts) and adding more in-depth examples.

The transcription should serve as a starting point to creating engaging, valuable blog posts.

2. Turn a Podcast Into a Video or Blog Post

You don’t need to forfeit multimedia content entirely! You can “upgrade” your podcast to a video using transcription services. Just add some visuals and you can now share to digital media platforms like YouTube and Vimeo.

The greatest benefit here is the ability to reach a wider audience. While there is certainly crossover between podcast listeners and video watchers, there are some people who stick strictly to one format. By turning your podcast into a video (or vice versa), you open your content up to a whole new audience.

You have a few options here when it comes to adding visuals to your videos. The simplest is using one image (perhaps a solid background with your brand and website URL) throughout the entirety of the video. This isn’t appealing, but it will enable you to add your content to sites like YouTube.

For more appealing visuals, you can also try stock photos, digital imagery, or even b-roll.

How can you ensure the visuals you use are appropriate and appealing to your audience? Search YouTube for similar content keywords to see what types of videos your target audience is currently engaging with. This can ensure you are on the right track, while also giving you ideas on how to improve your content over the current offerings.

Or, you can turn your podcast into a blog post.

For example, Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Pulizzi hosts a podcast, then turns the transcript into a detailed blog post. This allows users who don’t have time to listen to still access their content.

podcast into blog post example of using transcription services

3. Create a List-Building PDF

Do you have a video or podcast episode that would make great list-building content? Then consider hiring a transcriptionist to turn that content into text. 

List-building content, also known as lead magnets, are a great way to build your email subscription list. It is an offer of free content in exchange for an email address. However, it is not as easy to attract people to your list-building content as it was before everyone had a website. Your content must be truly compelling and high-quality.

There are plenty of lead magnet formats to choose from, including:

  • checklists
  • cheat sheets
  • e-books
  • infographics
  • case studies
  • white papers

Using a unique angle, you can use the above formats to attract a targeted audience. With such an array of content types, it’s likely you have a video or podcast episode that can easily be transformed into one of the above.

4. Build a Resource for Social Media Content

There’s bound to be a Tweet-worthy quote or two from your latest podcast episode. Instead of replaying the episode and scrubbing through it, turn the episode into a transcript. This will make it incredibly easy to find social media content to share.

Without the need to scour your audio, you can now spend that time creating attractive visuals using platforms like Canva or Adobe Spark. These services allow you to create the ideal visuals for each social media platform, and they even include templates to get you started.

Do keep in mind the cost of transcription services may increase if your episode includes more than one person. This can take time and skill to navigate. On the other hand, the added benefit of transcribing multi-guest content is that multiple speakers can add refreshing insight to your social media pages, especially if the guest has their own social profile to engage with your audience.

5. Create an E-Course

If you want to create a substantive course, then consider combining multiple videos or podcast episodes on a similar topic. The resulting e-course can then be offered as a lead magnet or even a paid course.

With platforms like Kajabi and Thinkific, you can host your online course with ease. How can you ensure the course you create is profitable? The steps to creating a successful online course include:

  1. Choosing a fail-proof, high-demand topic.
  2. Creating compelling course objectives.
  3. Structuring your course modules effectively.
  4. Choosing a platform to host the course.
  5. Marketing your course strategically.

As a paid course, the content should be of exceptional quality and it should go in-depth. Transcriptions of your previous content will be helpful to create an outline, but you should really dig deep and build out the content as best you can.

Before you employ a transcriptionist, take special care to pick your best audio and video episodes for transcription. These will form the basis of your course, but they’ll of course need to be bulked up with further examples, imagery, and more.

Transcription Services Frequently Asked Questions

Transcription is invaluable to digital marketers, but perhaps you still have a few questions. Let’s go over them.

How much does it cost to get a transcription of your content?

The cost to transcribe your content will vary. Consider that transcriptionists have various ways of charging for their work (e.g., per hour, by project) and rates will vary by experience level, location, and more.

How long does it take to transcribe audio?

Just as with cost, the length of time it takes to transcribe your audio will vary. The industry standard is two to three hours per one hour of audio. However, that assumes the audio quality is clear with little to no background noise.

Do transcribers use software?

Even professional transcriptionists rely on software to ensure efficiency and accuracy. With tools like Amberscript and Happy Scribe, you (or your editors) can collaborate with your transcriptionist in real-time. This ensures a seamless transcription experience.

Are transcription services accurate?

As with most services, you get what you pay for. The same can be said for transcription software tools, as well. The more experienced your transcriptionist (or advanced the software you use), the more accurate the transcriptions are likely to be. 

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Repurposing Transcriptions for Content Conclusion

Your audience craves new and updated content on a regular basis. While this can seem a daunting task, audio transcription services can offer a solution.

With transcription, you can turn your audio content into text. This text can then be repurposed into other forms of content, including blog posts, social media content, and online courses. Transcribed content can help you to satisfy the needs of your growing traffic numbers, while also providing accessible content so as to reach a wider audience.

Depending on the quality of the services you use, you may not even need to spend much time editing the transcription. This will save you immeasurable time while also expanding your reach as a digital marketer.

Which of the above content formats will you transform your audio content into?

How to Create Stellar Niche Paid Ad Campaigns

If you’ve been creating paid ad campaigns for a while, you’ve likely noticed how competitive online advertising has become. Businesses are spending more and more money on paid ad campaigns to attract a growing number of online users

However, it’s important to recognize not everyone is in your target audience. There are a billion social media users, but your business may only be relevant for a few thousand. 

It’s time to stop wasting money advertising to users who will never convert. Instead, you need to find your “ideal” users and create stellar niche paid ad campaigns to convert them. 

Paid Media Vs. Owned Media Vs. Earned Media in Niche Markets

It is easy to confuse the terms (paid media, owned media, and earned media), as they all pertain to marketing, but address different types of ads. 

When you pay money to a third-party channel like a regional magazine to advertise your business, it’s called “paid media.”

Here is an example of paid media on Twitter.

Niche paid ad campaign on Twitter posted by Morris Garages India.

If you post photos, videos, and other types of online content about your company on your owned social media channels, it’s called “owned media.” 

Here is an example of owned media. 

How to Create Stellar Niche Paid Ad Campaigns - Paid vs. Owned Media (Owned Media Example)

When people organically feature your content (without you paying for it), it’s called “earned media.”

These include:

  • sharing your business post on their LinkedIn Page
  • retweeting your content
  • posting photos and videos about your products and services on their personal blog, etc. 

This graphic by Oneupweb further explains the differences between paid media, owned media, and earned media: 

Niche Paid Ad Campaigns - Venn diagram of media campaigns

How to Create a Successful Niche Paid Media Campaign

Now you know you shouldn’t market your business to everyone, so your next question is how do you find the right audience so you can focus your ads (and ad spend) on the right audience. 

We’ll discuss and answer those and other niche paid media campaign questions next. 

1. Identify/Research Your Target Audience

Identifying your target audience is one of the most important steps to launch a successful niche paid media campaign. 

Don’t know where to start? Here are a few ways to research your target demographics effectively. 

Create a Buyer Persona

What does your target audience want? Find out by creating a buyer persona. Build an example profile of your ideal customer. 

What is their age? Which social media sites do they use? Why do they want to buy your product? What problem do they want to solve? 

Answering these questions will help you add nuance to your profile. 

Work With Pain Points 

The key to success when creating a buyer persona is not in having a comprehensive psychological profile of your audience, but rather knowing their pain points so you can present your business as a solution. 

Make a list of things that bother your target customer, and see how you can position your products and services as a “relief.” 

For instance, the team behind Tinder, a popular dating service, may market themselves to young adults who feel lonely by positioning their brand as a way to meet new people and form meaningful connections. 

Niche Paid Ad Campaigns - Tinder's buyer persona reflected in the description

2. Determine a Campaign Budget

Once you identify your target audience, it’s time to start working on the niche paid media campaign. 

Start by thinking about your budget. Don’t set an arbitrary figure that you “think” will be enough. Look at the hard data. 

Ask questions like: 

  • What were your sales in the last few months? 
  • What is the return on investment from previous niche paid ad campaigns? 
  • What is your company’s financial position at this moment?

This may help you come up with a number that offers plenty to work with without overspending. 

It also helps if you know which platform you want to work with. Look at the advertising rates on Instagram, Facebook, Google, or whatever other channel you want to use. 

Here are factors to consider when setting a budget for your niche paid media campaign.

  • cost per click/view/conversion on different platforms
  • typical return on investment for every dollar spent
  • the percentage of your target demographic using the particular platform 

Pay attention to where most of your customers come from—that platform will be a good place to start. 

3. Identify Your Paid Media Goals

Setting goals for your niche paid media campaigns helps you track, measure, and improve their performance. 

For best results, remember to set SMART goals. These are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. 

For instance, setting a goal to attract 1 million YouTube subscribers through Facebook marketing isn’t “SMART.” 

A better alternative could be: 

“Our team will spend 3 hours per weekday posting 1 video on our official Facebook page at 4 pm when the audience is most active, and spend $20 promoting it through Facebook ads with a long-term goal of attracting 50K YouTube subscribers over the next six months.”

4. Choose Your Paid Media Format

The right paid media format will depend on your target audience research, budget, campaign goals, and brand. 

Display ads work well for businesses that want to catch the user’s eye. Restaurants, fashion brands, and tourism companies often use display ad campaigns to showcase their businesses. 

Paid ads like the ones you see on Google (see below) are ideal for text-focused businesses like writing services, digital marketing teams, law, and agencies.

Niche Paid Ad Campaigns - Paid ad campaign on Google

Another option for niche paid ad campaigns could be influencer partnerships. An increasing number of businesses are working with people with large social media followings to promote their products. 

They are often effective because: 

  • Influencer campaigns can be personalized.
  • They increase brand awareness through word of mouth.
  • They help you build trust and credibility by leveraging somebody else’s audience loyalty. 

As a niche business, however, I’d recommend looking for micro-influencers with more targeted audiences. They tend to charge less but give you access to a carefully curated audience. 

5. Choose Your Ad Platform

Once you narrow down your niche paid media campaign goals, audience, and format, you need to choose a suitable platform. This could be social media apps like Facebook, or search engines like Google. 

I don’t recommend using all the platforms at once, as it can be difficult to master the nuances and optimize multiple campaigns at the same time. 

Instead, pick one or two that seem most relevant for your business. 

For instance, a photography business may see better results with a niche paid media campaign on Instagram compared to Twitter, since users interested in photography are more likely to use photo-focused platforms like Instagram

If you want to create an interactive campaign, use chat-focused platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and even Reddit. These tend to be more active and promote engagement due to their user-friendly setup. 

Platforms like this work well for giveaways and contests where you need a lot of audience interaction and informal sharing. 

While it’s crucial to create well-developed niche paid ad campaigns on one or two platforms, diversifying your efforts is also important. This doesn’t mean using all the platforms. 

Instead, diversifying your marketing efforts means experimenting with different formats (see the section above), changing the type of content you post (photos vs. videos), and occasionally cross-posting on different pages. 

6. Create Your Paid Ad Campaign Copy

No matter which platform you use and what your budget is, the results of your niche paid ad campaign come down to your ad copy. 

The key lies in making sure your ad copy is engaging, appealing, and offers enough information to drive the viewer to click. 

If you’re not sure where to start, here are the essential elements to include: 

  • what your business is about 
  • pain points of your customer
  • why or how your business is a solution 
  • why you and not your competitor 
  • what action the reader needs to take (subscribe, share, etc.)
  • what is the time commitment (for example, download in one click)

I also wrote a whole post on PPC ad copywriting to help you create engaging copy. 

7. Get Very Specific With Targeting 

You’ve decided on a platform, format, budget, audience, ad copy, and your campaign is ready. What next?

You need to get specific with your targeting.

Remember, not everyone is your audience. How do you make sure your ad is reaching the right people? 

Most advertising platforms offer detailed targeting options for your niche paid media campaigns. 

For example, Facebook offers pretty robust options for targeting your campaign to a very niche group of people. 

Facebook offers various targeting options for niche paid media campaigns.

Use these options to set targeting settings based on your buyer persona, as discussed in the first section of this article. 

Instagram, Reddit, Google Ads, and others have similar targeting options. 

8. Target High-Intent Keywords

An important part of targeting your marketing efforts includes using high-intent keywords

How do you find suitable high-intent keywords for your business? It’s all about keyword research. 

Look at your competitors. What are they using? How are they using these keywords? Which ones are and aren’t suitable for your business? Which keywords can form a solid base for your niche paid ad campaign? 

You can also use online tools like Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, and Moz Keyword Research for better results. 

3 Bonus Tips for Successful Niche Paid Media Campaigns

Now you’ve learned how to create stellar niche paid ad campaigns. Here are fast tips that will help your campaigns get better results. 

1. Personalize Your Niche Campaigns

Studies show using someone’s name can have a powerful attention-grabbing effect. Use your readers’ names in the ad copy, especially if it’s a newsletter or a sign-up form, so they feel more connected to your brand

Consider using dynamic keyword insertion, which adjusts copy and images based on user behavior. 

2. Include Videos in Your Ad Campaigns 

Reports show people remember messages delivered via a video better than messages read through text (blogs). Leverage this finding by incorporating more videos in your niche paid ad campaigns. 

You don’t need 15-minute videos to get good results. Even a 2-minute video is great for grabbing attention

3. Leverage Ad Retargeting

If your targeting efforts are fairly successful and you see users partially converting (subscribing but not buying, or adding items to the card but not completing the transaction), use retargeting. 

Retargeting options on platforms like Facebook and Shopify let you offer gentle nudges to users. 

You can also retarget users who bought from you once but may have dropped off the radar now. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Niche Paid Media Campaigns

Are Niche Paid Campaigns More Expensive?

Niche paid ad campaigns are not more expensive than typical ad campaigns. In fact, they may be cheaper because you’re advertising to a smaller pool of people. 

How to Make Niche Campaigns More Effective?

You can make niche paid ad campaigns more effective by leveraging influencer marketing, using intent-based keywords, doing thorough market research, and continually monitoring and improving the content and performance of your campaigns. 

How Do I Incorporate Pain Points in Paid Media Campaigns?

Create a thorough buyer persona to understand your target user’s needs and pain points. You can also use surveys, track online activity, or simply ask frequent users about their key concerns to get in-depth information about customer pain points. 

How Do You Retarget Users in Niche Paid Media Campaigns?

Use online tools offered by Facebook, Shopify, and Instagram to retarget past users with new ad campaigns. You can also use “abandoned card recovery” features to retarget users who browsed through your products and added them to the cart but didn’t finish the transaction. 

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Niche Paid Media Conclusion

If targeted correctly, niche paid media campaigns are often cheaper and more effective. 

Using simple strategies like the ones listed above may help you find your target audience, convert more users, and stand out from the competition. 

If you’d like more resources about creating paid ad campaigns or need more help to get started, check out hundreds of free blog posts on my website, or reach out for personalized help

Which niche paid media campaign strategy will you try using today?

New comment by jhartzmark in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2021)"

Revelle | Lead Engineer | Product Manager | NYC (Onsite post-covid) | Full-Time

Revelle is a personalized online shopping platform helping women find clothes that actually fit. Our mission is to help women feel beautiful in their bodies every day and fight back against the outdated beauty standards of the fashion industry. We’ve seen incredible growth on the platform and are looking for engineers to take ownership of our stack and bring our technical infrastructure to the next level.

We use: Python, Django, PHP, React, HTML, CSS, WordPress, AWS

Current team is 7 women. Lead Engineer will be first full-time engineering hire who will be able to hire team under them.

Interested? Email joanna@revellenation.com or learn more here: https://revellenation.com/ and https://revellenation.com/jobs/lead-engineer/

Contact Us Page Tips: Move From Blah to Yeah!

A visitor hits your website and wants to talk to you. What does that person start searching for?

Your Contact Us page.

It’s a page on your site that pushes visitors from browser to buyer.

Contact Us pages are among the most underutilized and misunderstood resources on the web today.

Some companies don’t use them at all, and those that do have them often push these critical pages to the back burner during website revision projects.

That stops today.

I’ll share a step-by-step plan you can follow to strategize and revise this lowly web page. And I’ll use plenty of examples to spark your creativity.

Let’s get started.

What Is a Contact Us Page?

Think of a Contact Us page as a sort of digital business card. Sure, it’s short and concise. But if someone wants to reach out to you, they’ll use this page to do so.

Contact Us pages often get lumped in with other critical website resources, including:

  • About Us pages: Use this resource to explain your company’s history, goals, and direction. If someone wants to know how you became a leader in your field, the data is ready to go.
  • Help pages: Customers with critical product or service questions lean on this page to get their answers.
  • Employment pages: Job seekers need private, protected spaces to learn more about open opportunities.

A Contact Us page is different because you’re telling people more about getting in touch with you.

Your page should also embody your brand and entice that click. If your Contact Us page is the blandest one on your website, you’re not alone. The best contact us pages contain some value proposition, even when they don’t have a lot of text.

Do You Need a Contact Us Page?

A Contact Us page can’t be skipped because it is a trust signal. Share location information and highlight your phone number and email, and you’ll demonstrate to wary consumers that they can reach you at any time.

Trust and transparency matter in marketing. Contact Us pages start the process.

Five Key Contact Us Page Elements

You know you need a Contact Us page. But you have no idea what to put on the page. Push past the writer’s block, and follow this recipe for success.

A converting Contact Us page contains these critical pieces:

  1. Your company name: Don’t beat around the bush. Use your full company name.
  2. Your physical address: This can get tricky for multi-location companies. Maps often solve the problem (and more on that in a minute). If you share only one address, use the one associated with your corporate headquarters.
  3. A map to your location: Google Maps hold immense power for marketers. When customers know where you are, even when they’re looking at a mobile device, your conversion rates can skyrocket. Boost that power by adding a Google Map to your Contact Us page.
  4. Your contact information: Include a phone number, email address, and a quick data-collection form. Customers need plenty of calls to action. Fight off spam with a CAPTCHA as well.
  5. Links to relevant pages: If you know customers have product questions, show them to your Help page. If you have plenty of job seekers, highlight that Jobs page.

Don’t be tempted to clutter up the page with more details and data. Keep things clean and streamlined with this list.

Build the Perfect Contact Us Form

If you’re looking for a way to streamline customer conversations, forms are key. If you build forms correctly, routing questions is a snap.

Your form could include several fields, including:

  • Name
  • Location
  • Current customer (Y/N)
  • Question
  • Email address
  • Phone number

You might be tempted to add all of these fields to your form. The more data you have, the better, right?

Not always.

When customers face a sea of questions, they tend to click away. Form completion rates and added fields are inversely related.

To keep those conversion rates up and deliver exceptional user experience, only ask critical questions.

10 Exceptional Contact Us Page Examples

I’ve talked a lot about what should and shouldn’t go on a Contact Us page.

These ten companies have lessons anyone can apply.

Streamlined and Simple: Scorpion

Scorpion offers internet marketing services to law firms, hospitals, franchises, and more. The company shows off robust design skills on all other web pages. But this one is remarkable in its simplicity.

Customers answer one simple question with a dropdown. The answer routes them to an appropriate secondary form.

Scorpion contact us page example

Customers can also skip the hassle of forms altogether, call the number in the top-right corner of the screen, or visit one of three locations listed at the bottom of the page.

Brand Promise First: BarkBox

A subscription service for happy dogs should have a dog’s photo on a Contact Us page. And that dog should look happy. BarkBox has that element covered.

barkbox contact us page example

Customers have three different contact options sitting below that big image. They can search FAQs, start a live chat, or send an email. It’s a simple, streamlined interface made for busy dog lovers.

Personality Plus: Kick Point

This Canadian marketing firm kicks off the About Us page with a chatty, conversational tone.

Keep scrolling, and that clever voice keeps speaking. When you reach the bottom of this page, you know just how these employees talk and write.

kick point contact us page example
another kick point contact us page example

The cleverness doesn’t impede clear communication. You’re told the company’s address, email address, phone number, and more.

Crisis Communication: Powell’s Books

Powell’s puts customer communication front and center on this Contact Us page. Timely content about shipping delays comes first. Keep scrolling, and you’re taken to email addresses and phone numbers.

powell's contact us page example
powell's books contact us page example

Typically, converting Contact Us pages are short. But you can break the rules when the unexpected happens.

Arresting Graphics: Parker Lee

People hire Parker Lee to design logos, websites, and other branded elements. He puts those skills to work on this visually arresting Contact Us page. The page begins with a brand statement, but scrolling past that is a snap.

parker lee contact us page example
parker lee contact us page example map

A simple form with just four fields appears, and a clever map rounds out the page.

Forms Do the Hard Work: Six Leaf Design

This company emphasizes sales on this Contact Us page. A three-field form, with a tiny multiple-choice quiz, gets potential customers a price quote.

sixleaf contact us page example

A blue button for anxious customers leads right to a 20-minute consult appointment. For companies hoping to emphasize lead generation, this is a smart model to follow.

Friendly Faces: Byte

Who will customers talk to when they reach out? Byte answers this question with photos of real-life customer service reps ready to respond to questions.

byte contact us page example

Choose from multiple contact formats, including text, email, Facebook message, and email. All of this data is streamlined, so white space surrounds the page.

Product Photography: Freshly

Freshly offers meal-kit delivery services, and an enticing product takes up about half of this Contact Us page. Putting the product first could attract customers to jump into a purchase.

freshly contact us page example

The contact box is the clever bit. Customers can chat, call, text, or skip to email.

This is a simple, friendly interface that puts the product first.

Multi-Location Mastery: Wendy’s

How do you handle inquiries when customers have dozens of locations to choose from? Wendy’s handles this question with a “Find Wendy’s” button at the top of the page.

wendys contact us page example

Customers with questions can text or call a number displayed in big, black text. It’s nearly impossible to miss. A clever, short form rounds out the page.

Short and Sweet: My Own

I put best practices to use on my website’s Contact Us page. I use a drop-down to route questions, and I ask customers to fill out just three fields.

I keep the branding light on this page, but the colors remind my guests that they’re still on my site.

neil patel contact us page example

I also link to relevant social media sites to follow me through those platforms. My digital marketing consulting contact form is similar. Short and sweet with just the information I need to know.

Contact Us Page Do’s and Don’ts

We’ve walked through several examples of pages that convert. And we’ve shared quite a few tips you can put to use right now.

But there’s more to learn.

As you’re working on your Contact Us page, be sure to:

  • Be a good journalist. Put the important stuff first. Your visitors are there to connect with you. Make those opportunities easy to find and deliver an exceptional user experience. Save the rest for last.
  • Promote your page like a pro. Put a link to your page in your email signature and link it to your social media accounts. Make sure customers know you’re interested in a connection.
  • Link to your page. Customers look in the top-right corner of a page for Contact Us links. Make sure each page on your site connects to that critical page.

Before you publish your Contact Us page, be sure to avoid:

  • Cluttered design. Don’t fill the space with tons of graphics, jokes, or text blocks. Respect what your consumers are there to do – contact you.
  • Overconfidence. Use A/B testing to find the design your customers want. Don’t be overconfident about your design prowess — you might be surprised by what works!
  • A desktop-first mentality. Test your site on mobile devices. Try out the form fields. Plenty of customers will visit you on the go; make sure their experience is a good one.

It takes time to design a Contact Us page that converts. Don’t be afraid to slow down, test, and head back to the drawing board. You can’t afford to make mistakes on such an essential piece of your website.

Conclusion

Your Contact Us page is one of the most critical assets on your website. People head here when they want to reach you. Make that communication as quick and painless as possible.

Publish with confidence, and watch those conversion rates. If you don’t see the response you want, change it!

With experimentation and vigilance, you can develop the right Contact Us page that works for your customers, your company, and your community.

Is your current Contact Us page lacking? What can you change to make it more effective?

The post Contact Us Page Tips: Move From Blah to Yeah! appeared first on Neil Patel.

Beat any Recession: Build Business Credit in 30 Days

Beat any Recession: Build Business Credit in 30 Days You, too, can beat any recession: build business credit in 30 days! Here’s how and why. Building better business credit means that your small business gets chances you never felt that you would. You can get brand-new equipment, bid on buildings, and cover the company payroll. … Continue reading Beat any Recession: Build Business Credit in 30 Days