28 Oct
The most sustainable e-commerce sales is attributed to email marketing because it involves the management and monetization of the only true asset any online business really owns. Email has the highest LTV of your customers. In marketing, every target audience requires a unique approach to communication, and when it comes to ecommerce, your product image as well as text play a big part. How you present your message to your audience is through the email template you use.
Various technologies or email builders are available for you to design responsive email templates that would look great on any device in minutes (no coding required) to match your goal. These builders allow you to use images, links, texts, and various objects etc. in the development process.
Table of Contents
What is an Ecommerce Email Template and Email builder Builder?
An e-commerce email template is a pre-formatted, reusable and prewritten structure or format that enables you to develop or write your emails by replacing the contents in them with your own. They support email conversions.
An email builder is a software that you can use to create an email template either by drag and drop or editing already made templates in a situation where coding experience is lacking. A builder ensures that you can grab your potential customer’s attention with a professional and attractive looking email.
Benefits of Email Template
With it you are assured of the below:
- Produce quick email campaigns since the underlying code is already created.
- Saves time by adding just contents of an email rather than creating them from scratch.
- Allowance of content substitute like user-specific info which the server replaces with the actual information as it sends out messages.
- Perseverance of your correspondence and no need of worries for possible mistakes on email formatting.
Basic Features of an Email Template
There are three important sections to consider in building any email template for e-commerce purposes:
- The Header – contains the logo and subject title
- The Content – embodiment of the copy, images, offer and related links (landing page).
- The Footer – where the contact information is placed like social media handles, telephone number, address or web URL.
Choosing an Email Template Builder
There are a lot of email template builders which do not require you to have any coding experience, and they enable you to design a highly responsive email template that looks good on all devices. They also enable you to export these templates, which means that you can make use of these templates in any email marketing platforms that you are using. But before choosing anyone of them, look out for the following features:
- Email template builder that allows creating reusable email templates.
- Have premade templates for use (email template libraries).
- Permits edit of contents like texts and themes in its templates.
- Compatible with email clients, can be integrated with email service providers, has a convenient user interface, built-in image editor and email preview.
Then you can now get started by choosing from several different layout options available in your chosen software and customize them to taste.
We Recommend the Following Email Template Builders:
But preferably using an email marketing platform like Klaviyo which has a robust feature for customizing email templates and managing your campaigns can be of more advantage to your business. Klaviyo also successfully delivers images in email templates into the primary inbox of your subscribers more than any other email marketing platforms I have used out there.
How to Customize an Email Template with Builders
After you choose an email builder, you have already gotten started with creating your email template. Once logged in, select a template based on the type of message you want to send and campaign objective (whether is a marketing offer or newsletter, etc.).
Choose an image logo you’d love to use, though this is optional but it is still advisable for user experience. Ensure the chosen image is of high quality and should be cohesive with your message design or theme.
You can now Edit your image for enhancement by resizing, cropping, adding effects, etc. as this functionality is offered by some builders.
Note: remember to keep saving on every process you complete.
Proceed to Add alt attributes and links, simply click on the image to add a descriptive text to it and this would appear in the user’s email inbox only when image display is put off. Also, add links to the image, which would take them to your landing page once clicked on.
Add content sections like the text/copy, other images, buttons for CTAs etc. by dragging and dropping them in the design space. Finally, check preview on mobile to ensure UI/UX in the mobile-index before exporting your template to your desired platform or sending out your emails to target audience or saving it to be re-used for future campaigns.
Note: The kind of email template to create depends on whether you are sending product curation, abandoned cart follow up, limited time offer, discount sale, order confirmation, thank you email, etc.
Key Takeaway
Every idea on starting your email campaign requires you to create a persona which should be based on variations of the target audience you have. So, putting down these inspirations require designing useful emails that can convert your leads into potential customers.
While creating email templates, pay attention to branding because you need to incorporate your brand strategies to gain more trust and authority. This includes setting the logo, accent color, contact information and background color that reflect your brand perception to the target audience.
Then try embedding the Unsubscribe button to grant your subscribers a choice to opt-out from your email campaign listing and giving feedback for doing so. This would help you tailor down to solve your pain points or what you aren’t getting right.
Preferably, you can vary the ordering process by crafting separate emails like add to cart, purchase, placement, shipment, or refund to align with the stages your target audience are in the customer’s journey, this will help to ensure that your emails stay not only beautiful but relevant in content and form thereby resonating better with your target audience. When your emails are relevant and resonate with your audience, you’ll enjoy higher conversions from them.
Furthermore, you can choose to create multiple templates for a particular email campaign then use A/B Split testing tools to determine the most effective template that drives the most email conversion for your business.
As a final note, by simply customizing your ecommerce email templates using any responsive email builder you have higher propensity of producing desired results and making your marketing campaign an absolute success. Take your time, play fair with them, and always keep striving for the best.
