Combining SEO and Email Marketing to Drive E-Commerce Success
Today, you’re in luck because two powerful forces are about to join hands and lead your e-commerce brands to new heights.
Picture this: SEO - one of the grandmasters of customer acquisition, teams up with email marketing - the undisputed champion of customer retention. Together, they form an unbeatable duo that drives growth, engages customers, and boosts your sales! I’m gonna show you how to turn this dream into reality.
SEO: Laying the Foundation for Customer Acquisition
Let's kick things off by diving into the realm of SEO. Search engine optimization is all about enhancing your website's visibility on search engines like Google. Picture it as your trusty map guiding new customers to your virtual doorstep. When customers are on the hunt for products or services, SEO ensures your e-commerce store appears at the top of search results, becoming their destination of choice.
SEO encompasses a plethora of strategies, from keyword research and on-page optimization to link building and content creation. By using the right keywords and crafting valuable content, you attract organic traffic to your website, turning curious visitors into delighted customers. Now, SEO sets the stage for acquiring new customers, but what keeps the show going? Enter email marketing!
Email Marketing: The Heartbeat of Customer Retention
Once SEO has attracted visitors to your e-commerce store, email marketing is the trusty lasso that keeps customers coming back for more. It's all about engaging with your audience and nurturing brand loyalty with personalized experiences, relevant recommendations, and timely promotions.
Through captivating email campaigns sent at regular intervals and behavior-triggered automated emails, email marketing is one of the best tools for creating a long-lasting emotional connection with your customers and ensuring your brand stays top of mind.
What’s the key to successful email marketing? Hiring skilled email marketers who can use perfectly timed emails to plot the perfect customer journey for each new customer you receive. Given that a tiny 5% increase in customer retention leads to a 25% - 95% increase in profit (Source: Bains & Co), email marketing is an area you need to give your full attention to.
The Dynamic Duo: How They Can Complement Each Other
SEO and email marketing may seem like different worlds, but they're more interconnected than you’d expect. Below are some ideas on how to combine them for maximum results.
Nurture Undecided Visitors
There will be many times when a visitor will land on your website thanks to your SEO strategy, but they're not ready to make a purchase just yet. Here’s where you introduce email marketing by collecting their email addresses and nurturing the relationship. Through engaging email campaigns, you keep your brand in their inbox, reminding them of the fantastic products and services you offer.
Before long, not only will the majority of such visitors make their first purchase (as well as their second and third…), but some of them will also help you spread the word to their friends and family - provided your products are actually good, of course. That segways nicely into the second idea.
Grow Your Email List With SEO
On average, email marketing generates an estimated $45 for every $1 spent by e-comm brands. Also, here at RPM, most of our clients get about 40% of their total store revenue coming from email marketing alone. These facts clearly show just how lucrative having an email list is, and it’s why I’m always getting questions on how to grow an email list.
Now, using paid ads to send your target audience to a squeeze page (a landing page built for collecting email addresses) is a great idea, but not every e-comm brand has the budget to fully take advantage of it. SEO, however, is [mostly] free - especially when you’re just starting out in a niche that isn’t oversaturated. Simply add a footer sign up form at the bottom of your website so that visitors can sign up after they finish reading your articles.
You can create this either in your Shopify account or via your email marketing platform (Klaviyo, for example).
An even more superior option is to use pop ups to collect the email addresses. In my experience, pop ups usually convert at more than 5X the rate of footer forms.
Be careful with this one though. Pop ups have to potential to be too disruptive for visitors if they “pop up” too soon. Ensure visitors have finished reading whatever brought them to your website before they see the pop up. To be safe, you can create exit-intent pop ups which trigger only when a visitor attempts to exit your website.
Grow Your SEO Ranking With Email Marketing
Backlinks
Now, I’m no SEO expert, but I know Google absolutely loves a website with a strong backlink profile, and email marketing can be your secret weapon in acquiring quality backlinks.
When you create compelling and educational articles on your website, don’t hesitate to share them with your email subscribers via email campaigns. If the articles provide enough value, some of your subscribers are likely to share them with their friends & family, or even on social media. Each share increases the chances of other websites linking back to yours, boosting your website's authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines like Google.
UGC
Another popular use of email marketing is collecting customer reviews and other forms of User-Generated Content (UGC) from subscribers. Not only does adding UGC to your product listings improve your credibility in the eyes of prospective customers, it’s also one of the surest ways to improve your chances of getting your products listed on the first page of Google.
That’s all for now! I’ve given you a few strategies for combining SEO and email marketing to supercharge both your customer acquisition and customer retention - thereby creating a seamless customer journey that leaves a lasting impact on your customers and driving sustainable growth for your e-comm brand.
RPM is no good at SEO, but when it comes to email marketing, there’s no better team out there. You can get yourself a free, no-obligation email marketing audit by clicking the big orange button below!
