Back in my consulting days, far and away the most repeatably successful deliverable was "Improve a SaaS company's email marketing." I never did it in eCommerce, though, so we asked @lovevalgeisler to drop some knowledge on us. stripe.com/atlas/guides/e…
Interesting, it is my ambient impression that eCommerce shops, which (generally) suffer for lack of development ability, have more sophisticated "informal software" built into their marketing mix than actual software companies do.
Informal software encompasses things like Excel sheets, triggers set up in a email tool or Zapier, integrations between Shopify and MailChimp, advanced use of tagging/segmenting, etc. This is morally software, it just usually doesn't have a design document or live in git.
One of the challenges with email in eCommerce-land is that shops are very heterogenous. For example, some of them have one or a small number of first party products. The success of the shop is selling a product line that they understand _very_ well.
Other eCommerce shops have thousands of SKUs, which might be _curated_ by the store, but the store might have limited ability to predict or influence the user's usage of the product. This is quite common in e.g. fashion or beauty stores.
It's partly because customer usage of the product is opaque to most stores that their marketing automation takes on a lot of the characteristics of an actual software product, such as nudging desired user behaviors via the inbox.
It's tough to pop up a notification on a blouse saying "This really deserves a new handbag, darling. Click here." and so email becomes the channel for that sort of product experience.
That's probably not how fashion people actually talk. My apologies, sincerely; the one time I had a fashion client (prior to making it my iron rule I Work For B2B Software Companies And That Is All) I said something flippant about a general product category.
That was the closest I've ever come to blowing an engagement on my first day. The CEO, quite rightly, was cross. "Do you realize that this is my life's work?" I spent the rest of the day with my mouth shut and ears open about men's fashion. Useful lesson in more ways than 1.
Back to email: most entrepreneurs of my acquaintance radically underestimate the amount of email a customer will happily read *contingent on them being interested in what you are selling.* 90% of good email practice is being very attentive to signals of interest.
Importantly: when a customer signals interest or potential interest, you want to be able to go arbitrarily deep with them over email. If they keep happily consuming, engaging with the content, and buying your stuff... you should keep sending them more email.
(This assumes your product has value. If you are selling a product where consumption is not a good thing for your customer... well, I get the case for sending less email in that instance, but there's an even stronger case for quitting your job today.)
Seasonal promotions really matter in eCommerce. Don't forget holidays, even holidays which aren't that significant to you personally. A _surprising_ amount of business gets done at e.g. Halloween. (Fun fact: best 3 days of the year to sell bingo cards. Ask me how I know.)
Microtactically, almost every Boring Old Transactional Email like a purchase receipt or similar can get improved by a) putting a little more voice in your copywriting and b) a P.S. with a clear next step.
People are happiest with a purchase immediately on making it; that's an excellent time to ask for something like a social share.
Most eCommerce businesses rely on an acquisition engine which burns through a relatively large number of one-and-done purchasers in the search for a smaller core of committed, loyal customers. Devote an appropriate amount of effort to maintaining those relationships.
Also look for signs that someone is in a transitional state for the relationship and, where appropriate, nudge them in the desired way. This requires you to either spend a lot of elbow grease or be better at tying your CRM / shopping cart / email together than many. Worth it.
