A strong email list might be the best investment for an ecommerce business. According to the survey, email marketing returns up to $40 for every dollar invested in 2024. The challenge is acquiring and retaining subscribers.
Fortunately, a simple change in perspective can unlock growth.
Many merchants offer a discount – usually 10-15% – to encourage signups, but then only engage subscribers with more deals and offers. Merchants train their followers to buy only when items are on sale.
What would happen if these marketers (retailers, wholesalers, direct-to-consumer brands) approached email marketing like social media?
Content Marketing
Editorial Emails are a content marketing tactic to attract, engage and retain customers. Including tips, instructions, and advice moves the email from promotional to informative, giving prospects new reasons to subscribe, engage, and purchase.
The process is similar to social media marketing and looks like this:
- Create a compelling, product-relevant editorial newsletter.
- Attract subscribers.
- Include products in every newsletter.
- Optimize for sales.
Content
The first step is to create compelling content related to the products your business sells.
Take Master Build For example. The company’s products are grills and smokers. Their content and social media marketing focuses on recipes: the product and content work together.
Masterbuild would require little additional effort to produce a grilling newsletter. He could group several of his recipes into a weekly summary.
This approach has proven to be a winner. Consider these five email recipe newsletters and reported subscriber counts as of March 2024.
The subscribers
The next step is to attract subscribers. Social media algorithms display posts from like-minded users who may follow your business.
But many social media marketers also boost these posts through advertising. Something similar exists for editorial newsletters. Let’s consider four factors of subscriber growth.
Organic recommendations. Substack, which combines editorial newsletters and social media features, was among the first to offer organic recommendations. When a person subscribes to an editorial newsletter, the platform offers others.
For example, “The Real Heroes of Ecommerce” is a newsletter on Substack from marketer Jason Shepherd. Subscribing to this newsletter produces Shepard’s recommendation of “The Human Voice.”
Paid recommendations. Newsletter publishers can acquire subscribers for around $3 each through Sparkling curl, Reference hero, and others. Recommendations are only available for editorial newsletters, not for marketing.
Paid growth. Several newsletter growth businesses have emerged. These agencies… Favorite for emails, Paper Boy Studios, Growth Letter – place advertisements on different channels to attract subscribers.
Blog and forms. Let’s not forget your company’s blog and web forms. Double down on newsletter promotion.
Include products
An editorial email should be worth reading. Don’t skimp on this part. And don’t forget to include the following products.
Treat products like sponsors. Editorial newsletters often have sponsors. There are no rules preventing a sponsor from offering a company’s own offerings.
Make it a recommendation. Many editorial newsletters recommend products after the main content. Think of them as text ads for your products.
Treat them as editorials. Masterbuilt could publish a weekly editorial newsletter featuring three recipes, an interview with a barbecue professional and a tip for using the company’s “Autoignite” system. This mention could push a subscriber to place an order.
In each example, configure tracking to attribute sales.
Optimize for sales
The final step is to optimize the editorial newsletter to generate the most revenue.
- Measure the commercial performance of the newsletter.
- Segment subscribers towards products they are likely to purchase.
- Monitor subscriber sources. Focus on people who signed up via an organic referral if they generate the most sales.