Done right, ecommerce email marketing drives a lot more revenue than any other digital channel: $36 for every dollar spent, in fact. Ecommerce brands have hundreds or thousands of email addresses at their disposal. But how are you using yours to build engagement, loyalty, and referrals? Strategic email marketing automation is the best way to get the most out of your email marketing efforts as an online retailer.

Table of Contents

• Customer behavior analytics should drive your ecommerce email marketing strategy
• Amplify your email marketing strategy with automated customer journeys
• Anatomy of an email marketing campaign in Journey Builder
• Essential journey-based email campaigns
• Welcome email series
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Post-purchase follow-up
• Customer nurture campaigns
• Re-engagement campaigns
• Product discovery series
• Birthday campaigns

Customer behavior analytics should drive your ecommerce email marketing strategy

You can spend weeks perfecting an automated email campaign, but if it’s not built on your customer behavioral data, it’ll underperform.

Purchase history alone isn’t enough to create marketing that truly resonates with your customers. The traditional approach of relying on basic purchase history doesn’t pull its weight in today’s omnichannel world. Today, email marketing effectiveness hinges on analyzing every interaction across every touchpoint to create a complete, holistic view of your customers’ journeys. This way, your personalization efforts will be way more effective.

Start by using behavioral data to create measurable goals using these key email marketing KPIs:

• Revenue targets like revenue per email and attributed sales
• Engagement metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and social interactions
• Customer retention indicators like repeat purchase rate and customer lifetime value

All of these KPIs and behavior metrics should factor into a well-thought out email list segmentation strategy. But managing this on your own is, quite literally, impossible — which is why an automated, data-driven approach like eRFM (Enhanced Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis is key. 

eRFM insights take into account all the granular info needed to create truly personalized email marketing campaigns. So make sure your transactional email platform can get granular and capture truly comprehensive behavioral data before you launch any automated sequences.

Amplify your email marketing strategy with automated customer journeys

There are a million ways to reach your customers these days: online, on mobile, on social media, in good old brick-and-mortar retail — the list goes on. That means there’s a ton of information about the way your customers (and potential customers) shop, what they want, when they’re most likely to buy (or not), and more. It would be silly to not take advantage of these behavioral insights, right?

That’s where automated journeys come in. Your goal as an email marketer is to create responsive experiences that adapt to individual behaviors proactively. You’ll not only see significantly higher email marketing ROI, but by delivering marketing that really resonates with what buyers want and need, you’ll build trust and see much higher customer lifetime values.

So, how do you do this?

The key is in using an ecommerce marketing platform that lets you respond directly to customer actions and takes note of those actions in real time. When a customer takes any action, whether that’s subscribing to your newsletter, abandoning a cart, making a purchase, or anything else, you want your marketing engine to trigger a relevant campaign to help move them along on their journey.

We’ll show you exactly how the Journey Builder in Maropost Marketing Cloud lets you achieve this and give you some examples of how you can put it to use in your campaigns.

Anatomy of an email marketing campaign in Journey Builder

Maropost’s Journey Builder is made up of four essential components or “widgets” that work together to enable robust omnichannel customer experiences. You can drag and drop each component to build a journey for a variety of customer circumstances.

Here are the widgets you can use to build a custom journey in Marketing Cloud:

• Triggers initiate Journeys based on specific customer behaviors or data points. Triggers can be when a customer opens an email, clicks a link, subscribes, makes a purchase, and more.
• Actions define what happens in the Journey when a Trigger is activated. This includes sending an email or SMS, updating a customer profile, changing subscription status, and more.
• Filters allow you to create branching logic, directing customers down different paths based on specific criteria that you set.
• Delays control the timing between Journey Actions so they happen at optimal intervals.

You can combine these widgets however you need to make automated flows that ultimately build experiences that reach customers when and how it matters most.

Essential journey-based email campaigns

The seven automated journeys below are important components of successful email campaign management. Campaigns like these allow you to personalize your customers’ journeys, improving retention and keeping them coming back. Once you begin to understand your customers’ behavior patterns more, you can use Journeys in a multitude of ways for specific customer circumstances.

1. Welcome email series

The second someone subscribes to your list, either by opting in on their own or through a purchase, you have a unique opportunity—they’re expressing explicit interest in your brand, and their intent is high. In fact, welcome emails have an average open rate of over 68%. A thoughtfully designed welcome email series aims to transform this initial interest into lasting engagement and drive first purchases.

Kick your welcome email off with a greeting that sets your brand tone and expectations while delivering any incentives promised for signing up. Your goal should be to build a relationship and trust before asking for an initial or further sale.

How to implement a welcome email series in the Journey Builder:

1. Use the New Subscription Trigger to initiate the welcome series journey when a contact joins your list.
2. Use Send Email Actions to deliver each message in the sequence.
3. Use time-based Delays between messages — try around two days between each one. You want to avoid overwhelming new subscribers but still maintain engagement.
4. Optionally, you can further segment with Filters based on subscription source or other parameters.

2. Abandoned cart recovery

Cart abandonment is a huge revenue suck for a lot of ecommerce businesses. While cart abandonment might mean you must address other aspects of your ecommerce operations, a well-crafted recovery campaign can still help you reclaim over 10% of those potentially lost sales.

Timing is important. The initial message should arrive in their inbox within a few hours after abandonment, while their purchase intent is likely still high. Consider this sequence: Send a gentle reminder and offer customer support when needed. After 24 hours, follow up with product imagery and any product benefits. In your final message, offer an incentive to purchase, like a 10% discount.

How to implement abandoned cart recovery in the Journey Builder:

• Set up the integration between Marketing Cloud and your ecommerce platform to activate the Abandoned Cart Trigger.
• Use the Send Email Actions to deliver time-spaced messages.
• Use carefully thought out Delays to create urgency.
• Implement A/B Split Filters to test different messaging approaches and incentive strategies for your abandoned cart campaigns.

3. Post-purchase follow-up

When a customer makes a purchase, you might feel like you’re off the hook. But the time between purchase and delivery is actually a super important opportunity to build trust, especially if it’s someone’s first purchase with you — it’s the only time they have sacrificed something ($$$) but received nothing in return.

Until we can teleport products straight into customers’ laps, a post-purchase follow-up is the next best thing. Putting customers’ minds at ease that you’ve got their order and letting them know exactly how they’ll expect to hear from you — and then delivering on that — is an essential opportunity to earn their trust and convert them into loyal customers.

Start with an order confirmation, letting them know how and when you’ll follow up next. As long as you’re keeping updates on their order status, you can follow up with content on how to use their product, similar products, and more. Once you’ve notified them of delivery and they’ve received their order, give them an opportunity to review the order — which you can incentivize with a discount.

How to implement post-purchase follow-up in the Journey Builder:

• Use the Product Purchased Trigger to initiate the sequence when an order completes.
• Use Send Email Actions to deliver messages about order status throughout the customer’s product experience.
• Once the order has arrived, separate the Send Email Actions with Delays before sending review requests or support emails asking if they need help with their product or order.
• You can use Case or Yes/No Filters to create different paths based on product category, ensuring follow-up messages are relevant to each customer’s specific purchase.

4. Customer nurture campaigns

Pay attention to your most valuable customers. eRFM reporting can help you define these, but you should make certain segments feel extra-appreciated, like the high-value customers that spend the most money the most frequently. But you should also pay attention to customers with lower average cart values but are loyal purchasers or new customers with high cart values.

For these customers, offer early access to new products, provide personalized recommendations based on their browsing history, and give advance notice of upcoming promotions. Your goal should be to make these customers feel genuinely valued while encouraging continued engagement with your brand.

How to implement a customer nurture campaign in the Journey Builder:

• Use the Total Revenue Trigger to identify customers when their spending reaches a specified threshold.
• Use Send Email Actions to deliver exclusive content, and use Add Tag Actions to mark “VIP” or “high-value” status for cross-channel recognition.
• Use Delays to make sure you’re nurturing consistently without overwhelming them.
• Try using Yes/No Filters to create tiered Journeys based on customer spending levels or purchase frequency. This will offer increasingly premium treatment as a customer’s value grows.

5. Re-engagement campaigns

You could have a really strong brand with a highly engaged audience, but even the most engaged email list experiences natural decay over time. It’s important to know how to implement a strategic re-engagement campaign to address an engagement slump proactively. Again, eRFM reporting will help you identify which customers to target in these campaigns.

Start with a gentle reminder that reestablishes your brand’s value. Then, follow up with more direct communication and inquiry about your customers’ interest, indicating you’ve noticed they haven’t been active in a while. If that fails, send stronger incentives for high-potential customers who have gone silent.

How to implement a re-engagement campaign in the Journey Builder:

• Use the Segment Event Trigger to proactively target subscribers who haven’t engaged within your defined timeframe (typically 60-90 days).
• Use Send Email Actions to deliver increasingly more compelling messages.
  Tip: If these fail, you may need to use the Change Subscription Action to sunset consistently inactive customers to maintain the health of your email lists
• Use Delays between messages to give customers time to respond naturally.

6. Product discovery series

Customers don’t know what they don’t know about your product catalog. For customers whose preferences align really well with your brand, making thoughtful product discovery recommendations is one of the most valuable things you can do. (Tip: You can also offer high-converting recommendations in your search bar!)

An effective product discovery series uses browsing behavior (enter eRFM reporting) to identify specific category interests. It then delivers personalized marketing recommendations that really resonate.

In your product discovery series, focus on category-specific content that highlights the unique selling points of products adjacent to ones your high-value customers have shown an interest in. Tailor marketing emails like new arrival announcements to feature items that complement their previous purchases.

How to implement a product discovery series in the Journey Builder:

• Use the Web Page Event Trigger to set a Journey based on browsing data, and use the Product Purchased Trigger to set a Journey based on purchase data. 
• Use Send Email Actions to deliver tailored product emails with recommendations based on browsing and purchase patterns.
• Use Delays between messages. (Tip: Set your Delays to align with average purchase and consideration timelines for your different product categories.)
• Try using Percentage Split Filters as another way to test different recommendation flows and identify the most effective approaches.

7. Birthday campaigns

Everyone loves a little extra attention on their birthday. Sending birthday messages and discounts creates a fun surprise — and birthday campaigns are actually a super effective sales driver. Send birthday messages to customers on their birthday, but make sure their discounts don’t expire for a month or so, giving them enough time to make a purchase.

How to implement a birthday campaign in the Journey Builder:

• Use the Contact Field Updated Trigger to identify upcoming birthdays.
• Use Send Email Actions to deliver celebratory emails and special offers.
• Use date-specific Delays to ensure messages arrive at the right time.

With a journey-based solution like Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder, there are endless ways to successfully reach and convert customers based on their preferences shown by their behavior. The data tells the story of what your customers truly want, and journey-based email marketing automation is what lets you deliver it at the just perfect moment. When marketing feels relevant and timely, people don’t just make a purchase—they become loyal, repeat buyers who stay with your brand for the long haul.