When it comes to marketing, email marketing is arguably one of the best ways of driving relevant traffic and sales. It’s cheap, easy to set up and is four times more effective than other modes of promotion such as social media, print ads and word of mouth among others.

Dropshipping, on the other hand, is one of the cheapest online business ideas you can invest in. And just like email marketing, it’s easy to set up. All because this business model doesn’t come with the limitations that cripple typical e-stores as well as brick-and-mortar stores.

If you’re looking to promote your dropshipping business using email marketing, you will definitely love this post. If you’re a beginner, don’t fret. Email marketing is not as challenging as many self-proclaimed “gurus” will have you believe.

That being said, read on to learn how you can use email marketing to grow your dropshipping business. Without further ado, let’s get down to work.

How to Use Email Marketing to Promote Your Dropshipping Business

For the most part, email marketing primarily involves sending relevant content, offers, and other promotional materials to your target audience via email. This means that you must have a clear picture of your target audience to make the most out of your email marketing endeavors.

If you shoot out of the blues, you are likely to completely miss the mark i.e., your email marketing goals. Knowing how to best get through to your prospects via email marketing depends on how well you know your target audience. As a matter of fact, it means all the difference between the failure and success of your email marketing campaign.

Without wasting another second, let us learn how you can use email marketing to promote your dropshipping business.

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Dropshippers themselves don’t actually handle inventory or shipping. You simply put the products in front of the customers, take the orders, and buy from the supplier who then delivers the product directly to the customer. Sounds pretty straightforward a business model, right?

Well, while dropshipping is a simple business to start, it can prove challenging to grow and scale. Many dropshippers do not concentrate on developing the business model to remain profitable for decades to come; the majority are in it just for the quick buck.

For instance, many dropshippers won’t see the value of building an email list until it’s too late and their well is drying up. They figure, “I don’t need an email list; I just need to get people to my dropshipping site, and my job is done.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

They quickly forget that over 70% of all people who come to a website leave and never return. By failing to incorporate email marketing when launching their dropshipping ventures, they miss 100% of that 70% of people don’t come back to their websites.

Getting users to subscribe is even simpler with the right tools. When you begin email marketing from day one of your dropshipping business, you have the golden opportunity to connect with prospects you would otherwise lose.

People who take time to subscribe to your email newsletter are more interested in what you’re offering than, say, the guy who is just browsing your web pages. Subscribers are more likely to convert down the line. You just need to send them relevant content via email and, just like that, you have more ready-to-pay customers.

You can start your email marketing journey right this minute for free with companies such as MadMimi, AWeber, and Mailchimp among others. Focus on getting more people to join your email list by using incentives such as free eBooks, file downloads, trials, PDF resources etc.

Segment Your List

Once you begin growing your list, you will want nothing more than to send mass emails to your subscribers. Often, this is the wrong move to make, unless you have announcements that are relevant to your entire customer base.

Keeping your target audience in mind when creating email content means you’ll create offers they love, which results in better conversion rates. The converse is true and, sadly, the reason many email marketers fall flat on their faces thanks to non-targeted campaigns.

The narrower you can get with your email targeting, the better the results of your campaigns. Segmenting your lists is all about narrowing your audience down, or rather grouping your subscribers into different categories based on similar demographics.

So, instead of sending out the same email to your entire list, you send separate and highly relevant emails to different groups within your customer base. For instance, let’s say your dropshipping business is doing well. People who buy products and those who don’t end up subscribing to your email list. At this point, you can clearly see your email list will have two groups of people; paying customers and mere subscribers.

It goes without saying that, if your goal is to boost conversion rates and grow sales, you can’t send the same offers to both groups. For example, you want to encourage subscribers to start buying your products. On the other hand, you might want to nudge paying customers to buy additional products. This is just an example of the many different ways you can segment your lists.

At the end of the day, segmenting helps you to fine tune and personalize your email marketing campaigns to suit each member of your target audience regardless of where they are in your conversion funnel.

Make Your Emails Appealing

The mailbox is one busy environment I tell you. Every marketer out there is competing for the short attention span of the same prospects you’re targeting. If your emails don’t stand out from the crowd, your message and brand will disappear into oblivion.

Look, for example, at all the promotional emails you receive every minute of the day. Why do you open some emails and completely ignore others? Why do you engage (i.e. click links, share etc.) with some emails while you don’t read others past the opening line? I will let you answer these questions.

In practice, study emails from successful eCommerce stores. What’s the one thing they all have in common? You’re 100% right if you said they are all appealing or engaging. Well, they didn’t become appealing by chance or accident, the marketers leading the campaigns put in the work.

Even without the limitations that come with typical eCommerce stores, your dropshipping venture is still an eCommerce business like any other. They are your competition whether you like it or not. That’s why you need to make an unforgettable impression on your prospects whenever you appear in their mailbox.

Everything from the text, media, and offers you use in your emails should be relevant and visually appealing to your target audience. This applies to the subject lines you choose, your email signatures, remaining consistent, and picking the right time/frequency that works for your audience.

Invest in high-quality images, graphics, videos, audio files, and if need be, a great copywriter too. Then A/B test variations of your emails to see what’s working, so you can adjust accordingly.

If you are to grow your dropshipping business, you want to create emails that prospects will open, read and act upon. The only way to shine in a mailbox chock-full of all types of messages is to create incredibly alluring emails that are simply hard to ignore.

A Short Note about Auto-responders & Email Dripping

The ability to automate is probably the reason email marketing is so powerful a marketing tool. If you’re wondering, automation in email marketing helps you to save plenty of time and drive return traffic to your dropshipping business on autopilot.

For instance, you can create auto-responders to welcome new email subscribers, and then redirect them as you deem fit. You could send them to any page on your online properties automatically, or even use a tool such as Zapier to streamline your workflow in ways never imagined before.

Additionally, you can use email dripping (i.e. sending a series of emails) to prime customers psychologically. After a couple of emails and when they are ready, you can move in for the ultimate kill by redirecting them to targeted product/landing pages.

You can successfully use priming in email marketing to grow sales in your dropshipping business automatically. I mean, you just need to create a series of emails once, which are sent out to every new subscriber automatically.

Besides, your psychological priming techniques have a better chance of succeeding via email than, say, on your website because email subscribers are actually interested and you have their undivided attention.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a powerful tool that you can use to take your dropshipping business to the next level. Sign up with a reputable email marketing provider to ensure you get the best service and your emails don’t end up in the spam folder.

On top of that, never, I repeat, never ever buy email lists from anyone or try to spam anyone intentionally. Build your email list from scratch keeping in mind that it’s one of the best assets your online dropshipping business will ever have. After all, the real money is in the email list.

Have questions, suggestions or tips on how to use email marketing to grow a dropshipping business? Please share with us in the comments.