Author: Rodney Laws

Content marketing and ecommerce go hand-in-hand.

Traditional sales strategies such as paid ads only go so far when it comes to convincing your customers to part with their hard-earned cash. Ad-savvy consumers are numb to the hard sell.

But content marketing overcomes this obstacle. It flies under the radar, a subtle product ad disguised as entertaining, informative, or useful content. You can introduce new customers to your brand in a way that feels natural and organic — and it works.

But creating the right kind of content that customers will love can be tricky. So instead of dithering over your content marketing, why not take some inspiration from the best? Read on for four examples of ecommerce content marketing that will inspire you today.

Burberry: taking to the trench (coats) for UGC success

User-generated content is a quick-win for online store owners in a pinch. With an estimated 2.77 billion people worldwide on social media, there’s no shortage of UGC for ecommerce businesses to use in their content marketing strategy.

UGC is more than just an easy way to fill your editorial calendar. It’s a powerful form of content marketing that builds your customer community, showing shoppers that they matter to your brand to keep them returning time and again.

And for an example of UGC done right, one need look no further than luxury fashion brand, Burberry.

Luxury brands have traditionally been slow on the uptake when it comes to social media. But in 2009, Burberry took the plunge and launched its Art of the Trench campaign. The brand created a dedicated microsite on which it could display real customers showing off their Burberry trench coats.

Image Burberry

The campaign transformed its customers into pseudo-models for Burberry, giving some love to its consumer base while marketing its own products at the same time. What really took this campaign further though was the addition of links to Burberry product pages, so inspired customers could buy the same coat themselves with just a few clicks.

This is UGC done right. People-powered and product-pushing, the Art of the Trench campaign helped grow Burberry considerably online.

In the year following the campaign’s launch, the brand’s Facebook followers grew to more than a million, the highest in the industry at the time. Online year-on-year sales increased by 50%, and visitors to the Burberry website hit 7.5 million from 150 countries worldwide in the year after the campaign was launched. Finally, conversions from the campaign were higher than from any other channel the brand used during that period.

Overall, a resounding success, even for a massive global brand like Burberry.

How to get it right

UGC is an inexpensive and self-propagating form of content marketing that pays dividends for brands — when it’s done right. The key to UGC marketing lies in giving your customers a good reason to create, submit, and share their own content, while simultaneously promoting your product.

Find that sweet spot between product promotion and customer involvement, and then promote your UGC submissions across your various marketing channels.

Shopify: case studies that celebrate customers while promoting the brand

Case studies are a valuable form of content marketing. They combine social proof with real-world expertise to deliver value to customers while simultaneously selling your own product or service.

One brand that knows the value of case studies (and how to get it right) is DIY ecommerce store builder Shopify.

Image Shopify

Shopify’s blog is replete with page after page of case studies of its own satisfied merchants. It drills down into a genuine success story of an ecommerce entrepreneur, recounting how they use Shopify’s service to launch their business and grow their brand.

The case studies also serve as a subtle form of social proof. They implicitly endorse Shopify’s service by showing, rather than telling — and it works beautifully.

Part of Shopify’s success as an e-merchant service lies in its eagerness to celebrate its customers’ successes. Such praise reinforces its value as a brand, strengthening its customer community. Shopify regularly champions its merchants, and its case studies are a fine example of that in play.

And the results prove this. In 2017, Shopify reported an increase of more than 200K merchants using its estore builder. As of February 2019, more than 800K merchants worldwide use Shopify, with the brand’s income totalling $1.073 billion last year, a 59% increase from the year before.

How to get it right

Your customers are your own best advocates. Reach out to your satisfied customers and invite them to take part in a case study of your own. Not all products naturally lend themselves to case studies (for example, fashion and apparel).

But creating a story around your customers and their purchase is an unusual alternative that will work for you. It makes for valuable content that both sells your brand whilst endowing you with some authentic social proof into the bargain.

ASOS: influencer-led content that drives engagement

Influencers are hot topic right now (albeit not necessarily for entirely the right reasons). But recent controversies aside, influencers are still a boon for ecommerce brands wishing to grow their business in 2019.

Influencer content delivers an array of benefits for brands. As well as the implicit social proof endowed upon your business by your association with influencers, they also act as a gateway to a whole new consumer base too.

For an example of great influencer content, let’s look at online apparel retailer ASOS. Rather than reaching out to renowned influencers with huge social followings, the fashion ecommerce brand partners with niche micro influencers that are active in their niche.

These influencers, known as ASOS Insiders, share style tips, behind-the-scenes insights, and products on branded ASOS Instagram accounts.

Since the inception of ASOS Insiders, the apparel retailer has seen considerable growth amongst its target consumer base of 18-24 year-olds. In 2017 it reported sales of £1876.5 million, a figure which increased to £2355.2 million in 2018. It goes to show just how successful influencer-led content can be for growing ecommerce brands.

How to get it right

The key to this kind of content is letting your influencer do the hard work. They have a deep understanding of their followers and know what kind of content resonates with them most. When you partner with an influencer, set an objective, but let them achieve it their way.

Top tip: cross-pollinate your content across yours and your influencer’s social presences. This nets you the best exposure, reaching more customers and getting your brand seen as a result.

Shutterstock: on-point insight that its customers can actually use

With the rise of easy-to-use content management systems and simple blogging platforms, the demand for high-quality stock photos has never been higher. Shutterstock has all but cornered that market, providing millions of free stock images to solopreneurs, startups, and big businesses alike.

Part of Shutterstock’s success lies in its savvy use of content marketing. Every year, the brand releases a creative trends report, outlining all the major visual styles that its customers need to know.

Image Shutterstock

Backed by hard data, the report regularly attracts thousands of shares on social media. It’s interactive too, featuring a blend of photos, video, and even music to engage customers. Each trend is accompanied by samples of Shutterstock’s free images, connecting customers with content to drive conversions as a result.

This strategy has helped grow Shutterstock considerably. The creative trends report was incepted in 2015. According to Shutterstock’s annual reports, it reported annual revenue of $425.1 million:

Image Shutterstock 2015 Annual Report

This was followed by 16% growth to $494 million in 2016:

Image Shutterstock 2016 Annual Report

And finally, Shutterstock saw 12.7 growth to $557 million in 2017:

Image Shutterstock 2017 Annual Report

By appealing to its core consumer demographics and helping them keep abreast of the creative trends they need to know, Shutterstock positions itself as a leader in its field, and its year-on-year growth reflects this.

How to get it right

This kind of content positions you as more than just a business — it shows that you’re an active source of thought leadership, a valuable resource that your customers can return to time and again.

Commission original data and distill it into a digestible format that your audience can easily understand. Use it to highlight the value of your own products or service to prospective customers.

Every successful ecommerce business needs a coherent content strategy behind it. It drives sales, boosts SEO, and engages customers time and again. Learn from the best and follow the tips above.

Capitalize on your customers and embrace the power of UGC marketing, and lean on influencers to create engaging content that celebrates your brand in an organic way.

Similarly, you should look to case studies to spotlight your customers while showcasing your product. Combine this with cutting-edge insight that your customers can actually benefit from, and you’ll create an ecommerce content marketing strategy that will grow your business well into 2019.

Be they online or offline, there are few marketing tools more rich with potential than email marketing. After all, each email begins as an empty canvas upon which you may paint a masterpiece: no character limits, no fixed set of viable image aspect ratios, and no restrictions on where, when and how you might deploy a CTA.

That said, there are similarly few tools that are misused so consistently. Businesses in the digital sphere regularly engage in email marketing without coming close to fulfilling its remarkable potential — and one of the main reasons is the quality (or lack thereof) of the copywriting.

The language you use and the way you present your arguments mustn’t be overlooked. Even if your readers don’t consciously notice the difference between amateur scrawlings and finely-crafted prose, they’ll detect it on some level. This can be hugely impactful, particularly when you’re trying to sell products and there are direct profits riding on the results.

So if you’re running an ecommerce brand and eager to do more with your email marketing, you’ll find that shaping up your copywriting will produce significant improvement. Here are five core copywriting tips to help you sell more through your emails:

Immediately match the subject line

In the grand pantheon of email copywriting essentials, this is the most divinely vital, and failing to adhere to it is akin to repeatedly shooting yourself in both feet before tumbling off a cliff into a craggy ravine. In other words, it’s a big deal. Here’s why:

It’s hard to stand out in an email inbox. You need to choose your subject line very carefully to give your contribution the best possible chance of getting attention ahead of the hundreds of other emails surrounding it — and if you manage to win that all-important click, the clicker will be expecting more of whatever you used to draw them in.

For instance, if you mention an unbelievable bargain in your subject line, you’d better deliver a bargain they struggle to believe, and quickly. Even getting to it in the second paragraph might not be enough. The reader might glance at the top line, wonder “Where’s this unbelievable bargain?”, and back out of the email.

So ensure a message match by writing the email content to seamlessly follow the subject line. Otherwise, all the high-quality product copy in the world might go to waste.

Show the emotion you’re looking to inspire

If you run an ecommerce brand, or at least work for one, then you should already know the basics of selling: in particular, the importance of selling potential buyers on how their life would change if they decided to purchase from you.

The point of this is to evoke emotion, whether it’s a sense of elation at the idea of a happier future or a feeling of fury at how frustrating life without your product has been. When we get emotional, we make irrational decisions — we buy what we don’t really need, and spend more money than we would sensibly prefer to. Both good things for sellers.

But people are better than you (or they) might think at detecting tonal disconnects. Suppose that you’re trying to market a luxury shower gel, eager to have the reader get excited about using it, yet your copy feels dry, cold, and uninterested. If you apparently don’t care about something you’re telling readers to get hyped about, why should they?

The key, then, is to write in a way that reflects the emotion you want to inspire. If you want the possible buyer to get excited, then show excitement. Use stylised text, exclamation marks, reaction GIFs (within reason…), and words with potent connotations.

Should you say that a luxury shower gel is “a powerful cleaner” or “a sumptuous sensory cocktail”? Which one better gets across the vision of a heavenly showering experience?

Space out your primary points

“Look at all the space I have!”, you might think as you look over your blank email canvas. “I can include as much text as I want!”. But don’t let that power go to your head — that you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. There’s a reason why spacing things out is one of the overriding principles of web design in general.

Think about how a reader might be making their way through your email. At a desktop computer with no distractions and ten minutes set aside to focus on your content? Hardly a realistic notion! Perhaps at a laptop with one eye on the screen and another on a TV, or in a store with a spare few seconds to scan through their inbox.

But doesn’t that mean that it’s more important to get to points quickly? Wouldn’t it be suitable to lump them together right away so they can’t be missed? Well, put succinctly, no, it wouldn’t. When you clump two big points together, they both lose visibility — they might be on the screen, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll be read and understood.

This calls for a steady determination to trim any unnecessary content and surround any notable point in enough space that it can actually be noticed. Check out a product page from any big brand and you’ll see that the initial content is sparse (potentially expanding to more substantial content down the page). Don’t make your points fight for attention.

Reflect the overall context

Sending out droves of generic emails is a dated tactic that doesn’t belong in this age of email automation and personalization. Through segmentation, templates, and complex triggering, emails can be pushed out to specific audiences with hyper-relevant content — and this is something you need to factor into your copy.

Consider how different one customer relationship may be from another. Any given email recipient may have purchased from you once, or several times, or many times. They may or may not have used your referral scheme. They might have expressed interest in particular products, or have refused any customization options. Relevancy is essential for transactional emails, and relevancy is contextual.

Now consider how the same piece of copy might have a different effect depending on the context. A pointedly warm and friendly tone might feel justified when directed at a long-time customer, but seem out of place (and even presumptuous) when aimed at a new customer. “Why are they acting like they know me?”, the latter might think.

You should also factor in the types of product purchased, and the clues they provide about levels of disposable income. Should you be pitching expensive high-end products at someone who has only ever ordered budget items from you? Obviously not — at best, it would be confusing, and at worst it would come across as insulting.

How do you achieve this practically? It’s simple enough if you use Campaign Monitor’s dynamic content sections: simply create content for every important scenario and select the segments that should be able to see each part. Conveniently, Campaign Monitor will readily integrate with almost every mainstream ecommerce CMS, with the only current exception being Shopify — and that’s solely because the app is being refreshed (and improved).

Anticipate and answer questions

One-sided as they may technically be, it helps to imagine what it would be like if your email pitches were halves of conversations. This is mainly because your content will inevitably give rise to questions — thought, not said — and it’s incumbent upon you to answer them to whatever extent you can.

For example, suppose that you start a marketing email by claiming that your new jacket line is made from the strongest fabric in the world. It would be entirely reasonable for someone who reads that to mentally ask various questions, such as “What evidence do they have to support that claim?”, “What makes it the strongest?”, and “What are the main competitors?”.

You can’t know about these questions when they arise, but you can anticipate them and answer them immediately. You’ll never be able to see every possible question coming, but you can cover the primary ground easily enough. That way, when someone reads your email and has most of their questions answered in a hasty fashion, they’ll feel more confident in the quality of the product and the reliability of your brand.

A useful trick for this is to directly state the questions in your copy. That way, even if someone has other questions that you didn’t anticipate, you can guide them back to the ones you did, and perhaps even leave them feeling that those questions were the ones they wanted answers to.

Is this really effective? Won’t people recognize what’s happening and recoil from it? I don’t think so. When you ask questions, as I did just then, the reader gets attached to them. We just can’t help it — it’s somewhat alike trying to stop yourself thinking about something, only to find yourself thinking about it even more.

Conclusion

There are plenty more copywriting tips out there — so many that you’ll never perfect the process, no matter how hard you try or how diligently you study — but the tips we’ve covered are the basic essentials. They should be applied to every type of ecommerce marketing email, no matter the product or situation.

Why not give them a try? Implement them when you run your next email marketing campaign to see for yourself how well they work.