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Email generates $38 billion in retail sales annually. If you want to get a piece of that pie, you’ll want to maximize your email performance.

One of the best ways is to learn from what has already been proven to work. Specifically, diving into the email marketing strategies of other brands so you can discover what makes them successful.

In this post, we will look at examples of popular email marketing campaigns and point out key takeaways that can be used to inspire your next campaign.

We’ll be looking at email marketing campaign examples from the following five companies to see how they write captivating subject lines, onboard new users, engage their customers and more:

1. Uber
2. Bonobos
3. BuzzFeed
4. Headspace
5. Patagonia

We’ll also see what makes an effective email campaign: voice, frequency, and simplicity.

Ready? Let’s go.

1. Uber

Uber’s email campaigns are simple and to the point — kind of like their service. Design-wise, the text is usually pretty brief but with a clear CTA which is great for skim readers (more on that later).

For users wanting to learn more, a link to follow is usually easily found somewhere in the email Uber sends subscribers deals and promotions like this one on rates.

This is perfect for subscribers who are quickly skimming the email because “Cheaper Than Ever” really stands out as a CTA and is further emphasized with the “dropping prices by 30%” deal.

And it’s not just limited to promotions. Check out how Uber uses simple but effective copywriting paired with a clean email design to show off new features.

Voice

This email is simple and straight to the point, yet personable and friendly.

Frequency

Again, they keep it simple. A welcome email, promotions, and summaries of your rides are enough to keep users engaged.

Simplicity

A+ on simplicity. Uber limits emails to just one CTA to make it simple for their audience to understand what they need to do.

2. Bonobos

Menswear retailer Bonobos also does a great job of engaging their audience with their emails. How? By giving users a reason to interact.

Emails are clean and minimalistic with a clear CTA that encourages readers to take action.

This email doesn’t have much copy, but what is there is playful — turning what could be a boring product into something you’d want. It’s also perfectly targeted at who would buy this shirt and for what reason (to wear at industry parties).

The structure of this email is pretty clear too. The aim is to target those who don’t want to waste time scrolling through products they don’t want.

How does Bonobos know this? Well, there is a lot going on behind the scenes here.

According to Internet Retailer, they use an algorithm to target consumers who are most likely to buy a particular item.

This data is pulled from previous buyers by color, size, location, how recent the purchase, and other factors. Bonobos then segments these groups so it can target specific audiences with specific products. Nice.

Voice

Bonobos knows its audience (young working professional men) and do a good job of using an appropriate voice injected with humor:

Frequency

One of Bonobos’ biggest strengths with email marketing is knowing when to send emails, whether for new sign-ups who need some help or to re-engage older users.

Simplicity

Bonobos knows how to use whitespace and clear messaging so the next steps after reading one of their emails are clear.

For example, even an abandoned shopping cart email is simple.

Instead of showing the forgotten item like most ecommerce stores, Bonobos keeps it vague to create some curiosity about what was left behind.

3. BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed is the king of subject lines.

Just look at these and tell me you wouldn’t click to read at least a few of them (if not all):

BuzzFeed’s newsletter became one of their top sources of traffic. Why?

Because they write engaging content with equally engaging subject lines, they make you want to click and open that email right away.

The subject lines and preview text are usually short. Often, the preview text answers a question posed in the subject line.

Good copywriting doesn’t end at the subject line either. it continues when you open the email. BuzzFeed is great at sending emails that make their audience engage.

This email gives enough information to pique your interest and makes you want to click through and visit the articles.

This is no accident. Every email BuzzFeed sends is designed to get users to click through to the site and read the full article. It’s for this reason email is one of their strongest growth channels, accounting for 20 percent of their traffic.

Voice

BuzzFeed segments their lists into people with different interests so they can serve them tailored content all wrapped up in BuzzFeed’s laidback and lighthearted brand voice.

Frequency

What’s great here is the user can choose how many emails they receive by heading over the subscription page and choosing interests.

While the principle is important, it won’t work for all business models so do what’s right for your audience.

BuzzFeed can get away with sending two emails a day on average because the content is less invasive than a sales email.

People are more likely to read emails like this every day than they are to make a purchase from an ecommerce store. Be sure not to bombard your mailing list.

Simplicity

Of course, BuzzFeed understands simplicity too. You want cats, you got cats.

The important thing here is that BuzzFeed allows users to subscribe based on their interests. They took this a stage further by breaking down topic categories into subcategories (animals >>> cats).

The takeaway here is segmenting subscribers and serving them content they are interested in reading.

4. Headspace

Headspace is an app for guided meditation.

What sets their emails apart is the design. They feature playful characters and beautiful relaxing colors.

Using this welcome in their onboarding emails is a masterstroke.

Their email does lots of things well, but to pick out a few:

• It sets a clear goal – it’s obvious what a new user is expected to do here — start meditating.
• It focuses on benefits – Headspace makes the email about the benefits their app will give users — a happier and healthier life.
• It’s fun – the soft colors and quirky character designs help to create positive customer emotions about the app.

Why bother with onboarding emails?

Effective onboarding leads to higher retention rates, higher revenues, and an increase in customer lifetime value.

Voice

Headspace is skilled at aligning their voice with what they offer.

Frequency

A gentle number of emails to calm onboarding new users and provide useful little reminders for existing ones. According to Mailcharts, this works out at roughly 14 per year.

Simplicity

An example of simplicity at its finest.

Not only is this a simple email, but it is also in keeping with Headspace’s core offering to simplify your life through guided meditation.

5. Patagonia

Outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia send a variety of emails featuring blog posts, interviews, promotions as well as information on social issues they are raising awareness for.

Sending a mixture of content gives users a reason to open their emails, even if they don’t want to buy something.

Patagonia maximizes engagement with a mix of eye-catching email content.

This email is very easy to read and clearly lays out the products on offer.

On the flip-side, the next email isn’t trying to sell any Patagonia products. Its purpose is to raise awareness and grab your attention.

Voice

Patagonia has really honed in on a simple and lighthearted voice to gently push their audience into buying products.

Frequency

Not only does Patagonia send emails every couple of days, but they also send them at personalized times, tailored to when individual users are more likely to read, click, and interact with them.

Simplicity

Although there may be a lot going on in some Patagonia emails, they are always easy to read.

Instead of following a more standard promotional product email, this image lets the product do the talking with some supporting copy to highlight durability.

Successful Email Marketing Campaign Takeaways

When it comes to a successful email marketing campaign, there is no one thing needed in order to stand out. However, there are a few common elements found in the best emails.

Voice

All of the email marketing examples have a well-established brand voice. This unique voice helps them stand out and is carried across all communication channels, not just email.

Users and readers of the emails benefit from a more personalized, friendly approach which in turn, creates a stronger sense of brand loyalty as customers feel less like numbers on a list and more like people.

Frequency

It doesn’t matter if it’s daily or weekly, having an email schedule that works for your customers is key.

All of the best email marketing campaigns listed had a clearly defined schedule, whether for updates, promotions, or onboarding emails.

You should do the same for your email subscribers.

Simplicity

Simplicity refers to both writing style and email design. Both are both equally important.

Writing-wise, you want to use simple and commonly shared language (for your user audience). Design-wise, less is more. Whitespace and small banner images go a long way.

The aim of both writing and design is to make it as easy as possible for your audience to digest your email.

Wrapping Up

These are just a few of our favorite email marketing campaigns examples.

Every day our inboxes are flooded with newsletters and promotional emails. The best thing we can do is follow the best practices in these examples and put them to use for your business.

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What do Apple, Starbucks, Disney, Under Armour, and Bank of America have in common? They all make hundreds of millions of dollars of sales while offering an incredible user experience due to multi-channel marketing.

Today, our goal is to take you through how these companies are succeeding with multi-channel marketing.

But that’s not all: We’re also going to highlight the important takeaways from their multi-channel strategy, and give you tips that you can apply to your own ecommerce store and marketing strategy.

What Is Multi-Channel Marketing?

Marketing channel strategy refers to how products are transferred from retailer to consumer. Multi-channel marketing means you’re leveraging multiple channels, particularly the channels that your customers use the most. In practice, it’s about meeting your audience where they live whether that’s on social media, a mobile app, in their email inboxes, over SMS, or on the phone.

Apple: Customer Service And Education

Apple is considered a “click-and-mortar” retailer which means Apple operates both physical and online stores. However, the situation with Apple’s physical retail stores is unique. Rather than being designed for sales, Apple Stores are primarily designed to complement Apple’s ecommerce business which accounts for the majority of total sales.

In this way, Apple’s physical stores function as customer touchpoints that support the overall Apple experience. Since the physical stores aren’t necessarily focused on retail, customers can visit Apple Stores without feeling like they need to make purchases. And with customers making more frequent trips to physical stores, Apple is able to drive more brand immersion.

Beyond advertising and using retail stores for customer support, Apple has focused on developing services to build more demand for Apple hardware while providing additional revenue streams. Prime examples include Apple News+, a premium news subscription service available only on Apple hardware, and Apple TV+, a Netflix-esque streaming service that will primarily be available on Apple hardware.

Also of note, Apple’s multi-channel marketing strategy is built around specific branding guidelines. This allows Apple to maintain a consistent visual style across all marketing materials in addition to Apple’s website, apps, services, and retail stores. Even Apple’s computing devices and other hardware share elements of a common design language. This does a lot to give consumers a very “Apple” experience no matter which sales channel is delivering it.

How to Replicate It

Apple maintains an ecosystem of many customer touchpoints from hardware to software and services to platforms. Simply put, Apple saturates its consumers’ lives with these touchpoints. One of the key takeaways is to create multiple direct, continuous links between your company and your audience, especially with services and subscriptions. This will help a business turn occasional customer interactions via various channels into ongoing relationships.

Beyond building relationships with the audience via customer touchpoints, Apple is a poster company for branding. Anything associated with the brand — from ads to physical retail stores, shares a consistent design language and even thematic motifs. This consistency is a necessity for multi-channel marketing.

Starbucks: Driving Customer Loyalty

Nearly everything surrounding Starbucks’ customer experience has been carefully designed to encourage patrons to continue visiting Starbucks. A case in point is Starbucks Rewards which consistently ranks as one of the best for customer loyalty rewards programs.

With the program, customers earn points or “Stars” with every purchase. The Stars accumulate to unlock free drinks and food. Additionally, the accumulation of Stars unlocks higher tiers of the Starbucks Rewards program. Each tier comes with even more perks like free refills and, eventually, the Starbucks Gold Card. Once unlocked, the Gold Card — which is actually just a gift card with the customer’s name on it — can be managed and reloaded via the company’s primary customer touchpoints: the Starbucks website, the Starbucks app, over the phone, or at any Starbucks location.

Then, the card can be “uploaded” into the customer’s mobile device, allowing them to pay from their device without the physical reward card. This meets consumers where they are – on their phones. By incentivizing reward program customers to have the app on their phones for easy payments, Starbucks makes it possible to share coupons, discounts and limited-time offers with its most loyal customers.

How to Replicate It

The focal point of Starbucks’ multi-channel marketing strategy is its loyalty rewards program. Due to the strength of the perks, those who use Starbucks Rewards tend to choose Starbucks over any competing coffee shop. This incentive has allowed Starbucks to cultivate fierce loyalty among its reward customers. They discover their favorite drinks and go-to snacks while earning rewards, making them almost averse to competitors that (a) don’t offer their favorite items and (b) won’t help them reach the next tier of rewards.

To implement a similar strategy for an ecommerce store, create a customer loyalty program that incentivizes more frequent purchases. The perks of the program should be both attainable and aspirational.

Disney: Multi-Device Optimization

Visit the Disney website on any device and you’ll have a great experience. This is partly because of the responsive web design. Disney’s site can automatically adjust to optimally fit whatever device you’re currently using. However, Disney’s marketing optimizations go well beyond just making sure its website looks good on any screen size.

The Disney website provides quick, easy access to all of the company’s verticals, including the shopDisney online store, Disney’s Vacation Planner, and access to a vast catalog of beloved entertainment. Most importantly, all these functions and sites (even the Vacation Planner) are fully functional on any device.

The Vacation Planner is surely one of the site’s most impressive elements, making it very easy to plan a trip to Disney’s parks and attractions. Users are taken step by step through the entire process: selecting a park (or multiple parks), where you want to stay, and building the trip itinerary with My Disney Experience.

The latter gives you the ability to book shows, find special events, and schedule a FastPass for your favorite rides. In other words, everything having to do with a trip to Disney World from booking to scheduling and managing your itinerary is accessible via the website or mobile app.

You can bet that the Disney Plus streaming service, launching in November 2019 as the exclusive home for Disney content, will increasingly provide touchpoints for selling experiences as well.

How to Replicate It

Start with a great website. Disney’s website is basically the hub of its digital empire. It provides easy access to the company’s vacation destinations, online shops, and entertainment on any device you could be using.

For ecommerce businesses, a lot of this can be achieved with responsive web design and multi-device optimization that allow your users to interact with your brand no matter what devices they’re using.

Besides a strong website, everything your site offers — from an online store to subscriptions, services, etc. — needs to be user-friendly and reliable. Disney’s marketing channel strategy is successful largely because its digital channels are so easy to access and use. If customers have trouble buying from you, they’ll simply find other retailers. Like many top brands, Disney uses WordPress as the platform for their multi-channel marketing efforts.

Under Armour: Personalities and Personalization

This well-known athletic wear company is another example of effective multi-channel marketing. More specifically, Under Armour is exemplary when it comes to user experience and personalization.

Much of Under Armour’s social media content and marketing material features celebrity endorsements. The list of Hollywood actors and professional athletes featured in Under Armour marketing includes Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, NFL quarterback Tom Brady, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. With A-list celebrities and athletes on display, Under Armour quickly grabs the viewer’s attention.

In 2015, Under Armour bought the MyFitnessPal app, giving the company another channel to reach its audience. This acquisition made Under Armour the number one company for fitness tracking while substantially increasing Under Armour’s digital footprint.

Another impressive component of Under Armour’s multi-channel marketing is the Under Armour app, commonly called the “UA Shop.” Under Armour’s retail app is designed around personalization and lifestyle-based recommendations. Most consumers crave a more personal shopping experience, but research shows that only 25 percent feel they actually get it. For this reason, offering a more personal retail experience gives Under Armour a huge advantage (and is why the app is rated so highly).

How to Replicate It

There’s a lot of practical, actionable strategies that you can learn from Under Armour’s multi-channel marketing strategy. Of course, most ecommerce startups and small businesses won’t have access to celebrities, nor the capital required to get their endorsements. However, influencer marketing is certainly accessible for most smaller ecommerce stores.

Another feature of Under Armour’s marketing that you could adopt is the company’s cross-platform user experience. In Under Armour’s case, the company has worked hard to build a digital presence for products that aren’t digital, and in fact, exist solely in the real world.

Similarly, an ecommerce business can look into ways of building stronger user experiences across different platforms and sales channels. Just adding an element of customization or personalization to the online buying experience can make a huge difference.

Bank of America: Seamless Digital Experiences

Bank of America has raised the bar when it comes to multi-channel marketing. Much of the financier’s marketing efforts could even be classified as omnichannel marketing since the company offers account management functionality through its various channels and customer touchpoints. From making appointments to depositing checks, nearly everything can be done on the website, in the mobile app, or in a physical location. In other words, it’s a seamless, unified customer experience.

In addition to offering a unified customer experience, Bank of America uses audience data and insight for up-selling. Basically, the company considers the services that a customer is already using and refers to historical data to see what other services that person has used. Once the complimentary services have been identified, Bank of America can begin offering and marketing those services to the customer via the channels he or she is using.

How to Replicate It

You don’t have to be a bank or financial company to implement a multi-channel marketing strategy like Bank of America’s. Basically, it comes down to fully leveraging your marketing channels and leveraging audience data.

On the channel side, you can follow Bank of America’s example by offering your audience similar experiences across all your channels. For example, instead of funneling your audience to your website to make purchases, you could give them the ability to make quick, easy purchases via other platforms, particularly social networks like Facebook and Instagram. This makes ecommerce non-interruptive, meaning that your audience can make purchases from your store without having to leave the platform they were using. Social purchasing may be the future of ecommerce.

Additionally, there is immense value in historical audience data. You can use data collected from past customer interactions in many valuable ways, but it’s particularly useful for suggesting add-on products and up-selling.

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Adding more sales channels to your business model can create inventory management headaches. When you sell on multiple online marketplaces, you may have to maintain numerous inventory systems. In a worst-case scenario, you’re keeping track of your inventory manually, using spreadsheets.

This leads to headaches. Inventory records for multi-channel retailers are, on average, accurate just 63% of the time. This is a major factor in why 29% of multi-channel retailers have trouble accurately promising fulfillment. Moreover, poor inventory management spells trouble for your profitability, customer experience, overhead, and shrinkage, all of which eat into your bottom line.

A multi-channel inventory management solution consolidates inventory management across platforms while automating and boosting recordkeeping. We’re going to help you choose the right multi-channel inventory management system for your ecommerce business (with or without WooCommerce in the mix).

What to Look for in a Multi-Channel Inventory Management System

Since poor inventory management can have a number of adverse effects on your ecommerce business, let’s look at some key features of a multi-channel inventory management solution.

Synchronization Across Sales Channels

The ability to synchronize your inventory across multiple channels is the most important feature of multi-channel inventory management systems. A system should sync incoming orders with your inventory so that products that are sold are reflected in your data.

Product Listing

The best multi-channel inventory management systems offer the ability to list your products on all of your sales channels. Even if it’s not an absolute requirement, this is definitely a convenient feature and a major timesaver.

Comprehensive Reporting

A multi-channel inventory management system should offer in-depth reporting on a number of important metrics including:

• Inventory turnover, or the number of times a product is sold and replenished over a period of time
• Days to sell inventory (DSI), or the average length of time a product sits in inventory before being sold
• Costs of holding, or the total of all expenses associated with keeping a product in inventory
• Return rate, or the percentage of sales that are returned
• Stock out, or when no inventory is available to fulfill orders
• Inventory accuracy, or the percentage of the difference between the amount of product that’s physically on your shelves versus the amount of product recorded in the inventory management system

Integrates with Other Software

When a multi-channel inventory management system integrates with other software you use, it saves you time. In fact, inventory management platforms often double as order management, shipping management, and other related systems, giving you the opportunity to consolidate your operations stack.

Top 6 Ecommerce Inventory Management Systems

Here are the most capable, flexible, feature-rich multi-channel inventory management systems. The specific multi-channel listing and inventory management solutions we’ll be covering include:

• Sellbrite
• TradeGecko
• Orderhive
• Ecomdash
• Ordoro
• Stitch Labs

Sellbrite

Sellbrite is a comprehensive, cloud-based inventory management tool that covers several bases. Besides multi-channel inventory management, it has the flexibility to double as order management, product management, and channel analytics tools in an easy-to-use platform.

Sellbrite integrates with most major online marketplaces including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Jet, and Newegg. And since Sellbrite offers order management, orders received through individual platforms are immediately and automatically reflected in Sellbrite’s web app.

Listing products is very simple with Sellbrite, especially with a bulk listing feature you can use to list hundreds of products simultaneously in just a few clicks. You can also create variation listings which are useful (for instance) when a product comes in multiple colors. With built-in templating, it’s possible to choose a listing style once, and then conveniently reuse it for future listings — and establish brand consistency across platforms.

Sellbrite integrates with many widely-used platforms and services. On the shipping side, you can integrate with USPS, Fulfillment by Amazon, ShipStation, ShipEngine, Easyship, and Deliverr. There’s also integration with order management platform SalesPad Cloud, dropship automation service Inventory Source, and product research tool Algopix.

There’s a 14-day free trial available for Sellbrite, which is rated very highly at 4.5 stars out of 5, for you to decide whether it works for you. If you choose to keep it, Sellbrite subscriptions start at $49 per month billed monthly or annually.

How to Connect a Sales Channel to Sellbrite

1. From the Sellbrite dashboard, click Connect your channels.
2. Choose the Shopping Cart or Marketplace channel you’d like to connect to Sellbrite. Then click Next.
3. Choose a custom nickname for the channel.
4. Click the provided link and sign into the corresponding account to connect the account to Sellbrite.
5. Click Connect another channel to repeat this process for another channel, or click Next if you’re finished connecting your sales channels.

TradeGecko

TradeGecko has become a very popular option in the multi-channel inventory management space. Particularly well known for its user-friendly, WordPress-esque interface and for offering powerful reporting options, TradeGecko is an ideal option for retailers looking for metrics across diverse channels.

At its core, TradeGecko is a capable multi-channel listing and inventory management system with channel support for WooCommerce, Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Wayfair, Etsy, Magento, ShipStation, QuickBooks, Xero, and Fulfillment by Amazon. These integrations, or “Apps” as TradeGecko calls them, will allow you to consolidate all the platforms and marketplaces you use into a single platform. Beyond the integrations, TradeGecko offers its own customizable B2B ecommerce platform, payment processing, and an iOS app to manage your inventory and orders from your iPhone or iPad.

Currently, TradeGecko is rated at 4.5 stars out of 5, indicating a very positive reception. Considering there’s a 14-day free trial, you can set up your own TradeGecko account and try it risk-free. From there, TradeGecko subscriptions start at $39 per month, but you can get a substantial discount if you pay for the service annually instead of monthly.

How to Connect a Sales Channel to TradeGecko

1. From the TradeGecko dashboard, click the Apps tab in the left-hand sidebar.
2. Using the filtering options, find the sales channel you wish to add to TradeGecko and click on it.
3. Use the provided link to login into the account you have on that channel and confirm the integration.
4. Repeat this process to add more channels to TradeGecko, or click the Dashboard tab to begin viewing inventory reports.

Orderhive

Orderhive is a balanced, organized system for managing inventory. Though a full-featured system in its own right, the colorful, user-friendly, cloud-based interface is a standout and offers quick access to inventory data as well as diverse reporting options, order management, customer data, returns, shipments, inventory replenishment, and more.

An array of integrations are available with Orderhive. Of course, it integrates with key shopping cart platforms like WooCommerce, but it also connects to most major online marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Jet, and Houzz. There’s also integration support for other systems that multi-channel retailers often use from Constant Contact to QuickBooks, from Slack to ShipStation.

Orderhive users seem to really like the platform as it’s currently rated at 4.5 stars out of 5. If you’re interested in trying it, a free 15-day trial offers plenty of time to decide whether Orderhive works for your multi-channel ecommerce business. If you decide to keep it, Orderhive subscriptions start at $99 per month with custom quotes available on request.

How to Connect a Sales Channel to Orderhive

1. From the Orderhive dashboard, navigate to Integrations > Marketplaces.
2. Find the channel you want to connect to your Orderhive account and click on the integration button.
3. Provide the necessary information about your channel account.
4. Choose the warehouse that will be supplying orders for that channel (if applicable).
5. Select an order sync date.
6. Click Done and follow the prompts to sign into your channel account to connect the channel to Orderhive.

Ecomdash

Ecomdash is a popular cloud-based multi-channel inventory management system for medium-sized ecommerce businesses. It’s a well-rounded platform, offering features for inventory management as well as order management and shipping management. This saves business owners from having to rely on separate platforms for those functions.

One of the characteristics of Ecomdash that sets it apart is its breadth of inventory control options. For example, you can choose if you want to manage the products in your inventory by SKU, serial number, or your own custom product identification system. This flexibility makes Ecomdash particularly well-suited to ecommerce retail. Best of all, Ecomdash supports an impressive library of popular channels and services including Amazon, Etsy, WooCommerce, Google Shopping Actions, Magento, Jet, Newegg, Facebook Shopping, and many others.

Another useful feature of Ecomdash is the ability to set reorder rules for your inventory. This ensures that you only order the amount of product you need to maintain optimal profitability. Additionally, the Ecomdash user interface makes it easy to track inventory across multiple warehouses.

At the time of writing, Ecomdash is rated at 4 stars out of 5. With a mid-range starting subscription price of $60 per month, Ecomdash offers a discount of 20% for paying an entire year upfront. If you’d like to take the service for a test run before committing, Ecomdash has a 15-day free trial for new users.

How to Connect a Sales Channel to Ecomdash

1. From the Ecomdash dashboard, navigate to Settings > Storefront Setup.
2. Click Add New to open the channel integration window.
3. Select the platform you’d like to connect to your Ecomdash account.
4. Input your login information and, if applicable, an authorization token, then click Save.
5. Input the correct order fulfillment option and lead time.

Ordoro

Like many other options on our list, Ordoro aims to be a central hub for your ecommerce and inventory-related needs. Ordoro combines inventory management, order management, shopping cart management, shipping management, inventory replenishment, and even dropshipping automation into a single platform.

Ordoro is very effective for multi-channel inventory management and consolidates disparate channels into a single system. Additionally, Ordoro offers “kitting” which is a feature that lets you create product bundles you can list and sell on all of your sales channels.

The Ordoro web app is neatly organized with tabs along the top that you use to navigate between multi-channel orders, shipments, and products. All your most granular controls and reporting options, like the list of products in your current purchase orders, are under the corresponding tab. So accessing the information and functions you need in any given moment never takes more than a couple clicks.

There are a couple of noteworthy perks to using Ordoro. First, you get significant USPS shipping discounts for using Ordoro as your shipping management platform. Another perk is that you can automate the process of sending purchase orders to suppliers, ensuring that you never run out of popular products.

Aside from being a well-rounded platform, Ordoro is often praised for offering excellent customer support, which certainly factors in its current rating of 4.5 stars out of 5. If you’re interested in trying Ordoro for yourself, there’s a free 15-day trial available. After the trial, Ordoro subscriptions start at $59 per month.

How to Connect a Sales Channel to Ordoro

1. From the Ordoro dashboard, click on your account name near the upper right-hand corner, then click Account Settings.
2. Click Sales Channels in the web app sidebar.
3. Select Add a Sales Channel.
4. Choose the channel you’d like to add from the drop-down menu, then click Add Sales Channel.
5. Follow the prompts to log into your account for that sales channel.
6. Accept the license agreement, if applicable.
7. Click Continue to finalize.

Stitch Labs

As the inventory management system of brands like Young & Reckless and Brooklinen, Stitch Labs is designed for high-growth ecommerce and scalability. Most notably, Stitch Labs is a multi-functional platform that can also handle your order management, shipping management, operations management, and in-depth reporting.

In terms of the interface, Stitch Labs takes a very similar approach to most other web apps with a collapsible left-hand sidebar that navigates between tabs and menus. This makes the array of inventory management and reporting options very accessible.

Though it offers many integrations, Stitch Labs currently only integrates with three online marketplaces: Amazon, Etsy, and eBay. This puts Stitch Labs at a disadvantage compared to other inventory management solutions since it supports only a limited number of the sales channels that multi-channel retailers commonly use today. But on the plus side, Stitch Labs does support certain platforms that could come in handy for an ecommerce business including WooCommerce, ShipStation, QuickBooks, Fulfillment by Amazon, and Square.

Business owners who use Stitch Labs praise its breadth of reporting options, dropshipping support, and strong customer service, all of which are factors in the platform’s present rating of 4.5 stars out of 5. Currently, Stitch Labs does not offer a free trial although there is a free demo available upon request. With Stitch Labs subscriptions starting at $799 per month — and with annual billing being the only option — you should probably make sure Stitch Labs is the right solution for your ecommerce business before buying.

How to Connect a Sales Channel to Stitch Labs

1. From the Stitch Labs dashboard, navigate to Integrations > Channels, then click Add Channel.
2. Select the channel you want to integrate. If applicable, make sure to select the channel version for your country.
3. Input your login credentials for that sales channel, then click Authorize.

Combine Multi-Channel Inventory Management Software With Hostdedi Managed WooCommerce

As you decide which inventory management system is best for your multi-channel marketing strategy, consider the many benefits of choosing fully managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi for your ecommerce site.

Our managed WooCommerce plans are designed with scalability in mind, so you’ll never have to worry about your store going offline as you grow your customer base. And just as platforms like TradeGecko and Ordoro make multi-channel inventory management simple, it’s easy to drive revenue with your reliable, high-converting ecommerce store when you choose Hostdedi as your hosting provider.

To learn more about managed WooCommerce hosting by Hostdedi, check out our plans today.

Your WooCommerce website will convert more browsers to buyers when it’s optimized for performance and functionality. Your customers demand an intuitive and pleasurable experience, and you should too.

There are many ways to optimize a website, and this guide covers three foundational categories: speed, operation, and add-ons. It suggests strategies and offers resources for trimming down a bloated website and alleviating migraine-inducing management.

Hand your IT team this guide and have them make sure your WooCommerce conversion optimization is on track.

Improving Website Load Times & Reliability

The faster you get your products in front of shoppers, the more likely they are to continue shopping. One Akamai report, which looked at optimal load times for conversions, found that:

• Two-second delays on ecommerce sites reduce browsing times by more than half.
• For peak conversions, websites need load times between 1.8 to 2.7 seconds across all device types.
• For the lowest bounce rates, pages should load between 700 ms to 1.2 seconds.

Online website speed tests like Pingdom and GTmetrix offer performance evaluations into load times, page size, and an overall performance grade. These tools also suggest ways to improve performance, like removing query strings from static resources and combining external JavaScript. You can also examine how individual pages use JavaScript with this free JavaScript usage tool.

If your website’s lagginess is costing you sales, here are some boxes to check that’ll keep your customers more engaged and converting.

Optimize Media

Online stores need plenty of demo videos and product images to make sales. The more accurate and detailed the visual information you give shoppers, the more likely they are to buy your products. Research on the impact of images on ecommerce stores shows a twofold increase in conversions just by having two product images rather than one.

But all of these images and videos take a toll on your site’s performance and your sales. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the cost of serving all of those high-resolution images and videos to customers can really add up—and dramatically lower page load speeds, further suppressing conversions.

To combat performance problems from bloated product pics, make sure you optimize your images and videos for the web. Here are some online tools and resources to help.

Photo Optimization Tools

Video Compression Tools

You can use video hosts like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia to embed product videos without a big hit to your performance. But if you want video integrated into your site’s design (e.g. as a homepage header), you’ll want to compress it to as small a file as possible for quick load times. Here are some video compression resources.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Optimizing file size isn’t the only step in serving static files to customers quickly. Using content delivery networks to serve consumers high-quality content wherever they live is no longer an optional part of your WooCommerce conversion optimization process.

CDNs can significantly cut down on page load times for customers who visit your site from the other side of the globe. Most top-tier hosting options now offer a built-in CDN option by default, so it’s possible to blend this with your normal month-to-month hosting fees.

Leverage Browser Caching

Another effective strategy for keeping large media files from slowing down your site is to have your developers leverage browser caching. When your customers first visit your site, you can tell their browsers which files (images, HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to save locally. Tell your IT team to make sure they’ve done the following:

• Change request headers of your resources
• Add .htaccess code to cached files
• Set optimized caching times

We’ve covered top WordPress caching plugins; Google’s PageSpeed Insights also offers a good primer on how to use browser caching.

Enable GZIP Compression

Any files your server sends to a browser can be compressed or “zipped” before being sent. Compressed files transfer much more quickly, cutting down on bandwidth usage and increasing page load times. Have your IT team configure your server to return zipped content when possible and to run a GZIP compression test to ensure things are running smoothly.

Get the Right Hosting Plan

If you’re currently on a shared plan and you want to boost your site’s speed, consider switching to either a managed hosting account that is optimized for WooCommerce, or if you have internal developer resources to optimize your store, a VPS or dedicated server.

Good website performance starts with finding the right hosting service for your needs and settling on the right hosting package. Many smaller ecommerce stores opt for shared hosting plans because of their low cost, but the smaller price tag usually means slower speeds. Shared hosting is “shared” for a reason—your website is sharing computing resources and data space with other websites on the same server.

Regardless of the type of hosting plan you’re on, you’ll want to also consider these nice-to-haves when looking for a hosting provider:

• Customer support – Look for hosts that provide free 24/7 phone support with real people who pick up the phone when your website is down.
• Hassle-free scalability – Many hosting companies start you off at a low rate but constantly try and sell you upgrades and extras as your business grows. Look for a plan that lets you scale without the hassle.
• Redundancy – Not all web hosts are the same, so look for good customer reviews, strong uptime guarantees, and a robust backup capacity.
• Server Access – If you’re going with a dedicated server, you’ll have access to it for making changes, altering code, etc. But not all plans offer access. Check to see before you commit.

Improve Store Operations

Aside from speeding up your site, you can also optimize your store’s performance and boost conversions by streamlining its functionality and increasing its analytics power—allowing your team to spend more time on the areas of the site that need improvement.

Disable/Remove Features You Don’t Need

WordPress plugins bring a lot of functionality to your website, but chances are you won’t need every feature running at once. Cut through the clutter and simplify your admin portal by disabling or removing features you don’t need:

• Admins areas and widgets you don’t use
• AJAX cart fragments
• Internal and external embeds
• Emojis and pingbacks
• Query strings

Here are some WordPress plugins to help ensure the speed of your WooCommerce store:

• Code Snippets – WP plugin that makes it easy to add snippets for disabling tasks, areas, or widgets that aren’t being used.
• LittleBizzy – Suite of plugins that lets you disable AJAX cart fragments and internal and external embeds to speed up page rendering and loading times.
• WP Disable – Speed up WooCommerce by disabling emojis, pingbacks, and removing query strings.
• WooCommerce Speed Drain Repair – This plugin instructs WP not to load WooCommerce scripts unless the user is on a WooCommerce page.

Upgrade Your Store Analytics

Boosting conversions depends on data to deliver valuable customer insights, and Google Analytics can get you a long way. But today’s ecommerce stores require even more granular metrics for managing customer relationships. All of this data can get in the way of running your store.

To combat the flood of information, consider upgrading your analytics to a platform that brings together data from your ecommerce platform, analytics tools, and advertising sources. Platforms like Domo give every decision maker real-time data across all of your analytics sources.

Using data consolidation, you’re also able to pull from more data points. With analytics platforms like Glew.io, you can micro-target your customers to personalize sales and find more revenue opportunities. For example, with Glew.io you can segment customers who only buy with a coupon from customers who pay full price. That means no wasted special offer emails being sent to customers who don’t use them, lowering your email costs and increasing conversions.

Improve Shipping and Fulfillment

Your shipping and fulfillment process is another area where you can boost conversion rates. There are plenty of WordPress inventory and shipping plugins that can streamline your process and give you additional functionality.

• ShippingEasy – Automates shipping, order tracking, and customer notifications.
• ShipStation – Integrate all of your sales regardless of where they’re made.
• Composite Products – Create customized product kits like gift baskets.
• TradeGecko – Start wholesaling and integrate multiple stores into one inventory system.
• WooCommerce Stamps.com – Create ready-to-print shipping labels for USPS.
• WooCommerce Dropshipping – Send automated order notifications to wholesalers.
• Ordoro – Ship orders from each of your sales channels.

Optimizing for Mobile

As the global mobile retail commerce revenue reaches $669 billion annually, ecommerce owners are scrambling to improve customers’ mobile experience. However, the majority of ecommerce sites get mediocre scores when it comes to shopper experience, especially on-site search functionality. For example, 72% of mobile sites don’t suggest highly relevant categories to search within in their autocomplete recommendations. Here are resources to unlock the power of WooCommerce on mobile:

• Algolia – SaaS that integrates with your store to provide personalized search results based on their purchase history, preferences, and demographics.
• WooCommerce Product Search – WP plugin with live search, filters, and analytics.
• Checkout Field Editor – Simplify your checkout fields for a more mobile-friendly UX.
• WooCommerce Social Login – Shoppers can sign into their accounts via social accounts.
• WooCommerce One Page Checkout – Consolidate your checkout process into one page and cut down on abandoned carts.
• AppPresser – Create a customized mobile app that integrates with WordPress.

Add New Features and Merchandising Strategies

After you’ve gotten your WooCommerce site loading fast and streamlined your store’s operation, it’s time to add some new features and strategies that will improve your customer experience and push your conversion rates northward.

Set Up Split Testing

Split testing, or A/B testing, is an effective way to test two versions of a website layout, checkout flow, or similar component to discover which version converts better. A/B testing is how ecommerce owners continually improve the customer experience, and there’s no shortage of testing ideas to increase your conversion rate. WooCommerce owners can use specialized platforms like Google Optimize, Optimizely, or VWO to easily perform split testing on just about anything they can think of. Common ecommerce split tests look at

• Product page designs
• Calls-to-Action
• Forms
• Advertising
• Follow-up emails
• Product images or videos
• Coupon offers
• Recognizable security seals
• “Thank You” pages
• Checkout pages

Product Sizing Tools

No one likes to get a product that doesn’t fit. If your products require sizing, you can increase your customers’ experience and conversion by incorporating a sizing chart into your product pages. Here are some resources to help:

Add a Cart Abandonment Solution

The fact that 70% of all carts are abandoned should move every eCommerce store owner to action. That represents an enormous amount of untapped sales to reclaim. There are plenty of reasons people abandon their shopping carts. Most of these pain points are solvable problems.

While there’s little to guard against unforeseen issues like website crashes or a declined credit cards, you can fix an overly complicated checkout process or too few payment methods. Here are some resources:

Choose Hostdedi for the Best WooCommerce Experience

When you’re in ecommerce, you want a hosting solution that provides access to premium plugins and themes, an ultra fast CDN, and top notch security built right in.

When you choose Hostdedi, you’re not just getting great WordPress ecommerce hosting. You’re also getting access to Sales Monitoring and Plugin Performance Monitor, and WooCommerce Automated Testing.

Try managed WooCommerce hosting by Hostdedi for your online store today.

Do you know how to scale your ecommerce business? Or when the best time to scale is?

Scaling a business is a major step for any ecommerce business. We’ve recruited several experienced business owners and professionals with firsthand experience to explain the best ways to scale an ecommerce business.

When Is It Time to Scale?

Scaling a business is a huge and immensely important undertaking. It’s not something that should be attempted too early in the business lifecycle.

As Tim Parkin, President of Parkin Consulting, says, “Scaling before building a solid foundation is a common and fatal mistake. It’s extremely difficult to achieve a positive return on investment (ROI) without the ability to maximize revenue.”

The goal of scaling a business is to increase the capacity of your business without negatively affecting revenue.

More specifically, you want to grow your operations to accommodate more sales. This is largely a matter of technology, requiring upgrades to the technologies you’re using to boost the capacity of your business. Additionally, you’ll need to consider whether you need to expand your workforce.

Scale Your Technology

For ecommerce businesses, technology is crucial. It’s what business owners use to start, run, and maintain their online businesses. For this reason, technology is where you should turn your attention first as you begin scaling your business.

WooCommerce

If you’re one of many using WordPress, WooCommerce is an extremely popular ecommerce plugin for WordPress. In fact, there’s a good chance you’re already using it. WooCommerce remains so popular because it’s extremely versatile with lots of useful add-ons and extensions.

In fact, WooCommerce is ideal for scaling because it can handle heavy traffic; as your customer base grows, your online store will remain functional in spite of the increased volume of orders. Best of all, WooCommerce is optimized for search engines, meaning your store will be more visible on the web.

Third-Party Sales Channels

As you scale your business, consider making your products or services available on other platforms like the Amazon Marketplace or eBay. Think of it like taking the training wheels off your ecommerce store. By leveraging other sales channels, you extend your reach and by extension, can earn more sales.

But be smart about the platforms you choose. Rick Watson of RMW Commerce Consulting says, “Pick ecommerce [platforms] with broad support that you can stay on for a long time.” Similarly, focus on mainstream platforms instead of new or small players that could go out of business.

“Often these players are short-lived and go out of business, causing you to re-platform and stunting growth.”

Logistics and Shipping

When you accept an order from a customer, you’re making a promise to fulfill that order. Logistics is how you fulfill that promise.

Logistics is the symphony of procedures, operations, and resources that facilitate essential business processes. Or put another way, it’s how you manage the flow of products from their points of origin to the end consumer.

For most ecommerce stores, this can include order fulfillment, inventory management, essential business resources, agreements with suppliers and distributors, and even your workforce. Your fulfillment and shipping processes need to be able to accommodate an increased sales volume as you scale.

Software

Software is as essential for scaling as it is for running an ecommerce business in general. Thus, you’ll likely need to revisit the software you’re using — from customer relationship management (CRM) software to your accounting software, email marketing software, and everything in-between.

Scaling is a different experience for someone who manages his or her own inventory than for someone who runs a dropshipping business. If you maintain your own inventory, a capable inventory management system will be needed to scale your business. There are a number of inventory management tools that are effective for higher-volume businesses, including Acumatica and OneWorld.

Another consideration is warehouse management. If scaling your business requires more inventory storage space, a warehouse management system like Manhattan SCALE could be necessary.

Software can also facilitate the streamlining of your shipping process. After all, scaling a business means shipping more orders. To offer the best customer experience possible, the shipping process needs to be as seamless as possible, and a platform like ShipStation can help.

ShipStation makes shipping easier for ecommerce businesses. Best of all, ShipStation offers native integration with WooCommerce and supports all the major shipping providers, including UPS, USPS, and FedEx.

There are technologies for boosting sales, too. For instance, many WooCommerce sites use a tool like Jilt which reduces cart abandonment. You can also use software to create a customer loyalty program which incentivizes customers to make more purchases. WordPress plugins like Beans and Gratisfaction can be used to create loyalty rewards programs for stores running on WooCommerce.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has huge implications for ecommerce, because it lets you offload computer-based functions to remote servers via the internet. In turn, you don’t have to manage your hardware or software because the provider continues to update and upgrade the servers over time. Meanwhile, you get continuous access to cutting-edge technology without the usual upkeep.

Justina Rimkeviciute, Marketing Director of ProForecast, considers cloud computing to be instrumental to future-proofing- in addition to scaling a business.

Moving your business to the cloud allows you … to better prepare for future eventualities … facilitate and adapt to change… and … forecast your business financials,” Justina says. “Also, cloud-based technology allows a business to scale faster and easier compared to traditional … requirements for scalability, and often comes with minimal or no downtime.”

Fraud Management

When you’re receiving more orders, you’re inevitably going to see more fraud. This makes fraud management software essential to scaling.

Many fraud management tools rely on machine learning, geolocation, and advanced authentication methods to ensure that your incoming orders are real. Fortunately, it’s not as difficult to implement fraud management as it may sound. Simility, which is made by PayPal, is a highly intelligent fraud management system that offers biometric order authentication. It’s very simple to install and offers a user-friendly dashboard for administrators. Best of all, Simility is scalable and can accommodate a growing customer base.

Another great fraud management system is Subuno. With native support for WooCommerce, Subuno is customizable and allows you to set thresholds and rules for fraud detection.

Marketing

For virtually any online business, marketing technology is an essential part of the technology stack. It’s even more important when your goal is scaling.

Since you want to accommodate a growing customer base, you need to find ways to extend the reach of your business. For an online business owner, marketing technology tends to be the most effective way to expand your customer base.

Before you choose your marketing technology, you need to figure out what you’re trying to accomplish. The key functions of marketing technology include:

• Tracking audience behavior
• Cultivating a community on social media
• Building landing pages
• Growing your subscriber list

Streamlining and Automation

Scaling a dropshipping business is both easier and trickier than a traditional ecommerce business.

On the one hand, you’re not maintaining your own inventory, so scaling isn’t quite so resource-intensive. On the other hand, dropshipping means your business depends on the ability of suppliers and distributors to fulfill your orders.

In order to scale, you need to know those suppliers and distributors can accommodate an increased volume of orders.

Fulfillment Pipeline Consolidation

One way to scale a dropshipping business is to scale horizontally instead of vertically which you can do by adding additional partners to your fulfillment pipeline. However, whether or not you add more partners to your dropship supply chain, streamlining your business is essential if you want to scale. This means you must consolidate your processes and sales channels as much as possible.

Tools like OrderCup actually make streamlining a dropshipping business fairly simple. Typically, dropshipping businesses receive orders from numerous sales channels. However, instead of forcing business owners to maintain those separate channels, OrderCup consolidates Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and many other online marketplaces into a single system. This consolidation gives you access to orders submitted through separate platforms in one place.

Fulfillment Automation

By nature, dropshipping is a highly automated form of ecommerce. However, there are ways to make an ecommerce business even more automated which comes in handy for scaling.

Some ecommerce marketplaces offer the ability to handle the entire fulfillment process. This allows you to incorporate sales from those channels with no need to make any major changes to your dropshipping supply chain. Amazon actually offers this service with Fulfillment by Amazon.

For ecommerce stores that don’t do dropshipping, ShipStation can be set up to automatically print labels for incoming orders. When you’re expecting a major increase in order volume, automating shipment preparation (as much as possible) is a requirement.

Expand Your Workforce

Scaling usually comes with the need for a bigger workforce. Generally, there are two ways you can do this: hire more employees or outsource the labor.

As Jonathan Prichard, Founder and CEO of MattressInsider, says, “Often when a company starts out [with] a small team, team members are juggling multiple roles. People in sales are also doing customer service, CEOs are also the head of marketing, and so on. Multiple roles split focus and [keep] people from doing what they do best.”

By splitting roles (or creating new roles), each member of your workforce can focus on what he or she is most skilled at doing. In turn, your business is more productive and can better accommodate more sales.

Customer Support

You cannot increase your order volume without increasing the need for customer support, so customer support must scale with your business. Of course, this means you’ll need more workers to help facilitate that support.

A designated team for customer support is typically recommended, especially for a dropshipping business. On the other hand, the ideal way to scale is to increase capacity as much as possible while increasing expenses as little as possible, and creating a designated customer support team can be quite a significant expense.

Fortunately, customer support can be outsourced.

Outsourcing Support

By definition, outsourcing is when you hire someone from outside of your business or company to do a job or task that would traditionally have been done in-house. This has become extremely popular across many industries which is evident by the growing number of people who make a living as freelancers and consultants, and the number of white-label maintenance and support companies out there.

If you’ve ever tried to find experienced, qualified candidates, then you know just how difficult it can be. And when you do find the right candidate, employing them is expensive.

With outsourcing, you’re often not restricted to hiring local candidates, as well. This is especially true for high-tech industries. In fact, since you’re casting a wider net, you will often find more skilled and qualified candidates than if you had to hire locally.

Outsourcing is particularly suited to scaling an online business, allowing you to meet your labor needs as they change over time, and allowing you to offload both the tasks and the management of the tasks to another. In other words, you can recruit workers if they’re needed, when they’re needed, and as they’re needed.

Track, Evaluate, Adjust

After scaling your technology and expanding your workforce, it’s time for TEA: Track, Evaluate, and Adjust. In other words, take a look at your progress and gauge your business scaling strategy.

• Has it been effective?
• Are you seeing the results you’d hoped to see in a reasonable amount of time?
• What has worked for you?
• What hasn’t worked for you?
• How can you tweak your plan to make it better?

Observe how your revenue is changing over time. Scaling is a substantial investment, so you want your revenue to be increasing commensurately. Similarly, you want to increase customer retention and acquisition which reflect the strength of your sales.

Forecasting is also important. According to Justina Rimkeviciute, “If you are anticipating growth, ensure that you have some form of forecasting available to you that will allow you to accurately predict what impact certain business decisions will have on your bottom line.”

As you assess your scaling strategy and its results, you can find ways to tweak your plan so you achieve your scaling goals.

Scale Your Ecommerce Business With WooCommerce Hosting

At Hostdedi, we know how difficult it can be to build or scale an online business. In fact, that’s part of what makes our hosting plans so great for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Fully managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi is chock full of cutting-edge technologies that will help you run your business. Built specifically with performance and revenue growth in mind, our hosting plans can accommodate high traffic and help you to reduce cart abandonment.

Check out our plans to get started today.

Consumers want to feel connected to the brands they buy. Lifestyle brands take advantage of this fact and make it easy for consumers to envision their product as part of a larger identity.

If you’re an ecommerce company, one of the simplest ways you can tap into the power of the lifestyle brand is to opt for lifestyle product photography: product images with a warm, breezy, and familiar aesthetic, usually in a styled setting.

This look is best achieved with natural light rather than studio lighting because natural light can help make your products look the way they do in real life. As an added benefit, natural lighting photography doesn’t require a lot of expensive equipment, extensive photography training, or hiring a photographer.

In this post, we’ll go over how to capture incredible images without the use of studio lighting equipment, as well as our best natural light photography tips.

The Basics of Natural Light Photography

You don’t need to take a lengthy course on photography to capture quality images in natural light, but there are a few camera settings you should be familiar with before beginning:

• Aperture is the size of the opening in your camera lens that lets in different amounts of light. The aperture is measured in f-stops. The higher the f-stop, the narrower the size of the opening and the less light is let into the camera. A higher f-stop will result in photos where more is in focus (think Ansel Adams). A lower f-stop means less will be in focus which can put more emphasis on your product.
• Shutter speed refers to the length of time the shutter on your camera stays open when taking a photo. Fast shutter speeds can “freeze” motion at a single moment with no blur. Slow shutter speeds do the opposite — often leading to intentionally (and artfully) blurred photos. You can have shutter speeds as quick as 1/100th of a second, or as slow as a couple of seconds depending on what look you want.

Adjusting each of these settings will help you get the right exposure, or the right amount of light and darkness, in your images. If you’re not comfortable adjusting these settings on your own, you can always turn to the automatic or program settings built into your camera.

Equipment You Need for Natural Lighting Photography

While you won’t need to purchase thousands of dollars of studio lighting, you do need the following essentials when shooting natural light photos:

• A DSLR camera. This is a type of camera that is an important step above a regular point-and-shoot digital camera. A DSLR camera has adjustable settings and changeable lenses to modify both the aperture and shutter speed to optimize for natural light.
• A tripod. Using a tripod ensures that your photos aren’t blurry and the framing for each product is identical because it will keep the camera completely still throughout your photoshoot.
• A reflector. This is something you can use to reflect the light in a different direction if needed. If you’re on a budget, you can use white foam boards from your local craft store. Professional reflectors are available for a purchase price ranging from $15 to $300.

Natural Light Photography Tips

How to best photograph in natural light depends on many variables: whether you are indoors or outdoors, how cloudy it is, and the time of day.

Photographing With Indoor Window Light

When indoors, the natural light source will likely be from a window. This means the light will be soft and coming from one side.

Here are our tips for working with window light:

• Have your subject or product face toward the window, not away. This reduces the chance for shadows.
• Try to find a long window so that the light isn’t only coming from above.
• Use a reflector to even out the light. Place the reflector at an angle opposite to the source of natural light.

Photographing on Cloudy Days vs. Bright and Sunny Days

Your photos will look drastically different on an overcast day than they do on a day with full sun.

Many photographers love the soft, even light of cloudy days. These images have a bluish tone and there is little contrast. This type of natural light is ideal for any photos involving models or products with muted colors.

Sunny days have strong, direct light which can cause harsh shadows. However, when done right, this type of natural light can be powerful. It’s best for wide, distant photos or for up-close images of products with contrasting patterns or textures.

Here are a few tips for working with each type of light.

Cloudy Day

• Be extra vigilant for changes in light as the clouds may be shifting constantly.
• As a rule of thumb, widen your aperture setting by decreasing your f-stops by two or three. This can help increase the contrast between your subject or product and the background.

Sunny Day

• One photographer suggests setting your ISO between 50 and 100 and choosing a fast shutter speed of 1/100th of a second to optimize exposure on bright days.
• Use a neutral density filter to reduce the light coming into your camera. The filter works like sunglasses for your camera lens.

Photographing During Different Times of Day

Because you’re relying on the sun for light, the time of day heavily impacts how your images look as the sun moves through the sky. There are three main changes in light every day: golden hour, midday sun. and twilight.

Golden Hour

Golden hour occurs twice a day, one hour after the sun rises and one hour before it sets. The distinctive “golden” tone of the light at this time is what gave it its name. Here are our tips for photographing during golden hour:

• Come highly prepared with how and where you want to photograph because you only have an hour to get all your shots.
• Don’t use the automatic setting on your camera, because it “corrects” for the special light you are there to capture. Instead, set your aperture and shutter speed manually. If you aren’t confident with manual settings, choose the “cloudy” or “shade” automatic setting.

Midday Sun

During most of the day, the sun is almost directly overhead, creating shadows and harsh light. This means you may have to work harder to find a position that doesn’t have shadows. On the other hand, the bright light is ideal for photographing texture or action shots. Here are our tips for photographing during midday sun:

• Avoid shadows by shooting in the shade, underneath a porch or tree.
• Use a neutral density filter to avoid washed-out images (as discussed for photographing on sunny days).

Twilight

Similar to the golden hour, twilight occurs twice a day. The first time is about 20 minutes before the sun rises, and the second is about 20 minutes after it sets. The light during twilight is dark and blue, but it’s not yet as dark as night. Here are our tips for photographing during twilight:

• When you need to get an up-close photo, don’t use the zoom on your lens. Instead, walk up to the subject or product. This way, you eliminate the shaking that’s amplified through zoom, especially in low light. You may need the help of a tripod to eliminate blur from movement.
• Use a lens with a much faster shutter speed than usual to capture crisp photos in low light.

Find the Natural Light That Best Aligns With Your Brand

Some people will tell you to always photograph during golden hour, while others will extol the benefits of photographing indoors with natural light streaming through a window. What really matters, however, is that your lifestyle product photography ultimately aligns with your brand.

Experiment with different types of photos taken in different types of natural light to find the image look that communicates the feeling you’re brand needs to convey.

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Growth is on the horizon for ecommerce fashion and accessories: data shows the industry is expected to continue to increase sales steadily.

But with that growth comes steeper competition which can make it more challenging for new ecommerce fashion brands to succeed.

As buying fashion online becomes more popular, consumers have started to demand more personalization. Over half of consumers now expect personalized experiences while shopping online or want to at least be shown products that are highly relevant to their individual interests. Most of the time this happens with help from marketing automation software or ecommerce tools that aid in delivering personalization.

However, if you’re not ready to introduce fancy tools and plugins for personalization (or you’re looking for something to run in tandem with them), one way you can make your brand feel more personalized is by zeroing in on a specific consumer identity — one that goes beyond mere gender and age.

Fashion lookbooks are one of the most effective marketing tools when it comes to conveying a specific consumer identity.

In this post, we’ll get into the basics of what a lookbook is and how creating one can help drive sales.

What Is a Lookbook?

Before the digital age, lookbooks used to be physical books that fashion brands would have printed to showcase their latest collections. Think of the original lookbooks like small print fashion magazines for a specific brand minus the editorials.

Today, most lookbooks are digital and live on a brand’s website. Some are designed like traditional lookbooks with slides of images that can be digitally “flipped through.” Others are more creative or interactive.

The purpose of a lookbook is to convey a brand or designer’s latest collection in a flattering, marketable light. For traditional fashion companies, the lookbook would be given to buyers of major fashion retailers to (hopefully) impress them enough to carry the new line.

Now that the fashion world has embraced direct-to-consumer ecommerce, there’s not as much need to distribute lookbooks to third-party retailers. Instead, many smart ecommerce brands are using lookbooks to appeal directly to customers through their website, mobile app, social media, and/or email marketing.

How Can a Lookbook Drive Ecommerce Sales?

Lookbooks offer stylized photography and branded graphic design that can be an important supplement to regular product images — drumming up renewed interest in your store and deepening consumer loyalty.

Let’s look at five specific ways lookbooks can drive ecommerce sales.

1. Lookbooks Help You Tell a Better Story About Your Brand

The reason that certain websites stand out in the crowded fashion ecommerce space has a lot to do with their ability to tell stories visually and imbue their products with character.

Lookbooks offer an excellent opportunity for brands to include vibrant lifestyle images of their clothes or accessories as a part of an aspirational narrative.

For example, popular ecommerce athletic clothing retailer Outdoor Voices uses images of people running through a California desert landscape to communicate a certain brand look and feel. These images tell a story about the types of people who wear Outdoor Voices: adventurers who love to challenge themselves with exercise because it brings them joy.

2. Lookbooks Put Your Brand Front and Center

On average, ecommerce stores that sell through their own websites generate 86 percent higher revenues than brands who sell through third-party channels. That’s largely because consumers value products more (and are willing to spend more) when they’re connected to a brand with which they identify and love.

A lookbook is a powerful tool for bringing your brand front and center. For instance, a lookbook by fashion brand Olive Clothing uses natural-looking lifestyle images of young people on the streets of Paris to convey their modern, simplistic, and youthful brand.

3. Lookbooks Create Emotional Connections With Your Customers

The reason that people wear certain brands over others may be because of a deep-seated emotional connection. Consumers sometimes feel driven to purchase an item of clothing not just because of a trend, but because it’s associated with a positive feeling or nostalgia.

Having a lookbook that plays to your customer’s emotions can boost sales as customers become repeat buyers.

American Giant ecommerce apparel brand recently released a full lookbook for one new dress. The lookbook capitalized on their audience’s emotions rather than exploring the features of the dress. The simple, black maxi dress was worn by real women staring boldly into the camera and was paired with the emotionally-charged tagline: “Dress like a badass.”

4. Lookbooks Can Help You Tap Into the Power of Experiential Retail

Traditional retail has experienced something of a revival in recent years thanks to experiential retail. Experiential retail is the concept that shopping should be entertaining and immersive instead of passive perusing.

Fashion brands don’t have to build a creative pop-up shop to take advantage of experience. Instead, ecommerce fashion brands can use interactive digital lookbooks to offer a more engaging alternative to looking through rows of static product images.

Nike’s CR7 Digital Lookbook is an inspiring example of a creative lookbook that serves as a complete online experience for consumers. It incorporates animation, music, vivid colors, and the ability to click directly on items you want to buy.

5. Lookbooks Are an Easy Way to Announce New Collections and Boost Seasonal Sales

In a sense, digital lookbooks for ecommerce fashion brands today can serve a similar purpose to the original print lookbooks. That is, they can be used to showcase your designs in a heavily branded, conceptual way to catch the eye of third-party media.

In addition, including your new collection lookbook in your email marketing to customers will be more enticing than a link to the collection that is for sale online.

For example, look to accessory brand Lisi Lerch. For their spring/summer 2017 collection, the company launched a lookbook pairing their accessories with bright and sunny beachwear and triggering consumers to buy for their summer plans.

How to Make a Lookbook

Aside from the work of hiring a photographer and models, creating a lookbook is easy and inexpensive. You can create a digital lookbook for free using Google Slides, or you can opt for a flipbook-building software like Flip Builder, AnyFlip, or Flipsnack. These tools cater to non-designers and provide an intuitive drag-and-drop builder to create professional lookbooks.

Ultimately, Create a Lookbook That’s Unique to Your Brand

We’ve seen how lookbooks can be a powerful marketing tool for ecommerce fashion and accessories brands. However, it’s important that you maximize the impact of your lookbook by putting your own brand spin on it. Don’t let your lookbook feel like it could belong to just any store … make it uniquely yours.

Some brands would be best served by a simple, streamlined lookbook. Some might want to incorporate more interactive features, and others should aim to tap into their customers’ emotions. Regardless of your approach, a lookbook is an excellent way to invest in design and photography that best complements your company.

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If you’ve ever had trouble shutting your middle dresser drawer, then you know that people like T-shirts.

Whether you’re a lifestyle blogger, a musician, or just a designer with a vision, you’ve probably given some thought to making and selling your own. T-shirts are a great promotion for your brand, in addition to being a money maker.

These days, you don’t even have to be a stellar graphic artist to design and sell amazing shirts, tote bags, and more. You don’t even need to know how to screenprint, embroider, or keep physical stock of your shirts. All you need is a vision, and dropshipping can take care of the rest.

What Is Dropshipping?

In short, dropshipping is a method of selling products online when you have no physical product. Basically, you have an online store where you list products, a customer places an order, and a dropshipping provider fulfills that order for you.

The pros of dropshipping are simple. There are low startup and operating costs since all you really need to pay for up front is your website, hosting, and things like that. You don’t have to bulk purchase products ahead of time, and you don’t need to pay for a space to store anything (or take up valuable real estate in your bedroom).

One of the biggest benefits is turning around a new design quickly. For example, say there’s a big news story, and you think of a funny take on it. If you had to order new shirts and print them yourself, the shirt could be irrelevant by the time you get it on sale. Or worse, someone else might think of the same idea and get it on sale before you.

With dropshipping, there is no delay. When you think of a design, you can immediately submit a new design for your online store and start selling right away. Throw some quick promotion behind that idea, and you could have a viral hit on your hands.

Of course, where there are positives, there are probably some negatives, too. When you’re dropshipping T-shirts (or any other product), you don’t have control over things like inventory or shipping times. At the same time, you’re the one running customer service. So, those customers who are used to free 2-day shipping? They might get a little testy with the 3 to 5-day shipping times most T-shirt dropshipping providers boast.

Additionally, costs per item can be a little higher. Normally, if you ordered a bunch of plain, white T-shirts, you could get them for just a few dollars each. With the most popular dropshipping T-shirt providers, the base cost of just the shirt starts at over $7 per unit.

Printify vs. Printful vs. Scalable Press: Find the Right Dropship T-Shirt Platform

There are lots of options for your dropship T-shirt business. Today, we’re going to discuss the big three that integrate with WooCommerce: Printify, Printful, and Scalable Press.

Why are we focusing on WooCommerce? Because it integrates so seamlessly with WordPress. WordPress is one of the most popular website platforms on the market today, so it makes sense for us to focus on easy integrations for WooCommerce. That being said, all of these platforms also integrate with Shopify.

All three essentially do the same thing. They take your designs and turn them into a product that people can buy. They even ship it directly to customers under your brand. It doesn’t really get easier than that.

But there are some key differences. Printify, Printful, and Scalable press all have different upsides and downsides.

Printify

You can start using Printify for a whopping zero dollars (which is the case with all three of these providers). Their most affordable T-shirt starts at just $7.45, but higher quality/pricier items are available.

Printify also offers higher tiered packages with extra features, including a discount on products and branded customer support. Those things could be especially appealing as you expand, but are hardly necessary for newer stores.

They also ship from a lot of places. They have warehouses in more locations than any of the other providers we’re discussing, with a whopping nine locations in the United States as well as locations in Canada, Europe (including three in the UK), and China.

Of course, there are some downsides. Fulfillment is outsourced, which can lead to reduced control over the entire process. Additionally, they take a bit longer to ship the product (3-4 days). And they don’t offer screen printing or embroidery options for your products, which could be a dealbreaker if screen printing or embroidery are the specific looks you’re hoping for.

Printful

Printful arguably has the most features of any of these options. Like the others, it’s free to start, but their most affordable T-shirt is on the high end at $8.95.

Unlike Printify, Printful offers in-house fulfillment and their own warehouse. They have fewer shipping locations but can still ship from the United States and Europe, which likely covers your big buyer markets. Their shipping time is a little faster than Printify, at 2-3 days for fulfillment on average.

The big benefit of Printful is its litany of printing options. In addition to standard DTG (a method where ink is applied directly to the fabric, like an inkjet printer) and sublimation (where designs are printed onto paper and then transferred to the fabric via heating) options, they offer screen printing and embroidery. Those options might be a little more expensive, but are popular with consumers.

Scalable Press

Finally, we have Scalable Press. It’s also free to start with Scalable Press, and you might like that their most affordable T-shirt starts at just $7.41. And, like Printful, their typical fulfillment period is just 2-3 days.

Scalable Press has a host of shipping locations in the United States, including three in California alone, but they’re the only provider we’re discussing today that doesn’t ship from Europe or Asia at all. If you’re expecting a lot of sales from those regions, your customers could find themselves waiting a while for your shirts.

Like Printful, they offer DTG, screen printing, and embroidery on their shirts. However, they only offer sublimation on non-apparel items, like posters, making them the only one of these three that do not have that option. They’re also the only of these three options that don’t allow you to include your own branding via custom inside or outside labels.

But what other options are out there?

You’ve probably heard of sites like Teespring, Threadless, and RedBubble. These sites function a lot like the dropshipping platforms above, but they don’t incorporate seamlessly into your own website like Printify, Printful, and Scalable Press. They also don’t include your branding, so it’s harder to build your own brand with your T-shirt business.

On the upside, those types of online marketplaces have their own audiences who are constantly searching for new T-shirts. If you sell otter-themed shirts and someone is a big fan of otters, it’s more likely they’ll find your product just by browsing, with no other marketing investment from you.

Finding Your Niche and Adding Products

Almost every successful online T-shirt business has a niche that they can build a fanbase and repeat customers around.

Your niche could be as simple as your original designs and unique design style. Or, it could be themed around something beloved by people, ideally a topic that no other decent T-shirt designers are creating for.

Examples could include hometown or home-state pride, a cause that’s important to you and others, popular hobbies, or other interests.

Be careful that you don’t violate copyright or trademark laws. Avoid using logos or other trademarked images in your designs, like sports team names or logos. It could open you up to cease and desist letters or worse. And, when in doubt, please speak to a lawyer who can help you navigate this tricky field.

Once you have your niche settled, it’s time to choose your products. All of the dropshipping T-shirt providers mentioned above have vast libraries of available products for you to design on. You can filter by materials, available sizes, available colors, general fit and style, and more.

You’ll notice a range in prices depending on the style. Name-brand products, like American Apparel, might be more expensive, but it may encourage potential buyers to order since they likely know exactly what their size is.

After all, buying online can be a risk for shoppers, especially for women. Even when size charts are available, if you’re not familiar with the make of a shirt, it can be hard to determine how it will fit, feel, and look on you.

Marketing Your Shirts

By now you’ve chosen your online dropshipping provider, built your online store, and added products to it.

Now you have to connect your shirts with interested buyers.

If you built your brand around a specific niche, you can pretty easily connect to those fans via social media. You can utilize guerrilla tactics like joining related Facebook groups and pages and (tastefully) promoting your products. You can also follow fans of your niche on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. You could even work with big influencers in your niche by offering them a free product in hopes that they’ll be seen in your shirts.

However, one of the biggest resources available to you comes in the form of Facebook ads.

Facebook Ads

With Facebook ads, you can target potential buyers based on age, location, gender, interests, and more.

Trying to promote your Cincinnati baseball-themed shirts that have a uniquely ‘90s design? Target people who live in Cincinnati, are between the ages of 25-40, and like baseball. Those are the people who are going to be most interested in your products since your designs were made with them in mind.

From there, you can get into targeting pixels so you can retarget folks who visited your site before, gently reminding them how close they were to buying your product.

Email

Email is an efficient way to convert first-time buyers and create repeat customers.

To encourage a first-time buyer, including an offer for a coupon for the first purchase in exchange for an email address. Even if someone doesn’t buy right away, their willingness to give you an email address shows that they have an interest in your designs.

When you have someone’s email address, it opens up marketing opportunities. You can use plugins like Jilt to send abandoned cart reminder emails to folks who start their purchasing process but don’t finish it, as well as general marketing emails for new product launches, sales, and more.

Faster Site, More Conversions

When it comes to your ecommerce store, speed is imperative for conversions. Slow sites mean missed sales by frustrated consumers, and can even mean reduced search rankings for your site in Google.

Managed WooCommerce hosting solutions can speed up your site, ensuring that customers aren’t leaving because of slow load times. Sites that use our managed hosting are 2-10 times faster than sites that use shared servers and unoptimized solutions.

Whether you’re looking to start or simplify your T-shirt business, dropshipping services are a solid option. They’re affordable, customizable, and are huge time and space savers (no more T-shirts in storage or trips to the post office!). Regardless of if you go with a marketplace like Teespring or build your own site with WooCommerce and WordPress, starting your T-shirt business is fast, easy, and affordable.

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Our Managed WooCommerce Hosting plans are ideal for growing businesses and t-shirt startups. Specially designed to convert more sales, the plan is packed with cutting-edge technologies to reduce query load times and cart abandonment rates. Best of all, our plan arms you with more than 20 different performance tests so you’ll know you can accommodate tons of web traffic.

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With ecommerce, you can turn a humble website that’s dependent on advertising for profit, into a digital storefront and burgeoning business of its own.

This glossary is a complete collection of terms, concepts, products, and services you should know to master dropshipping.

What is Dropshipping?

Traditional ecommerce typically sees retailers maintaining the inventories used to fulfill their customers’ orders. Dropshipping is a different strategy for ecommerce. Retailers don’t actually maintain inventory for the product or products that they’re selling. Instead, the dropship model means the retailer passes incoming orders to either a manufacturer, supplier, or distributor to fulfill the order and ship it to the customer.

It may sound straightforward, but there are actually a lot of pieces to the dropshipping puzzle. Fortunately, we’ve provided a roadmap for all the important terms and concepts you should know as you consider implementing dropshipping for an ecommerce business.

Dropshipping 101

In this first section, we’re covering the dropshipping basics. These terms are the most fundamental aspects of dropshipping.

What is an Affiliate?

Affiliates are site owners or publishers that recommend a retailer or merchant to their audiences. The idea is for the affiliate to help increase revenue for the retailer by forwarding qualified leads and traffic. The affiliate, in turn, gets a percentage of revenue for every sale.

What is a Blog?

Blogs are websites that post primarily short, narrative articles called ‘blog posts.’ They originated as the digital journals of individuals — in fact, the word blog is a portmanteau of “web” and “log” — but have increasingly become tools for marketing. Merchants and retailers frequently hire bloggers to promote their products and services via content marketing.

What is a Distributor?

Distributors are businesses that maintain inventories of products from a number of manufacturers and sell those products to a number of different retailers. Typically, distributors offer shorter windows for shipping orders to customers than the manufacturers of those products.

What is Inventory?

Inventory is a term used to refer to the amount, quantity, or value of products that a retailer currently has available. It does not account for products that have been ordered from suppliers; inventory accounts only for what is physically on hand and could be shipped at any given time.

What is a Manufacturer?

Manufacturers are the businesses or companies that produce products for the purposes of selling to consumers.

What is Gross Profit?

Gross profit refers to the difference between the amount of money generated through sales of a product and the retailer’s costs of producing or acquiring that product (also known as the cost of goods sold).

What is Net Profit?

Net profit refers to the difference between the amount of money generated through sales and the retailer’s total costs, which can include not only the cost of goods sold, but things like payroll, operating expenses, and marketing. Net profit reflects the amount of revenue that’s left over after all the necessary expenses have been paid.

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is when a business, company, or individual hires a third party for a task, project, or specific type of work.

What is a Reseller?

Resellers are businesses that purchase products or services for the purpose of resale rather than for consumption. With ecommerce now ubiquitous, affiliate marketers are becoming resellers sometimes, too, as this promotes rebranded products or services.

What is a Retailer?

Retailers are companies and businesses that sell directly to the end user or consumer.

What is a Supplier?

Suppliers are companies, businesses, or individuals that supply something the retailer needs. This could be a product, service, or something else.

What is a Tracking Number?

Tracking numbers are alphanumeric identification numbers assigned to items that are shipped through services like USPS, FedEx, and UPS. The purpose of tracking numbers is to allow the sender and receiver to track the progress of the shipment as well as to confirm its delivery.

What is a Wholesaler?

Wholesalers are manufacturers and distributors that sell to retailers. Oftentimes, wholesalers offer discounts when the retailer orders larger quantities of the products and services, which is the origin of expressions like “buying wholesale” and “bulk discount.”

Intermediate Dropshipping

Now that we’ve covered the basics of dropshipping, let’s move into the intermediate terms and concepts. This section will help you to understand some of the complexities of the dropship model of retail, including chargebacks, listing fees, overhead, and supply chains.

What is an Affiliate Link?

Affiliate links are URLs with a unique identification number affixed to the end that provide a way to quantify an affiliate’s performance. Retailers provide affiliate links to affiliates that can share them on social media and in content marketing on blogs. Since the identification number attached to the URL is associated with a specific affiliate, you can track how much traffic the affiliate is forwarding through the link.

What is an Authorization?

Authorizations are one of the steps for processing payments. Before a payment is processed and the order is submitted, an authorization allows the system to determine whether the account has the funds available to complete the order.

What is an Authorized Distributor?

Authorized distributors are companies and businesses that have been designated or approved by the product manufacturer to sell the product in quantity to commercial retailers.

What is an Authorized Retailer?

Authorized retailers are merchants that have been designated or authorized by the product manufacturer to sell the product directly to consumers.

What is a Chargeback?

Chargebacks occur when a refund is forcibly issued by the customer’s bank, taking transaction funds from the retailer and returning them to the customer. This tends to occur when a customer files a complaint, such as in cases of fraudulent purchases, false advertising, or when the order wasn’t fulfilled. If chargebacks occur at a high frequency, the rate a retailer pays to process payments for customers’ online purchases could increase.

What is a Delivery Confirmation?

Delivery confirmations occur when shippers are notified of delivery. This is a service offered by many package carriers like FedEx and USPS. However, delivery confirmation isn’t the same as when a recipient signs for delivery.

What is Fulfillment?

Fulfillment is the process of putting an order together so that it’s ready for shipment. The term also refers to when third-party companies with their own inventories ship orders on behalf of a retailer.

What are Listing Fees?

Listing fees are costs associated with listing products or services on third-party online marketplaces. An example of such an online marketplace is eBay, which usually charges a fee for listing.

What are Logistics?

Logistics refers to the management of products as they progress from origination to destination. In the world of ecommerce, logistics often encompasses the different phases of transport that occur between a product’s manufacturing and its delivery to the customer, including transport from the manufacturer to the supplier, transport from the supplier to the retailer, and transport from the retailer to the consumer.

What is a Margin?

Margins refer to the difference between what a retailer pays for a product and the amount the consumer pays when purchasing the product. Retailers’ profits are dependent on the margins they have on their products. Margins represent how much of what consumers pay is actually profit for the retailer. Retailers can increase their margins by either negotiating a lower rate from suppliers or increasing the purchase price for consumers.

What are Net Terms?

Net terms refer to an agreement between supplier and retailer. It allows the retailer to pay the supplier for the products a predetermined amount of time after those products have been shipped to consumers.

An example of net terms is “net 30,” which indicates the retailer has until 30 days after shipping to a consumer to remit payment for the product to the supplier. There can be discounts involved, too. For instance, “10/5 net 30” means the retailer would receive a discount of ten percent if payment is made in the first five days, but the discount would be forfeited is payment is made between day six and day 30.

What is Overhead?

Overhead is a catch-all term for expenses associated with operating a business that doesn’t include things like labor, direct materials, and direct expenses. Expenses that are part of the overhead can be things like advertising costs, interest accrued on loans, rent, utilities, repairs, maintenance, insurance, taxes, and legal fees.

What is a Preferred Supplier?

Preferred suppliers are businesses and companies from whom a retailer prefers to source products. A preferred supplier arrangement usually occurs when special rates have been negotiated — which, in turn, means better margins for the retailer — or when there’s a long-term partnership between the supplier and retailer. As such, preferred suppliers are advantageous to both the retailer and the supplier.

What is a Supply Chain?

Supply chains refer to a network of businesses or companies involved in moving a product from its point of origin to the consumer. For ecommerce, this usually equates to the manufacturer and distributor of a product.

What is Wholesale?

Wholesale is a term that refers to buying products at a discount in large quantities. These businesses and companies — referred to as wholesalers — sell products in quantity to retailers that, in turn, sell those products individually to consumers.

Advanced Dropshipping

Having covered both the basics and the intermediate dropshipping concepts, it’s time to turn our attention to advanced dropshipping. In this final section, we’ll be going over the minutiae of dropshipping, like multi-channel ecommerce and restocking fees, as well as some specific services and players in the dropship space, including PayPal, Alibaba, and Stripe.

What is an Address Verification System (AVS)?

Address verification systems originated as a way to combat payment fraud. With an address verification system in place, the billing address provided during order checkout is compared to the address the creditor has on file for the card; if the addresses don’t match, it indicates a fraudulent purchase and prevents the transaction from being processed. Retailers use address verification systems as a deterrent for payment fraud to minimize the frequency of chargebacks.

What is Alibaba?

Alibaba is the largest online marketplace in China and by some accounts, the entire world. It consists of hundreds of millions of users who buy from millions of retailers and merchants across three websites. Alibaba processes more transactions for online purchases than any other ecommerce site, so a growing number of retailers are listing their products on Alibaba in an effort to target Asian consumers.

What is AliExpress?

AliExpress is a popular online marketplace owned by Alibaba that is more international in focus. In fact, AliExpress has at one time or another, been the most visited website in Brazil and Russia which is an indication of its international appeal. Compared to Alibaba, AliExpress has become an ideal marketplace for small businesses to list their products for global audiences.

What is Amazon?

Amazon is a U.S. online marketplace and mega-retailer with a growing international presence that has allowed it to become the largest online retailer in the world in terms of revenue and market capitalization. Today, around half of Amazon’s sales are driven by third-party retailers that list their products on the Amazon Marketplace. Amazon is also growing rapidly in the software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service industries.

What are Analytics?

Analytics refers to reviewing data to infer patterns of significance, especially when it comes to user behavior. Typically, analytics are used to determine consumers’ purchasing habits and how they engage with a retailer’s website. With analytic data, you can implement changes that might lead to increased sales and revenue.

What is eBay?

eBay is a popular online marketplace that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer purchases. Though traditionally associated with online auctions, eBay allows items to be listed with set prices which gives retailers the chance to extend their reach by creating eBay listings for the products they offer. This has become a popular practice for both small businesses and larger companies.

What is a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price?

Manufacturer’s suggested retail price, or MSRP, is the price at which a product’s manufacturer recommends selling the product to consumers. Retailers can choose whether they want to actually sell a product at the manufacturer’s suggested price or sell at a higher price to increase the margin.

What is a Minimum Advertised Price?

When ecommerce retailers agree to a minimum advertised price (MAP) for a product, they agree not to advertise that product at a price lower than the MAP. Manufacturers may require adherence to a minimum advertised price as a condition of selling their products.

What is Multi-Channel Ecommerce?

Multi-channel ecommerce, also called multi-channel selling or multi-channel retail, is an increasingly common model of retail where the retail lists products on multiple online marketplaces, such as on eBay, Amazon, and AliExpress. The idea is to reach a larger audience of potential customers.

What is PayPal?

PayPal is an online payment system that facilitates online purchases as well as money transfers. Though originally associated with eBay, PayPal has become ubiquitous and as such, is supported by many digital storefronts.

What is a Restocking Fee?

Restocking fees are either a flat fee or a percentage of the purchase price that is charged to customers when they return the products they’ve purchased. This is particularly common with products where the value is lower after they’ve been opened because it affects whether the items can be resold. It’s common practice for restocking fees to be deducted from the customer’s refund.

What is Stripe?

Stripe is an online payments system similar to PayPal. PayPal is more consumer-facing, whereas Stripe is geared toward businesses and professionals as a means of allowing them to accept payments for their products and services.

Now You Know

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Email is a proven tool that can help you win the online marketing battle. But not everyone succeeds with it.

If you are going to enjoy the kind of email marketing results you want, what do you need to do? Well, you need to follow email marketing best practices. You also need to choose the right email marketing software platform for you.

Today, let’s dive into another topic critical to your email marketing success — your email distribution list. More specifically, how to build an email list. Not only will we talk about how to create a large mailing list, but how to build a high quality, engaged list as well.

Take a Holistic Approach

Growing an email list requires three things: An offer or reason for people to sign up, a method of getting that offer in front of people — and patience.

Jeff Moriarty runs a small jewelry store as well as an online company. His company collects emails from people who come to the store by asking on social media, with paid lead generation ads in the local area, and with pop-up ads on his website. “Over the past three years we have built our list from zero to a little over 7,000 subscribers,” says Jeff. “It takes time, but implement just a few strategies, and it will build on its own.

Nicole Rohde is in charge of communication for the luxury fashion brand Maxwell-Scott. One of their major marketing focuses over the past few years has been growing their mailing list. They optimized their home page for email sign-ups, put a permanent email sign-up at the bottom of every page, and created a pop-up that encourages website visitors to subscribe for the latest offers and product launches. “This has worked great,” Nicole says. “We now have over 25,000 subscribers worldwide.”

Whether you’re a small jewelry store or an international luxury brand, the tactics aren’t really that different.

Develop an Offer

First, put yourself in the shoes of your potential email list subscribers. When someone considers giving you their email address, they are asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?” So when you are trying to persuade them to join your list, tell them what’s in it for them if they do.

“The honest truth is that the majority of people couldn’t really care less about your list — they need to know how they can benefit,” says Stephen Hart, CEO of Cardswitcher, the U.K.’s first payment processing comparison website.

Educate Through Content

A lot of online marketers produce a useful, written “special report” or other pieces of content that builds email lists, boost brands, and helps drive sales numbers upward. This is a tried-and-true option you can consider.

This written report is often referred to as a lead magnet, a piece of content you give subscribers after they opt into your email distribution list. Offering the right lead magnet will substantially increase your email subscription rates. So what constitutes the “right lead magnet” for your business? That depends, but it needs to be in some way related to the products you offer in your ecommerce store.

For example, let’s say you sell equipment for home-based fitness workouts. Your target audience members will naturally be interested in proper nutrition. So a report on “Foods to Avoid If You Want Six-Pack Abs” would likely resonate with them.

“My most successful tactic has been packaging a free report around a difficult problem and using paid traffic to grow my list,” says Jeffrey Nelson of Salesachievers, Inc. “Reports should talk about what and why, and leave out how so you can monetize your list.”

“We run webinars and provide eBooks on our site that require email sign-up to access,” says Dennis Cassøe of the data feed marketing tool WakeupData (a product data feed optimization tool). “These were the most successful as they immediately showed the value of sign-up to the prospect — in the form of helpful content.”

Simon Slade, CEO and Co-founder of SaleHoo, a research community for online stores, suggests advertising email newsletters as “courses” that soft sell. “Consumers are much more intrigued by a “course” which promises useful information, and specifying the number of installments tells potential customers what to expect.”

The course can turn into a conversion opportunity. “Focus on excellent content for the first six editions with the occasional soft sell, and then go for the sale on the seventh email with a hard sell,” mentions Slade.

Drill Down With Your Content

Ruggero Loda, of Running Shoes Guru, a running shoes reviews site, had their in-house running coach develop a marathon training plan to entice email subscriptions. “This was very well received,” he says. “People write to us weekly thanking us for it.”

But they took it one step further. “Our first expansion decision was to start offering not only a marathon plan, but a plan for every distance (5k, 10k, half marathon). This approach doubled our subscription rate.”

Give Exclusive Discounts

“We decided to use our email list to offer exclusive discounts to those who were subscribed to it,” says Stephen Hart of Cardswitcher. “Compared to previous campaigns that we’d tried, we noticed a marked improved in sign-up rates when we started offering an incentive — around
35 percent.”

Provide Entertainment

Vix Meldrew, an email marketing coach, started building quizzes on her site using the lead-generation quizmaker Interact. “I use Interact on my website, and I grow on average 20 to 50 subscribers a day currently,” she says.

Spin the wheel apps are increasingly popular on ecommerce sites, turning email collection into a Vegas-style experience. One ecommerce owner credits a wheel-spinning pop-up with increasing email sign-ups 131 percent.

Consider Giveaways

Product giveaways are an increasingly popular and effective means of collecting email subscribers. Online marketer Naresh Vissa describes a successful campaign for a client with a podcast:

“We gave away free digital subscriptions to a paid newsletter if people entered their email on a landing page, we created on a vanity URL. We plugged the URL on-air during the podcasts. We built our mailing list to more than 10,000 subscribers from scratch over a one-month period because of this campaign.”

Ruggero Loda, of Running Shoes Guru, says that giveaways don’t just convert at a high rate, they have the possibility of going viral, and “25 to 30 percent of people that see our monthly shoe giveaway page subscribe to our email newsletter.” Plus, the contest app they use, Gleam.io, allows people to share the giveaway with their friends, in exchange for more entries. They get a better chance to win, and “on our side, we get free viral advertising of our email list.”

Marketing Your Offer

The most successful way to drive email sign-ups is with pop-ups. Nearly all of the business owners we surveyed use them. “Website pop-ups are good because they are low maintenance and mostly look after themselves,” says Richard George, a digital marketer at Print4Hospitality which creates printed products for luxury hotels.

But you have to decide which is right for your audience — and what you’re comfortable offering.

Which Pop-Up Is Best for Your Store?

Ruggero Loda, of Running Shoes Guru stopped running some pop-ups, even though they had the highest conversion rate. “After a while, we decided against it because many people hated them and giving users the best experience while on the website is paramount,” he says.

Although Loda hasn’t abandoned pop-ups entirely.

“Right now, we see the most success with exit intent pop-ups which only appear once a user is trying to leave the website,” he says. “These are not disruptive because only users that were about to leave the site see them.” Loda says that he’s satisfied with the conversion rate — 1 percent of their daily visitors convert into an email subscriber.

Louis Wood, the owner of DefendItYourself, an ecommerce store focusing on home security products, says the exit-intent pop-up he uses gets 3 times the conversions of the static form in page footers.

Loda notes that exit intent pop-ups do have one downside — they don’t really work on mobile. “But, he continues, “I also believe that people on mobile have even less tolerance for intrusive experiences so until we find a better solution, no pop-ups for mobile visitors.”

Pop-Up Messaging

On your email list sign-up form, and in any other place where you are trying to convince visitors to subscribe, “sell” them on the value your emails will bring them. Tell them in glowing, benefit-laden terms why they would want to invest their time and energy into your emails. Include a specific, powerful call to action that compels viewers to join your list.

Your email distribution list sign-up forms can have a “make or break” effect on your email marketing campaign’s effectiveness. So it pays to learn from companies that are getting this critical step right.

Rob Powell, who helps bloggers grow their traffic, has a specific recommendation for the all-important call-to-action buttons on pop-up messages: “Use strong action words that convey a clear benefit, such as ‘Start’, ‘Join’, or ‘Download’.”

Steven Macdonald of SuperOffice.com has helped grow their list from zero to 10,000 subscribers. One simple messaging tactic made a big difference. He says, “When we included social proofing (companies like Coca-Cola, Breitling, and Emirates who get our weekly updates to grow their business), then we really started to see our list grow.”

“My best piece of advice is to split test everything!” So says McKinzie Bean, a mentor and coach for bloggers. “Test your landing pages, your headlines, your actual emails, your graphics, etc. By testing, you can significantly increase your conversion rate as well as your ROI.”

Other Email Collection Tactics

Pop-ups and on-site messaging are the most efficient way to get email sign-ups, but some of these other tactics may work for you as well.

Participate in Online Communities

You don’t have to wait for people to come to your site to benefit from your expertise — you can bring it directly to them. One marketer found success answering questions on Quora. “Many questions on Quora require a professional response,” says Ketan Pande, founder of Goodvitae, a website for entrepreneurs. “I have found if you properly combine photos, text, and emotion, your answer can go viral. Once, I wrote an answer which got more than 5,000 upvotes, and at the end of the answer, I added a link to my landing page. This particular answer helped me gain 150 subscribers in two days.”

Attend Events — or Hold Your Own

Brian Sheehan is marketing and sales manager at Hollingsworth, a supply chain management company. They have pop-ups on their website, but they also collect emails in person. “At trade shows (we attend 12 annually) we collect emails by offering giveaways,” he says. “These events garner about 500 to 800 emails.”

If you’re a high-volume, high-sales business, this tactic may not make sense, but if you’re trying to develop lasting relationships, it’s worth considering. “For us, there’s no substitute for going out and signing up people in person,” says Adam Cole, Co-Director, Grant Park Academy of the Arts. “There’s no substitute for a one-on-one conversation. It’s slow. It also generates clients who really want to be on our list and have a face to put by a name.”

Enthusiastic Fans! Not Just “Subscribers”

As an eager, ambitious email marketer, you want to have a large email distribution list. That’s an admirable goal, but list size is only part of the email marketing success formula. What’s much more important? Quality. And engagement. You want a list that is engaged.

It’s better to have 1,000 subscribers who are your eager buyers, fans, and brand ambassadors than it is to have 10,000 email subscribers who are inactive. So look for ways to get your list engaged and involved with your emails.

How? Try re-engaging inactive subscribers, staying hyper-focused with the content, and using engaging copywriting.

Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers

Create an email list segment of your subscribers who have not opened your emails in one month. Send them a “re-engagement” email with a special lead magnet or other premium offers to get them energized and involved with your email content.

Be Hyper-Focused

Don’t try to be “all things to all people” with your email marketing messages. It’s clichéd but true, if you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.

So understand your core audience very well. Write hyper-focused email marketing content that appeals to them. Although you are not necessarily trying to be controversial, and you don’t want to offend those outside of your target audience, you are not focused on trying to resonate with them either.

“Don’t over-focus on who unsubscribed,” says Melis Sawerschel, founder of the online style brand She Is Rebel. “People who are uninterested but remain on your list are more costly than those who state their disinterest by unsubscribing themselves. Unsubscribes are actually doing a favor for your business.”

Engaging Copywriting Is a Must

Write email marketing content your readers actually want to read. How? In addition to the previous advice, employ great copywriting principles and techniques. Learn to write conversationally. You aren’t writing a stuffy, formal academic research paper. You are having a conversation in print. Think about how you would be interacting with an old friend over lunch and write your email content like you talk. Also, write at a fairly basic level, not like you are talking to a room full of PhD candidates. Don’t use industry jargon.

One of the best ways for you to understand how to write conversational, engaging, yet persuasive emails is to observe and dissect the email marketing campaigns of companies who are doing email well. This article gives you seven examples. As you read it, pay special attention to the part on Birchbox. Notice how conversational their email copy feels. Look at how often the words “you” and “your” are included.

Successful Email List Growth Gives You the Best of Both Worlds

Today, we’ve talked about proven steps to help you build email list subscriber quantity. We’ve also talked about building list quality. They are not mutually exclusive. In your quest for email marketing success, you can enjoy both. These steps will go a long way toward helping you build a large, quality email list full of not just subscribers, but eager followers and enthusiastic buyers as well.

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