Interview: “Provide a more personalized experience than big brands are able to”

1. Describe your business/service in a few words

MailerLite is a marketing and email automation platform that helps e-commerce businesses grow revenue and connect with customers.

2. Describe your e-commerce journey. How did you enter the space?

We started in 2010 and we’re extremely proud of the work we’ve done to help thousands of e-commerce businesses grow sales, build customer loyalty and promote their brand with email. 

Our intuitive no-code tools make it easy for founders without marketing or coding expertise to create e-commerce campaigns that effectively drive their stores to success.

3. How is your business helping e-commerce owners?

Small dropshipping and e-commerce stores must find a way to compete with industry giants like Amazon. The best way to do this is to answer the question: What can we offer that they don’t? 

One effective strategy we’ve seen MailerLite customers implement is to build deeper connections and provide a more personalized experience than big brands are able to. 

To do this, you need ways to connect with your customers. Social media is a big opportunity as it helps you find an audience. 

Email marketing is also key for two reasons: First, it’s a direct way to communicate with your customers; second, features like targeting, personalization and automation allow you to roll out experiences that meet the needs of every customer. 

4. What should a dropshipping store do first when starting email marketing?

Most stores benefit from the following four elements. These are the things that we see our customers get the biggest bang for their buck from. 

First, you need to collect customer email addresses. Most e-commerce platforms allow you to ask for permission to send marketing emails when someone signs up for your store. It’s easy to sync these people with MailerLite using our integration. 

Then you can add pop-ups and forms to your site asking people to hand over their email addresses. Increase the effectiveness of these forms by providing value to people who sign up. Offering a discount on the first purchase is a common strategy.

Step three is to set up a welcome email automation that delivers the discount and provides more information about your store. At this point, you can also automate other essential customer touchpoints like abandoned carts and post-sales.

Your newsletter is the final part of your strategy. Use this to promote your store, introduce new products, highlight offers and sales, and share your content. It’s an effective way to keep in touch with customers and build repeat sales. 

Once you’ve got these basics in place, you can go deeper. Experiment with targeting, segmenting users based on shopping habits or behavior, creating more complex workflows, and optimizing campaigns with testing. 

5. What’s your best advice for both dropshipping beginners and experienced e-commerce owners?

An e-commerce store owner we recently interviewed offered some insightful advice that anyone running an e-commerce business can learn from. 

He said that you shouldn’t just want the customer’s money. Rather, you should want them to love your product and have an experience that turns them into brand advocates who make repeat purchases and recommend your store to others. 

Email marketing is critical for this as it lets you connect with people interested in your business both before and after the sale.