Google Ads vs email marketing: Why not join forces?

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When it comes to Google Ads vs email marketing, have you ever had a discussion about which one to focus more of your energy on?

Perhaps your ecommerce brand’s marketing team wants to spend more on beautifully crafted emails. Or maybe they want to go all in on PPC and put whatever budget is left into Google Ads campaigns.

The reality is there’s no right or wrong answer.

Each of these approaches would provide positive (or negative) results depending on what marketing strategy was followed. But would that really be ideal?

Most often, we hear that as ecommerce store owners, we should focus on one thing mostly for massive success.

One advertising platform. One strategy. One niche. One marketing funnel.

But truth be told; having some sort of diversification never hurts. And that’s exactly why it’s better to combine the power of Google Ads with email marketing to bring about life changing revenue and profit.

With that in mind, we’ve teamed up with Yoru Marketing to share seven different ways to go from “email marketing vs Google Ads” to “Let’s use both to grow to the next level” in no time.

Let’s get going.

How Google Ads really works

Most ecommerce store owners running Google Ads don’t necessarily need an introduction to how the ad platform works. But it’s important to know the foundations many are unaware of to see how it relates to email.

Simply put, Google Ads is a search based platform.

You don’t actively go out looking for your next customer like you would do with something like Facebook or Tiktok ads. In fact, a lot of the work you do is done to attract your ideal customer.

And this holds true for email marketing as well. People browsing your website aren’t normally in the mood to give up their email address and open themselves to possible spamming from some brand they don’t know.

They need to be enticed. Attracted.

A lot of the techniques that work with Google Ads indirectly help increase the conversion rates for email marketing. And the major benefit with this is that once more people sign up to your newsletter, you open yourself up to a lot of extra revenue.

Some common practices for an overall effective Google Ads strategy include:

• Focusing on the landing page to ensure it’s sleek and professional with not too many CTAs
• Ensuring website load speed is under three seconds
• Having high quality images for products and powerful descriptions

As you’ll soon find out, these three fundamental things directly impact your email marketing results and ultimately, the success of your ecommerce brand.

How email marketing works

Let’s take a step back for a second and understand how email marketing works. Here at Omnisend, we believe there are two distinct ways to do email marketing for ecommerce businesses:

• Through automation
• Through one-off, promotional campaigns

Both of these are ideal to help explode your results with any advertising platform you use.

Once you’ve started building up your email list, it’s as easy as sending them automated campaigns you “set and forget,” or creating effective “one time” campaigns which are sent out to these folks.

For maximum results, we always recommend Omnisend merchants use both and have flows that continue automatically, as well as individual blasts that go once or twice a week.

But while the basic strategy is simple, there are many moving parts that make the conjunction of advertising, specifically with Google Ads, and email marketing work.

Almost like a well-oiled machine.

The conjunction of the two

This well-oiled machine works off of two supporting bases: email marketing and Google Ads.

But exactly why do these two pieces go so well together? Why not something else?

There are seven major things which both of these things lead to when used together:

1. Retrieving lost customers
2. Leading Google Ads visitors down a funnel
3. Upselling, downselling, and cross-selling
4. Increasing brand awareness
5. Growing a separate piece of the pie
6. Increasing AOV and conversion rates
7. Exploding the business valuation

Let’s cover each one in detail.

#1 Retrieving lost customers

Did you know that about 14% of lost sales are recovered through effective email marketing—specifically abandoned cart automation? 

And when it comes to Google Ads, there are a lot of leaks in the bucket. Consumers often compare prices, products, and much more when shopping with Google Shopping or Search.

This often causes them to sift through various different listings and brands before deciding on one. In fact, many don’t even make a decision on the same day.

With gut wrenching stats like these, it makes even more sense to ensure there’s a proper funnel to prevent lost traffic from Google Ads.

Having automated flows while following a proper Google Ads strategy can cause a great increase in overall sales and revenue. Throw in a few individual campaign blasts or have your automation set up and you’re onto something.

Omnisend makes it easy to set up abandoned cart automations, with its vast library of ready-made templates you can get started with in minutes.

#2 Leading customers down a funnel

No amount of email flows in the world can help if you don’t lead customers down a proper funnel.

Combining email marketing with funnels is especially crucial when you’re driving traffic from platforms like Google Ads. 

As we mentioned earlier, there are many leaks in the bucket with Google. And there’s only so much conversion rate optimization you can do on the website level.

Once a customer enters their email address and leaves, which will be a huge chunk of customers, you need to have a way to get these customers back. 

Some of you might have retargeting campaigns running with Google Ads but the reality is that you need to be showing your ads as many times as possible to the customer. And with retargeting, there is a frequency cap as to how many times the same ad gets shown to a potential customer.

With email, you can have them go through an abandoned cart sequence, and even go as far as sending them individual email blasts containing other items. This ensures that you cover all possible scenarios of getting them to purchase.

That’s a win-win situation for most ecommerce brands.

But this leads me to the biggest opportunity of all: upsells and downsells.

#3 Upselling and downselling

When it comes to ecommerce, there are a lot of ways to upsell and downsell to get that extra revenue.

You could have this done through a special upsell app that fires on the product page or the thank you page. You could also sell items as bundles and increase AOV that way.

But the reality is you’d be missing out on a lot of extra revenue by just focusing on these things.

Don’t get me wrong, these things are extremely important as well. But what’s most important is what happens behind the scenes.

And that’s the upsells, downsells, and cross-sells you do on the backend.

Email marketing is the perfect way to have this done, especially with traffic that comes through Google Ads.

Just have them land on your landing page, capture their email before they leave, and begin the process.

But always remember that you’re speaking to a human; don’t always try to be selling things. You’ve added them to your list and this list should be treated like your brand’s family.

This brings us to the next most important strategy: brand awareness.

#4 Brand awareness

As I mentioned, it’s not just about getting that next sale. A proper Google Ads and email marketing strategy revolves around your brand as a whole.

This is simply because (and let’s be honest here) people purchase due to your brand and not because of the item itself. They purchase due to their emotions and how they feel about you.

Keeping these things in mind, you can spread a bit more knowledge about your brand itself. By the way, this is pretty easy to do with Omnisend, since it will automatically import your branding—logos, colors and fonts — from your store into your emails.

When building your brand, talk about your story, how you came into existence, why your email followers should trust you, how it benefits them, etc. At the end of the day, think of it as a conversation between two family members or friends.

The more casual you are with them here, the more they’ll connect with your brand and the more sales you’ll get from Google Ads.

But one thing you might not have realized with all these things you’re doing is that you’re actually building another part of your business.

#5 Growing a separate part of your brand

Most ecommerce store owners disregard email marketing because they think of it as “a task they need to cross off the to-do list.” What they fail to realize is the email list they’re growing is another part of their business.

A part which, when it comes time to sell, can increase the authority and selling price point of their business by 2x-4x!

There are many owners out there who purchase other people’s email lists to send promotional offers to. In fact, this is a big business of its own.

When you have a rock-solid email list with people revolving around your niche, you get to reap the fruits of getting sales on demand and adding that as an asset to your overall brand.

The bigger and more directed the email list, the more power your ecommerce brand has.

Never disregard it.

But let’s dig a big deeper into the first benefit I mentioned earlier – getting sales on demand.

#6 Increasing AOV & CRO

Every email blast you send is an opportunity for you to earn more sales. Every automated email that goes out to your customer is a chance for you to win them back.

And the cycle repeats, over and over and over.

Do it for a certain period of time and you’ll naturally notice your AOV going up.

Every order suddenly is bigger than the last. But that is exactly what happens when you combine the power of Google Ads and email marketing.

It speeds up the entire process and makes running ads even more profitable.

Obviously, in order for you to even get that customer’s email in the first place, you need to ensure the website is properly conversion rate optimized.

But not only do the CRO techniques assist with getting more emails, but they also help increase sales from Google Ads.

A complete win-win situation.

Once the AOV starts to go up, you’ll have the ability to spend just a bit more with Google. However, if Google Ads attributes these sales to its marketing efforts, it will assume Google is the reason people are buying.

This is a positive as your quality score will begin to rise, causing your ads to get shown more for less.

This brings us to the final point: business valuation.

#7 Your business valuation

While not every ecommerce store owner is planning on doing a 7-figure exit, it’s important to keep this in mind. Not only does this metric guarantee that you’ll be a decamillionaire in the future, but it also portrays the health of your business.

When you’re running Google Ads profitably and have a large, healthy email list to go along with it, your valuation skyrockets.

At the end of the day, anyone wanting a brand wants something that’s profitable. And in the future, if ads become prohibitively expensive, or its effectiveness goes to 0, at least they have that big, beautiful email list to continue selling to.

Don’t underestimate the power of these two power houses working together: they can literally change your business forever.

Closing thoughts

Phew.

We’ve covered a lot.

We hope by now that you’ve gotten a good understanding of how important it is to have Google Ads and email marketing running together.

Running ads is just one piece of the puzzle. You need to connect the other pieces to complete the puzzle and run an ecommerce brand at full power.

But don’t forget that email marketing and Google Ads need constant optimization. If you want continued success with the two, make sure you’re giving them the time they deserve.

Luckily, Omnisend makes it so much easier to optimize your Google Ads campaigns by allowing you to create a lookalike audience from your existing customers—or, even better, specific segments.

If you segment your absolute best customers, or recent customers, or customers for a specific product, you can sync that list up to Google Ads and create lookalike audiences that Google will then target. 

Since you’re now telling Google to look specifically for those audiences that are similar to the ones you know already love your products, your sales go up (and your Google Ads costs go down). 

Want to see how it works? You can start Omnisend for free and access all of its features—no credit card or commitment required.