Let’s explore how a WooCommerce newsletter can strengthen your marketing efforts, introduce the best email newsletter plugin, and walk through how to create your own newsletter.
If you run an online store, you almost certainly have transactional emails set up — things like order confirmations, shipping notices, and password reset notifications. These are great for customer service, but aren’t necessarily marketing-oriented.
Email marketing’s ROI is incredibly strong, though, so if you don’t have an email strategy in place to reach prospective customers, this should be your next move. The easiest way to get started is with an email newsletter.
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An email newsletter is a type of email that companies send out regularly to their subscribers. It serves as a way to update their audience on everything from new products and sales to tips, reviews, and helpful information.
This is a powerful marketing tool that keeps businesses top of mind, builds customer relationships, and encourages both new and repeat sales. In fact, shoppers are three times more likely to make a purchase through an email than through social media and 50% of people say that they buy through a marketing email every month.
Why every WooCommerce store needs an email newsletter
Every WooCommerce store — whether you sell physical items, services, digital downloads, or another kind of product — can benefit greatly from an email newsletter. Here are a few ways you can take advantage of this powerful tool:
Keep customers engaged and increase sales
An email newsletter is a fantastic way to keep existing customers engaged and ultimately lead them to make more purchases.
By regularly sending emails, you stay at the forefront of their minds. You can keep them updated with new information from your company, teach them how to best use your products, and tempt them with sales and discounts. Then, when they’re ready to make a purchase, they’ll remember your business and the trust you’ve built with them over time.
Another way to boost sales with an email newsletter is by informing previous buyers about related products. They may not have time to look through your entire inventory, but by taking advantage of segmentation and automation tools, you can let them know which items might be particularly helpful to them.
Of course, these are just a few examples. We’ll explore some ways you can utilize an email newsletter shortly.
Stay top of mind for products with a long sales cycle
If your customers take a while to complete a purchase, an email newsletter can be your best friend. Perhaps you sell B2B products where multiple stakeholders are involved in the purchase decision. Or maybe you offer services like solar power installation that involve a long-term, large investment.
If it takes shoppers months or years to decide to purchase, staying top of mind is absolutely critical.
A WooCommerce newsletter is a very effective way to do this.
Send potential customers emails with information about your products over time — how to use them, what their benefits are, what makes them unique, etc. Share testimonials from people just like them. Include behind-the-scenes looks at the manufacturing process or introduce team members they may work with in the future.
This helps potential customers remember your company when they are ready to make a purchase, and positions you as a business that’s knowledgeable and professional.
Keep customers informed about new products
A WooCommerce newsletter is an excellent way to update your audience about everything related to your business. Announce new product launches, include new location information, share awards or recognitions, or just email them about anything that’s exciting at your company.
This encourages new sales and makes your customers feel involved in your business.
Reduce returns
Returns are an unfortunate part of running a store — and they’re unavoidable to some degree. That said, you still want to be proactive in trying to reduce the number of returns and exchanges you experience.
How exactly can an email newsletter help with this? You can use it as an educational tool. Answer common questions you receive from customers. Link to blog posts, documentation, or instructions that show how to use your products. Share hacks, tricks, and additional ways that customers are making the most of your items.
All of this keeps shoppers from experiencing buyer’s remorse. Instead of getting frustrated because they don’t know how to put something together or the best way to use it, they can easily access helpful information.
Encourage customer referrals, reviews, and recommendations
A WooCommerce newsletter is a great opportunity to ask for referrals, reviews, and recommendations. Alongside helpful content, you can remind customers to leave a review on your site (or on third-party platforms) and even link them directly to the review form. You could also offer an incentive to those who refer a friend or family member to your site.
Increase store traffic
All of the hard work you put into your WooCommerce newsletter will result in more site traffic. And while all of those people won’t immediately make a purchase, they may read a couple of blog posts, add some items to a wishlist, watch a video about your products, or download a product guide.
This gives you the opportunity to provide them with information about your business, answer any questions they may have, and continue to drive them down the sales funnel.
Ways to use WooCommerce newsletter
Now that you know why an email newsletter is important, let’s explore some ways you can use it to reach your audience and drive sales:
Welcome emails
A welcome email does exactly what it sounds like — it welcomes new subscribers to your list.
It’s similar to welcoming a new friend to your home with a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies and a cup of coffee. You immediately make them comfortable and let them know that you appreciate them.
Since this is the first impression you make on new subscribers or customers, you want to be strategic about what you include. Let them know a bit about your company. Send coupon codes or discounts. Offer free shipping. Thank them for subscribing. Give them a taste of what they can expect from your list and link to your most popular blog posts.
In the email below, for example, Fulton shares a coupon with new subscribers and talks about what makes its shoes stand out from competitors:
Automating welcome emails makes this process absolutely seamless. You can set your email to include information like products previously purchased or the subscriber’s name so that each one is personalized. Then this powerful tool will go out as soon as someone subscribes without you having to lift a finger.
Send product updates
Keep your audience updated on what’s happening with your business. Did you launch a new product? Improve an existing one? Add a new variation? Open a new location? Let subscribers know!
Coupons, discounts, sales, free shipping
While your email newsletter shouldn’t be solely promotional, you can (and should!) include promotions once in a while. If you have a flash sale or holiday promotion, let subscribers know.
As you can see in the email example below, Elysium offered 25% off of a customer’s first shipment of a monthly plan:
Image via Really Good Emails
You can also segment your audience to create even more effective campaigns. Send a coupon code to subscribers on their birthday. Offer free shipping to customers who haven’t made a purchase in six months or more. There are endless possibilities!
Information on how to use products
A WooCommerce newsletter is a great educational tool for customers, too. Use this opportunity to teach them how to make the most of your products.
Share new blog posts with “hacks” and new ways to use products. Link to documentation or setup videos. Share maintenance tips, like replacing batteries, cleaning the items, or changing a filter.
All of this is designed to keep customers happy and encourage them to make another purchase.
A behind-the-scenes glimpse at your business
Share what makes your company, processes, and team unique. For example, you might share videos of the production process, highlight your commitment to your community, or include photos of a charity event your team participated in.
You could also highlight a different employee each month. Share their role, how long they’ve been with your company, what they’re excited about, their hobbies, their family, and other types of interesting details. This is a great way to humanize your brand.
Product recommendations based on previous purchases
In addition to more generalized product updates and information, you can also recommend specific items to customers based on their previous purchases. This is called cross-selling, which is not to be confused with upselling.
When you upsell products, you guide customers to purchase better or more expensive versions of the same product. But when you cross-sell, you encourage them to purchase items that work alongside the ones they already have or are interested in.
Here are a few ideas:
If you sell glasses, recommend a matching case or straps
If you sell children’s books, recommend a stuffed animal that goes along with the story
If you sell cleaning services, recommend adding an oven cleaning
If you sell clothing, recommend a pair of jeans that perfectly match a specific T-shirt
This is, of course, very dependent on the type of business you run. Everlane, for example, recommends complementary items that fit with the style of clothing a customer purchased in the past. You can see this in their “You have great taste!” email below:
Image via Really Good Emails
And, of course, with good email newsletter software, you can automate this process, too.
Answer frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Use your ecommerce newsletter to answer questions that you receive most often from your customers. You may know these off the top of your head, but you can also go through customer support emails, ask team members, or review your contact form submissions. If you already have an FAQ page, you can simply repurpose that content.
Customer reviews, interviews, and stories
You can also share reviews and testimonials from happy customers, which go a long way towards encouraging sales. In fact, 98% of shoppers say that reviews are critical when making a purchase decision — that’s a staggering number! And with a WooCommerce newsletter, you can get those reviews right in their inbox.
In the email snippet below, you’ll see that Hiyo chose to include five-star reviews directly in their email copy:
Image via Really Good Emails
But you can also share longer case studies and stories by linking to in-depth blog posts or videos that live on your website.
Surveys
Surveys are incredibly useful for any online store. You can use them to collect valuable information about your products, customer service, marketing efforts, and more. With this information in hand, you can adapt to make your business bigger and better.
Create these surveys using a plugin or third-party platform, then link them in your emails. You may want to throw in a bonus or giveaway opportunity for those who complete the survey.
Gift guides
Create gift guides around a specific holiday, target recipient (e.g., husband, wife, child, co-worker, etc.), or interest (e.g., food, sports, fishing, golf, etc.). While you should include your own products in the guide, you should also include other items that work alongside them. This makes the list more beneficial and less promotional.
What is the best WooCommerce newsletter plugin?
Omnisend is the top choice for sending and managing WooCommerce newsletters thanks to a suite of powerful tools with unrivaled ease of use.
The Omnisend email builder truly makes the newsletter creation process simple, fast, and fun. Branding assets (like your logo, colors, and social media links) are automatically added to templates, so you don’t have to hunt them down every time. Without having to touch a line of code, you can design multi-column layouts, add elements to your emails, and even hide content on different devices.
The Product Listing feature enables you to automatically add items from your store into your newsletters. Just select the products you want to include and Omnisend will automatically import all of the information. You can even add personalized product recommendations to your emails, with data that syncs with your store every single hour.
Want to generate unique coupon codes and drive sales? Just drag the Discount Code block into your newsletter and Omnisend will create them automatically. Be as detailed as you want — choose between cart percentage discounts, fixed amount discounts, and free shipping. Then set the expiry date and maximum redemptions.
And you can’t beat the segmentation options available with Omnisend. In addition to more typical segmentation capabilities like demographics and engagement, you can also target customers based on the products they’ve purchased, their average order value, their purchase frequency, and more. You can even combine all of these capabilities to create very niche, specialized groupings so your newsletters are as effective as possible.
Here’s a list with just a few of the features included with Omnisend:
A simple WooCommerce integration that automatically syncs data between both platforms
A drag-and-drop email builder that allows you to create beautiful designs without working with code
Advanced segmentation and targeting to reach your audience on a personal level
Automation capabilities that save you time and headaches
Analytics and reporting so you can constantly improve your marketing strategy
A large library of email templates that provide the perfect starting point for your newsletter
Advanced A/B testing to help you determine exactly what works (and what doesn’t!)
Unique coupon codes for each recipient
Since Omnisend was designed primarily for online stores, you can’t beat its ecommerce features. They truly help merchants reach their audience, build their brand, and increase sales. At the end of the day, it’s one of the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.
Now that you know the importance of an ecommerce newsletter, let’s take a look at how to create one with Omnisend. Before going through the steps below, make sure that you’ve followed our getting started guide, which will show you how to connect your store and import customer data.
Now, head to Campaigns > Create Email Campaign in your Omnisend account:
This will open up a campaign wizard with several streamlined steps. The first page has settings for campaign information like the subject line, sender name, preheader, campaign name, and more:
The next page, shown below, enables you to choose a template. You can filter these by goal (welcome, promotional, sale, etc.), theme, or type.
You can also preview each template before ultimately choosing one by clicking Use current template.
Your template will open in a drag-and-drop editor, where you can edit, add to, and remove the content. There are a lot of content options you can choose from, categorized by type in the left-hand menu. When you find something you like, simply drag and drop it into the email body:
To edit email content, simply click on the element you want to work on. In this case, we’ve chosen the Product Listing block. A panel will open on the right with settings. For this block, you can choose the layout, number of products and columns, product details to show, image appearance, padding, colors, and more:
If you want to move or delete a block, simply hover over it. A new menu will appear with options to delete, duplicate, save, or move up or down:
With blocks unselected, you can also make changes to the email design as a whole, using the menu in the right-hand panel. For example, you can set the canvas width, change the background, and edit the look of buttons:
Using the top menu, you can also preview the email or even send it as a test before moving forward. Once you’re happy with your design, click Save and choose recipients at the top right:
On the screen that appears, decide whether to send your email to all subscribers or a segment of your audience. Note that you’ll need to separately create segments before selecting this option.
Select Review Campaign at the bottom right to proceed. Here, you can review all of your settings, then send your email immediately or schedule it for a future date and time:
And that’s it — you’ve created your first WooCommerce newsletter!
Creating a WooCommerce newsletter is an excellent next step towards growing your ecommerce store. It enables you to keep in touch with your audience, encourage sales from both existing and potential customers, build brand loyalty, garner reviews, and more. Pair your newsletter with WooCommerce analytics to create a truly effective system that enhances every aspect of your marketing strategy.
But to maximize your success, you need the right email newsletter tool. Enter, Omnisend.
Built specifically for online stores, Omnisend has all the features you need, from a drag-and-drop email builder and automatic product recommendations to one-time-use discount codes and powerful segmentation options. Plus, the newsletter woocommerce plugin makes setup and integration super simple.
Frequently asked questions about WooCommerce newsletters
Still have questions? Looking for more tips? Let’s dive into some common questions and their answers:
Does WordPress have a built-in newsletter option?
No, WordPress does not have a built-in newsletter tool. While you can set up transactional emails by default with WooCommerce, you’ll need a third-party plugin like Omnisend to create email newsletters.
What is the best way to capture email addresses on my WooCommerce store?
There are a variety of locations where you can add an email capture on your WooCommerce site. Here are just a few:
In the header, footer, or sidebar
Halfway through a blog post
On landing pages
In a popup or slide-in
On the WooCommerce checkout page
Should I set up double opt-in for my WooCommerce newsletter?
With double opt-in, users confirm their subscription to your list via email after signing up. You may want to set up double opt-in to improve the quality of your list, avoid email deliverability issues, and prevent spam. It can be a very helpful tool for your ecommerce newsletter signup process.
How is an email newsletter different from a transactional email?
Transactional emails are reactionary — a response based on an action that someone has taken. They’re sent on an individual basis rather than to an entire email list. And their purpose is to inform rather than sell or advertise.
Transactional emails include order confirmation emails, shipping notifications, automated form submission confirmations, and password reset emails.
An email newsletter, in contrast, is sent to your whole email list or a segment of that list. It’s primarily intended to be a marketing or sales tool.
How often should I send WooCommerce newsletter?
According to our data, sending three to five emails per week leads to the best results. However, this is highly dependent on your business, your goals, and your subscriber list.
Should I offer something in exchange for signing up for my email newsletter?
Yes, offering something in exchange for an email signup is a great way to incentivize new subscriptions. You could offer a coupon code, free shipping, free add-on with purchase, downloadable content, or really anything that your audience would find useful.
Karolina is a content project manager and team lead at Omnisend, where she blends creative strategy with a keen focus on competitive intelligence. Outside of work, Karolina finds balance through her love of gardening, exploring new hiking trails, biking, and raising a bunch of boys.
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