I’d like to know if anyone can help me understand why the email list for my ecommerce store wasn’t as profitable as I’d expected.
I ran a store on
The store mostly sold shirts for the niche, although there were some other products with the same designs such as mugs and necklaces. The traffic came almost entirely through FB ads.
I ended up with 1417 paying customers in that niche.
My emailing schedule was this:
1) At the beginning of each month, I would announce a monthly promo. Some of these monthly promo offers were:
* 10% Off All Tank Tops
* Free Necklace with Any Purchase
* Free Shipping with Purchase of 2 or More Shirts
* Save 15% on All Hoodies
2) In the middle of the month, I would promote a new shirt design. Usually this would be something that was already making sales. A coupon code would be included.
3) Near the end of the month, I would remind them that the monthly promo was expiring in a few days.
I used the Klayvio app to send out the emails and my open rate averaged about 11.5%
I had always heard the “rule of thumb” that an email list should bring in about $1/month for each name on the list.
But my list only made me about $0.15/month for each customer on the list.
Is $1/month for a store like this realistic? I would start an ecommerce store again if I was confident I could make $1/month from each paying customer.
Any feedback would be helpful.
You would say it's quite niche enough to build a decent e-mail database which should have a higher open rate than you mention. How many bounces did you have on those 1417? How many did end up in the spambox?
Perhaps drop some example subject lines you used, which could have a huge impact too.
In addition, I would suggest testing on a gmail account or whichever are the common webmails in your mailing list to see if emails make it through the spam filters.