Promote an eBay Store or auction items in an email

Promote an eBay store, or sell specific items with an email

Selling items on eBay is a great way to reach customers through a vast marketplace, but it can be highly competitive when you're not the only seller who's got an unique item available. Creating a contact list and sending email updates will help you reach your audience in a more consistent way, and help you keep in touch with your most loyal customers.

• Growing a contact list
• Generating buzz for auction items
• Promoting an eBay Store

Design tip: When you add a button, text link, or clickable image link to your email, make sure to enable click segmentation to automatically add the contacts who click on it to a specific list. This helps you to send shorter emails with a clear call-to-action to a more targeted audience, and improve your open rate!

Growing a contact list

Though eBay doesn't prevent you from using email marketing and collecting email contacts outside of eBay, it has strict policies against unsolicited messages requesting contact information through eBay communications, and pointing to links outside of eBay from all eBay pages and messages.

The first step you can take is to sync your eBay account to your Constant Contact account. This lets you import your eBay customers only after they give you permission to email them.

To grow your list outside of eBay, your sign-up list and emails need to be seen!

• Share your emails on your social media sites.
• Link your sign-up form to your website or blog
• Add a link to your Lead Generation Landing Page to your social media profiles.
• Collect sign-ups offline using an old-fashioned sign-up sheet, or better yet, try the List Builder app for tablets.

Important: Remember, it's also against our terms of use to email people who haven't given you permission to mail to them!

Generating buzz for auction items

Supply and demand drive the price of auction items, but there is also an element of buyer awareness that can be factored in. By sending an email promoting your auction items to your contact list, you increase the awareness that your auction is happening beyond the chance that people are searching for your item on eBay. When your customers join your list, they do so because they expect some value from it, but this doesn't just mean offering a discount! Giving your customer early access to view the item and an opportunity to ask questions is also very valuable - it's even common practice for traditional auction houses to hold a pre-auction viewing.

• Give the details - Your contacts joined your list because they were interested in your auction items. Give the same description you'd provide in your eBay listing and explain what you think your contacts would find especially interesting about the item.
• Include pictures - eBay has image limits before you have to pay for a library upgrade, so your email is a good place to add a few extra images that you may not be able to add to your official listing. If you use an external gallery, you can create a clickable image link to add it to your email too.
• Include an "Ask Me a Question" link - Insert a mailto link with an email address where buyers can easily contact you, or insert the link for contacting a seller found in your eBay listing.
• Add a call-to-action button - Use a button in a color that compliments your branding and points to the URL for the specific item, the URL for your eBay store, or your eBay profile page. You want your contacts to be able to find you or your auction item when you start taking bids.

  Did you know? You can easily promote specific items by inserting a Product block into your email and then track the total sales and orders generated from your campaigns on the Ecommerce Reporting tab!

Promoting an eBay Store

Whether you're selling one-of-a-kind items or you specialize in specific products, getting people to visit your eBay store over all the others is your main goal. The best eBay sellers are known for their honest and detailed descriptions, good communication, and prompt shipping. There are a couple of things you can do to carry these ideas into your email marketing to stay top-of-mind with your contacts:

• Make an announcement - Send an email to your contacts letting them know that your eBay store is fully stocked with newly listed items they may be interested in. As you grow your list, you can look for shopping patterns for your contacts and send more targeted emails to them based on their interests.
• Include a call-to-action button - Use a button in a color that compliments your branding and points to the URL for your eBay store, or your profile page.
• Include a coupon or promotion code - eBay customers are looking for bargains on what they buy. If they see the same item in a different eBay store, the condition, price, and shipping costs are going to be the deciding factors. Offering the customers on your mailing list a discount or free shipping could make all the difference - eBay even gives you the ability to create and manage promotions within your eBay account. All you have to do is drag a coupon block into your template.

Be a better marketer: Check out our tips and best practices for using emails for e-commerce and driving more sales!

Any links we provide from non-Constant Contact sites or information about non-Constant Contact products or services are provided as a courtesy and should not be construed as an endorsement by Constant Contact.

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