Ecommerce with Marketing Automation – Lesson 1: Solid Foundations | Blog SALESmanago – Customer Engagement Platform for impact-hungry eCommerce marketing teams

Ecommerce is one of the fastest-growing industries in the modern world. One could call ecommerce today’s equivalent of the American dream. You can start from scratch and build a fortune with only a few must-haves, such as internet access, own website and ability to deliver your product to customers.

For those who want to become the next Jeff Bezos, we have launched the SALESmanago AppStore – an elegant solution for ecommerce entrepreneurs who want to build and customize their own, marketing automation stack. The SALESmanago AppStore is a self-service store with 11 modules which you can combine according to your needs.

The number of marketing automation solutions on the market may seem overwhelming. Even platforms built from the ground up to be intuitive, like SALESmanago, can be a challenge for an ecommerce rookie. To help you decide what fit for your business, I’d like to offer a cycle of 5 essential lessons on how to use marketing automation to grow your online store. The first one is an introduction to basic modules and how to make the best out of them.

Step zero: CRM

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a must. It is the place where you storage all contact with additional information. It is also a heart of behavioral profiling which is crucial for ecommerces.

It doesn’t surprise anyone that personalized content and tailored offers get more attention and result in better conversion rates. But bear in mind, it isn’t so because customers are unique snowflakes. It’s simple maths: Imagine you’re a customer. Let’s say, you have a dozen similar stores to choose from. You don’t have an emotional connection with any of them. Your attention span (according to research) is as low as 8 seconds – or even less. All you want to do is buy a hair product. Be honest – which store would you choose: one that shows a flashy ‘razzle-dazzle’ of goods or one that displays a special discount on hair products? Behavioral profiling is a mechanism that stands behind displaying the right content to the right visitor at the best moment possible. Customers take shortcuts when they can – hence the importance of behavioral profiling.

The gathered information may facilitate further database segmentation, indirectly leading to more efficient campaigns and tailored communication.

For ecommerce purposes, simple gender-based segmentation just doesn’t cut it. Each customer has different needs. If you want to address them you must discover them in the first place. The set of variables that affect them is far beyond “30+, male, Londoner”. Other, more advanced options of behavioral profiling exist. They include methods of optimizing the lifecycle of customers and products and combine them with transactional data. The simple act of buying shampoo has a (highly significant) context. A person who buys shampoo might also need a conditioner or other styling products. If the shampoo is made to cure a specific hair condition, the buyers are likely to get other products of the same product line. Also, since a shampoo bottle has limited volume when a buyer needs one in the future, it would be nice to remind them to get another bottle when the current one starts running dry.

Read more on segmentation and behavior monitoring:

Contact base segmentation – a vital requirement for successful automation

11 Reasons to Start Monitoring Your Website Visitors Today!

The Discreet Charm of the TAG

*You get the CRM module for free if you own the Email Marketing or Lead Generation module.

Step one: Generate leads

Visitors come and go. They skim through the catalog and close the tab. Since there are thousands of them, it would be a shame if you let the anonymous traffic just pass through your website, without even attempting to convert them into leads. Every visitor matters.You may think that if you are meant to develop a business relation, it will happen eventually, but why why should all the valuable behavioral data go to waste? On the website that can monitor user activity, the information about anonymous visits is collected and stored for several hours and then is removed. If the contact does not trigger the system to start monitoring them within 3 hours, the details from anonymous visits are lost. However, if you can convince them to perform such an action, data will be assigned to the newly formed contact card, where your CRM will store all further behavioral and transactional information.

There are many tactics to obtain contact details. There are good tactics, bad tactics, and also the ugly ones. There are also smart ways. Each website has many places where you can ask people for contact details. Implementing smart contact forms to your website is one of them.

Data is valuable. People don’t want to share it just like that. They need some encouragement – a discount on, an extra for the next order, free shipping, and so on. It must be appealing, yet not scammy. And, what’s also important, it works best if it’s context-based. Don’t ask people for contact details more than once – they hate it. Encourage them with a discount on browsed products. Design a landing page directly related to the clicked ad, with a clear call to action and no distractors.

The lead generation module can be of help to convince hesitating prospects. Arm your website with popups and sidebars. They can keep visitors’ attention on the right track and re-display an item category they spend the most time looking at as they attempt to close the tab. It’s up to you, but I’d recommend adding some discount. Nice and simple – one browses specific items, gets distracted, or wants to continue research in another online store so you show them these items once again followed by a reasonable discount if one will buy them at once.

Try Lead Generation for 14 days for free or…

… download a free ebook and read more on lead generation.

Step two: Build communication

Email Marketing is the cheapest and most convenient communication channel of them all. If done right, it is also one of the most efficient ones. People like to read emails that are:

personalized – that’s the reason I emphasized the value of behavioral profiling and collecting meaningful data. Your audience isn’t interested in receiving someone else’s emails or blunt mass communication. Use contact card details to personalize email for each recipient, and database segmentation to send messages to the proper audience – according to what interests them in the store.
beneficial – don’t forget to provide real value with your messages. Both financial and educational incentives will do the trick. So whether you offer an insane discount or a new line of exclusive products, let your contacts know.
sent at the right time – it’s not that an untimely message will trigger a wave of opt-outs. However, they won’t be read. So, the time spent preparing them is going waste. The best practice is to adjust the dispatch to peaks in contact’s activity.
easy to read – to be read willingly, emails must be written without typos and other serious mistakes. They shouldn’t be too elaborate as well. Moreover, they must fit the device they are read on. Always check your email before sending and make sure it covers this list.

If a plain email doesn’t cover your appetite, send a birthday email to show your customers that you value them and want to celebrate important events together. Another option is to use periodic emails to remind people of a special monthly sale or to tell them about the points they gathered from the loyalty program that they can use during the next shopping spree.

Try Email Marketing for 14 days for free or…

…keep reading:

How to Create a 100% SPAM Email [Frivolous Handbook]

Email, say hello to Marketing Automation. The most important switch you must do this year

10 Commandments of Email Marketing [ebook]