Marketing Automation was originally dedicated to B2B companies, but ecommerce adapted some of its solutions, which turned out to deliver great results. Learn how e-commerce can benefit from skillfully implemented automation and what features can be quickly implemented to drive amazing results.
Create Amazing Shopping Experience. Download Free Ebook
Use scoring to select your most loyal customers
Scoring, or points assigned to customers in Marketing Automation platform, helps you determine given contact’s engagement in the brand and separate loyal ambassadors (people who buy from you, subscribe your newsletter, and read your messages) from less active ones.
That way you can easily group loyal users and create campaigns especially form them. It’s vital because most marketers focus on attracting new visitors while spending much less time on existing customers. In the effect it’s more beneficial for customers to be a new customers at various e-stores (as new ones are always tempted with great offers) than to stick to one brand. Prepare something unique for your loyal customers.
Customer segmentation
You can segment your audience according to various criteria, not just engagement, as described above. You can group your contacts basing on:
– Interests
– Gender
– Location
– Previous purchases
– Participating in a previous campaign.
In ecommerce marketers use segmentation to match offers to particular user’s interest and needs, for example in email marketing.
Remember that it’s not only WHAT you send matters. It’s also what you DON’T send. Each irrelevant information (like an event in a place far away from me or an ebook I’ve already downloaded) lowers your audience’s trust. If you convince your recipients that you carefully choose content of each message so it delivers value to a particular user, they will wait for your emails and open it. But if they see a lot of unnecessary data there, they will just start to ignore what you send.
That’s why customer segmentation is essential.
Lead Nurturing for ecommerce
Lead Nurturing is a typical solution for B2B: it means educating your leads with a cycle of educational messages. When you obtain an email address, the potential customer probably knows little about your solution, so you send a couple of emails with introductory information, including knowledge necessary to make a decision.
In ecommerce, you can prepare an educational cycle that either prepare the ground for a big purchase or educate prosumers. Today a lot of consumers want to know more about the product: where was it produced, how to measure their quality, etc. As customers want more and more knowledge, so the need for Lead Nurturing campaigns in B2C and ecommerce is growing.
It’s not exactly a simple and quick automation, but of you have a blog or produce valuable content, creating a Lead Nurturing campaign is a question of a few hours.
Welcome messages
As much as 74,4% of users expect welcome messages after they subscribe to a newsletter. Send these to make sure that recipient will remember that she gave you her address intentionally. That way she won’t mark you as spam.
Also tap into user’s initial interest in your offer. Include a special offer in your welcome message.
Abandoned cart rescuing emails
That’s one of the essential weapons in ecommerce marketer’s arsenal. 68% of carts are left behind in ecommerce, but you can win some of them back.
That message is sent after a customer put products in the basket and didn’t finalize the deal. It can include a discount or an information about product limited availability to motivate customer to buy.
Win-back messages
Won-back messages reactivate customers who haven’t visited our e-store in a long time. System can select such users and automatically send a dynamic 1-to-1 message after a contact was inactive for a given time, or you can run a win-back campaign once in a year or once in 6 month, selecting contacts that haven’t bought anything in that period.
Birthday emails
If you know the birthday of your customer, surprise her with a special offer and wishes. It’s very nice and builds a personal relationship.
Add recipient’s name in email subject
It’s a simple trick that can boost Open Rates. Just add user’s name in the subject line. It makes it feel more personal. But don’t stop your personalization at that point: if you put the name in the subject only to slap recipient in the face with bulk offer, the contrast will be striking.
Avoid superficial customization.
Match the time of email delivery to individual user’s preferences
It’s another quick and easy trick that requires just one mouse click in your Marketing Automation system and increases open rate of your emails.
How it works? Instead of wondering what is the best time to send an email, let your Marketing Automation system deliver a message to each user at the most suitable moment for her.
That way even the bulk mailing becomes more interesting – they hit the inbox in the most suitable moment, when given user shows the higher activity.
Dynamic content
Your website isn’t a static place, it’s a dynamic construct that can customize to each visitor. Tailor the banners you display to particular user: to her interest and purchase history. Dynamic banners allow you to show each customer an offer that suits her needs.
It also helps navigate through your website.
Recommendation engines
Recommendations are powerful. Often customers lack a clear image of what they search and at that point come to the rescue. 2/3 of Netflix movies are watched after a recommendation. 34-36% of Amazon products are bought after a recommendation. 26% of songs played on Spotify are listened to after a recommendation. (Michal Kreczmar and Łukasz Dziekan)
One of the most advanced recommendation engines is SALESmanago Copernicus – Machine Learning & AI – a self-learning algorithm.
SALESmanago Copernicus:
- analyzes the behavior of individual customers,
- predicts future purchases,
- and then it sends personalized product recommendations according to what the algorithm deems most likely to be bought.
It’s a great tool for big e-stores where traffic is big enough for the engine to learn visitors’ behavior.
Personalized contact forms
If someone hasn’t bought from you, don’t lose her. Just attract her attention with an exit popup with contact form (add a tempting incentive!).
To increase the likelihood of purchase, personalize the form so it harks backs to what user was interested in (for example to products she viewed).
And what automation features work best for your ecommerce?
Follow
