One of the biggest challenges a marketer faces in e-commerce is driving visitors to WWW page. The challenge is not only number of visitors but their matching to the shop offer. A marketer confronts wide range of possibilities to choose from and needs to pick those channels that will bring clients to the business. MarketingSherpa carried out a survey among 1000 marketers and from its results we can learn which communication channel to choose.
It turns out that communication channel choice does not depend solely on the profile of potential client but also on the size of the company, measured by revenue scale. Companies with revenue below 10 000 $ and over 100 million $ took part in the survey. Their task was to answer the following question: Which communication channels generate traffic on your WWW page in e-commerce? Each surveyee could choose more than one channel. The graph below illustrates the results.
We quickly notice the TOP 2, which is e-Mail Marketing and organic search, which is almost alike for all surveyees.
Does e-mail Marketing generate greatest traffic in e-commerce?
The result says so. However, as usual we have one ‘but’… E-mail Marketing, which generates valuable traffic to the website must provide the receiver with tailor-made, relevant messages, containing interesting content and needs to be sent at the right time, when he or she needs information. Good solution here is taking advantage of Marketing Automation systems, which will secure that each client received automatically those messages he finds interesting at this particular moment. Effectiveness of e-Mail Marketing with Marketing Automation also results from its universality and popularity. Nowadays, it’s hardly possible to find a person that does not have an email address or the Internet access. Right next to the popularity, there’s one more aspect. An e-mail message forces recipient to either open or delete it. Here, tailor-made e-Mail Marketing in Marketing Automation makes more people click ‘open’. That’s why e-Mail Marketing popularity is slightly lower among companies with small-scale income. It results from the necessity of using technology, where the bottom line input requires the purchase of a system dedicated to e-mailing. The amount of investment will determine activity possibilities in this channel.
Organic search most important for businesses with average revenue
This category contains companies generating from 10 000 to 10 million a year. It’s not easy but gives evident results. On one hand we must take care of our website optimization in accord with search engines order. On the other hand, the content of the WWW page itself is essential and should be as useful as possible for the client. It simply needs to contain exactly what is required and expected by the client. In order to do that, it’s worth to analyze their needs. Module of conversion analysis in Marketing Automation SALESmanago is very helpful here. It will display wherefrom we acquire clients, what they do on WWW page, how they react to marketing activities and what they search in browsers during the purchase process. Thus, we can tailor the website content to their needs.
Social media proves successful for small on-line shops
Relation is pretty simple; the bigger the business, the smaller percentage of traffic generated by social media. Such fact is mainly connected with data quantity. It’s easier for a small shop to accumulate their clients in social media and effectively communicate with them. The bigger the shop, the more miscellaneous clients and more dispersed amid various social media web portals. That is why big businesses focus on particular target group and carry on their activities in defined scope. Big businesses obstacles in social media are associated with the following:
• huge amount of data necessary for analysis and response in real time
• complicated procedure of content acceptance before sharing
The effect of scale does not agree with the social media specifics, where response should be immediate.
Summary
Consequently, the marketer should onboard monitor traffic acquisition sources and focus on strategic communication channels. Then, in each of them, he should optimize communication process in order to effectively reach to individual receivers, which is hardly possible when done manually. This way, more and more businesses grasp the necessity of Marketing Automation systems implementation, which take responsibilities for mechanical activities and allow humans to focus on creative tasks and processes optimization.
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