When you hear the term ‘Marketing automation,’ your mind instantly imagines mass emails that track opens and clicks. But marketing automation can do so much more, such as integrate email with your customer management platform to create relevant campaigns. For ecommerce merchants, one of the most important features is the ability to sync a visitor’s on-site behaviour (such as the products they’ve viewed) to their profile in your CRM system.
It allows merchants to create segments based off customer behaviours like their purchase history, recently viewed items, and even their geolocation. By combining a shoppers’ on-site behaviour with clean, reliable data, it can dramatically improve conversions and easily justify the cost of an automated tool.
At WunderTalent, we understand the benefits of a marketing automation program, which is why we’re going to discuss our top tips on how to accelerate one of your own.
- Only use clean data
Maintain your customer database, ensuring the 4 C’s: current, correct, consistent and complete. If you’re not sure, tracking your data quality by monitoring bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, and engagement will give you a good idea of the quality.
Ensure consistent geographic names, and that your products are properly categorised, which is key for segmentation. If you have incomplete or missing data, use dynamic forms for the customer to supply the missing information on his next form submission.
- Welcome emails are essential
Your first impression counts. So as soon as someone buys from your company or signs up for the newsletter, send them a welcome email asap. The email can be used to offer discount codes or special promotions. You can then test those codes and promotions to see how well they’ve done and use the data to frame the segment of a new prospect.
You can play around with various formats and designs too. Ensure your welcome email communicates your brand personality, provides helpful product tips, and informs your potential customers about the frequency of your newsletter.
- Offer complementary items
Using the historical basket analysis, you can showcase similar items to your customers. This is the same for complementary items, which can be assessed by identifying your potential customer’s paths before purchase. Including recently viewed items doesn’t always yield results, as there’s usually a reason a customer didn’t purchase it.
- Fine-tune segmentation
Personalisation is important. Connecting your brand and your potential customer is likely to yield better results. Emails segmentation needs to be based on a) Spending habits, b) products viewed or purchased, and c) overall interaction with your brand, such as site visits and emails opened. Third-party data can be useful, which includes demographic info such as age, gender, household income, geography, and marital status.
- Reward loyalty
Repeat customers are a driving force in terms of profits, with the added benefit of being great brand ambassadors. Treat them as such. Offer them special deals and even exclusive products to make them happy and keep them coming back. You can quantify repeat customers by their lifetime value, however using predictive modelling lets you anticipate potential high-value customers based on the historical behaviour of others. Target those valued prospects and explain the rewards your offer in return for their loyalty.
- Target visitors who abandon shopping carts
Research suggest sending an email to customer who abandon their carts immediately is the best course of action. However, you can test the best timing for your Ecommerce site and identify an optimal time. You then need to understand why the cart was abandoned, which can be discovered through a quick survey. Sending an email to ask why is one option, perhaps with a single multiple-choice question. Depending on their answer, you could still commit them to a sale by offering a solution, such as a discount or free shipping. The slightly decreased profit margin will be worthwhile if it produces a loyal customer.
- Send post-purchase emails
A coupon, a request for product reviews, or even money off next orders are some examples of what you can include in a post-purchase email. Whatever your method, after someone receives a product, it’s usually a good time to request feedback, upsell complementary items, or simply engage with the customer. Just try to keep the call-to-action down to one thing at a time…
- Re-engage visitors
Convincing visitors to return to the site is the hardest part of any marketer’s job. Strategies can include offering a discount, asking why they left, or just fixing whatever the problem was. Expressing how you miss them in an email can also work. The only way to know what works is to test it. Segmenting recipients can yield better results too.
