eCommerce Marketing Automation

For an online business to become successful, it is not enough to launch an eCommerce website and call it a day. If you want to establish a profitable store, you definitely need to do more. To attract new customers, drive more sales, and boost your conversion rate, you have to combine eCommerce efforts with elaborate marketing techniques.

What Is eCommerce Marketing Automation?

Online marketing automation is the implementation of marketing software with the aim to launch effective marketing campaigns for your eCommerce business promotion. Automated eCommerce marketing eliminates the risk of human error, saves time for your staff, and facilitates customer retention and business growth.

With this automated marketing tool, sellers:

• reach out to larger audiences
• get more traffic to their website
• personalize the shopping experience
• streamline advertisement strategies
• increase their brand awareness
• boost revenue.

With the help of eCommerce software, online merchants can launch effective marketing campaigns without having to manage them manually. All you have to do is to set up the initial configurations and enjoy the results of a thriving online business. If needed, you can make the necessary adjustments to change any automated actions performed by the installed software.

What Can eCommerce Marketing Automation Platforms Do?

The main purpose of automated marketing platforms is to optimize your team’s time by automating routine tasks and focusing on your target audience with the help of advanced artificial intelligence analytics. It makes the work of the marketing department easier and saves time for employees.

The key functions of an automation platform are:

• sending emails
• scoring and nurturing leads
• managing social media posts
• omnichannel reporting
• analytics.

As a result of using eCommerce marketing software, sellers can enhance their marketing strategy with:

• revenue recovery with abandoned-cart emails
• sending out automated upsell and cross-sell messages
• building customer loyalty with the help of effective win-back email campaigns
• using advanced advertisement techniques
• offering special discounts to clients
• implementing segmentation and personalization approaches.

eCommerce software providers offer rich opportunities to improve the marketing strategy of your online shop. For example, you can choose between  SAP Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Sitecore Marketing Automation solutions that help boost revenue and conversions with enhanced interaction techniques.

How to Use CRM to Attract Contacts and Create Automated Personalized Emails

A powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a great instrument to process the information about all interactions with your loyal buyers and potential customers. With an efficient CRM, you can monitor all your transactions easily, streamline your advertising efforts, and automate your communication with clients.

New Contacts

Gather Data at the Purchasing Stage

When buying products, customers enter their contact details. Information such as transaction history, location, name, social media details and email can be used later by sellers to refine their marketing strategy.

Newsletter for Information

Customers can choose which topics they would like to read in the newsletter you send to them. This could include:

• discounts and sales
• updates on definite products
• blog posts
• advice and life hacks.

Create Lead Magnets

Marketers can offer website visitors a lead magnet — a present available after they enter their name and email address, or other contact details. This can include promo codes, discounts, or free books.

Instant Customer Engagement

Interact with contacts you added to your list recently. With automated marketing campaigns, you can engage customers almost instantly with a thought-out welcome message, and offer them a good bargain.

Personalized Email Marketing Campaigns

All customers are different and their purchasing habits vary. The CRM helps online merchants monitor and track customer behavior provided the customers:

• subscribe to a newsletter
• buy only discounted products
• use promo codes
• shop seasonally
• abandon their shopping carts
• leave without making a purchase.

This information can help sellers develop a personalized approach to each group based on their characteristics.

Top Automated Marketing Campaigns to Implement Right Now:

1) Abandoned Сart Recovery

Visitors often add items to the shopping cart and leave without making an actual purchase. To help them complete the purchase and convert more visitors into buyers, you can implement the Abandoned Cart Recovery marketing technique.

With this option, the system automatically sends an email reminder 24 hours after the potential buyer leaves the shopping cart. Merchants can create custom emails with personalized content so that the message would reflect their brand identity. The message should include a Complete Your Order button. When customers click that button, the system sends them directly to a Review Cart page, where they can finally make their purchase.

2) Promotional Offer for Discount Customers

Online customers usually have two attitudes towards discounts: some tend to make purchases when they need them, regardless of whether there are discounts or not; others only buy items that are on sale or discounted. This knowledge may be of use if you try to segment your audience based on their behavioral characteristics.

To target the second type of customers, you have to make favorable discount offers to them. You can configure an automated sequence of email messages that contain products on sale or at a discount. It is especially beneficial to send targeted messages focusing on their purchase history, suggesting items that they may be interested in.

3) Promotional Offer for High AOV Customers

Average order value (AOV) is an eCommerce indicator that shows the average sum of money spent per order. It gives you insight into typical customer behavior on your website. If the AOV is low, it means that buyers prefer to make orders for small items. Consequently, high-AOV customers are more preferable, as they provide more profit to your company.

To attract more high-AOV customers, send personalized messages based on information from their previous activity, and offer discounts for purchase of multiple items. Use upsell and cross-sell messages to increase the number of items in the order, or the total value of products in the cart.

4) Win Back Emails

If the system notices that certain customers haven’t visited the website for a period of time, it automatically sends a special sequence of win-back email messages. Usually, this type of email marketing campaign includes multiple messages:

1. Reminder about the company products and/or services
2. Offer to make a purchase (may even contain discounts to lure customers into making a purchase)>
3. Inducing communication through asking for feedback on products
4. “Last chance” email
5. “Unsubscribe” message

Win Back emails help engage those customers who were once active buyers or subscribed to your emails, and enhance your relationship with them. The ultimate objective of such an email campaign is to initiate interaction. It is advisable to schedule messages properly to make sure the customer reads them.

5) Life Event or Holiday

Holidays and birthdays are a good time to get in touch with your clients. This is a great opportunity to stand out amongst your rivals and show your appreciation to your customer.

Such events could include:

• Christmas
• Easter
• Thanksgiving
• Halloween

Personal events:

• Birthday
• Wedding
• Honeymoon
• New Home Buyer
• Expecting A Baby

It is possible to set up a marketing campaign so that the system will send out emails for seasonal holidays on a specific calendar date. For life events, marketers can collect data at any available source, such as contact forms and social media. You can personalize your newsletter and attach discounts and promotional codes, which can trigger more purchases.

6) Cross-Selling Follow-Up

After clients buy products, sellers can send several follow-up messages with a recommendation to buy related items from the same product category. This is a cross-selling marketing technique that can be used to boost sales and get more revenue. For instance, if the customer orders a prom dress, merchants can offer shoes, a purse, jewelry, and accessories to match it.

This is a popular method of driving more sales, and customers tend to make this kind of extra purchase. Usually the reasoning is that they need complementary items anyway, and it is very convenient to buy everything on the same website, especially when offered a significant discount.

7) Receipt Follow-Up

After the customer successfully completes the purchasing process, marketing software can automatically send a personalized follow-up receipt to their email address or messengers. In this case, you target customers who are already active and suggest they buy more items from your store.

Follow-up receipts have high open rates, so it is a good idea to use them to boost sales. Along with the receipt and a thank-you note for buying at your store, you can add advertisements for related or complementary items based on the customer’s purchase history and preferences.

8) Replenish Emails

Some items such as make-up, cleaning and laundry products tend to run out after a certain period of time. Sellers can send a reminder to their clients to buy the product again when the bought product runs low.

You can estimate the approximate period of time it will take the purchased product to be used up, and configure an automated email marketing campaign to send replenish emails. Customers will appreciate your attention and care. These types of emails include a recommendation to buy the product they have purchased earlier, with a direct link to the product page on your eCommerce website.

eCommerce Marketing Automation Software Comparison by SaM Solutions

Let’s look at the most popular software used to boost ROI and increase conversions. We will compare the software in regard to three aspects: features, integrations with your current eCommerce platform, and pricing plan. To choose the right software for you, pay attention to these aspects and the number of contacts you want to address.