Category: automation

Why do you need ready-to-go ecommerce workflows in your email marketing toolbox?

The main reason is this: Small businesses, startups, and nonprofits must perform a balancing act between efficiency and never sacrificing functional depth at any point in the subscriber’s journey, whether messaging a customer, member, or donor.

The right tools make marketing and advocating for others easier—and they increase the likelihood of prospects buying or donating since people will see themselves reflected in your brand or cause.

Relevancy plays a powerful role in making conversions. More than 90% of consumers say they’re more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember, and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations, Accenture Interactive finds.

Another reason to lean into smart ecommerce tools is for the help they provide people just beginning their ecommerce and email marketing efforts. You’re busy and you might not be a digital marketing expert—at least, not yet.

Shopify puts the value of automation in context:

“In any organization, there are hundreds if not thousands of small tasks that take between two and five minutes to execute. Individually, they never appear to be a significant time-waster. Together, however, they devour productivity and stunt growth. Automation simplifies these tasks, drives efficiency, and allows you to experiment.”

Whether you’re launching new products, managing finances, tracking inventory and courting suppliers, or you’re meeting with nongovernmental organizations, hiring developers, and planning charity events, your time is understandably tight.

But there’s a third reason to invest in the right tools for your small business.

Buyers and donors have their own set of expectations that can’t be ignored. Today, your customers and donors want to talk to your organization. You must listen to and heed your target audience. They want you to reflect the trust they put in causes and brands. When that happens, they become your advocates across the digital landscape and in social channels.

This landscape continues to intensify as the spending demographic shifts. Here’s an interesting statistic: Gen Z spends two to three times more on shopping through social channels than the average consumer, according to the “2018 Omnichannel Buying Report” from BigCommerce.

Gartner ecommerce analysts predict that by 2023, the majority of organizations using artificial intelligence in their digital commerce will achieve at least a 25% improvement in customer satisfaction, revenue, or cost reduction.

If you’re up to date on the best practices in digital marketing, you know you need the right data and tools to automatically pull information and engage and convert buyers or donors wherever they enter your ecosystem: through product reviews and giving campaigns on social channels, on landing pages, in carts, and through newsletters.

But what do you need in an ecommerce marketing tool and why? Here are six ways you’ll want to use these tools today and why these capabilities matter in helping your organization with growth, revenue recovery, and conversion.

1. Leverage customer feedback in marketing communication.

Your product or social cause isn’t always going to be enough on its own.

Additionally, donors and consumers—who want to be found on the channels they use—share and interact with brands through email, social media, and mobile experiences. The most trusted brands and social causes pay close attention to personalization and social proof, and they leverage it.

Here’s an example from Revolution Tea that wraps testimonials and survey data into an email to help further validate its products and service.

Source: Really Good Emails

2. Combine message personalization with audience segmentation.

Ultimately, a human makes the decision to buy from or give to you. Customers who are fully engaged represent a 23% higher share of profitability, revenue, and relationship growth compared with the average customer, according to Gallup research.

The right ecommerce marketing tools pay attention to and segment communication efforts based on these human preferences and buying and giving habits.

Here’s a tactic that uses both personalization and segmenting based on location. Use information collected from your ecommerce platform to personalize your email campaigns. For example, WooCommerce might tell you which subscribers live in a certain geographic area based on billing addresses. You can then use this information to send emails tailored to a subscriber’s physical location, which is useful if you’re promoting an event in a particular city.

Here’s another example: Use people’s names or special occasions to personalize your emails, as the Whale and Dolphin Conservation wildlife charity does on donor birthdays.

The data is clear: Being as human as possible works. Per Monetate, 86% of companies getting high return on investment online reported that personalization made up at least 21% of their marketing budgets.

Our own research finds emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Likewise, marketers note a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns.

3. Integrate the right ecommerce stack.

Automated functions depend on advanced data intelligence. Businesses will want tools that can capture customer information, interpret events, and then automate decisions based on that data.

Tools that automatically integrate with your ecommerce platform are essential. You’re not going to burn more developer hours on back-end integration with shopping platforms. You’re just not set up for it (nor should you have to be).

Advanced segmentation that welcomes new signups, captures product reviews from customers or donors, and can use those reviews in multiple mediums will help save time and ensure consistency. That ecommerce marketing stack should also be able to send reminders to people who abandoned their carts, upsell with personalized receipts, and target customers or donors based on their preferences and behavior.

CM Commerce leverages all of your customers’ purchase, demographic, preference, and engagement data. We seamlessly connect with your Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce platform.

4. Optimize your time and your value to customers on day 1.

The sooner you’re generating revenue or inching closer to donor targets, the sooner you can scale and make an impact on your bottom line or your cause.

You might need an email-centric ecommerce tool that works right away—that can take your store’s URL and start immediately pulling the most relevant customer data.

But remember, you’re not the only one with time constraints. Your customers’ time and experiences matter, too.

It’s a fact of ecommerce today: Cart abandonment happens often. If your account setup, checkout flow, and shopping cart take longer than customers expect, they’ll abandon their orders.

People are easily distracted or disappointed when a digital process feels like it could (or should) be faster. According to a Baymard Institute study, 69.57% is the average rate of ecommerce cart abandonment. It’s even higher for mobile consumers, at 85.6%. The same study finds customers want an ideal checkout flow of 12 to 14 steps, yet the average storefront flow has 23.48 steps.

5. Humanize ecommerce with product reviews from your customers.

All customers and prospects expect validation from reviews and positive social sentiment. They look to other real people.

Even with a personal voice in your approach, your customers and donors will seek independent validation from others. Sentiment matters. There is no better marketing than word-of-mouth, user-generated buzz, and positive customer testimonials.

And it goes further than your efforts on your website, email marketing, digital ads, and search and SEO efforts. Social proof makes it easier to validate sentiment and tie it to your sales.

“The basic examples of social proof can be found in users leaving reviews, comments, recommendations, or social sharing,” notes the Search Engine Journal. “This form of user-generated content and its demonstrated ability to create social proof can lead to higher conversion rates, and thus sales.”

Across industries, the average uplift in conversion rates between customers who view content created by other buyers and those who do not is a whopping 161%. It’s even higher for apparel (207%), health and beauty (203%), and food and beverage (203%), according to Search Engine Journal.

CM Commerce provides a unique set of options to turn happy customers into the best form of advertising. A few simple steps make it easy for brands to immediately capture customer feedback, solicit reviews for recent purchases, and feature that social proof on the brand’s website to accelerate additional purchases.

Don’t sleep on social proof. Leverage it as important data that can be reused and personalized. After all, ads with customer-generated product reviews have a click-through rate four times higher than those without.

6. Create and foster loyalty by building trust.

Go beyond surface-level information when you collect data from your customers and donors. Find ways to ask about their hobbies, food choices, personal life, or habits.

Did they just have a baby? How often do they use a particular app? There are so many ways to create targeted emails and further your efforts.

For example, check out this newsletter from Grammarly.

Source: Really Good Emails

Grammarly collected data on a customer’s typing habits and corrections that were made with the free version of its software. The company went above and beyond to share personal statistics about productivity and accuracy.

The number in the “advanced mistakes not corrected” section may sway the customer to buy the premium package offered with the discount. This newsletter could result in both a win for the customer (problem solved) and a win for Grammarly (sale made).

Wrap up

You never need to sacrifice functional depth at any point in your target’s journey or waste time on getting your ecommerce email marketing set up and working with your shopping platform.

Look to these tactics for help:

• Embrace the feedback loop with your customers and donors.
• Personalize your messaging and marketing tactics with segmentation.
• Integrate the right ecommerce stack.
• Optimize your time on day 1.
• Humanize ecommerce and leverage the reviews from your customers.
• Foster loyalty—and build trust in your brand during every experience.

From welcome emails to re-engagement campaigns and beyond, we seamlessly integrate with your ecommerce platforms—Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce—so you’ll have all the features you need to exceed your goals.

CM Commerce features:

• Pre-made conversion campaigns to recover revenue from abandoned carts
• Follow-up segmented and personalized emails for cross-selling
• Product reviews that spotlight your happy customers and build trust (and sales)
• Automated feedback to increase repeat revenue
• Ready-to-go templates or custom versions, coupons, and rewards with your branding

Try CM Commerce today for free.

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