A Complete Guide for Marketing Automation in eCommerce
According to the State of Marketing Automation Survey Report, nearly 75% of marketers utilized marketing automation tools, in one form or another, in 2019. With the global pandemic outbreak in 2020 and other factors, these numbers have accelerated to a point where the industry is expected to reach a valuation of USD 19.66 billion by 2026, thereby registering a CAGR of 19.2%!
Considering that eCommerce marketing is rather taxing on time, labor, and resources, marketing automation in eCommerce could be the differentiating factor that drives more sales, generates more leads, and increases your revenue. Since marketing automation in eCommerce businesses is a lucrative opportunity, let’s take a look at how one can implement it!
Here is your ultimate guide for marketing automation in eCommerce!
Why Do I Need eCommerce Marketing Automation?
Before delving into how to introduce eCommerce marketing automation, let’s take a look at all the associated benefits:
1. Improved Customer Insights
Marketing automation helps eCommerce businesses understand their clients. It captures and utilizes customer data, such as their date of birth, geographical location, preferences, purchase patterns, order history, and more! Feeding these inputs into your eCommerce marketing automation platform can be useful in curating a truly personalized experience.
Consider birthday marketing, for example. Birthday emails register 481% higher transaction rate, 342% greater revenue, and 179% unique click rates against regular promotional emails. The message is loud and clear – know your customers.
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2. Enhanced Customer Service
Make your customers happy, and the revenue will follow – Marketing is no rocket science.
Marketing automation software improves customer experiences by resolving their queries almost instantly. Whether they seek sales assistance or post-purchase support, they no longer have to listen to the annoying IVR music or wait for someone to respond to their ticket.
A simple chatbot, for instance, can take care of all the routine inquiries to offer dynamic scalability. Apart from handling repetitive customer service tasks, chatbots can also offer a personalized experience, which will leave your clients floored!
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3. Generate More Leads
Marketing automation in eCommerce can improve leads qualitatively and quantitatively. While using marketing automation software, 88% of marketers reported an increase in the number of leads, while 77% saw higher conversion rates – thereby indicating an improvement in the lead volume and quality.
Interestingly, it is a symbiotic relationship, where eCommerce marketing automation nurtures leads to develop a loyal customer base, which in turn transforms into brand advocates. Such evangelists attract more leads and improve lead-generation activities.
4. Omnichannel Monitoring
eCommerce websites approach clients through multiple marketing channels ranging from emails to push notifications. Marketing automation can help you identify and grow the overlooked revenue streams by maintaining an omnichannel presence. It achieves it by addressing the most challenging aspect of omnichannel marketing – performance measuring.
eCommerce marketing automation takes care of all the grunt work that goes into monitoring all the marketing channels. Plus, it gives rich, data-driven insights into the various touchpoints and highlights their role in tipping the scales in your favor!
5. Better Customer Relationship
High customer attrition rates could be the primary cause behind dwindling revenue (ask Tiket.com), and marketing automation tackles this issue head-on. Omnichannel marketing automation can result in 90% higher customer retention.
Marketing automation can deploy various other strategies to win back existing customers. For example, you can offer tailored promos and discounts to inert accounts. Or you can offer product bundles to increase average transaction size while also providing items of value. All in all, it can mold customer experiences to make them more meaningful.
6. Higher ROI
eCommerce marketing automation platform can offer impressive ROI through its multi-pronged approach.
For starters, marketing automation carries out tasks like lead capturing and customer service automatically. Hence, you no longer have to dedicate human resources to carry out these tasks. As a result, you also don’t have to spend large amounts in the form of salaries for these employees.
Next, it bumps up the bottom line through its many benefits, which accrue in the form of financial benefits that will translate into profitability.
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How to Use Marketing Automation in eCommerce?
Following are some classic examples of how you can use marketing automation in eCommerce to increase sales, improve customer experience, and generate higher revenue. We have also incorporated a few use cases for every category to inspire your next marketing campaign:
1. Acquire New Contacts
You can employ eCommerce marketing automation to grow your contact list and attract new contacts.
Say, if you regularly churn out high-quality, actionable, and insightful content or products, your audiences would be keen to hear from you. This situation can be an excellent premise to offer them something of value in exchange for adding their information to your email list. Typically, you would see surveys, whitepapers, reports, and similar documents available to those who sign up for a business newsletter.
Similarly, if someone makes a purchase on your online store, your marketing automation software can add their details to your customer database. Every addition offers granular insight into buyer profiles and helps discover commonalities, which you can later exploit.
2. Welcoming and Onboarding
First impressions matter.
Nowadays, it is almost a given that signing up on a website would trigger email automation workflows that will welcome you to the website. These communications can acquire explicit consent for adding the customer to the email list, share an overview of the brand’s value or message, or guide them through the purchase process. You can also lure the new accounts with promos and discounts that will get them swiping their card in no time!
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A welcome series can also be particularly helpful in extending customer service for those who have already purchased your product or service. You can share details on how to use the offerings to extract maximum value. Such a consideration can boost customer loyalty and enhance customer experience.
3. Translate Abandoned Carts to Sales
Cart abandonment is a serious problem in the eCommerce sector.
About 7 out of 10 buyers will abandon products in their cart for various reasons. This figure varies depending on the device and can go as high as 85.65% for smartphone users. As a result, cart abandonment can cost your online eCommerce store about USD 18 billion in sales per annum!
Fortunately, marketing automation in eCommerce attempts to offset these losses through regular follow-ups and check-ins. Automatically triggered emails that hit the right combination of subject lines, email copy, and CTA could convince the shopper to buy from you!
4. Win Back Inactive Users
Similar to cart abandonment, you could have users who may have signed up on your online store only to forget about you entirely! Or you could have someone who made an occasional purchase and pulled the plug on their CLV.
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eCommerce marketing automation platforms can come to your rescue in such instances. You can customize email automation workflows that deploy after the lapse of X number of days, offering the client coupons or promos to pique their engagement. Given that the account has already gone cold, you’ve got nothing to lose, right?
You can read more about how MoEngage helped Tathastu, a Future Retail initiative, reactivate the dormant accounts here.
5. Capture Customer Feedback
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Several studies indicate that eCommerce businesses that encourage users to post their ratings and reviews against the products can improve conversion rates. In this regard, marketing automation software makes the task easier through automatic feedback collection. You can implement email automation that prompts the buyer to share their customer experience after the passage of X days post-purchase.
6. Establish Omnichannel Presence
Consider a situation where someone has browsed through the products on your online store. This action is an indication that they are either curious about the product or have considered purchasing it. That’s a lead right there.
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Through marketing automation tools, you can reach the lead through other channels, say social media platforms, and test their responses. If they continue engaging with the ads, it is a clear indication that they are a qualified prospect. Automated workflows can then capture their details and continue nurturing them to the point of purchase. Curious to know how MoEngage heightened customer engagement by eight times and CTR by five times for OYO? Take a look here.
7. Send Media-Rich Dynamic Communications
Including rich media, such as product images, can make a world of difference when you are re-engaging your leads. Product images can improve your CTR by 42% and 56% for emails and push notifications, respectively.
It also offers great potential to cross-sell or upsell products on your online store. All you need to do is set up product blocks and let the eCommerce marketing automation platform handle the rest. This form of automation will share relevant details such as product specifications, price, and other crucial details that will be too tempting to pass up!
8. Reward Loyal Customers
At a time when customers are spoilt for choices, you must acknowledge and reward customer loyalty. Considering that eCommerce automation collects insightful data on your customers, you can segment the customers and develop long-term customer relationships.
Building a loyal customer base effectively creates a steady stream of revenue since such customers are five times more likely to purchase from you, seven times more likely to try out new products, and four times more likely to refer you to their peers. Under your loyalty program, you can offer flat discounts, exclusive offers, BOGO promotions, free gifts, and more.
Final Thoughts
From the above guide, it is clear that marketing automation can revitalize your eCommerce venture and propel your business to new heights. Check out our elaborate marketing automation guide that can lead the way to excellence.
If budget is a constraint, here’s a fun fact – eCommerce marketing automation platforms do not cost a fortune. And honestly, even if they did, they would easily recover their cost in almost no time. Given its deep impact on your ROI, limitless potential, and high versatility, eCommerce marketing automation could be your golden ticket to success!
