Marketing Automation is about implementing automated marketing campaigns that are triggered by a set of predefined conditions and based on user behavior.
Whether it is an acquisition, retention, conversion, or loyalty campaign, Marketing Automation serves several marketing objectives and considerably increases the performance of your e-commerce.
Discover in this article the advantages of Marketing Automation for your e-commerce and how to integrate it intelligently into your digital strategy, to optimize the performance of your campaigns.
The benefits of marketing automation in e-commerce
Marketing Automation is about using software or web services to plan, implement, manage, and automate repetitive marketing tasks across multiple channels. The goal is to save time, improve your ROI, increase customer loyalty, and optimize costs.
Centralize your e-marketing campaigns
Marketing Automation allows you to gather all the e-marketing campaigns directly linked to your e-commerce site and your customers. You can define a global approach to your strategy that is the most successful and the most enriched possible.
Reducing oversights and errors
It is almost impossible to design a long-term marketing automation strategy without a tool that manages all aspects of an automated campaign. This includes the creation of a list of contacts, the design of scenarios and messages, the update of various data, and finally the analysis of performance.
Saving time and therefore revenue
Once you have set up all the tasks inherent to an automation campaign such as data entry, the configuration of e-mailing campaigns, or centralization of all available information in one place, these will be fully automated afterward.
Improve marketing campaigns and conversion rates
Automation software can help your marketing team constantly improve their campaigns. Data collected from different campaigns such as email performance, CTA’s click-through rates, and social media engagement can be used to optimize your next campaigns.
What’s more, this data does not need to be processed manually. It can automatically populate customizable dashboards. Advanced automation software can even recommend the best next steps to take.
How to set up an automation strategy for your e-commerce?
Start by defining your objectives. Are you using an automation solution to generate leads, to increase your notoriety, or is it to gain profitability? By answering these questions, you will have clear and concrete guidelines to choose the most suitable platform for you.
Then, try to understand who your customers are. By creating marketing personas, you will be able to use all your knowledge about your targets to determine their different customer journeys and their level of maturity.
Once you’ve set your goals and targets, it’s time to choose your automation tool, and create your scenarios and the content that will nourish them.
Which marketing automation tool for your e-commerce?
Nowadays, several marketing automation tools and software are suitable for different e-commerce platforms. To select the best one to answer your needs, think about the processes you want to automate. Check the features offered by each tool and most importantly, choose a software that is well-established and has a solid reputation in the e-commerce industry.
We recommend that you do a thorough review of existing automation solutions before you start thinking about your scenarios, to select an automation tool that offers the type of scenario you have chosen.
Read also :
→ Everything You Need To Know About Email Automation
What are the possible scenarios for your e-commerce site?
At this point, you can select the scenario that best suits your goals.
1. Subscriber acquisition pop-up scenario:
When we talk about acquisition, we often think of inbound marketing with SEA or Facebook Ads, but this is not the only way to feed your database. You also need to implement a solid acquisition strategy on your e-commerce site through the use of pop-ups.
You can deploy and, if necessary, combine two must-have acquisition pop-ups: the customer account sign-up pop-up and the newsletter sign-up pop-up.
To encourage your visitors to sign up, many ideas can be implemented. Associate your pop-up with a contest, a fun quiz, or offer a reward or a coupon to make your pop-up more attractive. Also, make sure that your pop-up does not appear for a long period to avoid disturbing your visitors’ navigation.
2. Abandoned cart scenario:
Whether you have a BtoB or BtoC e-commerce site, it is important to implement a solid customer retention strategy. Beyond possible efforts on the number of your delivery fees or a simplification of your payment process, recover your abandoned carts thanks to a dedicated automated scenario.
To convert your customers more efficiently, consider offering a benefit such as a coupon, a gift, personalized product recommendations, etc.
It can be interesting to include other channels than email marketing to your reminders: Push Notification, Facebook Messenger messages, Display, etc. There are many options to help you reduce the volume of your abandoned carts and optimize your performance.
→ How to establish a winning Data-Driven strategy for your E-commerce?
3. Loyalty scenario:
In the face of omnipresent direct and indirect competition, whatever your sector of activity, your loyalty strategy must be well organized. Maintaining a bond of proximity and trust with your customers is therefore essential.
Many scenarios are possible depending on your strategy and the means you have put in place for your e-shop. We recommend you opt for these two main scenarios to start with:
Customerbirthday:
To show your interest and care for your customers, send them your best wishes for their birthday! This is a great way to maintain a personalized relationship.
Think of an adapted and personalized strategy based on your customers’ profile and purchase history. Coupons, gifts, etc., many ways are possible to seduce your customers and push them to interact with your brand and make a purchase.
Loyalty rewards:
Think about rewarding your best customers. They will appreciate the gesture and will be more likely to come back to your site rather than to a competitor’s. For your loyalty reward strategy to be complete, don’t hesitate to structure it by levels and to offer rewards adapted to the average cart and the profile of each customer.
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4. Cross-selling scenario:
This feature adapts to many automated scenarios and allows you to deliver content adjusted to your customers’ profiles to convert them more easily. The goal is to display product recommendations adapted to the purchase and browsing history of different visitors.
You can base your cross-selling campaigns on one of these scenarios:
- Interest for the site: re-launch your visitors following a visit to one or several products or product categories.
- Inactive customers: reactivate a customer who has not placed an order for a while.
- Cross-sell display combined with Smart Content on Site: a list of products personalized according to your customer’s preferences and profile appears when your customer browses your e-commerce site.
Your scenarios are ready to be deployed!
Once they are online, you can analyze the performance of your scenarios to optimize them as you go along and adapt them to your targets.
At Eminence, our experts use the SALESmanago solution, which has enabled them to automate the agency’s emailing campaigns and those of our clients.
Do you want to develop a successful e-commerce website and achieve your business objectives?
To conclude, Marketing Automation is an essential tool to reach your commercial objectives in terms of e-commerce. You will be able to propose offers that are different from those of your competitors and a personalized and relevant shopping experience.