3 Ways to Boost eCommerce Sales with Marketing Automation

3 Ways to Boost eCommerce Sales with Marketing Automation

In this post, we share three tips that will help boost your Ecommerce sales. We cover the following: the importance of having an irresistible lead magnet, building brand awareness by sending nurturing emails, and growing an email list of highly engaged readers who love your brand and can’t wait to hear from you.

If you’re running an online store, then the tips we share in today’s post will help you save time and money when it comes to growing your database of potential buyers (also known as your ‘Mailing list’)

We’re all busy business owners so let’s get cracking with today’s post.

1. Grow your email list with an irresistible lead magnet. A sure way to start boosting your eCommerce sales.

First off, do you have a way of capturing traffic from your online store?

“The latest survey and studies in 2020 show that the average conversion rate of e-commerce websites is 2.86%. The average eCommerce website conversion rate in the US stands at 2.63% as compared to the global website conversion rate of 4.31%.” Source

That means that about 95% of site visitors browse your online store and then leave. There could be multiple reasons why people would abandon browsing your site. The main reason is that the majority are simply not ready to buy yet!

To put it into perspective, let’s use a brick and mortar shop as an example.

When you visit a brick and mortar store, you enter the store to browse first. Maybe you’ll buy something there and then. Maybe not. But the main thing is you’re there to browse. It’s your first time visiting the store, you’re not sure if you should trust the quality of its products or there’s nothing in the store to compel you to make a purchase. Just imagine if the store owner put up a sign and said “10% off your first purchase!”. Well, hello! Maybe this is all you needed to see in order to take action and make a purchase.

So going back to your online store…

What if you could entice a fraction of those 95% that leave your store to buy something or to join your mailing list in case you plan to run any promotions in the future?

Enter Lead Magnets or (opt-in forms.)

Remember, not every person who lands on your site is ready to buy. There’s always a fraction of those 95% who are not ready to buy from you. They’re interested in learning more about you and your company before they commit to purchasing.

This is why we always recommend our eCommerce clients install a “lead magnet” aka an opt-in form on their site that’s clearly visible for people to enter their email address. This way they can join your community and learn more about your products and the company.

PRO TIP: Growing a mailing list of potential buyers will help you bring in revenue in the future and help you sell more stock! With marketing automation, you can run this on autopilot.

2. Make new subscribers fall in love with your brand and see them turn into loyal customers. Customer retention helps you boost eCommerce sales.

Most online businesses focus on customer acquisition rather than customer retention. This is what we see happening in the eCom space a lot!

The store owners would often spend more money on paid advertising to bring in new customers as opposed to focusing their attention on the existing customers where they don’t have to invest a lot of money on ads.

Remember, once you start to grow your mailing list then your customer base will grow as well.

What we often see with our eCom clients is that 80% of their database are “First-time buyers”. Only around 10% are repeat customers.

Do you see this in your business, too?

To have people fall in love with your brand is to encourage those “First-Time buyers” to make their second purchase.

Basically, you’ll need to convert first-time buyers into repeat customers.

Here are three things you could do today to have more repeat customers:

• Run surveys for your first-time buyers. Wouldn’t it be great to know the reason they bought from you in the first place? What attracted them to your store? Did they like the products they bought?

• Offer a special discount just for first-time customers. Run an exclusive promotion that’s targeted for them… not to the whole mailing list! It will make them feel special 🙂

• Create a fun VIP club for repeat customers so they become your brand ambassadors and loyal customers.

Let’s take the customer survey point and elaborate further.

Imagine if you set up a survey that only goes out to those that made their first purchase. You only need to set up the survey once. You then write a nice email that asks them to complete the survey. The survey’s main objective is to collect data (i.e. survey responses) about your new customers. As a thank you for completing the survey you reward them with a 15% discount on their next purchase in your store.

Now imagine this whole setup runs on autopilot without you having to write more emails for every new customer that joins your list.

Then it’s time to think seriously about bringing in marketing automation systems that will help you boost eCommerce sales. Click here to chat to us when you’re ready!

Marketing Automation can help business owners attract the right customer to their store and retain them with timely reminders about new products and promotions… automagically.

Online store owners are too busy to be writing emails every day!

To help you boost your eCommerce sales and sell more stock, you’ll need to implement Marketing Automation systems in your business as soon as you can.

3. Only send emails to subscribers who want to read them. When someone opens your emails, your chance of boosting sales goes up!

Sending automated follow ups and newsletters to active subscribers in your database will ensure your “open and click through rates” stay high.

When open rates are high, you’re more likely to sell more products.

When you’re sending emails to people who don’t open email for more than three months, your open rates are affected!

Without diving into too much detail about open rates, we’ve covered subscriber engagement in our previous posts. Check out our posts on Email Deliverability and Email Engagement:

• Email deliverability
• Segmentation and Email Open Rates

The two posts above will give you some background information on how to segment leads who click and open your emails.

Once you separate those contacts that are highly engaged from those that are sitting idle, start sending them promotions with your emails and see your store revenue jump!

The good news about Marketing Automation is that you don’t have to sit and type emails to every segment in your database. You can automate follow ups just to those who are most interested in engaging with your brand.

Need help in setting up automated follow up emails? Click here to chat to us when you’re ready!

OVER TO YOU

In summary, what you’ve learned in this post is that: 1. it’s important to build your email list with people who are keen to hear from you, 2. Send relevant emails to build brand awareness and encourage repeat purchases and 3. Segment active subscribers to ensure your emails get opened and read every time you send emails.

What we’ve described above is a mini-marketing-automation system. The idea is to set it up once and let it run on autopilot so you can take a break from writing follow up emails and focus on other activities that help run your store.

We know that every store is different. There’s no ‘one’ marketing strategy that will work for your store. Over five years we’ve worked with hundreds of store owners and we know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to setting up marketing automation the right way.

When you’re ready to implement marketing automation in your store, click here to book a chat with us.

FURTHER READING

What is EDM Marketing?

Create a Marketing Automation Plan For Your Business

One Easy Way To Boost Your E-Commerce Sales This Holiday Season

Automate Client Communication to Boost Sales

Black Friday Email Marketing: How to Get Customers to Come Back After Black Friday