Marketing automation comes in handy in almost every sector and company, but this technology truly shines in e-commerce. As it happens, in online trade, it’s all about well-designed, repetitive processes. And that’s exactly what marketing automation offers. We want to show you how marketing automation can take your e-commerce business to a whole new level.
Imagine this hypothetical but 100% real scenario:
A potential customer, let’s call him Mark, has seen your ad on Facebook and decided to drop by your store. After browsing some products, Mark selected the best product for him and put it in the cart.
In the cart, he discovered that there was a slightly more expensive but better version of his product. He decided to check it out and thought it was a better decision to pay a bit more. Mark placed the order, made an instant payment using one of the online payment gates, and immediately received an email with the parcel tracking code.
A few days after receiving the order, Mark got another email asking whether he was satisfied with the purchase. The same email also encouraged him to give the store a review.
Mark was fully satisfied with every stage of his order. Surely, he’ll be back soon. And when he does, he’ll receive an invitation to the store’s VIP club.
Every single element and stage described in this short story can be partly or fully automated using marketing automation in e-commerce. The fact is, if you run an online store, you have a whole list of possible options enabling you to save time and streamline processes happening in your business. Let’s talk specifics.
Marketing automation in e-commerce
Of course, it’s a simplification, but online trade is all about designing, optimizing, and executing processes. There is a process for getting more visitors to your store. There is a process for product recommendations. There is a process for payments. And finally, there is a process for tracking orders and shipping. And when you work with many different processes, you can automate the vast majority of them. Let’s have a look at various aspects of MA in e-commerce.
Marketing automation scenarios
It all starts with marketing automation scenarios. With them, you can design every stage of the customer journey and guide your customers to the expected outcome (e.g., order) with a set of actions and responses. Here’s how such a scenario can look:
As you can see, you can design the whole purchasing process from the first visit right to the purchase. Along the way, you can decide what each customer will see on your website and what kind of communication channels should be in use. Surely, designing and optimizing such a scenario takes some time, but once it’s done, it will help you save a lot of time!
Communication channels
What communication channels do you use in your online store? Typically, these are:
- Chat/chatbot
- Phone (including text messages and WhatsApp)
- Push notifications
- Social media (including Messenger)
- On-site communication (including pop-up ads and personalized product recommendations)
The list is quite long! Thankfully, each of these channels can be automated, at least partly. Do you want to tell your users about an upcoming sale? Send an automated push notification. Do you want to send a parcel tracking code? Send an automated text message or an automated email to the customer. Do you want to stay available to your customers 24/7, and you have a query coming from abroad in the middle of the night? Switch them to an automated chatbot.
As a result, you can communicate regularly with your customers and ensure that nothing important slips their attention without the need to sit and send every single message manually.
E-commerce platforms
If you want to go far and wide with your automation, you need to integrate your e-commerce platform with a marketing automation platform. This way, thanks to a technology called API, both platforms can exchange data and act on it without your involvement. For example, when you receive a new order through the e-commerce platform, the MA platform automatically receives information about this order and sends the tracking code via SMS or email.
Right now, iPresso can be integrated with the following e-commerce platforms:
- IdoSell
- Shoper
- PrestaShop
- WooCommerce
If you operate on a different platform, send us a message, it is likely we will be able to integrate with it!
Product recommendations
Automation comes to the rescue also when you want to provide your customers with personalized product recommendations. Our algorithms analyze products in your offer and the behavior of your customers and show them products they should be interested in. The same solution can be used for upselling and cross-selling. Take a look at this example of such an action:
This way, you can easily sell more products and increase the AOV (average order value) index in your store. Similar messages can be displayed using push notifications, overlays, boxes, banners, and other formats you use.
Retargeting
The global cart abandonment rate is rising continually, and as of 2021, it’s close to 70%:
Your store likely needs help with the same problem. Retargeting is one of the most effective techniques enabling you to lower the cart abandonment rate. In fact, many abandoned carts result from some kind of distraction or a simple fact that the customer forgot about their order. Thanks to retargeting, you can reach customers who were interested in buying something from you in the past and encourage them to go back to your store and finish the order.
With iPresso, you can set an automated process that reminds you about the order. Here’s how it can look:
Thanks to this simple solution, you will be able to rescue at least some of the abandoned carts and grow sales, as well as the number of regular buyers in your store.
If you run an online business, you surely see the potential behind all the solutions described in this post. All of them have but one goal: To help you improve your business without the need to invest a significant amount of time. With marketing automation, you can almost forget about all these repetitive actions you had to do manually in the past. Now, you can concentrate strictly on the most important questions and leave the majority of your work to MA.
Apply for marketing automation for your store
The next step for you is to start a free trial on our platform. If you need any help or have some questions before you start, feel free to reach out to our team!
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