Welcome email, birthday offer, abandoned cart workflow: if you run an eCommerce site you will have come across these eCommerce marketing automation activities before.
Well, if it hasn’t happened yet, it’s a good time to dig deeper and learn about some of the activities that can quickly boost sales. And if you already know them, don’t worry! In this new article you’ll find lots of interesting ideas for boosting their performance, with the help of Blendee!
Before we get into the heart of the matter, however, a brief theoretical background.
Workflow: the heart of eCommerce marketing automation strategy
The term “workflow,” literally workflow, is used in business to refer to the management of work processes through the adoption of models that allow their complete or partial automation. In marketing, this translates into the ability to set up a series of actions that are executed automatically when certain conditions (triggers) occur.
In this case marketing automation platforms such as Blendee, will provide the technological support that enables the implementation of the activity, be it, for example, sending a newsletter or SMS, rather than real-time personalization of on-site content.
Workflow encapsulates the essence of an ecommerce marketing automation strategy: sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
Workflow welcome email : much more than a “welcome”
Often thought of as simple transactional emails to be sent once the user chooses to sign up for the newsletter or register for the shop, welcome emails, if personalized, have enormous potential, as they are not only the brand’s business card, but also constitute the first contact with the new customer, the first opportunity to stimulate them to purchase, to engage them and to build their loyalty.
According to data released by invesp:
- welcome emails record average open rates of 50 percent;
- over 76% of users who sign up for a service expect to receive them immediately after signing up;
- users who receive “welcome emails” show 33 percent more engagement with the brand than those who do not receive them.
As we can easily guess from the data, the welcome email represents an opportunity not to be wasted to stimulate the user during their customer journey, so why not enhance its effectiveness by introducing it within a more complex workflow?
Accompanying the user to make the first purchase is undoubtedly one of the main goals of the welcome series, so here are some useful tips to make it even more effective:
- take an empathetic approach initially, think of the first welcome email as the first conversation with the potential customer, use the emotional level of communication;
- strengthen the relationship in the second email sending, introduce the user to the world of your brand, share its values, reassure them about the benefits they can get, use the rational level of communication;
- stimulate the first purchase, emphasize product benefits, let other users know reviews, offer a coupon code, deploy a persuasive strategy;
- be consistent with your brand image and tone of voice;
- customizes content by also offering recommended products.
eCommerce Marketing Automation: the birthday workflow
Conversion rates exceeding 481%, unique click-through rates 179% higher: again we choose to start with data released by Experian to understand how birthday emails represent an excellent investment for a brand, especially from a retention perspective.
A way to be close to one’s customer, but not only that: the effectiveness of a birthday email is even greater if it is also accompanied by an ad hoc special offer.
Also in this case, just as we have seen for the welcome email, the advice is to create a workflow of approach to the birthday that allows thus to make the most of this occasion from a commercial point of view. Already a few days before the date it is in fact recommended to send an email inviting the user to take advantage of the exclusive offer reserved on the occasion of the anniversary, as well as it is possible in the following days to make a recall in case the user has not taken advantage of the promotion, also exploiting as a weapon of persuasion the principle of urgency.
When referring to birthday workflow we usually tend to consider email marketing as the only channel. In reality, a good strategy of marketing automation involves the integration of multiple channels.
The goal is to engage and involve the user with appealing messages in order to stimulate them to take advantage of the reserved promotion.
Email marketing campaigns can thus be flanked by campaigns of SMS marketing, especially in the recall phase, as well as by behavioural messages published on the site in order to better personalize the user’s browsing experience.
If well crafted and managed, emails and on-site personalization activities on birthdays certainly have positive impacts. In addition to the offer that can take the form of a coupon code, as well as a selection of items designed specifically for the user that the user can send to a friend as a gift suggestion (a sort of gift guide), it is important to focus on:
- eye-catching graphic layouts for both email and on-site customizations;
- content customization (think of texts and email subject line bearing the name, rather than on-site messages).
Abandoned shopping cart: the ultimate workflow in eCommerce marketing automation
Many eCommerce solutions already include it among the flows that can be activated in the platform: the one related to the abandoned shopping cart is undoubtedly one of the most widely used workflows in eCommerce marketing automation. The goal, in this case, is to have all customers who have chosen to add products to the cart complete their purchase, but without continuing to the next checkout steps.
Again, the numbers give us a good understanding of how cart abandonment is a rather recurring problem. Whether because of the need to think a little more about the purchase, or because of the shipping costs that are often a deterrent to purchase, or because of the hope of receiving a reserved offer, statistically 68% of carts are abandoned(Baymard Institute). However, reminding users that they have left products in the cart allows them to recoup well over 57 percent of revenue, so it is important to put in place an effective cart reclaim strategy including targeted promotions.
In this regard, the advice, as in previous cases, is to place the cart retrieval email within a workflow.
It might thus be interesting to show an on exit popup to the user who chooses to leave the site without completing the order, perhaps inviting them to register if they are not, and thus providing for a sequence of emails to be sent over a period of time ranging from a few hours after abandonment 8to the next three days.
As anticipated, offering a discount to conclude the purchase can be a winning move, however, we must remember to take advantage of it only in the final stage after repeated invitations to the user.
Discounts but not only: textual content related to emails and behavioral messages can, without a doubt, leverage the principle of persuasion related to scarcity (last pieces available), as well as social proof interesting in this regard is the inclusion in newsletters of positive reviews about the product given by other users.
eCommerce Marketing Automation: why Blendee
Marketing automation activities if included within a broader marketing strategy constitute a great added value as they allow to ring the user with the right message at the most appropriate time, with obvious returns in terms of engagement and revenue. In this context, a customer data platform such as Blendee allows a high level of audience profiling and segmentation and, consequently, effective personalization activities of the on-site and off-site customer experience.
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