In an era where digital technology leads the way in advertising, digital marketing has become essential for businesses of all sizes and industries. With the numerous and diverse options available, it’s important to understand the advantages of digital marketing and find the most effective methods and channels to increase your exposure, attract potential customers, and boost sales. Want to do it right? Let’s dive into the topic.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the use of digital platforms and channels to promote your business’s products, services, and brands. It encompasses a wide range of tactics and strategies, from social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) to paid advertising, email marketing, and landing page creation. Unlike traditional marketing, which focuses more on non-digital media like TV, radio, and print advertising, digital marketing leverages the power and capabilities of the internet and various digital platforms to reach specific target groups in a more focused and efficient manner.

What Are the Advantages of Digital Marketing?

One of the most important advantages of digital marketing is the ability to measure and analyze the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and strategies. Unlike traditional marketing methods, digital platforms provide real-time data on user engagement, conversion rates, and return on investment, allowing businesses to make informed decisions and adjust their approach based on the data received. Another advantage of digital marketing is the potential to automate repetitive marketing tasks, saving businesses time and resources while improving overall efficiency. Marketing automation can include sending automatic emails to a mailing list, posting targeted digital messages, personalizing content in response to customer preferences, behaviors, and characteristics, and more, providing customers with a more tailored and relevant experience.

3 Winning Digital Marketing Channels in the Age of Social Media

In today’s competitive digital world, choosing the right channels to market your brand is crucial for success. Here are three leading digital marketing channels that can help you reach your target audience and achieve your business goals:

– Social Media – Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) offer businesses a direct channel to their target audience. Through branded posts, targeted ads, well-crafted content, and direct interaction with the audience, you can expose your brand to new people, create a community around your business, and drive traffic to your website.

– Google – Google is the starting point for many people searching for products, services, or information online. By optimizing your website for Google through SEO and using paid advertising like Google Ads, you can increase your business’s visibility and attract more potential customers.

– Landing Pages – Landing pages are standalone web pages designed for a specific purpose, such as collecting contact information or encouraging conversions. By creating well-designed and action-focused landing pages, you can turn traffic from various marketing sources into leads and sales.

6 Digital Marketing Methods You Must Know

To maximize the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts, it’s important to be familiar with a variety of methods and strategies. Here are six key digital marketing methods that every business owner, including you, should consider implementing:

– SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – When people search for products or services online, they usually go to the first organic result on the results page. To be at the top of the list, you need to optimize your website for search engines (SEO), and modify the content and structure of the site so that Google considers it a good and reliable source for providing solutions to users.

– Content Marketing – Non-advertising content can also generate interest and attract potential customers. Invest in creating quality content like detailed blogs, well-edited videos, downloadable guides, and more.

– Social Media Marketing – Use various social media platforms to promote your brand, build a community, and engage with followers and potential customers. On social media, you can publish both organic posts and sponsored ads that reach a wider audience.

– PPC (Pay Per Click) – Paid advertising, where you pay every time someone clicks on your ad, can be part of your digital marketing strategy. The most common platforms for PPC are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

– Email Marketing – Sending branded emails to existing and potential customers to promote products, offer discounts, or provide valuable content is a marketing method you shouldn’t skip. It’s an effective way to nurture long-term relationships and loyalty with your customers.

– Influencer Marketing – Create collaborations with social media influencers to promote your brand and reach new audiences. This method can include sponsored product reviews, content sponsorships, mutual advertising, and more.

Conclusion

Digital marketing offers you and your business a vast array of opportunities to reach and connect with your target audience in more creative and targeted ways. By familiarizing yourself with available strategies and channels, and tailoring them to your business’s unique needs, you can build a strong digital presence, attract new customers, and drive growth. Whether you’re focusing on social media marketing, content marketing, or email marketing, investing in digital marketing can significantly benefit your business in the long term.

Now it’s time to check yourself – which methods are you already implementing? What works best for you and what doesn’t? Feel free to share in the comments as always.

Customer satisfaction surveys are essential tools for businesses, companies, and organizations aiming to improve service quality, understand customer needs, and drive business growth. In an era where excellent customer experience is key to success, the ability to assess and analyze customer satisfaction levels has become more critical than ever. Effective surveys provide genuine insights, help identify trends and issues, and drive focused and appropriate improvements. However, conducting a satisfaction survey that yields reliable and useful results requires the right approach and attention to detail.

Wondering how to conduct such an effective survey? This article is just for you.

Where to Begin?

The first step in the process is to clearly define the survey’s objectives—what exactly do you want to learn from the respondents? Are you looking to assess overall satisfaction, identify service failures, or compare yourself to competitors? Clearly defining your goals will help you craft focused and relevant questions. During the planning stage, it’s also important to define your target audience, timing, and the platform for conducting the survey. Additionally, it’s wise to spend time reviewing best practices in customer surveys. Learning from leading companies, businesses, and organizations, as well as recent studies in the field, will help you develop an effective method that produces the desired results. For those working within organizations, collaborating with relevant internal teams, such as marketing and customer service, will ensure the survey addresses all the right issues and meets its overarching objectives. If you are self-employed, consider consulting with colleagues or professionals.

Open-Ended Questions—Very Important

Alongside closed-ended questions with predefined answers, it’s crucial to include some open-ended questions in the survey. These questions allow your customers to express their opinions in their own words and raise points you may not have considered. Responses to open-ended questions can provide deep insights and improvement ideas. While open-ended questions offer rich information, analyzing the responses can be somewhat complex. Unlike closed-ended questions, which are relatively easy to summarize and present the results, open-ended responses require in-depth content analysis and pattern identification. Here are some examples of successful open-ended questions:

– What did you particularly enjoy about your service experience?

– How do you think we can improve our product or service?

– We’d love to hear more about the issue you experienced.

It’s important to phrase the questions in a way that invites detailed responses without steering them in a specific direction. 

How to Phrase Questions About Service Satisfaction?

When drafting questions regarding customer service satisfaction, focus on specific aspects such as response times, the representatives’ attitude and behavior, professionalism, problem-solving ability, and more. You can also ask respondents to rate their satisfaction with various features and services you offer, for example:

– How would you rate the response time of the service representative?

– To what extent did the representative demonstrate knowledge and understanding of your needs?

– How satisfied were you with the features and services we offer in our X plan?

Additionally, satisfaction surveys can be used to collect feedback on ideas and future plans. Questions like “How useful would it be for you if we added feature X?” can provide an indication of how future changes will be received by customers.

Phrasing Questions for Comparing to Competitors

Questions related to comparison with competitors will help you understand your business or organization’s position in the market and the perception of your brand. However, these questions should be phrased delicately and avoid disparaging competitors. For example:

– How would you rate our service compared to other companies in the field?

– What do you think sets us apart from our main competitors?

Such questions can reveal both strengths and areas for improvement. When analyzing the answers, consider the “availability bias”—the tendency to evaluate prominent and memorable things as more frequent. Customers might compare you to a competitor whose advertisement they recently saw, even if that competitor is not your main rival. Therefore, look at the overall picture and avoid drawing conclusions from individual responses.

How to Phrase Questions About Overall Satisfaction?

Questions about overall satisfaction help get an overview of how customers perceive the company and their overall experience with you. They should be phrased in a way that encourages them to provide honest and comprehensive answers. For example:

– Overall, how satisfied were you with our services and products?

– How would you describe your overall experience with us?

– How likely are you to recommend us to friends or colleagues?

You can also ask customers to rate their satisfaction on a numerical scale, which can help you draw the necessary conclusions.

What About a Thank-You Note?

At the end of the survey, it’s important to include a short thank-you note for the participants. Such a note strengthens the relationship with customers and shows that you appreciate their effort and investment in sharing feedback. The thank-you note can also briefly remind them how your organization, company, or business plans to use the survey insights to improve future services. An optimistic and personal closing sentence like “Thank you for being loyal customers and partners on this journey!” will leave a positive impression and definitely do the job. You can also take the opportunity to later publish the survey results (or parts of them) through relevant channels or various platforms like your newsletter.

4 Important Tips for Conducting a Customer Satisfaction Survey

Here are a few more tips to help you enhance the effectiveness of your satisfaction surveys:

– Create an objectively and well-written survey – Avoid leading questions and biases. Use clear and pleasant language and maintain a professional and clear writing style.

– Balance between closed and open questions – A proper mix will allow you to gather quantitative data alongside qualitative insights. Think about the survey structure and the placement of different types of questions.

– Phrase questions simply and clearly – Complicated questions will lead to inaccurate answers. Keep it simple and easy. Avoid overly technical language or complex terms.

– Not too long and not too short – A survey that is too short won’t provide all the information you need, and a survey that is too long may tire respondents and cause them to leave halfway through. Find the right balance and carefully consider which questions are most important. (If you feel you must extend, consider using conditional fields that make the survey appear short but still effective in gathering all relevant information).

Creating Surveys in smoove 

One of the features you can enjoy in our system is creating surveys directly within the interface and managing and distributing them via email and automated processes customized to the responses. With these surveys, you can gather all the relevant information from customers to improve existing offerings and add new ideas to your business. The results will be automatically captured in your smoove account, and you’ll be able to see important information like the number of respondents, their personal details, and of course, the answers to the questions you asked. All this information can also be exported to an organized Excel file. Feel free to watch the beginners guide on creating a survey in the smoove system, try out the feature yourself, and see how easy this task can be.

Here are also some visual examples:

In Conclusion

A customer satisfaction survey is a vital practice for evaluating customer experience and improving service. Carefully planning the questions and phrasing them will help you create an effective survey that maximizes value for both the business and customers. Ultimately, the key is to listen, learn, and apply the survey insights for continuous improvement and, of course, to maintain the things that work well. Good luck!

You’re probably familiar with the term “cart abandonment.” Here’s an interesting fact:

Most successful e-commerce site owners manage to reduce the number of cart abandonments. Studies show that a simple email reminding customers about the items left in their cart can bring back 5 to 9% of those customers.

But…

I discovered something interesting. After a lot of research into why customers abandon their carts, I found that there are a few main reasons:

1. Price: The product we offer can be found on other sites, and price has an impact (for better or worse). If we think a customer only visits our site, we’re living in a dream world. Customers compare prices (think about yourself when booking a vacation package).
2. Timing: The product is right, the price is fine, but not now / I’ll wait until the 10th of the month when I have more funds / I’ll wait for the end-of-season sale / for winter/summer/fall/spring… but not now, even though I want it!
3. Stock/Inventory: The product is similar, but not exactly what I wanted / I have to compromise here / I’ll think again about whether I really want it or should wait for the real thing…
   

*

When I understood this, I decided to do a small experiment. Instead of sending a generic (well-written) email reminding customers that their product is waiting for them to complete their purchase, I created a simple survey asking “Why?” What stopped the customer from completing their purchase?

Based on each response (and surprisingly, 93% responded to the survey), I sent them a targeted email with content relevant to the issue they mentioned in the survey:

* Is the price too high? Here’s a discount code or an additional product at a special price!

* Not the right time to buy? Great, let us know when to remind you in the future!

* Not exactly what you were looking for? No problem! We’ll notify you as soon as new stock arrives.

* Not clear on the product or service benefits? No worries, we’ll be happy to explain!

I tried this trick on five different customers and saw an average increase of 7% (meaning some saw an increase from 9% to 16% in returning customers)

How to Implement This in smoove

1. Create Custom Fields with Survey Questions:
   Start by setting up custom fields with the survey questions.

2. Integrate with a Landing Page or Survey Page:
   Next, integrate these questions into a landing page or survey page.
3.    Set Up Automation:
   When a cart abandonment trigger is detected, instead of sending the same generic email, send the customer a short survey with the questions mentioned above.

   When the customer responds, their answers are recorded in their contact profile, triggering the appropriate email tailored to their response – including a link back to complete their purchase. (Of course, some customers won’t respond to the survey, but those who do will provide you with valuable insights about your product or service, and some will continue the purchase process once they receive an appropriate response.)

Process 1

1. Trigger – Cart abandonment. Set up your online store to update you whenever a customer abandons a cart.
2. Action: Send an email with the above survey.

Process 2

1. Trigger: Contact update. When a customer indicates the reason for not completing the purchase, the relevant personal field is updated, triggering automation.
2. Condition: Contact status. Set conditions based on the various reasons in this field, checking what the customer indicated.
3. Action: Send an email. Create an email for each reason with personalized content. When the customer meets a specific condition, the relevant email is sent to them.

Advanced Option

For more advanced users, create a single email with targeted content, where each section addresses a different reason. This is how it looks when defining the target:

This process will be shorter:

1.Trigger: Contact update. When a contact indicates one of the reasons, their personal field updates accordingly.

2. Action: Send an email. The targeted email is sent to everyone, displaying the relevant content for the reason they marked.

In Summary

This process will allow you to gather important information from your customers and bring them back to complete purchases, thereby increasing your store’s revenue. It’s a win-win, right?

Want more ideas for additional automated processes to implement in your online store? We’ve compiled six more for you in the attached article.

*Written by Yahav Yaler – CX expert and a member of our professional partners community

Meet Eran Pe’er – Tourism and Travel Entrepreneur / Manager of Israel’s Largest Camping and Travel Community.

Eran, a former tech professional, manages Israel’s travel and camping community, which has over 111,000 members, along with several other travel-related groups.

What started as a hobby, writing a travel blog with recommendations for trails and destinations, evolved into a thriving Facebook group and community, thanks to loyal followers.

Eran is deeply committed to his community, investing more than 100% of his effort and spending most of his time in the field promoting various projects (we know this firsthand, as some of us go camping occasionally). Even our conversation with him takes place while he’s driving to Jerusalem for a current project.

Tell us about the beginning

“My main challenge was communicating with the community members and sending updates and tips. As the community grew, attracting members from both the website and the blog, as well as Facebook, the audience became more diverse. The information needed to be tailored to each member, and I was looking for a smart email marketing system to help with that.”

What exactly did you need?

“I needed a system that could handle multiple email registration functions. Once I outgrew the free systems, I realized I needed a more comprehensive solution, especially for the visual aspect of the content, so I chose smoove.”

How do you use the system now?

“smoove is basically my back door, right after the website. If the website is the content, smoove is the way to communicate with the customers. My main use of the system is contact management. I send out a newsletter once a week and occasionally create landing pages, but mostly I manage contacts. I also built a database of campsite managers using the system, with an embedded form and custom fields.”

Do you work with multiple mailing lists, or are they all in one main list?

“I have dozens of mailing lists. Each registration source, each campaign, and every area I work in has its own list. Every product I sell has an interested list, and I track payment processing and more. Everything is organized into lists.”

Recently, he launched a membership club for his community, offering group sales, exclusive benefits, and special discounts on gear and attractions. All group sales are managed through smoove lead forms on his website, which then connect to a payment processing system.

What other uses do you have for managing the club?

“I have a dedicated list for club members and use a custom field I created for the membership number. When I send the welcome email to each member, this field appears along with their other details. It helps with customer identification and tracking.”

Would you say using the system is easy for you?

“Most of the time, I have no issues, and since I come from the tech world, I understand how it works. When there are problems, I rely on support, and at the beginning, I used the guides to learn how to operate the system. It’s pretty straightforward for me.”

“I think most people don’t really know all the capabilities of the system,” he adds. “I mainly focus on list management as I mentioned, but I know there are other features and capabilities I haven’t explored deeply yet.” He refers to automation, which he currently uses primarily for creating email series about purchased products but plans to expand to more uses in the future.

What’s the feature that excites you the most?

“Custom fields. Although I’m at a fairly basic level of use, I already see how it helps me control and analyze data in the most convenient way. I also really like the ability to create mobile-optimized landing pages; it’s very convenient for people working from their phones.”

Finally, do you have any tips for using the system efficiently?

“If you have many products and services, it’s important to create as many contact lists as possible to help you segment customers and processes. If you have sub-services and sub-products, this will help you a lot.”

—

There’s no doubt that when it comes to building relationships with customers (and we certainly are talking about that), Eran provides a great example of how to do it right, and there’s much to learn from his approach.

We were particularly impressed by his ability to manage personal contact fields while simultaneously handling multiple focused lists to provide each person with relevant content, thereby strengthening the community connection. If that’s not the core of relationship-based marketing, then what is?

How about you? Do you use different lists to segment and manage your contacts? Share your experience with us, and maybe we’ll feature you in our blog.

Every e-commerce website, regardless of its niche, relies on three key components for success:

1. Brand/Website Promotion: This is primarily achieved through search engine and social media campaigns, whether organic or paid.
2. Retention Processes: These bring customers back for repeat purchases and address cart abandonment.
3. Increasing the Average Shopping Cart Value: Encourage customers to buy more per visit.

Let’s break it down:

Component 1: This doesn’t need much explanation. If potential customers don’t know your website exists, they won’t visit or make purchases.

Component 2: This involves bringing back customers for repeat purchases or encouraging them to complete their purchases if they abandoned their cart. It’s significantly easier and cheaper to retain an existing customer familiar with your product or service than to acquire a new one.

Component 3: This aims to break the glass ceiling repeatedly. If the average customer buys one product per visit, the goal is to increase this to 1.5 products per visit.

In essence, you attract new customers (Component 1), bring back existing customers (Component 2), and increase their average cart value (Component 3). If your site accomplishes these three goals, it will continue to grow and sell.

So, how do you achieve this with an automation system like Smoove?

The Main Goal: Creating marketing automation processes and relationship marketing aims to replicate the real-world customer experience in the digital space. Initially, digital marketing was about reaching thousands of users efficiently, with exposure as the success metric. The new approach, however, is to give each user a personalized experience, making them feel as though they are receiving the same level of service as if they were in a physical store.

Why is this important? 

Because customer experience (CX) is now the primary factor determining whether a customer buys, returns for repeat purchases, or recommends your store.

To create effective retention processes and increase the average cart value, here are six automation ideas to integrate into your e-commerce site. Note that synchronizing your store with the automation system is crucial to track purchases accurately. This can be done using smoove’s e-commerce tools and, if necessary, external integrators like Zapier or Make.

Six Automation Processes to Integrate into Your E-commerce Site

1. “If You Liked X, You’ll Love Y” Process

If you have a variety of products, you can link related items. For example, if a customer buys pants, send an email suggesting a matching shirt with a direct link. The system will automatically pull product details for easy browsing.

2. “Buy X, Get Y” Process

Encourage customers to buy complementary or additional products. For example, offer a free hat or a discount on a second shirt when they buy one.

3. “Smart Cart Abandonment” Process

Understand why customers abandon their carts. Sometimes it’s not about the price but timing or a lack of understanding of the product’s value. Simply asking for feedback can provide insights, which you can act on to recover the sale.

4. “Recommend to a Friend After Positive Feedback” Process

After a purchase, send a satisfaction survey. If feedback is positive, ask the customer to recommend your store to friends.

5. “Happy Holidays and Birthday Wishes” Process

Many sites collect additional customer information, such as birth dates. Use this data to send personalized emails on holidays or birthdays, possibly with a discount to encourage purchases.

6.”We Want to Know You Better” Process

Collecting more information about your customers can help tailor products, services, and content to their needs. Use post-purchase emails to link to surveys, asking about their family status, location, and other relevant details.

Conclusion

While these six processes are highly recommended, each e-commerce site should choose the ones that best fit its product or service. Implementing all of these processes can significantly improve your results quickly. 

If you need help with automation, reach out to us – we’d be happy to assist.

 

Aviv Business Consulting assists small and medium-sized businesses with credit acquisition and business plan preparation. Additionally, the company provides business and strategic consulting services to various companies, organizations, and entities, including project management and budget control.

Every month, the company handles hundreds of business owners simultaneously.

Now, imagine this scenario: Every new client who submits an application and enters the workflow goes through about 15 different stages. At each stage, the client needs to be updated on the status of their case, reminded to send documents, and informed that everything is being monitored. Meanwhile, new clients are coming in, and it’s necessary to get back to them and ensure they are available. Sometimes messages are left, and if clients don’t call back, further attempts must be made to contact them and provide reminders.

Good communication with clients means keeping them informed at every stage, ensuring they know the status of their case, providing information in a simple and convenient manner, notifying them when they can’t be reached by phone, and allowing them to contact the company if they have questions or need clarification.

At smoove, we love helping our clients communicate effectively with their clients.

The Need

The sales team faced two main challenges:

1. New leads that required consistent contact throughout the engagement period, with updates at every stage of the process.

2. Lost leads that did not answer the initial phone call and were not reachable afterward. These were hundreds of leads coming in every month, and it was very challenging to follow up with all of them, provide status updates on requests, and send document reminders. Inevitably, some leads were missed, resulting in lost business opportunities.

The idea was to ease the burden on the team by automating the reminder process, reducing workload, and connecting clients to the entire process.

The Challenge

The main challenge was creating the initial process of communicating application statuses to clients.

Previously, at each stage, details were updated in the internal CRM system used by Aviv Business Consulting, called Zebracrm. Information was communicated to clients proactively by phone and sometimes in response to their inquiries.

Regular communication with clients (newsletters, general messages) was done through smoove, but there was no integration between the two systems. As a result, the updated details for each client were not automatically synchronized.

Due to the lack of defined integration and the fact that Zapier does not support Zebracrm, there was a need to develop direct integration between the systems.

The Solution

First Process: Consistent Contact with Existing Leads

Aviv invested in developing and programming direct integration between Zebracrm and smoove to allow automatic synchronization of all information and updates entered about clients in the organizational system, and to communicate these updates to clients via smoove.

In practice, after integrating the two systems, it was possible to build automations.

For each product, an automation was created. The primary basis of this automation is an update in the CRM system whenever a new lead enters the process.

From there, every update in the organizational system triggers a response in smoove, which checks the status entered in the CRM and sends an SMS to the client with all relevant information or reminders to send documents, etc.

Some SMS messages also include the option to contact the company for further questions or assistance via a link to a landing page with an embedded contact form.

Second Process: Handling Lost Leads

In this process, when someone cannot be reached, they are added directly to a dedicated mailing list and enter an automated process of receiving emails and SMS reminders. These messages include notifications allowing them to choose a convenient time for a callback, manager alerts to relevant representatives, and reminders on the day the call is scheduled.

This approach minimizes the number of lost leads and keeps them engaged continuously.

Client Feedback

Over the past five months, more than 1,800 clients have gone through the various automated processes at Aviv Business Consulting. This is a significant number.

We spoke with Omer Erlich, the company’s business development manager who initiated and oversaw the process, to see how it’s working for them and what changes they’ve observed since implementing the automations.

According to her, there is a clear increase in responsiveness when it comes to recovering lost leads. More people are leaving their details, responding to SMS messages, and returning calls, which brings back clients who might have been lost previously.

Regarding client communication, there is a sense that clients feel much more connected. Regardless of their status, they always know the relevant details, receive regular updates, and even if the process takes several months, they are always in the loop. This connection saves a lot of proactive phone calls.

What About Your Leads?

Are you able to maintain consistent contact with your leads? Do you follow up with all clients until you reach them? Are you ensuring that leads don’t get lost? If these challenges sound familiar, maybe your business needs to switch to automation.

Contact us; we’d be happy to help.

As business owners, you’re familiar with these types of customers. They might come through a campaign, hear a recommendation, receive your product or service as a gift, or redeem a coupon. Now that they know your product is good, they have the potential to become regular customers. So, how can automation help you (along with a few other tricks)?

Abandoned Customers are the customers who made one purchase but never returned. There are also the more complex cases—those who filled their shopping cart and then left the site. Both types of customers already know the product and have been convinced by a campaign, recommendation, or active search, yet they didn’t complete the purchase. Why does this happen? Research, mainly through surveys like this one by the American company Baymard, shows that the most common reason for cart abandonment (cited by 60% of respondents) is high additional costs such as taxes or shipping fees that significantly increase the final price. Other reasons include sites that only allow purchases through an active account, website glitches, lack of preferred payment methods, and more. Only 4% mentioned “credit card declined,” indicating that most visitors are capable of making a purchase if the conditions are favorable.

The Cart Abandoners Group

Before being business owners, you’re also consumers in a hyper-consumer world. You browse dozens of e-commerce sites daily, searching for your next purchase. You know that customers leaving a site despite having a full cart is not uncommon. But for your business, it’s less than ideal. Research has long tried to understand the reasons behind cart abandonment. We’re here for the solutions.

1. It All Starts with a Pop-Up

It’s possible the abandonment wasn’t personal. Our world is full of distractions, and one might have caught the customer right before they filled in their credit card details. Therefore, we want to ensure every new visitor leaves their email address or mobile number and joins our mailing list. A sign-up pop-up should include a compelling offer, like a discount or free shipping on the first order (and no, a coupon code for the next purchase doesn’t count). This encourages purchase completion and allows us to follow up with the customer, even if they abandon their cart.

2. Now, Reminders

We have one customer, one email, a full cart, and zero purchases. The best approach is a gentle reminder. Send an initial email with a personal link to their abandoned cart, in a friendly tone, without guilt or pressure, highlighting the benefits of the product. Including a content piece, research, or professional information related to the product’s values and benefits can also help.

3. Tough Nuts to Crack

Some customers won’t respond to emails or empty their cart. The next email in our automation series can be dedicated to them. Include a direct link to the abandoned cart and an additional incentive (e.g., free shipping) to persuade even the stubborn ones. Don’t give up on them too quickly; you can also reach out via SMS or WhatsApp. Any message or content prepared for email can easily become a personalized smartphone campaign.

4. Last Tip from Us

Customers often abandon their cart due to frustration with the purchase process. Try to understand why. Is the registration process too long, with no option for guest checkout? Are the shipping costs too high, making the total price unreasonable? Is the website not mobile-friendly, making the browsing experience unpleasant? These questions can help identify the breaking point for customers on their way to a successful purchase.

The One-Time Customers Group

The one-time customers are those who visit the site, fill a cart, complete a purchase, and then disappear. Or do they?

There are various reasons for not returning after a purchase. While we’re here to provide solutions, you need to answer a few questions first:

1. Do you have a consumable product? If so, how often is it needed?
2. Do you have additional products to offer?
3. What’s your primary sales model (product purchases, monthly subscriptions)?
4. Are your customers satisfied?

The Right Email at the Right Time

You know best how long your products last and when customers might need a refill. With this knowledge, you can time an automatic email reminder just when the customer is likely running out. Besides email, a reinforcement SMS or even a WhatsApp message can keep you in their mind. For instance, one of our clients who owns a pet store sends WhatsApp reminders to customers based on their last purchase, prompting them to buy more pet food or replace a flea collar, keeping them in the customers’ minds.

We Have an Offer

It’s likely that a customer who bought from you once would be interested in more products. In our automation for occasional customers, we include an email suggesting additional products. The more accurate the suggestion, the more likely additional purchases will follow. For a customer who bought gluten-free products, offer more gluten-free items; for one who bought a towel set, suggest bed linens. You get the idea.

Hey, Become a Subscriber

If your business offers consumable products or services that fit a recurring model, offer monthly, annual, or whatever-frequency subscriptions. This secures regular income and a base of regular customers, reducing time-consuming tasks and letting you focus on what truly matters.

How Was It?

Hearing from first-time customers about their experience is always exciting. It confirms we’re on the right track and encourages continued excellent service and products. This quality control can be done in several ways, such as sending a survey, an automatic email/SMS/WhatsApp to customers after a reasonable time post-purchase. Opening a direct communication channel helps build and maintain a relationship, ensuring customer satisfaction.

How Do You Actually Do All This?

Here’s an example of a basic automation process that will help you welcome customers who have purchased from you once, allowing them to get to know you better and connect through value propositions and additional tips:

Define a Trigger – Joining a List
All customers will be added here after their first purchase.

Add an Action – Send Email
Send a brief introductory email with details about yourself and your business, and thank them for their purchase.

Add an Action – Delay
Set a waiting period before sending the next email in the series.

Add an Action – Send Email
After the defined waiting period, send an email to remind them that you’re here. Include an interesting tip or a customer story they can relate to or be inspired by.

Add an Action – Delay
Set another waiting period before sending the next email in the series.

Add an Action – Send Email
Send the next email in the series. This one should continue to build the relationship by providing value with an interesting article or important tip. You can also include a purchase offer or special deal for new customers.

*You can, of course, continue the series with additional emails, depending on your goal and the customer journey you’ve defined.*

The main idea of this process is to reinforce customers’ choice in you and provide real, personalized value based on the information you have. This way, they’ll know that you understand them and their needs, thereby strengthening their loyalty to your brand and to you.

By deepening your relationship with customers, you can incorporate relevant offers and incentives within the email series to maximize revenue from your existing and loyal customers.

And What About the Emails?

You can easily create these emails using our designed templates. Our system offers dozens of templates categorized by professional fields and special occasions. 

In Summary

By refining your approach to abandoned customers and correctly categorizing them to provide relevant responses that prompt action, you increase the chances of converting abandoners into buyers.

A short and simple customer journey that will simply bring in more money. Don’t miss out on it.

This is the story of Jane, who decided to open a website selling baby gifts. For months, she sourced the softest toys and the prettiest blankets. She invested heavily in cross-network campaigns to acquire new leads, but conversion rates stagnated, leaving her frustrated.

With the help of a savvy business consultant, Jane made a strategic shift. Instead of focusing primarily on new lead campaigns, she turned to campaigns and automated processes for existing customers, and saw her conversion rates climb.

Jane is not alone in this mistake. Many business owners fall into the “lead growth” trap as a marketing strategy in e-commerce. However, the data tells a different story.

A Few Words on Retention

Did you know that returning customers generate about 40% of online store revenue? Research has found* that the average cart value of a returning customer is 33% higher than that of a new customer, and existing customers tend to increase their cart value each time they return to the site. Another study** showed that increasing the number of returning customers by just 5% can lead to a profit increase of 25%-95%. Additionally, converting a new customer requires more time and resources, costing 6-10 times more than converting a returning customer.

Therefore, as website owners, you have every reason to remind your customers to visit your site again.

Retention marketing fosters loyalty among long-time customers. This leads to the magic cycle we love—loyal customers recommend you to their friends, offering trustworthy word-of-mouth marketing. Additionally, your customers are likely to recommend your brand to people similar to them, providing targeted and accurate marketing.

Now that we understand the importance of retaining customers, especially in e-commerce, join us to explore five excellent methods for effective customer retention.

Email Marketing

Communicating with both new and existing customers via email is a great strategy. With easy-to-implement automation, you can reach every new customer within seconds with a thank-you email post-purchase. You can also update existing customers about promotions and deals on products they love. Email marketing allows you to personally reach out to many people who already know you, deepening their connection with you. Customer retention strengthens relationships between customers and brands (and the people behind the brand).

Our system offers basic templates for creating various automated processes, even in commerce. For example, a process for encouraging repeat purchases allows you to automatically reach out to customers after a defined period, offering relevant purchase suggestions.

This process starts with a purchase trigger, adding every customer who buys a product to the workflow. The workflow then sends a thank-you email detailing the purchased products. After a defined period, it checks the purchased products and category, sending another email with a relevant offer and purchase link.

Smart Use of Customer Data

Any respectable e-commerce site offers customers products based on past purchases and interests. Segmenting can be done on the site itself and through targeted emails and SMS. You can easily see each customer’s cart and purchase history. Use this data wisely.

Helpful Features:

– Personal Fields: Collect relevant customer info to personalize interactions, show specific content, and segment customers for different automation scenarios.

– Smart Links: Every link in emails or landing pages can trigger actions like data updates or customer classification.

– Store Sync + Product Block: Sync your online store with the system to display products and categories directly, increasing sales.

Customer Appreciation

Customers appreciate being seen as more than just wallets. Instead of constant discounts, find a balance with value-added offers like future purchase coupons, exclusive weekend sales, small gifts with purchases, or free shipping over a certain amount. Show that real people are behind the website.

Visit the template gallery in the system to send your customers an exclusive, irresistible offer!

Social Media Presence

Maintaining a strong social media presence is crucial. Build relationships with followers and target segmented audiences with tailored offers. At least one significant social media account that fits your business is essential, whether it’s a Facebook group, Instagram page, or TikTok account.

Memorable Branding

As an online store, you can’t design an extravagant storefront or open the biggest shop on the street. Instead, focus on memorable branding and a consistent visual language that reflects your brand message. This should also be evident in your email communications.

Key Takeaways

Customer retention is a critical step in any e-commerce marketing strategy. Returning customers account for around 80% of orders and often increase their cart size with each purchase. Retention involves maintaining and developing relationships with customers who are already familiar with your brand. Personal outreach via email or SMS and tailored content based on past purchases can help maintain an active site with high conversion rates without excessive spending on new customer acquisition campaigns.

 

*Research by Adobe Digital Insights
**Research by Bain & Company

 

What we love about automation is that it can be applied to various business areas and streamline processes for a wide range of needs.

Take, for example, Milk & Honey, the first whiskey distillery in Israel. They used our system to create a complex automated process that included event registration management, purchase approvals, and personalized product shipping based on each individual’s purchase, if any.

Their story began a few years ago when they decided to establish the distillery and launched a crowdfunding project to support it. The backers paid to make the dream a reality, knowing it would take several years before they saw the actual bottles. Recently, the long-awaited moment arrived when the backers received their rewards at the distillery’s launch event.

The Need

Milk & Honey needed to manage event registration and track attendance, including sending reminders. They also had to handle reward deliveries for their crowdfunding supporters, each with unique order and delivery preferences, all automatically.

The Challenge

Not all supporters pre-purchased bottles, and those who did had varying quantities, requiring personalized emails (segmentation). Supporters could choose delivery methods: home delivery, event pickup, or self-collection, needing precise coordination. Managing event registration and attendance confirmations was also crucial.

The Solution

The automation process included:

– Initial Email: An invitation to the launch event and purchase details.

– Customer Confirmation: Buttons for event attendance and delivery method choices.

– Personalized Follow-Ups: Based on selections, processes were triggered:

•   Attendees received event reminders.
•   Self-collection customers chose pickup times via a landing page.
•   Delivery customers filled out a detailed form.

Automation included confirmation emails, tracking responses, reminders for non-respondents, and event reminders.

Automation Benefits

– Efficiency: Saved hours of manual work.

– Accuracy: Reduced errors.

– Improved Focus: Allowed the team to concentrate on production and event preparations.

Conclusion

Automation streamlines processes, saving time and effort, and lets you focus on crucial tasks. For upcoming events or product deliveries, let our system work for you.

Imagine a business with numerous potential customers, each interested in different services. Customers sign up on the website, and each one needs a follow-up. Every sales call must be tailored to the specific service they’re interested in. This means making a lot of sales calls, each starting from scratch—understanding what interests the customer, providing information about the service or product, emphasizing its benefits, and so on. Some don’t answer the phone, some are interested but not ready to buy, and some are suddenly irrelevant. You need to track the status of each lead—imagine the complex Excel sheet! Is it even possible to manage this efficiently with so many variables? The answer is yes.

To understand how to do this right, we met for coffee with Shlomi Ben Lulu, the Digital Manager at Reidman College, and heard about an interesting automation process they recently created to maintain contact with incoming leads and build relationships with prospective students.

Before diving into Shlomi’s insights, for those unfamiliar, Reidman College is Israel’s leading college for complementary medicine. It’s a large institution with five campuses across the country, offering training in a wide range of fields.

What led you to turn to smoove?

“First of all, the need to maintain continuous contact with incoming leads. Sometimes it takes a long time to decide to enroll in studies; it can even take a year from the moment someone shows interest until they decide to start studying. We needed a solution that would allow us to build a relationship with these prospects and maintain continuous contact. smoove has the capabilities to meet this need.”

What solution did the system provide?

“We created a process where, beyond addressing incoming leads, we also generate personalized content for each prospect. Initially, they receive an email with a video clip of graduates from the program they showed interest in, talking about their studies at the college, job opportunities, and more. We can then see who opened the email, who watched the clips, and based on that, send additional emails with content like articles about the program they were interested in, highlights on why to choose Reidman, and so on.”

Shlomi’s process distinguishes between irrelevant leads, incorrect numbers, unanswered numbers, and provides a comprehensive solution for handling incoming leads.

As someone who created the process on our system by yourself, would you say it’s user-friendly?

“I did all the automation design myself, literally sat down and wrote out the entire process and scenarios on paper to organize my thoughts, then transferred it to the system itself. Working on the system is very simple, drag & drop. The key is understanding the differences between the features and continually improving. I’m always checking and refining my process, and I plan to continue enhancing it.”

Did you get any support?

“In terms of the actual work, I did everything myself. I got advice and feedback from Dudi at Getyou company on what I wanted to do in advance, and I used Zapier to connect smoove with our CRM system.”

Today, Shlomi has control and monitoring of all incoming leads directly through his customer management system. He can see every lead they tried to reach and the process they went through.

How long did it take you to set up this process?

“Two weeks, more or less, from the moment I started until it started working. Of course, I’m not only doing this, but I dedicated at least two full working days to it.”

Tips for DIY enthusiasts?

“It’s crucial to consider all possible scenarios. Things don’t always go exactly as planned, and it’s important not to lose anything along the way and provide a solution for every possible scenario.”

Results of working with the system

“Previously, leads that reached the telemarketing representatives were ‘cold’ leads, interested parties who hadn’t received any attention, didn’t know details about the college, and the conversations with them were completely different from what happens today.

Today, leads come in much more prepared, people already have knowledge about the programs, which makes the conversations much easier and saves a lot of time and effort. It also allows us to give attention to everyone and retain them. For example, those we used to miss if they didn’t answer the phone now get continued attention via email.”

In summary, are you satisfied with working with the system?

“Absolutely. The whole concept of working on marketing automation is correct and recommended, and smoove delivers the solution very well.”

Conclusion

If you’re also facing challenges in managing your relationship with leads and potential customers, we invite you to check out our feature page on the website. With our tools, you can start building the automation that suits you right now.

Meet Shimrit Binyamin – owner of “Home for Digital Visual Presence”. 

Why did you start working with smoove, what was the initial challenge or need?

I started working with smoove to maintain contact with my clients and share up-to-date content of websites built in the studio and other content.
Additionally, I wanted to send information, updates, and tips to clients for smartphone photography and visual marketing.
Later on, I needed a place to store my digital photography course, and when smoove introduced the option to host digital courses, I happily jumped on it.

How does smoove help you solve this challenge?

In two main areas:

Customer relations

To maintain contact with clients, I regularly send emails – once a week with different content, sharing tips and examples of new websites we’ve built in the studio. Every Saturday, I share photos taken by participants in my courses, and once a month, I send a newsletter with interviews, tips, and more.
Over time, my distribution list has grown, and there are more responses to the emails I send.

Digital photography online course

Today – my digital photography course is at smoove. Clients easily log in with a password to the portal and watch the course lessons.
I have the option to create beautiful pages in the system for the various course lessons, and the best part is that everything works automatically!

I create automation where there is perfect synchronization with the payment company, the client is billed and pays, and then the relevant lessons they purchased are immediately and automatically opened for them, and they receive an email with a password for login.

The interface is very convenient for both me and my clients.

What is your main activity in the system?

Sending emails and maintaining contact with clients, and a portal with courses for learning photography.

Is it easy to work with the system?

Easy and fun. And when something gets complicated – the smoove service team is unparalleled in the world!!! Patience, kindness, and availability. I’m in love with smoove, I enjoy working with this system so much, and I recommend it to all my clients.

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And here are some cool examples of Shimrit’s use of the system:
Newsletter sample

Courses Portal 

Automation for the course members