Every e-commerce website, regardless of its niche, relies on three key components for success:
- Brand/Website Promotion: This is primarily achieved through search engine and social media campaigns, whether organic or paid.
- Retention Processes: These bring customers back for repeat purchases and address cart abandonment.
- 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.
