Download Nurturing your ecommerce customers with Marketing Automation

Nurturing your ecommerce customers
with Marketing Automation
WRITTEN BY STEVEN SHAW, DIGITAL DIRECTOR
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STEVE
SHAW, DIGITAL
DIRECTOR AT
BRANDED3 WITH MARKETING AUTOMATION
NURTURING
YOUR ECOMMERCE
CUSTOMERS
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Contents
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Synopsis
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What is Marketing Automation?
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Where do we start?
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The right message at the right time
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A simple example: Abandoned Basket
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Getting more complicated
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Nurturing post-sale
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What does Marketing Automation look like?
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How do I make the most of the process?
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Top 5 most effective Automation plans
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Summary
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Synopsis
A look at what marketing automation is and how it can be used to help
drive increased revenue, return custom and help build lifetime customer
value. From using the simple “Abandoned Basket” process to planning
full CRM reactivation strategies, how these marketing plans fit in your
2015 digital strategy.
What is Marketing
Automation?
The term Marketing Automation relates to developing
or implementing a process that will automatically
display, create or send marketing messages based
on specific criteria. More importantly, this process
takes place in order to help drive leads and maintain a
consistent brand experience.
Marketing Automation is certainly not a new term and
is something that has been around almost as long
as ecommerce. The name usually inspires thoughts
around automation similar to those that appeared in
industrialisation or the automotive space, the idea
being that you can create a way to automate something
you do on a regular basis making it more efficient and
saving time. This is true to some extent, however I
don’t believe that’s why you will see this phrase a lot
in the coming year alongside trusted topics that I’ve
covered such as Personalisation.
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For me, the advancement in technology from software vendors such as Sitecore
and Kentico, web platforms like MailChimp as well as lots of other SaaS systems;
means that Marketing Automation has the potential to make something very
exciting in 2015.
In particular to how you should be thinking of
Marketing Automation, I saw this phrase on Wikipedia
which I liked “Due to its interactive nature this has been
described as Marketing Automation 2.0.”
The right message at
the right time
Most Marketing Automation is focused on moving
customers down a sales funnel but there are benefits
for businesses to consider implementing plans
throughout their strategy to ensure they build trust
and engage with their customers in all their brand
experiences.
The fact that the process is a marketing one, means
that it works best when relevant and that’s what the
beauty of Marketing Automation is; it allows you to put
criteria together, you create the rules and the signals
that shows when your customer or opportunity is
ready for this message and you use the right one.
Where do we start?
In the early stages of the customer journey you will
probably focus your messaging on being more helpful
than sales-led, however in terms of the abandoned
basket you have seen some real intent, so reacting to
that in-kind can produce results and drive sales.
As with most marketing activity, the first place to start
is your customers.
If you plot your current customer journey along the
traditional stages such as Acquisition, Conversion and
Retention, you can begin to visualise where you can
have the most impact and more importantly, where
you will drive the most value and ROI in terms of the
planned activity.
When you understand the journey your customers
go on with your brand, you can set the context of the
messages you are looking to deliver.
The next step in the process is to identify what data
you may have about a customer at the particular
stages that you want to use to build relevance and
trust, this is where a single customer view is extremely
useful.
The final step is to consider what is the action you are
trying to encourage? What do you want to promote
your customer to do? This usually involves either
making a purchase, giving some data or perhaps simply
taking another step along your target journey.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
CUSTOMER DATA
REQUIRED ACTIONS
MESSAGE CONTENT
It’s not just email
marketing
One of the most common misconceptions about
modern Marketing Automation is that it’s
all about email marketing. Email is still a very relevant
channel and when done right, works really well (I would
love to see the Amazon numbers for the good 30% of
my received emails, however the other 70% probably
don’t look great).
The key thing however, is that there are still other
channels such as SMS/push-messages, that when used
in the right place, can be extremely effective. The rise
in iBeacons in-store are an example of this, the trigger
event is “Customer X entering into store Y” and you
can send them deal of the day. An exciting, but more
complex Automation, is that if you are luckily enough
to have a single customer view linked to your in-store
activity is to send a message as you detect they are
LEAVING the store if they HAVEN’T ordered with an
offer. (No point pushing an offer if they already have
the intent to buy!)
Social media integrations are becoming stronger where
single sign-on methods mean you have access to your
customer’s data as well as a direct channel to their
social space so a private message, tweet or post can
be orchestrated.
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States, Conditions, Triggers & Actions
Putting together what we’ve just covered; a simple way to start to
visualise Marketing Automation (which incidentally matches with
a lot of vendors) is to use four core elements to your plan.
State
Trigger
Conditions
Action
State
Prospect
Form
Submission
Did they
request a
brochure?
Send
email
Lead
STATE: Prospect
CONDITION: Have they requested more information?
TRIGGER: Submitting an enquiry form
ACTION: Follow up email
STATE: Lead
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Example:
Follow up email
Example:
Abandoned Baskets
One of the quickest and most implemented example
of Marketing Automation is the follow-up email.
Acknowledging your customer when they have
submitted a form or carried out a transaction is
essential in maintaining trust.
According to SaleCycle, one of the biggest
opportunities in ecommerce in 2015 is the
abandoned basket, in 2014 online sales were
forecast at $1.4 trillion dollars, abandoned basket
value was as $3 trillion dollars.
In terms of ecommerce and customer service, using
these auto-responders can have very positive effects
when combined with the customer data you have. It’s
also worth pointing out that the data can simply be
based on the form options that were used.
Now it’s naïve to think that all of
those sales and products being added
to baskets were sales waiting to
happen, personally I’ve added items
to my cart just as a way to keep a track
of things I might be interested in or
want to revisit.
For example if we have a “Reason
for contact” drop-down with three
options:
1. I have a question
2. I have a complaint
3. I need to return a product
Then confirming the submission with an email along
with expected next steps, for example if the selection
was “I have a question” a response might be within 24
hours, however a complaint might warrant a response
within four hours, setting this expectation can help
reduce repeat contacts and frustration with customers.
However, there is still some very positive signals
that using Marketing Automation to retarget your
customers when they have shown this small element
of intent can result in conversions to sale.
• Open rates from marketing emails average
around 54%
• Click through rates from these emails is 19%
• Conversions from click to purchase is 30%
• Abandoners spend 55% more when remarketed
• Most cart abandonment happens between 8-9pm
• Most people abandon cart on Thursday
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“You can advance
your marketing
messages when
you have solid
data around
your customer
buying cycles
and purchase
trends.”
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Getting more
sophisticated
Adding more sophistication to your Marketing
Automation plan starts with getting a deeper
understanding of your customer data and seeing how
existing processes are working and what is effective in
delivering results.
For example, in the last section we
discussed abandoned cart times and
most frequent day of the week for this
activity, this is a general statistic and
is something that you should look into
for your customers.
Within your abandoned basket there is certainly more
depth that you can approach in terms of the rules that
determine which marketing message your customer
receives. One of the areas that may affect this is the
value of the customer to your business, this may be
in their total lifetime sales or the frequency of their
purchases.
It’s common place to offer incentives in the abandoned
basket email to drive that last bit of excitement and
trigger the click to purchase, however this kind of
strategy can also back fire if it’s a blanket strategy. If
your customers start to become savvy to your strategy
then this can often lead to purposely abandoned carts
to get the discount. Varying your plans with branches
can help to continue to guide the customers but also
give you a view on your total customer base, planning
multiple states and setting bands for messaging can
tailor that experience.
One of the pitfalls to watch out for in Marketing
Automation is to be careful of the massing and how
it can drive your customers behaviour into a negative
one, constantly incentivising and delivering sales led
messaging can often spiral into slumps in transactions
that require more sales-focussed plans.
Some brands such as Amazon are no doubt starting to
include machine learning to help with their Marketing
Automation plans to review customer data, sales
patterns and trends in order to drive their activity
however these can be costly and are yet to be proven.
You can advance your marketing messages when you
have solid data around your customer buying cycles
and purchase trends, this can be easier when your
goods are consumables or subscription-based and
have an expected purchase cycle, we have seen very
positive results with one of our makeup clients who
send upsell marketing messages at set intervals from
the last purchase date based on expected use.
Nurturing post-sale
Ecommerce is very much driving the Marketing
Automation market, as it provides a consistent topic
and the realm of familiarity within the purchasing
experience means we are more inclined to respond
positively when it will support getting better service.
This is certainly true in the post-purchase space where
the euphoria of buying a product is still front of mind.
More and more companies are realising
the benefits of unique content and
customer feedback that helps improve
everythingthey do.
Service reviews
Amazon has an email follow-up for rating its
packaging for goods that have been shipped, this is
also a good way to allow the customer to give any
supporting feedback on the courier
Product reviews
Everyone should by now, know the value of unique
content on your website, reviews are the most
effective way of gathering this in ecommerce, and if
the product is good it can have secondary benefits
to help other customers make the commitment and
convert
Customer service
Focusing all of your activity on sales-driven
messaging can damage your brand if you’re not
supporting it with ongoing relationship building
and customer service
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Feedback
Allowing your customers to feedback, engage and
recommend post-purchase helps build that trust
with your brand, this can also be a very useful
exercise to validate your marketing strategy
Planning a reactivation
strategy
Marketing automation can be a great way to engage
with your customers who haven’t been in touch for a
long time. This doesn’t necessarily mean trying to get
them to purchase straight away but acknowledging you
know they haven’t logged into their account for a while,
for example.
Social media platforms are becoming
increasingly effective at proving this
on-going, nurturing messaging with
effective “round up emails”.
LinkedIn sends me a weekly and monthly round-up of
information, giving me a hint at some of the people
that have viewed my profile, some of the related
companies or topics that are being discussed and they
lead with a CTA to return to the site and engage.
Twitter sends information about new followers,
popular conversations within the groups and people
that are being followed all trying to get me back into
the platform tweeting again.
Reactivation strategies should be part of any CRM
plan. Bearing in mind that you have already engaged
with the customer in the past, they have probably
purchased from you, this all means that you have data
and history to work with
More importantly with reactivation, you have to
consider your messaging for the different types of
lapsed customer, there is a difference between those
who have made a large ticket value purchase that don’t
need to buy again to those who were just browsing.
How do I make the
most of the Marketing
Automation?
In order to ensure your Marketing Automation efforts
are not done in vain, start small and grow them to
become more complex as you begin to realise results.
Be selective about when and
where you want to market to
your customers
Don’t try to implement everything at once and
focus on the main marketing messages of your
brand
Consider what data you have
and what you may need to be
more effective
Asking additional questions of your customers
can be seen as a blocker to purchase but done in
the right way and with an explanation of why it’s
required, can help your messaging
Consider your monitoring
and reporting
How often you review your plans and how you
report on the effectiveness of these is essential
to delivering results
Ensure you have a feedback
loop in your data to ensure
it’s accurate
The main factor in ensuring your Marketing
Automation is successful is the quality of data that
you are working from. By ensuring your data is as
up-to-date and accurate as possible, this will mean
that your messaging remains focused and relevant
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Include check points in your
plans to ensure you aren’t
becoming a nuisance
We’ve all been the recipient of numerous emails
asking for feedback or asking us to come back,
having a clear way to opt-out of comms or to
update their preferences is just good practise
Always be testing
One point I’ve made in the past with using
Personalisation is “Always be testing”. Some of the
examples we’ve covered may work for some but not
necessarily for all, therefore test as often as you
can and evolve your strategy
Summary
As with most new activities in the digital marketing space, getting started can often seem like the hardest
part. The lure of creating new and intricate plans, learning new technology and ways of working and marketing
messages for every customer quickly becomes something of a scary place and a reason not to start.
However, we have seen that by considering your various audience groups in your marketing plan that you can do
some very clever and relevant messaging. But most of all, I hope I’ve demonstrated that Marketing Automation is
not an exercise or process that you carry out once and leave alone, it’s something that you evolve alongside your
main marketing activity.
If you focus on the transactional elements of your ecommerce experience such as abandoned baskets, upsell
and product recommendations, then you can definitely increase your revenue. But if you build upon more digital
touch points, then you gain brand value and trust with your customers.
Thank you
www.branded3.com
0113 260 4010
[email protected]