Like most brands, your team has probably hit the ground running in 2024.
As marketing professionals, we know you’re looking for ways to keep your company ahead of the game and on top of industry trends. And if you’re an eCommerce brand, you know especially how essential it is to keep your business top of mind, attract new customers, and keep your existing ones coming back for more.
The competition is fierce but have no fear! The right marketing automation strategies can keep you ahead of your competition and make sure that your brand not only survives but THRIVES in 2024.
To help you out, today’s blog is bringing you our best and brightest eCommerce marketing automation strategies to help you make this year your most successful one yet!
Let’s get started!
What is eCommerce Marketing Automation?
eCommerce marketing automation refers to the use of automated processes and tech designed to streamline your workload and speed up marketing tasks within an ecommerce business.
The goal of these processes is to automate tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks to free up your marketing team for other activities that need their attention.
The right strategies can not only free up time in your day but help you engage your customers at the right time and deliver personalized experiences to improve their customer experience and the efficiency of your marketing campaigns!
The Best eCommerce Marketing Automation Strategies for You to Try
If you’re looking to streamline your workday and stop missing out on opportunities to engage your clients at the perfect moment, then here are some strategies to try!
Take a look and see which would best suit you, your brand, and your audience best!
1. Triggered Emails
Triggered emails are essential to any good email marketing campaign!
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a triggered email is an email that is programmed to automatically go out as soon as a potential customer makes a certain action.
They are extremely useful because they allow your brand to deliver timely and relevant content to your audience at critical points in their customer journey to keep them moving smoothly along your marketing funnel!
Here is a list of actions that can trigger useful automated emails to your customers!:
- Abandoned Cart Emails — Sent when a visitor adds items to their shopping cart but leaves the website without completing the purchase.
- Email Welcome Series — A series of emails sent to new subscribers, introducing them to your brand, products, or services.
- Price Drop Notifications — Sent when the price of a product that a user has shown interest in decreases.
- Inventory Alerts — Notifying customers when a product they are interested in is back in stock.
- Special Occasion Messages — Everyone likes to feel special! Birthday or anniversary emails offer personalized discounts or greetings to your customers!
- Order/Shipping Confirmation — Sent to confirm a purchase and provide details about shipping and delivery.
- Recommendation Emails — Triggered by browsing history, a recommendation email provides personalized product recommendations based on previous purchases or browsing history.
- Reengagement Campaigns — Sent to users who have been inactive for a certain period, encouraging them to re-engage with the brand.
- Promotional Emails — Triggered by specific events or promotions, such as holiday sales or seasonal discounts.
2. Eye-Catching Visuals
No matter what type of automated content your brand is using (social media ads, digital ads, emails, website content, etc.) eye-catching visuals are crucial for grabbing your target audience’s attention and compelling them to see what you have to offer.
Consider the following visuals as you create your ads, social media posts, and other content for your website or landing pages.
- High-Quality Product Images — Quality product images showcase your products in the best possible light, helping potential customers visualize the products they're considering.
- Compelling Graphics and Banners — Graphics and banners can convey promotions, discounts, or key messages in a visually appealing way.
- Engaging Videos — Videos provide an immersive experience and are particularly effective for demonstrating product features, uses, or benefits.
- Interactive Content — Interactive content, such as quizzes, polls, or shoppable elements, engages users and encourages them to actively participate.
- Digital Ads — Engaging and eye-catching digital ads are a targeted way to reach your audience as they research solutions or scroll through social media. Consult with your user personas to see what kind of colors and imagery would best suit their preferences.
3. Optimized Landing Pages
An optimized landing page is crucial for any automated marketing campaign.
Your landing page acts as your digital storefront and is often the first touchpoint where potential customers engage with your brand.
Take advantage of that with automated landing pages that are optimized to resonate with your visitors.
There are several CRM systems that allow marketers to automate the landing page a user sees when clicking on an ad that will adjust the visibility, language, and call-to-action button to match your user’s screen size, preferences, and referral source for a seamless and more personalized experience.
By using these automation tools (more on that later), you can make sure that each user engages with a landing page that is both aligned with their preferences and designed to enhance their engagement (and your conversion rates!).
4. Personalization and Segmentation
If you’ve created detailed user personas, you should have a better understanding of your target audience’s pain points and preferred messaging style. This will help you create more personal content that better resonates with them and is more likely to generate leads and encourage conversions.
You should also segment your email lists based on user behavior so that you can automate your email campaign to deliver targeted content at the right time and in the way that best fits where they are in their customer journey.
Here are some common ways to split up your email lists to ensure personalized content that reaches your audience on a more meaningful level than a traditional “marketing blast” email:
- Demographics — Things like age, gender, location, and income.
- Behavior — Behaviors such as purchase history, website activity (pages visited, time spent), email engagement (open rates, click-through rates), and abandoned carts.
- Preferences and Interests — Categories of interest, preferred brands or styles, types of content engaged with (blogs, videos, etc.).
- Customer Lifecycle — What part of the customer lifecycle your recipient is currently in, like new subscriber, first-time customer, repeat buyer, or inactive user.
- RFM Segmentation — Recent customers, high-frequency buyers, and high-value customers.
- Engagement Level — Highly engaged, moderately engaged, low-engagement, or inactive.
- Subscription Type — Newsletter subscribers, email list subscribers, product update subscribers, promotion offer subscribers, etc.
- Shopping Behavior — Discount seekers, premium product chasers, or season shoppers.
- Device Used — Desktop users vs. tablet or smartphone users.
- Location — Local customers, regional promotions, or international.
- VIP or Loyalty Program Members — Exclusive offers for loyalty program members and tiered rewards based on customer loyalty.
- Referral Sources — What marketing channel your lead initially came from, such as landing page lead, social media visitor, Google visitor, etc.
5. Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is used to rank leads or prospects based on their perceived value to your eCommerce business. It works by analyzing different user behaviors and then automatically assigning a score to each user, even evolving in real-time as user behaviors shift.
By integrating automated lead scoring systems into your existing CRM system, you can help your marketing team know which high potential leads they need to direct their energy and time to and, in doing so, make your team much more efficient overall!
6. Cross-selling and Up-selling
Cross-selling and up-selling may fit into the theme of triggered emails that we explored earlier in this piece, but it’s worth mentioning more in-depth due to its added benefits for your eCommerce store.
By automating emails that suggest things like related products, upgrade options, and an offer to bundle complementary items and accessories, you can both enhance your customers' engagement and satisfaction levels, as well as increase your revenue!
7. Chatbots
Customer service is a demanding job and AI chatbots are fast becoming a popular way to free up your teams’ time and improve customer relationships!
By integrating chatbots into your website, you can offer your clients immediate 24/7 customer support, instant responses to any questions they have, and seamlessly guide them through the buying process on their time.
Chatbots are capable of doing some digital marketing lifting for you too by clarifying product details and recommending products that align with each user’s unique profile.
8. Remarketing Ads
An important part of any marketing strategy, remarketing ads are a great way to reach those customers who have interacted with your brand but, for some reason or another, are still on the fence about converting.
By using customer data of past interactions, like website visits, product views, or abandoned carts, remarketing ads can be automated to target a hesitant potential customer and keep your brand top-of-mind for them as they scroll through the internet or social media.
Benefits of Marketing Automation for eCommerce Brands
Marketing automation offers plenty of benefits for eCommerce businesses just like yours!
Here are just a few reasons you should be automating your content!
- Time Savings — Automation eliminates manual, time-consuming tasks, allowing your team to focus on more strategic activities.
- Personalized Customer Experiences — Automation enables you to deliver targeted and personalized content, recommendations, and promotions based on customer behavior and preferences.
- Increased Sales — With automated workflows and personalized communication, you can nurture leads, encourage repeat purchases, and ultimately drive more sales.
- Efficient Campaign Management — Plan, execute, and monitor marketing campaigns seamlessly with automation tools, ensuring a more organized and effective approach.
- Improved Customer Retention — Automated loyalty programs, personalized offers, and timely engagement contribute to higher customer satisfaction and increased loyalty.
- Data-Driven Decision-Making — Access to detailed analytics allows you to track and analyze customer interactions, helping you make informed decisions for continuous improvement.
- Cross-Channel Consistency — Maintain a cohesive brand image across various channels, ensuring a consistent and seamless experience for customers.
- Reduced Cart Abandonment — Implement automated cart abandonment emails and reminders to recover potentially lost sales and encourage conversions.
- Scalability — As your eCommerce business grows, marketing automation tools can scale alongside, accommodating increased demands without a proportional rise in manual effort.
- Cost Efficiency — While there may be initial setup costs, the long-term efficiency gains often result in cost savings compared to traditional manual marketing approaches.
Our Favorite Marketing Automation Tools
There are several excellent marketing automation tools available, each offering unique features to cater to different business needs. Here are some of our favorites:
- HubSpot — Known for its comprehensive inbound marketing solutions, HubSpot offers a robust marketing automation platform with features like lead nurturing, email marketing, and analytics.
- Mailchimp — Initially a popular email marketing tool, Mailchimp has expanded to include automation features. It's user-friendly and suitable for businesses of various sizes.
- ActiveCampaign — Combining email marketing, automation, sales automation, and CRM, ActiveCampaign is a versatile tool designed to help businesses automate their marketing and sales processes.
- Marketo — Geared toward enterprise-level businesses, Marketo provides a sophisticated marketing automation platform with a focus on lead management and analytics.
- Pardot by Salesforce — Ideal for B2B businesses, Pardot is a Salesforce product that offers marketing automation features, including lead scoring, nurturing, and analytics.
- Drip — Tailored for eCommerce businesses, Drip provides powerful automation for email marketing, customer segmentation, and personalized campaigns.
- Autopilot — Known for its visual and easy-to-use automation builder, Autopilot offers multi-channel marketing automation, including email, SMS, and direct mail.
- GetResponse — Beyond email marketing, GetResponse includes automation features, webinar hosting, and landing pages, making it a comprehensive marketing solution.
- SharpSpring — A full-featured marketing automation platform, SharpSpring offers tools for lead nurturing, analytics, and CRM integration.
- Zoho MarketingHub — Part of the Zoho suite, MarketingHub provides automation tools for email marketing, social media, and more, with a focus on ease of use.
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Looking for an Automatic Boost in Your Marketing Efforts?
If you’re ready and willing to start implementing any or all of the above 8 strategies, but a lack of time or a creative team is holding you back, then don’t worry.
That’s why Designity is for.
By putting Designity on your team, you can have instant access to a dedicated Creative Director, a marketing and design expert with 15+ years of experience, to help you strategize and build out a winning marketing plan to bring more visitors to your online store.
Every marketing campaign needs the right marketing collateral as well — eye-catching digital ads, snappy copy, persuasive emails, optimized landing pages, dynamic video, and more.
Not a problem. With Designity on your side, you’ll also have access to the top 3% of US-based creative talent, including all the copywriters, graphic designers, web designers, video experts, and more you’ll need to create the top-notch assets to run a successful eCommerce marketing campaign.
Sound like a partnership you could get behind?
Why not have a peek at our portfolio and see the collateral we created for other brands? If our style vibes with yours, then take the plunge!
Book your demo call and let’s get you started with your two-week, no-obligation trial!
Let’s elevate your eCommerce business together!
