How to Improve Online Sales with Marketing Automation

As you grow your online retail business, you start having a lot of questions.

• How do the big online retailers keep up with the growing customer base?
• When do they provide a consistent experience to all their customers?
• In what way do they increase their sales?

Two words: Marketing Automation.

As your business expands, marketing automation becomes more of a need than a want. Because how else are you going to personalize the buying journey of every visitor that lands at your store and ensure they make a purchase?

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what marketing automation can offer.

72% of successful companies use eCommerce marketing automation because of its endless benefits in improving sales.

How can you do the same?

Let’s find out.

#1 CRO Tools

Site visitors don’t always convert into customers by themselves. You need to give them a push to explore your store. Typically, eCommerce websites witness an average conversion rate of 12.9%.To increase this rate, online stores leverage Conversion Rate Optimization tools. Some of the most popular tools to consider are popup tools, surveys, analytics, personalized CTAs, and chatbots.

For example, when you incorporate a chatbot on your website, it urges the user to converse with them. Once it starts the conversation, it can provide product recommendations based on customer preferences, provide answers to common queries, and encourage them to stay on the site and explore the store.

At the end of the day, you generate a lead and convert a site visitor into a prospect. Tools like chatbots have become quite popular because of their easy implementation and cost-effective chatbot pricing. Similarly, you can integrate exit-intent pop-ups or pop-ups that announce a special offer to keep the visitors on the site and improve sales.

#2 Personalize your Website

Personalization is your answer to a lot of potential challenges in eCommerce. Because every customer comes looking for a specific product on your site. If you showcase generic products, your site won’t resonate with them and chances are they won’t stay long enough to see your list of offerings.

You can instead personalize your website for visitors. 80% of consumers prefer shopping from a brand that provides personalized experiences.

How can you do that?

You can gather visitor data using marketing automation tools and get a background of where they come from, where they work, what is their buyer’s history, and what is their intent. This will help you segment your customers based on their information and create personalized content for each of your leads. You can also utilize A/B testing to see what content, design, CTAs, and media your visitors are resonating with better.

#3 Track your leads on every Channel

If you have an online store, it is highly likely that you are providing multiple avenues for customers to make a purchase. Your social media and other channels are as crucial to your sales as your website which makes it rather important for you to track your leads from every channel.

With marketing automation tools like CRM, Facebook automated messages,  email automation, and multi-channel bots, you can keep the engagement game strong on these channels.

Automation tools update contact’s lead scores from all channels using pre-built rules which dramatically improves data quality and accuracy. Additionally, it helps you track your marketing campaigns and optimize them on multiple touchpoints. It helps you coordinate messages and build an ad and communication strategy for all channels to work collaboratively and boost sales.

You also get to know where your visitors are coming from, and what ads are working for you, and encourage you to place your efforts on these channels.

#4 Segment your Customers

Segmentation in marketing automation is the act of grouping leads, visitors, and customers based on common characteristics. This may mean categorizing them based on their awareness level, active vs inactive customers, blog subscribers, location, etc. Since we’ve emphasized enough on personalization, you should know that segmentation plays an integral role to provide the same.

Segmentation helps you market your product to the right people, at the right time, on the right channel, and with the right message. It provides marketers with the opportunity to understand their target audience via customer segmentation analysis and improve campaign performance by minimizing wasted ad spend.

Marketing automation tools like ActiveCampaign also help you automatically track, segment, and reward your most engaged customers. This introduces new possibilities as you can send out latest offers and special discounts to a selected group of customers. Behavior-triggered emails are personalized based on visitor behavior which is likely to translate to sales and increased revenue.

#5 Get Real-time Customer Insights

A significant number of eCommerce companies are employing marketing automation tools just because they provide action-oriented insights into behavioral data. Most tools are equipped with analytics that reflect how visitors are navigating the sites, which products are most popular, what is the cart abandonment ratio, and so on.

Having answers to all these questions helps companies improve their customer shopping experience. For example, an email automation tool shows what kind of messaging is working and what’s the best time to send an email, what type of subject line works the best, etc. Automation tools also provide a sneak peek into sales and marketing performance results.

You can measure your campaigns through open rate, click-through rate, conversions, demo requests, and free trial sign-ups to know which ads are most effective and which can be improved upon.

Data-driven marketing is the future. You cannot make decisions based on assumptions or basic research. To ensure your sales reach the targeted numbers and revenues keep flowing in, you need to have reliable insights to drive your marketing efforts.

Wrapping up

As online buyers are evolving, you need to go the extra mile to ensure they have a smooth buying experience. So instead of simply setting up an online site and backend logistics, ensure that your visitors actually resonate with what you’re trying to sell.

Marketing automation helps you go that extra mile and take the online buying experience a step closer to a brick-and-mortar buying experience. All you have to do is set things in motion and your marketing automation ensures customer engagement and higher sales for you in the process.