Selling online products and services is becoming a profitable solution for modern businesses. This year, forecasters predict online shopping revenue could reach $ 1.1 trillion in the Americas alone.
The figure highlights the profit potential of selling your offerings online. However, the financial success of your online store depends on several factors, such as marketing and advertising. This short guide outlines how automation can help improve your e-commerce marketing efforts.
Key Takeaways:
- E-commerce marketing aims to drive attention toward online businesses. The goal is to help brands establish an online presence, get a bigger audience, and attract new customers.
- More and more e-commerce business owners are taking their advertising efforts to the next level through automation.
- E-commerce marketing automation uses tools and software to streamline marketing campaigns, including email, SMS, and social media advertising.
- Developing an e-commerce marketing automation strategy involves defining goals, setting benchmarks, research, and implementation.
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E-commerce Marketing: What You Need To Know
The goal of e-commerce marketing is to drive attention toward a brand selling its products online. The process can involve digital content, social media, search engine optimization (SEO), and email campaigns.
Today, entrepreneurs spend significant time and money on digital marketing. Digital marketing budgets are increasing yearly — by 2026, experts believe spending could reach $836 billion.
You might ask why entrepreneurs are ready to spend so much on digital marketing. The answer is because online marketing works. Read on to learn how business owners benefit from effective digital marketing strategies.
Importance of Marketing for E-commerce Businesses
An effective marketing strategy is necessary for e-commerce brands looking to increase brand awareness and audience reach. This section outlines how effective advertising strategies can help modern e-commerce brands.
Reach new audiences and customers
The internet is continuously growing, with millions of users worldwide. For business owners, this growth poses opportunities for e-commerce brands to reach a large customer base.
Thanks to the convenience of email communication, marketers can now send one email to multiple customers simultaneously. This tactic can help save time since they do not have to send emails to customers one at a time.
Influence a customer’s buying decisions
With increased internet access, consumers are more inclined to conduct extensive research before purchasing online. Now that almost all brands have a significant online presence, buyers have more options to compare and experiment with before making a final decision.
This means positive online presence is essential for e-commerce brands because buyers rely on online information to make crucial decisions. Engaging with consumers through discounts and customer support can positively impact their purchase decisions and increase brand loyalty.
Remember that customers will more likely trust a brand with an excellent reputation and glowing recommendations from past buyers.
Lead to massive growth in sales
Through effective digital marketing, e-commerce brands can boost sales in a short time. High-quality online advertisements encourage your audience to try your products and services. Paired with the convenience of online shopping, your marketing campaigns can convert leads into paying customers.
Help marketers save time and money
One of the crucial benefits of digital marketing is it helps marketers save time and money. Unlike traditional advertising methods, online advertisements do not take up much of an e-commerce company’s marketing budget. Creating high-quality content that you can post on social media for free can attract new customers.
Improve market reach against competitors
E-commerce marketing can help your retail business stay competitive. Today, all companies, including large corporations and top brands, invest time and money in innovative marketing campaigns. You must develop something more eye-catching for your target audience so your brand can stand out.
Examples of E-commerce Marketing Strategies
E-commerce businesses wanting to improve their marketing campaigns need a solid plan before starting. Here are examples of effective e-commerce marketing strategies that can give your marketing team the results they want.
Get UGC through social media
Instagram is a social media site popular among consumers, influencers, and modern brands. Its features help connect organizations and influencers to their audiences.
The platform helps brands gain a large following of people interested in their products. Marketers can attract new leads by taking high-quality photos, using relevant hashtags, and posting at optimal times.
Another critical reason to use social media sites like Instagram is to get user-generated content (UGC). UGC or user-created content is any form of content from your audience that you can use to promote your product or service.
There are several ways to engage with your audience on social media. One effective method is hosting contests or sharing behind-the-scenes (BTS) glimpses of your product development process. Another way to get social media users to visit your online store is through paid advertising.
For e-commerce marketing, including products in your Instagram posts and stories can give your followers a direct purchase path. This approach can be essential for increasing online sales and improving customer journeys.
Aside from getting UGC from social media, you can look at discussion forums and wikis for user-created content.
Prevent customers from abandoning their carts
Remember that your business loses potential revenue whenever a customer abandons their cart. Experts have studied this phenomenon, which often occurs when visitors add items to their carts but still need to complete the checkout process.
In the US, consumers have a 68 percent cart abandonment rate. To address this issue, entrepreneurs must find the problem causing visitors to abandon their carts. They can also offer incentives, such as discounts or free shipping, to convince hesitant shoppers to complete their purchases.
Implementing an abandoned cart email recovery campaign is one effective e-commerce marketing strategy for reducing abandoned cart rates. This email marketing campaign can remind visitors to return to their carts and complete their original purchase.
Write original content
Creating high-quality and original content that will resonate with your customers is an effective way to establish an online presence.
Your content must encourage your audience to interact with your brand, buy your product, and become loyal followers. Find the balance between engaging content and content that may deter visitors from leaving your e-commerce site.
To achieve lasting success, you must go the extra mile and create relevant content for your audience. After reading your blog, your target audience must get new tips or tricks to help them address their problems. This tip is a crucial e-commerce marketing strategy that can drive revenue for years.
Start by adding informative content to your primary site pages, such as your homepage, about us page, and policies. Then, populate your online store's content with unique product descriptions that highlight the key functionalities and why it's superior.
In addition to creating unique content for your website, you must also be proactive. Try publishing blog posts to attract new audiences while informing and engaging existing followers. You can also add product demonstrations or explainer videos, which can be an excellent fit for e-commerce sites.
Try influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that allows businesses to collaborate with influencers for increased brand exposure.
Under this partnership, entrepreneurs can ask influencers to publish social media content that promotes their products or services.
Social media users follow individuals they trust on various social media platforms. If they see their favorite influencers promoting your small business, there's an inherent trust factor you can lean on to boost your conversion rate.
Determining which influencers might suit your brand is integral to any influencer strategy. For example, if you are marketing moisturizers, work with an influencer famous for promoting skincare products.
Once you find the right influencer, reach out and propose a partnership. In exchange for promoting your brand, you can commission them on all the products they sell. This example is only one of the several incentives you can offer to influencers.
Automate your marketing processes
Another strategy is to use marketing automation software to automate repetitive marketing processes. With these tools, marketing departments can save time doing repetitive tasks such as social media posting, email marketing, and even ad campaigns.
Look closely at how automation can help your e-commerce marketing efforts below.
What is e-commerce marketing automation?
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Online marketing automation refers to using software or solutions that support marketing campaigns for your e-commerce business. The process reduces the risk of human error, facilitates customer retention and business growth, and helps save time.
By using automation tools, marketers can do the following tasks faster:
- Connect to larger audiences
- Personalize shopping experience for buyers
- Increase site traffic
- Streamline promotion strategies
- Boost brand awareness
- Increase revenue
Using automation software, entrepreneurs can launch effective marketing campaigns without manually managing them. They only have to set up the initial configurations, monitor the results, and change their strategies if necessary.
Marketing automation strategy
Advertisers must develop a strategy to get the most out of e-commerce marketing automation platforms. A marketing automation strategy is a framework for a brand’s automation effort. The design should answer the automation plan's who, what, when, where, and how.
Your e-commerce marketing automation strategy should include the following information:
- Your audience - Include detailed data on your target audience and audience segments. Defining a buyer persona can help your marketing team make informed decisions and map automation based on customer needs.
- Processes to automate - Ask yourself which tasks you want to automate. You can automate email list admin work, social media postings, and other repetitive promotional tasks.
- Where to post your content - Think of the channels where you plan to automate content. This plan underscores which social media platform your content will appear on or which sheet gets an update.
- The time to automate - You can automatically send out newsletters once a week or every month. You can automatically notify customers if your servers are down and notify them when you have resolved the issue.
- Evaluation of your plan - Remember that marketing automation strategies must be flexible and fluid. Review and assess your automation plan regularly to identify areas you can improve.
How To Develop an E-commerce Marketing Automation Strategy
Developing an e-commerce marketing automation strategy can be challenging if you are still determining where to begin. To help in this effort, check out this step-by-step guide on creating an effective strategy.
Step 1: Understand your goals
Goals are long-term outcomes you want to achieve, while objectives are the measurable moves that can help you reach your goals. By defining goals and objectives, you can determine what you need to automate and keep your plan on track.
For example, if you want more brand awareness, you should focus on automating tasks linked to content and social media. These tasks include scheduling posts, collecting content, and responding to comments. By automating these social media tasks, you can save time and focus on other elements of your marketing strategy.
However, if you want your team to focus more on creative campaigns, you should automate basic, time-intensive administrative tasks.
Automate invoicing, data entry, or other repetitive tasks that take up your staff's time.
By doing so, your team can focus on marketing work that will help drive your business forward.
Remember that it is wise to start with a single goal and narrow your focus. This way, you do not spread yourself too thin and can dedicate time and resources to achieving your objectives. To get started, consider the following goal categories:
- Increase marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
- Boost brand awareness
- Reach out to lapsed customers
- Convert free trial users to paid customers
- Reduce time on email list segmentation
Step 2: Set benchmarks
Now that you have objectives and goals to achieve, you will need to set metrics to track so you can measure progress. The following are examples of benchmarks you could use to indicate progress:
- Increase demo downloads, newsletter signups, or webinar attendance by 10 percent this year
- Boost landing page views to 8,000 per month or boost follower count by 5,000 by the end of the year
- Increase click-through rates by 10 percent this year
- Reactivate 100 lapsed customers from the first quarter
Most modern marketing automation tools provide some level of data analytics. Find a solution that provides insights and reporting alongside analytics. You can integrate some tools with other analytics platforms to allow users to collect accurate data.
Step 3: Research
When looking for marketing automation software, ask yourself two questions.
- What level of automation does my e-commerce business need?
- Do I need a simple trigger, or do I have a complex series of events to automate?
These questions can help you determine what features to look for in a marketing automation tool. It can also tell you what plans you’ll need. Evaluating your needs can help you allocate a budget, too.
It would be wise to combine tools in your marketing tech stack. You may already be using other software and solutions for other purposes, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool.
Check whether your tools already have the features you need. You should also consider integrating your new automation software with your existing automation tools to scale automation if required.
Step 4: Implementation and monitoring
After choosing an automation tool and completing the necessary integrations, you can implement your strategy.
If you’re using a new tool, you should run some tests before rolling out public campaigns that can impact customers.
A/B testing will depend on your platform and level of automation. Start by creating a test profile and set up hypothetical campaigns. You can launch a small group of transactional emails as a test. During testing, check if all platforms are running smoothly and if any issues arise.
After you successfully automate projects in the test, you can roll it out. Start with a small group of customers, then implement the new process if the results are promising.
After implementing the new automation software, you must review and monitor the results. Remember that a successful automation strategy is a flexible one. Consumers’ interests, preferences, and concerns change over time. If you want your campaigns to succeed, you must respond to the changes accordingly.
Benefits of Using E-commerce Marketing Automation Tools
Some e-commerce business owners are still on the fence about spending money on marketing automation software. Some paid automation solutions are indeed pricey, but their benefits make them worth it. Here are the crucial advantages of using e-commerce marketing automation software today.
Improves multichannel tracking
Marketing automation platforms can support e-commerce marketing activities across multiple touchpoints. This advantage enables businesses to find essential platforms where customers are active.
It also enables optimizing marketing processes to generate more leads. The automated workflow can result in increased customer engagement rates and personalized experiences.
Provides accurate insights and reporting
E-commerce marketers can accurately track and monitor campaign performance over time using automation tools. These automation platforms provide visual reports of the brand’s activities in real-time, which helps marketers find loopholes in the system.
The valuable customer data can help advertisers predict progress and provide helpful recommendations. These features enable businesses to develop better strategies that address the needs of their customers.
Enhances customer service
Marketing automation software can play a crucial role in improving customer service experience by enabling quick resolution of customer queries. With this feature, customers do not have to wait on hold for a response to their ticket.
For instance, a chatbot feature can efficiently handle repetitive customer service queries. This way, you can offer personalized experiences and leave clients impressed.
Facilitates lead generation
Marketing automation in e-commerce businesses can help enhance leads both quantitatively and qualitatively. You develop a loyal customer base by nurturing leads and transforming them into brand advocates. This tactic can help improve lead-generation activities.
Examples of E-commerce Marketing Automation Solutions
Because there are hundreds of marketing automation solutions available, it can be challenging to choose one. The best way to know which tool is the best for your e-commerce store is to understand the tasks you want to automate.
There are automation tools to support UGC campaigns, influencer marketing, and email marketing platforms, among others. Check out the solutions below and see how they can help improve your marketing campaigns.
Archive
Archive is an application that helps users manage user-created content on social media, specifically Instagram and TikTok. With Archive, users get notifications when someone tags their brand online.
With Archive, marketers do not have to waste time scrolling through social media apps to find content relevant to their e-commerce brands. The app automatically detects and displays the posts and refines the search using lists or filters.
The solution also enables users to request Usage Rights directly from original posters. It tracks the status of all requests so users know what content they have permission to use. With this solution and its ease of use, marketers can use any UGC with authorization from creators.
Features:
- TikTok UGC manager
- Instagram UGC manager
- Usage rights requests
- Labels filter and organizer
Pricing:
- Free version
- Starter - $29/month
- Pro - $99/month
- Advanced - $299/month
Buzzbassador
Buzzbassador is an automation solution to help brands engage influencers to generate sales and brand awareness. It offers a centralized platform where users can complete influencer activities, including onboarding and email communications.
It also has unlimited reward tiers, allowing businesses to create multiple levels of rewards based on their ambassadors' sales performance, longevity, and social audience size. This empowers businesses to design a tailored incentive structure that motivates ambassadors to advance in the funnel and achieve higher levels of performance, resulting in increased engagement, loyalty, and sales.
Features:
- Automated content creator onboarding
- Performance tracker
- Streamlined payments
- Unlimited reward tiers
Pricing:
- Launch - $39
- Build - $79
- Scale - $299
- Plus - $499
HubSpot
HubSpot’s marketing hub is a solution that helps users attract visitors, convert leads, close deals, and improve customer experience. This tool also supports the development of landing pages with forms, calls-to-action (CTAs), and live chat.
HubSpot also has a library of free educational content to support the creation of blog articles, online courses, and comprehensive certification.
Features:
- Automated email campaigns
- Online form builder
- Chat automation
- SEO support
Pricing:
- Free version
- Starter - $45/month
- Professional - $800/month
- Enterprise - $3,600/month
Pro-Tip: Before deciding to automate, you must assess your marketing campaigns thoroughly. This way, you can determine which tasks to automate first.
Collect and Manage UGC Easily With Archive
Advancements in technology are helping marketers launch more streamlined advertising campaigns. Automation solutions can make it easy for marketing teams to send emails, work with influencers, and manage UGC.
If you want to take your UGC campaigns to the next level, try the Archive App today! With our help, you will not miss any relevant user-created content on social media.
Automation can be challenging to implement without the right tools. Try the Archive app today to improve your UGC marketing strategies.
FAQs on E-Commerce Marketing Automation
What are the biggest obstacles to marketing automation?
Relying on sub-par data can negatively impact the results of an organization’s marketing automation efforts. Improper evaluation of the tasks to automate can also lead entrepreneurs to spend money on automation solutions they do not need.
Does marketing automation affect product offerings?
Marketing automation can help entrepreneurs provide a personalized experience for their buyers. Automation tools can speed up repetitive tasks, including tasks that can directly affect customers, such as email marketing and social media advertising.
Is marketing automation easy to implement?
Marketing automation can be easy to implement with the right strategy. Your implementation tactic must involve all marketing team members to ensure every member is on the same page. Provide training so team members can use new tools and solutions with ease.
