10 Formidable eCommerce Marketing Automation Techniques

Running an eCommerce business is anything but easy – especially when it’s a startup and you have a small team to manage stuff. Given that, when the global sales of the eCommerce industry have almost doubled in 2023, the competition will not be easy anymore.

Source: Statista

At the end of the day, you and your team are humans – that’s where eCommerce marketing automation software can help you out. From streamlining your day-to-day operations to helping you maximize your marketing efforts – the right automated marketing tools can make a huge difference for you.

Here’s how you can choose the right eCommerce marketing automation software for your business:

• Integrations: Look for software that is easy to integrate with your existing tools, such as a CRM or campaign management tool.
• Features: Before you start considering the features of a tool, ensure you have clarity regarding your business’s requirements. If your goal is to focus on increasing sales, then you might need a tool equipped with predictive analytics, customer segmentation, campaign management, and more.
• Cost: This is one of the major factors when choosing software for your eCommerce business’s automation, especially if your brand is still in the initial nurturing stage. Consider different pricing models of different tools and book demos to see those features in action – ensuring you will be getting good value for money.

Now that you know how to choose the right tool let me tell you how eCommerce marketing automation software can help you get ahead of your competitors. 

How eCommerce Marketing Automation Can Help?

Check out the techniques you can use to make the most out of your eCommerce marketing automation software:

1. Set up SMS campaign automation 

Even though we all might think that SMS is outdated, it’s not. In fact, SMS can still give tough competition to email, with its open rate going as high as 98%. This is why most eCommerce brands prioritize it, especially when it comes to cart abandonment. Implementing an effective SMS service for eCommerce can be a game-changer for your business. Besides in-app and email notifications, you can set up automation for card abandonment SMS campaigns. The campaign’s primary goal is to engage your customers, who will receive an SMS for the products they have added to the cart, resulting in prompt action. 

Seamless automated checkouts

When your checkout process is complicated, customers can feel deterred and leave without completing the purchase. Here, giving them a solid discount will not work for you – instead, you need to focus on giving them a smooth single-click checkout experience. 

Source: Baymard

For example, you can give them options to auto-fill details with a single tap. Or, you can provide them with the option to save their cards for even faster checkouts. 

Automatic segmentation for better personalization

Maybe you have 1,000 customers who regularly purchase from you – do they all prefer the same product? Probably, no. 

Then, how can you have the same messaging or offer for every customer?

While the offer might seem irresistible to one group, it might seem unworthy to the other. This is where personalizing shopping experiences via automated segmentation becomes very important. 

Based on the demographics or whatever your criteria are, you can start the segmentation by putting in all the details in your automation software. Once you do that, do not forget to filter out your list to ensure you are not sending two different newsletters to the same customer. 

Set up automated customer loyalty campaigns

Acquiring a new customer is much more costly than retaining an older customer. In fact, the probability of converting an existing customer is around 60% to 70%. That’s why you can set up customer loyalty campaigns to keep them engaged from time to time so that they do not forget about your brand. 

For example, you can send periodic discount offers or in-app cash to your older customers that are specifically for them to make them feel special. You can also give them special discounts on their birthdays, as Nykaa does for its Privé members only. 

Source: Nykaa 

On every Privé customer’s birthday/birth month, Nykaa gives a free birthday gift (which remains a secret) on their first order of that month. 

You can also use a social media analytics tool to see which of your older customers who used to engage in the past aren’t engaging anymore or if there are any drops. Keeping a regular check on the analytics will help you re-engage your customers before they decide to drop off completely. Additionally, integrating embedded analytics platforms directly into your customer relationship management systems can provide deeper insights into customer behaviors and preferences, further enhancing your engagement strategies.

What does this do? It makes your older customers feel special and increases their satisfaction – which means more sales for you! 

Send automated abandoned cart emails 

The cart abandonment rate is around 7 out of 10, which means 70%. That’s too much loss to handle for a start-up eCommerce brand. Even though SMS campaigns tend to make up a portion of this loss, complete recovery seems far-fetched. In such a situation, abandoned cart emails can come in handy to fill in the gap and win over “your almost lost” customers.

When a customer abandons the cart, they will probably first get a notification from the app or the browser. Then, they will get an automated SMS, covering up the 50% push they need. Lastly, when that automatic email reminds them about the product in their cart, they might finally hit the “Buy now” button. 

Encourage personalized customer experiences

While automation is an important part of your eCommerce business, that doesn’t mean you will have to compromise on personalizing customer experiences. A significant part of eCommerce is social media, and it can be an incredible medium for engaging with your customers without giving up on automation. 

For example, if you are a clothing brand, you can set up a weekly campaign to repost some of your customers’ posts and tag them on it – and they might be like, “Wow! I got featured!” 

I know what you are thinking – “Do we have to manually search around and discover these posts by our customers who don’t tag us?” The good news is that you won’t have to do that because many tools like Hootsuite offer a social listening feature. This feature can bring all the news about your brand across all social channels in your inbox.

If you are just starting and want to try some affordable options, you can look at the Hootsuite alternatives to discover advanced social media features without paying much.

7. Promote automated cross-selling

Cross-selling is one of the easiest ways to make money in your eCommerce business. It happens when your audience has just clicked on “Add to Cart,” and all of a sudden, a range of other products pop up with the option of “Add to Cart.” 

For example, one of your customers may have added a formal shirt to their cart. Next, you can show them options for formal trousers to add to their cart, and so on. Here, they will have two options: add the product to their cart or skip it and go to the payment page directly. 

Using a predictive analytics tool, you can align these recommendations for your customers, which will help you target them better, give better deals, and understand their buying patterns.

Automate asking for feedback

Nowadays, a significant part of your eCommerce business depends on the reviews and social proof your brand has. We all know manually and consistently asking your customers for reviews and feedback might be challenging. Here’s where marketing automation software can help you out.

You can set up an automation to send an SMS or email asking for feedback as soon as the product is marked as delivered. By doing this, you are saving your time and ensuring that all your customers are getting the request for leaving feedback. Even if 50% of them decide to do it, it’s a win-win. 

You can also incentivize your customers to leave their honest feedback. For example, with their order, you can send them a gift card, discount coupon, or a free sample and request them to leave a review. 

Automate A/B testing for landing pages

When it comes to marketing, keeping count of the landing pages is impossible. But if you have been investing in landing pages without seeing any fruitful results from that source, it’s probably time to A/B test your landing page. 

But imagine running A/B tests on unnumbered landing pages – it seems like a nightmare, right? That’s where automation software can help you out. Such softwares can automate A/B tests for your landing pages, identifying the gaps like unclear taglines or unresponsive CTA buttons, and more.

Can you think how much time you will save? Moreover, once you fix these gaps, your landing pages will also bring you leads! 

Use automated lead-scoring softwares

I believe it’s one of the best features in an eCommerce marketing automation software because it can save your sales team quite some hours of hard work. In your leads’ dashboard, your software can automatically score leads based on their details and previous history. It saves your sales team the extra effort they would have otherwise wasted on nurturing the leads who wouldn’t even get converted. 

Takeaway

If used strategically, eCommerce marketing automation software can bring significant results for your business. It’s not only about streamlining your operations but also contributing to how your brand is perceived by the audience. Wrapping up – now that you know how an eCommerce marketing automation software can help you align and run a business seamlessly, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and choose your automation software today!