All the bells and whistles offered by marketing automation software can be overwhelming. If you aren’t careful, you can easily get sucked into the rabbit hole of bright shiny objects and lose sight of the ultimate goal of using those features – namely, to increase sales and conversion.
This article was originally published by Apruve.com.
One of the most powerful ways that marketing automation can help boost sales is through the personalization of customer experience.
According to a research by Invesp, web personalization has been proven to improve conversion:
- 53% of online shoppers find customization to be valuable;
- 45% of shoppers prefer to shop on sites offering personalized recommendations;
- Personalized ads have a conversion rate 10 times higher than “one-size-fits-all” ads.
To boost your eCommerce sales, use these 4 strategies to leverage your marketing automation tools and tap into the power of personalization:
1. Segment High-Quality Leads
The advance in email marketing software has made lead generation much more efficient. It’s now possible to capture a large number of leads and automate follow-ups using the appropriate segmentation strategy.
However, not all leads are created equal and you don’t want to be paying your email service provider every month just to collect email addresses. It’s important to capture quality leads that have a high likelihood of turning into customers.
High-quality leads can help increase sales and boost marketing ROI because you’re investing in prospects who are most likely to make a purchase.
To attract the right potential customers to your website, you can create high-quality content that appeals to your target audience. You can also customize social media or PPC ads to target specific audience segments or keywords.
Once you have driven high-quality traffic to your website, you can capture email addresses by offering a lead magnet.
You can create multiple landing pages and funnel the leads into different segments, so you can customize the subsequent follow-up content in an automated email sequence designed to drive traffic back to your eCommerce website so prospects can make a purchase.
You can further leverage the segmentation capability of marketing automation software to send out personalized product recommendations to make your communication even more relevant.
2. Implement Personalized Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Not everyone will buy from you the first time they land on your site or right after they sign up for your lead magnet. In fact, studies have found that 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy.
Especially if you offer items at higher price points, it may take a while to educate your prospects and convince them that your products are the best solution for them.
After you have captured quality leads, it’s important to nurture the relationship and build trust so these prospects will eventually make a purchase.
Marketing automation software allows you to segment your list so you can email prospects relevant and personalized content. In addition, you can use email campaign tools to further customize subsequent email content and other interactions based on a prospect’s response to your campaigns to optimize conversion.
3. Improve Customer Happiness
Marketing automation is not just for turning new prospects into customers. It also has an important role in helping you improve customer retention, increase customer lifetime value and even turn existing customers into advocates and refer others to your business.
You can use marketing automation software to generate responses to inquiries or support tickets by letting customers know that their messages have been received and will be responded to shortly. Some bots can interpret incoming messages and send out initial replies with answers to common questions.
Marketing automation software can allow you to offer rewards and incentives that show up on your customers’ account automatically based on purchasing behavior or customer milestones. This will not only improve customer satisfaction but also incentivize customers to continue purchasing from your site.
As part of your customer care strategy, you can create an automated follow-up sequence that will be emailed to customers after they have purchased a product. E.g. to make sure that the product has arrived, to see that the customer is satisfied with it, to provide additional tips and content on how to get the most out of the product, or to ask for a review or referral.
Automation software can help you provide integrated customer service to support the execution of an omnichannel customer experience by bringing together information gathered from multiple contact channels. This will help your customer care team offer personalized assistance quickly and effectively without having the customers reiterate their questions or problems from scratch at the start of every interaction. (If you have the experience of calling the cable company and then being transferred five times to get to the right technician… you know what I’m talking about!)
4. Leverage Social Media Presence
Marketing automation allows you to post regularly on your social media channels and stay connected with your fans and customers.
Maintaining a consistent social media presence is a great way to increase brand awareness, stay top of mind and cultivate customer relationships that will lead to sales and increase customer lifetime value.
Furthermore, you can create targeted campaigns to promote to specific segments based on their interactions with your email campaigns. E.g. you can upload a list of “hot leads” (by exporting a segment of subscribers who have been very engaged with your email content) and craft a Facebook ad campaign that links back to a specific product they’ve viewed.
There’s a lot of potential in leveraging the power of personalization through marketing automation. What strategies have you tried? Share your secret sauce with us in the comment below:
