Smart Email Segmentation Ideas For More Relevant Emails

In email marketing, relevance is achieved by segmenting your subscribers and customers to deliver email content that creates a context for recipients.

Contextual experiences increase engagement, conversion, and the profitability of your email campaigns.

Relevance → Context → Action → Retention

Blasting your opt-in list with promotions that aren’t relevant to them is the opposite of this philosophy. We’ve all gotten those retail email newsletters with offers for stuff we have no interest in buying. Here’s one I got recently:

Since there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of possible strategies for segmenting an eCommerce list; clients ask us for the most important segments that retailers should be using to power their email marketing efforts.

Depending on the vertical industry that the client does business in, our answer will include segmentation parameters that break down into some combination of the following four categories:

By combining these segmentation parameters, you can build a complete picture of a customer’s relationship with your business, what stage of the customer lifecycle they’re in, and deliver email communications when customers are most likely to be receptive to your message.

Here are six foundational eCommerce segments that power the highest performing lifecycle email campaigns for our clients (and how we set them up inside our software):

Low-Value Customers

We use low-value filtering to segment customers making very small purchases. This is important for browse and cart abandonment programs where incentives are being used. Suppressing offers/coupon codes for abandoned carts that don’t meet specific value thresholds prevents a situation where the margin is lost on a very small order.

High-Value Customers

‘High value’ customers can be represented by the total order value of a cart they abandoned or the fact that they were browsing in a high-value product category. The definition is largely dependent on your specific business case and what stage of the funnel you’re targeting. A B2C retailer may want to send a high-value customer a more aggressive offer to drive conversion from a cart abandonment campaign. A B2B company may need to connect a customer from its high-value segment with the right sales rep in the right territory. The definition of a high-value customer can vary widely depending on your industry, business model, and sales process.

First Time Customers

First-time customers are an important audience for your business because of their ‘recency’. Recency is the idea that the more recently a customer has purchased from you, the more likely they are to purchase again. Think about that for a second. The most likely group of customers to make a second purchase are the ones that just made their first. Capitalize on this opportunity by triggering a welcome series for your first-time customers that reinforces their initial purchase decision. Tell them why they should continue doing business with you and emphasize your unique selling proposition. This is your opportunity to not only drive a second purchase but also to impart those brand warm and fuzzies onto your new customers and tell your story. First-time customers are the most likely candidates to be receptive to your message.

VIPs

VIPs are the customers that drive your business over the long term. We’ve all heard the 80/20 rule. 80% of your profits are generated by 20% of your customers. In B2C eCommerce, that ratio can be even more dramatic for some companies. Define the characteristics of what makes a VIP for your company. Is it a number of purchases? Total spend? Average order value? Define those business rules and set up a VIP campaign that is designed to thank your best customers for their business, automatically. Here’s an example: For a customer that has spent over $200 on two different occasions, this retailer sends a loyalty email thanking the customer for their business and encourages the customer to make their third.

Replenishable Customers

Replenishable products are those that have an average useful life or are consumed over a period of time by your customers. Segmenting these customers creates an opportunity for time-induced reorder campaigns like this one from 1-800 CONTACTS. If you sell consumable products, try segmenting customers based on what you believe is the typical consumption period for a given product and trigger a campaign at the end of that consumption cycle. You may find that customers just need a gentle push to drive that reorder and that means more automated revenue generation for your company.

Defecting Customers

Next to cart abandoners, customers exhibiting signs of defection are the most valuable segment to pay attention to. These are customers who have purchased from you in the past, but haven’t been back to your site in an abnormally long period of time to complete another purchase. “Abnormally long period of time” is a key part of the discussion here. In order to know what is abnormal, you also must know what is “normal”. More on this shortly.

These customers aren’t buying for a reason — maybe they had a bad customer service experience or they’ve fallen in love with one of your competitors. Don’t worry too much – you usually have an opportunity to save this customer. Set up your segmentation rules to recognize when a customer is exhibiting signs of defection and trigger your marketing at the moment of maximum impact. This is commonly called a win back campaign.

eCommerce Statistics 2020

Your ecommerce business doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it’s a part of the global ecommerce ecosystem. That’s why you need to pay attention to the broader context in order to make the best decisions—and that means staying on top of the latest ecommerce statistics.

Ecommerce statistics: Amazon

Amazon is the leading online retailer with net revenue of $232.88 billion in 2018. (Statista)
Amazon has over 100 million Amazon Prime members. (Jeff Bezos in a letter to shareholders)
Other sources estimate that there are over 95 million Amazon Prime members in the United States. (Statista)
On average, two in five US consumers (41%) receive one to two packages from Amazon per week. That number jumps to half (50%) for consumers ages 18-25, and 57% for consumers ages 26-35. (Walker Sands)
In the last six months, 83% of US consumers have made a purchase on Amazon. (BigCommerce)

Ecommerce statistics: Google Shopping

The average amount of time between a Google product search and a purchase is 20 days (it’s 26 days on Amazon). (Jumpshot)
35% of Google product searches turn into transactions within 5 days. (Jumpshot)
Google Shopping ad spend was up 43% YoY in Q4 of 2018, making the quarter the fastest growth rate in two years. (Merkle)
Cross-device targeting yields 16% more conversions for retail advertisers in the US. (Google)
Google Shopping ads have a higher CTR than Amazon’s Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand ads. (Merkle)

Ecommerce statistics: Shipping & delivery

79% of US consumers said that free shipping would make them more likely to shop online. (Walker Sands)
54% of US consumers under the age 25 said that same-day shipping is their number one purchase driver. (Walker Sands)
Only 15% of US consumers said that online retailers always offer shipping options that meet their expectations for speed of delivery, compared to 30% that report the same for Amazon. (Walker Sands)
83% of US online shoppers expect regular communication about their purchases. (Narvar)
53% of US online shoppers won’t purchase a product if they don’t know when it will arrive. (Narvar)

Ecommerce statistics: Returns

42% of US online shoppers have returned an item they bought online in the last six months. (Narvar)
63% of US online shoppers said that they would not make a purchase if they couldn’t find the return policy. (Narvar)
Nearly 70% of US online shoppers said that their most recent return experience was “easy” or “very easy,” and 96% would buy from that retailer again based on that experience. (Narvar)
59% of US online shoppers said that they want to receive notifications about the status of their refund. (Narvar)
41% of US online shoppers said that they “bracket” at least some online purchases (“bracketing” refers to buying multiple versions of the same item, then returning those that didn’t work). (Narvar)

Ecommerce statistics: Cart abandonment

The average global cart abandonment rate in Q3 of 2018 was 76.9%. (SaleCycle)
58.6% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart within the last 3 months because “I was just browsing/not ready to buy.” (Baymard Institute)
The top three reasons US online shoppers give for abandoning a cart during checkout are high extra costs, the need to create an account, and a complicated checkout process (these are the survey results after removing the “I was just browsing/not ready to buy” segment). (Baymard Institute)
The average open rate for an abandoned cart email is 15.21%, and the average click-through rate is 21.12% for SmartrMail users. (SmartrMail)
The average revenue per email for an abandoned cart email is $27.12 (for SmartrMail users). (SmartrMail)

Ecommerce statistics: Conversational commerce

The top three messaging apps have user bases of 1 billion or more. (Business Insider)
61% of US consumers say that they have messaged a business in the last 3 months. (Facebook)
70% of the US consumers who message businesses expect a faster response than they would have gotten had they used a more traditional mode of communication. (Facebook)
69% of US consumers who message businesses say that being able to message a business helps them feel more confident about the brand. (Facebook)
29% of US online shoppers use or plan to use chatbots to shop online. (Narvar)

Ecommerce statistics: Instagram

83% of people say Instagram helps them discover new products and services. 81% say the platform helps them research products and services, and 80% say it helps them decide whether to make a purchase. (Facebook)
Compared to non-users, Instagram users are 70% more likely to make online purchases on their mobile devices. (GlobalWebIndex)
44% of active Instagram users say they use social media to conduct brand research. That’s the highest percentage among the major social networks. (GlobalWebIndex)
Engagement between users and brands on Instagram is 10 times greater than it is on Facebook, 54 times greater than it is on Pinterest, and 84 times greater than it is on Twitter. (Forrester)
96% of fashion brands based in the US use Instagram to reach consumers. (eMarketer)

Ecommerce statistics: Mobile devices

Nearly 40% of all online purchases made during the 2018 holiday season were done on smartphones. (OuterBox)
80% of Americans are online shoppers. More than half of them have made purchases on mobile devices. (Pew Research Center)
People who have a bad mobile experience with your business are 62% less likely to become your customer in the future. (Google)
69% of smartphone users say they’re more likely to buy from businesses with mobile sites or apps that answer their questions. (Google)
59% of smartphone users favor businesses with mobile sites or apps that enable them to make purchases easily and quickly. (Think with Google)

Ecommerce statistics: Conversion rates

The stats for this final section come from our brand new Shopping Benchmarks report—a deep dive into how ecommerce businesses from 16 different verticals are performing on Google Shopping and Bing Shopping.

Across all verticals, the average Google Shopping conversion rate is 1.91% and the average Bing Shopping conversion rate is 1.74%.
Although you can expect to convert Google shoppers at a higher rate, you’ll have to pay a premium for it. Whereas the average Google Shopping CPA is $38.87, the average Bing Shopping CPA is only $23.05.
Ecommerce businesses in the Office & Business Needs vertical are killing it on Bing Shopping: they convert clicks into actions at an average rate of 15.19%.
Turning to Google Shopping, HVAC businesses are killing it, too: They boast an average conversion rate of 3.30% and an average CPA of just $7.28.
Advertisers in the Chemical & Industrial sector have one of the toughest jobs out there: less than 1% of their Google Shopping clicks convert into actions, and each conversion they do get costs $91.21 on average.

5 Must-Try E-commerce Tips to Increase Holiday Sales

Attracting customers to the shopping portal by just establishing an online presence is not enough. Rather, one should put efforts to boost the eCommerce holiday sales so that the store gets identified by the visitors in the festive season.

The holiday season is the most rewarding time for eCommerce store owners in terms of increasing overall eCommerce sales. But it turns out to be difficult as they need to toil hard for converting the visitors into conversions. The time has arrived to be prepared for Christmas, where website owners can capitalize on targeted customers who are hungry for big deals.

Today, most of people express their love on festivals by sending gifts and wish cards to their loved ones. And for that, they consider online shopping the best and easiest option. The holiday season is the perfect time when e-commerce stores can earn customers and conversions at the same time. All they need to do is to implement proven e-commerce SEO strategies that are best suited to provide optimum eCommerce conversions.

Here are some widely implemented tips that help eCommerce webmasters to increase conversion rates during festive days.

Easy tips to boost holiday sales

Engage Broadly With Mobile Customers

At present, desktop e-commerce has become a good choice for users. On the other hand, mobile e-commerce is growing at a high pace. Stats say that e-commerce holiday sales during last year’s holidays increased by 59%. This is because of the wide usage of mobile devices. Surprisingly, approx 50-60 % of search queries usually come from mobile devices.

Send Automated Holiday Sale Emails And Web Push Notifications

Sending pre-sale promotional emails to targeted customers is a powerful strategy that anyone can utilize to increase the chances of getting more conversions.

Similarly, if you wish to spread awareness for your upcoming e-commerce festive, you first need to target the audience via attractive emails and festive alerts. The promotional campaigns create a sense of urgency and instill a fear of missing out on something important which compels the users to click and view the deal.

Recover Abandoned Carts With Festive Special Discounts

According to stats, 99% of the audience don’t make purchases for the very first time when they visit the store. As a result, they choose to abandon the cart. It might be scary but true somewhere. But now, there are chances that you can bring back the users who abandoned their carts by sending festive sale offers to their selected items. It cannot be possible that you could be in the right place with the right offer. Hence, you should be ready to retarget the visitors whenever possible. Festive days are the high time when you succeed in this venture. Check out this article where they have beautifully explained why users abandon their carts.

Give Landing Page A Complete Festive Makeover

Guide your web designer to create a theme-based festive background that is embellished with bright banners. It’s up to you how you want to decorate your landing page so that customers get attracted and feel like making a purchase. Fascinating visitors through the exquisitely designed offer page provides better e-commerce website optimization during holidays. This not only attracts customers and creates a joyous mood, but also results in better conversions.

Create Convenient & Festive Targeted Products Navigation

Many times, people are not able to find the product they are looking for. This is the reason which can result in the low visibility of your store’s products. Simple and smooth product navigation is the key to generate enhanced conversions. It directs visitors to the most relevant product they are searching for and that too within seconds. When you are renovating the banners and landing page layout for grabbing the biggest festive season opportunity, make sure to concentrate more on building easy product navigation. Suppose, you want to redirect the customers towards the Christmas combos like dress, tree, and chocolates then make that page more fascinating and easy to access for users.

Final Thoughts:

When festive sale arrives, people are supposed to shop like crazy. This is all because of the bumper deals and offers e-commerce stores offer on all products. E-commerce website owners often think that it is easy for them to earn optimum profits during the holiday sales. Remember, there are e-commerce pioneers who keenly execute SEO for an e-commerce website. And these pioneers always win the race of getting excellent conversions during festivals. Now, it is your turn to implement the above-mentioned tricks to earn better than the others.

6 Emerging Ecommerce Trends for 2020

By the end of 2019, the total value of eCommerce retail sales is expected to top $3.4 trillion! In the highly competitive e-commerce sector, relevancy needs to be a top priority. One day you’re in, and one day you’re out. Online businesses must constantly be aware of ways to keep their brand and products in front of the eyes of their customers.

One of the best ways to do this is by simply staying alert and up-to-speed with e-commerce trends. However, there is always a risk that comes with trying out the latest fads.

Ultimately, when it comes to experimenting with trends, it is important to make sure that any changes you make are always making things better for your customers.

That being said, there are currently some significant eCommerce trends that every online entrepreneur should be aware of (and consider taking advantage of).

6 Emerging eCommerce Trends for 2020

1. Google is Becoming an Online Marketplace

Unless your brand is super well-known, the majority of your customers are likely arriving at your website via organic or paid searches for items that your store offers. So, in order to get your products in front of more customers, you should be optimizing for Google Shopping. This is an extremely powerful sales channel – and can be an incredible SEO hack for online stores.

Integrating your e-commerce platform with Google Shopping will create a PLA (product listing ad) that will automatically top the SERPs on the Shopping tab when a customer searches for a product that matches up with your store. This is exciting news for e-commerce stores that sell niche products.

In fact, a recent case study found that Google Shopping helps to boost conversions by over 17%.

The setup process is pretty simple, too. You just need to head to the Google Merchant Center to sign up and if your online store meets the ad requirements, you can start advertising through this lucrative channel.

2. Customers are Shopping Through Social Media

Social media is a lot more than just likes, shares, and cute dog photos these days. Many social channels are turning into mini search engines of their own – and 55% of online shoppers have bought a product directly through a brand’s social post.

Lots of platforms are making it super easy for eCommerce stores to sell directly through their social pages these days with built-in embedded links. This means that customers can click on specific products within a post and be led directly to a product page, making it far easier to boost impulse buys through online advertising.

3. AR and VR are Becoming More Commonplace

One of the greatest challenges that online stores have always faced is the fact that their customers cannot see the product before buying it. This makes it difficult to sell things like clothing, furniture, and other accessories that people want to preview before purchasing.

AR and VR are helping to solve this problem by allowing customers to virtually try on products without physically touching them. Companies like Warby Parker have launched an app that uses AR so customers can try on different glasses before ordering.

Amazon and Ikea also use similar technology so shoppers can test out how pieces of furniture will look in their own homes.

E-commerce stores should take note of the ways that technology is revolutionizing the customer experience and consider investing in these digital systems.

4. Customizable Products are a Big Hit

Personalization is going to go to the next level with products that are entirely customized for the individual. Many online stores are taking advantage of interactive content – like quizzes and surveys – to build entirely customized products that cater to each individual’s needs or preferences.

One area where this trend is specifically prevalent is in health and wellness. Stores like Curology and Gainful create totally customized product lines based on the individual’s health needs and goals, while brands like Native use an interactive quiz to create a custom scent profile that people can buy as a deodorant or body wash.

5. Flexible Payment Options for Big Purchases

If your store’s products tend to range on the most expensive side, it can be hard to convert new customers simply because they view that purchase as more of a risky investment. One e-commerce trend that can help to combat this is offering flexible payment options through systems like Afterpay, Final, and Affirm.

These services automatically break down large purchases into smaller equal payments over the course of several months – making large purchases a little easier to swallow. In fact, retailers that offer Afterpay specifically have seen conversion rates increase anywhere between 20% to 30%.

6. Companies and Consumers are Becoming More Environmentally Mindful

Caring about the earth isn’t just for tree huggers or Millennials anymore. Most consumers these days are far more conscious about their environmental impact, and they want to support businesses that are doing their best to reduce carbon footprints.

87% of consumers agreed that they would be more likely to buy a product from a brand that offered a social or environmental benefit – giving companies yet another reason to go green.

Many e-commerce brands are doing their best to reduce shipping waste by using recycled or biodegradable materials – such as packing peanuts that dissolve in water. Some businesses are getting super creative here – such as Banish Skin Care which sends products wrapped in branded socks (rather than bubble wrap) to reduce waste.

Conclusion

Although trends inherently come and go, it is important that e-commerce businesses pay attention to ones that are having significant impacts on the customer experience and conversions. While these trends may change and evolve in time, many online stores are seeing incredible returns by capitalizing on them.

7 ways to Segment your Target Audience for effective eCommerce Personalization

As defined by Smart Insights, segmentation shows approaches to grouping prospects and customers to deliver more relevant communications and offers. The result is to give better response rates to these communications.

In the marketing arena, personalization is a term often misused for segmentation. Personalization and segmentation, while both valuable tools for marketers, couldn’t be more different.

Key benefits to Segmentation

There are five key benefits to having a good customer segmentation when looking to improve your customer’s online experience through personalization

Better match of your product or service offering to your customer’s segment needs. Creating tailor-made marketing initiatives
Improve the product or services offered. Businesses can use market segmentation to identify what does work but more importantly what doesn’t work and alter accordingly
Enable businesses to retain more customers by offering products that appeal to where customers are in their stage of life
Allow a business to grow by upselling on customers who have responded to introductory offers
Enhance business profits by targeting customers who have a propensity to have more disposable income by raising their average selling price

Segment your Target Audience for effective eCommerce Personalization

1. Segmentation by referrer or traffic source

This means where the place where your visitor was prior to landing on your website. An AI-based personalization system can learn which offers work best for visitors from different sites, whether referral sites, social media, direct or from paid link ads.

2. Visitor type

For example, new visitors or returning visitors can be identified in analytics and in personalization systems. This is a commonly used technique for personalization, for example, offering new visitors a discount on the first purchase or creating welcoming rewards for repeat purchasers.

3. Customer information

Customer segments can be either profile based or behavior-based. Behavior-based segments are based on, for example, what users have searched for on current and previous visits or purchase behavior. Profile-based segments are based on what kind of customer they are to the business, for example, VIP, infrequent visitors, first-time visitors. This segmentation allows businesses to upsell, cross-sell and incentivize to buy again.

4. Site engagement duration or times

Examples of this are browsing time or number of pages viewed. In some circumstances, it may be best to deliver personalization to visitors who have engaged with the site for a certain length of time. Audience behavior can also vary based on the day of week or time of day, so audiences visiting at different times can be targeted differently.

5. Content (products) viewed

This is the most common segmentation technique used in retail personalization, based on product categories or individual products viewed. Related products of a similar style can be shown. Given a large number of products (SKUs) many retailers hold, some form of automation rather than a rules-based system is required here.

6. Landing page

This is a slightly different form of content-based segmentation based on where the visitor first arrived on the site, which suggests their initial intent.

7. Event or interaction

Common interactions on an e-commerce site are people who click on add to basket, cart or interact with product information. These can be selectors for product variants such as color or size or reviews. The value in the cart can also be referenced.

8 Technology Trends Enabling the Future of Personalized Customer Journeys (2020)

According to Frost & Sullivan, customer experience will become the key brand differentiator by 2020, edging out both price and product. This means eCommerce personalization is here to stay, and brands who can’t connect with the customer to create satisfying experiences will struggle to remain competitive.

Markets are increasingly becoming saturated with similar, high-quality products at slightly varying price points. It’s no longer enough to offer the cheapest goods or even the best product. Paying attention to how customers interact with your brand both before, during, and after the buying process is critical for a winning strategy.

So how can digital marketers create a highly interactive and satisfactory customer experience for their brands? The answer lies in leveraging the best technologies to build immersive, personalized customer journeys across every channel.

5 Technologies That Are Shaping Personalized Customer Journeys

These eight technology trends enable brands to provide the ultimate personalized experience for the customer.

1. Web Content Management Platforms Facilitate Personalization

“The democratization of capabilities has provided greater agility for marketers and enabled WCM to be formally regarded as key to delivering engaging digital experiences to multiple audiences.” – Mick MacComascaigh and Jim Murphy, Gartner authors

Web content management (WCM) platforms are evolving as the need for personalization influences the software capabilities brands need to implement their customer engagement strategy. Almost all WCMs can automate metadata to optimize content categorization.

Compared to manually categorizing content, which can be ineffective and inaccurate, automating this process closes the gap created when using drop-down lists for tagging, for instance.

2. Augmented Reality Provides an Engaging In-Store Experience

Consumers no longer need to go to a physical location to purchase a product. Retailers today are considering this by using AR technology to provide an immersive experience outside of the store.

This is a key strategy for the future of retail as 71% of consumers say they would shop more frequently at a store that offers augmented reality and 40% would pay more for a product if they can experience it through AR.

Brands like Lacoste are already using AR apps so that customers can try items of clothing through the app to experience how they would look and feel. Other examples of AR technology include in-store AR mirrors that show you wearing a piece of clothing and signage around stores that can connect to your cellphone to pull up reviews of a product.

3. Voice Interactions to Add to the Audiovisual Experience

According to a survey of 500 IT decision-makers, 88% believe that voice technology would give them a competitive advantage when it comes to enhancing the customer experience.

As voice technology becomes more and more functional and engaging, customers won’t think twice about interacting orally with brands through apps. The Starbucks barista app––which allows users to speak orders into their phones––is a prime example of consumer-facing voice technology.

4. Smart Cars Bring the Brand to the Driver

Cars today are no longer pieces of assembled hardware. They are built around sophisticated software that brands can utilize to create an on-the-road experience for customers.

For example, General Motors cars come with a featured called Marketplace on the car screen, through which drivers can place orders from brands like Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. The technology offers consumers both convenience and experience that comes to them, rather than the other way around.

5. Artificial Intelligence Suggests Relevant Data to Customers

AI and machine learning are the difference between a brand that stops at personalizing emails by using the customer name and one that can give customers exactly what they want by offering relevant information.

Perhaps the most powerful example of a brand that uses this technology for maximum advantage is Amazon, which reportedly drives 35% of its sales through its recommendations feature. Artificial intelligence can determine customer behavior by mining through the troves of data generated by their browsing and purchase histories. Machine learning continues to improve this process by using new data to narrow down the customer profile further.

Create Personalized Customer Journeys That Don’t Sacrifice Your Content

The technology certainly exists to enhance brand experiences for customers. But implementing that technology without sacrificing the heart of the experience—your content—will be a tough task if you don’t have a modern, flexible content management system (CMS), such as a headless CMS, in place.

Not only will a headless CMS organize all your cross-channel content in one place, but it can also help you create more engaging personalized customer journeys.

The Holiday Email Marketing 2020

The holiday season is one of the busiest and most lucrative times of the year for many businesses. Last year, holiday retail sales climbed 4%, which led to $658.3 billion in sales, according to the National Retail Federation. With more people buying online, holiday shopping starts earlier and earlier. Start planning your holiday email marketing now to take advantage of this trend.

Why email makes the best holiday marketing tool

Holidays—no matter what time of the year—provide an excellent opportunity to reach out to not only current subscribers, but to help generate even more leads by promoting the need to “share” the value you offer to your subscriber’s family and friends.

Emails are made for our mobile world

Your subscribers rely on their smartphones and tablets for all kinds of information, and research shows a growing number of consumers are doing their holiday shopping on mobile devices. In the past four years, purchases made on mobile devices jumped from 3.4% to 36.7%, according to a report by Castor. In addition, a whopping 76% of Black Friday emails and 63% of Cyber Monday emails were opened on a mobile device, according to Movable Ink. In this busy season, we can help you keep your customers up to date and purchasing with our mobile-ready email templates.

Emails offer instant buying options

Research shows 41% of retailers will use “Buy Now” buttons in their email marketing, making it extremely simple for subscribers to make a purchase. By using a call-to-action button in your email, you can highlight a gift, a special offer, or even an event that a subscriber can buy in a matter of a couple of clicks. Keep in mind your customers are just as busy as you are during this time of year, and anything that can speed up their holiday shopping will benefit them, and your business.

Emails can support all of your campaigns

Businesses can use email to promote sales, invite subscribers to holiday events, showcase unique gift ideas or even gift guides—the list is endless. It allows business owners to reach out to customers regularly and stimulate sales throughout the season. Email can also support other marketing initiatives, such as social media sales, contests, and reward programs.

Automation and personalization makes email more effective and efficient

The holidays are busy in every way, so put marketing automation to use by automating a variety of your email campaigns, from welcome emails to offers and reminders. To get ideas, check out these 9 inspiring examples that use marketing automation. Additionally, you can segment your emails to create personalized messages, as personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates.

Top 10 Best Ecommerce Platforms in 2019

When it comes to choosing software for your eCommerce store, the possibilities are endless. There are a ton of factors to consider, including:

Should you sell on a marketplace or an eCommerce platform — or both?
Which features and tools do you need? Which can you safely pass up?
Can your chosen technology support your current sales volume, as well as growth as your business scales?
What’s your technology budget?

In this article, we’ll focus on eCommerce platforms in particular. An eCommerce platform is software that allows businesses to launch, host, and manage their online store.

While different eCommerce platforms offer different features, all of them give merchants the opportunity to build a branded online storefront to sell their products.

We’ve reviewed the top 10 options on the market today to help you figure out which is the best fit for your business.

Best Ecommerce Platforms

Different businesses have different needs depending on their business model, sales volume, and a variety of other factors.

Here are the top 10 eCommerce platforms available to online sellers in 2019.

1. Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world, in part because of how simple it is to quickly launch a new store. This makes Shopify particularly popular with smaller eCommerce brands doing a lower order volume.

Depending on added features and order volume, Shopify’s monthly pricing can range from $29 to $299. Despite limited customization options, Shopify is a great option for SMB eCommerce merchants.

2. Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is Shopify’s enterprise eCommerce solution tailored to merchants who have outgrown their original Shopify setup and need more advanced features and customization options. Unlike Shopify, Shopify Plus also allows merchants to create a customized, responsive checkout experience.

Pricing depends on a variety of factors, including order volume, technology, design, and customization. Shopify Plus also provides dedicated account managers, which can be a huge advantage for merchants with a more complex setup.

While more expensive than other options, Shopify Plus can be a great choice for scaling enterprise businesses.

3. BigCommerce

With a wide variety of built-in features and customization options, BigCommerce appeals to both enterprise-level eCommerce merchants like Toyota and Natori and those who are just starting out.

Features include industry-leading uptime, advanced security, payment and order fulfillment partnerships, and a wide variety of built-in integrations with leading eCommerce apps.

BigCommerce can be an expensive option with a bit of a steep learning curve, but it’s popular for a reason — it offers a full-fledged store without complex backend hurdles, making it a great choice for a wide variety of merchants.

4. Magento

Magento is tailored mainly to enterprise-level eCommerce businesses. As an open-source eCommerce platform, Magento requires programming and developer resources, creating a higher barrier to entry than plug-and-play platforms like Shopify.

That said, Magento offers a wide variety of features for enterprise sellers, including the ability to offer discounts, support recurring payments, unlimited product listings, and much more.

The basic version of Magento is free, but the enterprise version can cost upwards of $20,000 annually. For large online stores, Magento can be a great choice, but we don’t recommend it for small or midsize businesses with smaller product catalogs.

5. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that allows eCommerce merchants to turn their WordPress sites into online stores.

One of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world, WooCommerce includes its own secure payment processor and shopping cart. The open-source platform can be a great option for smaller brands with WordPress development resources on-hand.

WooCommerce is one of the only free eCommerce platforms, though it costs additional money to completely integrate the shopping cart.

If you expect your business to scale quickly, consider choosing a different platform — WooCommerce can slow down as additional customers and products are added to your store.

6. Squarespace

Squarespace is known for sleek drag-and-drop templates that make it easy to build beautiful websites. On top of that, they offer many of the tools and features needed to build an eCommerce store. While Squarespace is popular with artists and creative with smaller product catalogs, they offer unlimited product listings, including multiple variants and SKUs.

They also support recurring payments and subscriptions, marketing tools for abandoned cart recovery, and a variety of other more advanced features. Pricing starting at $18/month make it a great and affordable tool for growing eCommerce brands.

7. Wix

Wix is one of the most basic eCommerce platforms, making it great for brand new online stores. With 72 free themes and super simple setup, Wix is a no-frills option that offers just enough features for small sellers to get started, but can’t necessarily scale alongside fast-growing stores. Wix’s online store hosting is also one of the most affordable eCommerce platforms, starting at just $20/month.

8. Big Cartel

Big Cartel is an eCommerce platform tailored to artists looking to sell their work. Merchants can customize one of Big Cartel’s free themes or code their own unique design.

Other features include the ability to use a custom domain, inventory tracking, real-time sales stats, and the option to add promos and discounts to certain items.

Monthly pricing is based on how many products a merchant lists, starting at a free membership for 5 products or fewer and going up to $29.99/month for 300 listed products.

With limited features and scalability, Big Cartel is a good choice for creative merchants with a smaller product catalog.

9. Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware)

Formerly known as Demandware, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based eCommerce platform tailored to B2C retailers.

As part of the Salesforce product suite, Commerce Cloud integrates with a range of other CRM and marketing services, making it a great choice for enterprise-level businesses that rely on Salesforce’s other products.

Other features include order management, AI and personalization, and globalization options for international businesses.

Commerce Cloud can handle high volumes of traffic and sales, but with a high price tag and complex technological requirements, it’s a poor fit for smaller brands just getting started selling online.

10. Volusion

Last but not least, Volusion is a smaller eCommerce platform aimed at newer eCommerce sellers. Volusion offers a variety of pricing tiers, making cheaper for smaller merchants and more expensive as you grow.

All tiers allow discount code creation, a wide variety of free themes, and in-site blogging capabilities. However, its integrations and app options are limited, making it more of a standalone tool.

Volusion’s tiered pricing ranges from $14/month for its most basic “mini” plan to $135 for its “premium” level.

Final Thoughts

Overall, there’s no one-size-fits-all eCommerce solution for every online store. Consider your business’s needs, sales volume, and potential future growth when picking an eCommerce platform. We hope the list above helps you make the best decision for your business.

Source: cpcstrategy

8 Of The Best Ecommerce Metrics To Track And Grow Your Business

The most successful of the eCommerce stores make decisions backed by data. They always know the current scenario of their online store’s performance at all times which enables them to grow and take on competitors.

There are loads of data matrices that you can track, but only a few of them are actually be used as actionable insights to help you grow.

Let’s talk about the most important eCommerce metrics.

The most important eCommerce metrics

These are the 8 most important metrics every eCommerce store should track.

1. Sales conversion rate

Your conversion rate, quite simply, is the percentage of visitors who make a purchase. This is the metric you’ll worry about the most—that’s why it’s first on this list.

According to Marketing Sherpa, a fair conversion rate for eCommerce stores is between one and five percent.

Most analytics tools will tell you the conversion rate, but you can find it manually by dividing the number of people who bought a product by the total number of visitors.

2. Email opt-ins

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools eCommerce stores have to drive repeat business. It delivers a 4,400 percent ROI. That’s $44 for every $1 spent. Plus, your mailing list doesn’t make you dependent on another platform (like Facebook or Google) to drive traffic.

Ideally, you want to get as many people on your email list as possible, even if they don’t buy your products. So it’s important to track your total opt-ins and your opt-ins by source. That is, you want to know the individual opt-in rates of every form on your website.

You can track email opt-ins two ways:

Use the built-in analytics in your email marketing tool
Set up a conversion goal in Google Analytics to track your opt-in’s “thank you” page

3. Customer lifetime value

Your customer lifetime value is a metric of the total you earn from a typical customer over the course of their life. If you earn $25 over six transactions from a typical customer throughout their life, your CLV is $150. (You’ll have to subtract your acquisition costs, but we’ll get to that in a moment.)

Knowing your customer lifetime value tells you how much you can spend to acquire a customer and how far you should go to retain them.

4. Customer acquisition cost

Naturally, it costs something to acquire a new customer. This value is called your customer acquisition cost.

In order to make money, your customer acquisition cost needs to be less than your customer lifetime value. Ideally, your acquisition cost should be less than your average order value so you make money off every new customer.

5. Revenue by traffic source

In our post on traffic quality, we talked about how all traffic isn’t equal. Some traffic sources send visitors who are more likely to become customers. It’s important to stop spending cash on sources that don’t work well or don’t work at all, and invest that money in sources that do work.

6. Average order value

Your average order value is, quite simply, the average value of each purchase. To discover yours, divide the total value of all sales by the numbers of carts.

Naturally, you want customers to spend as much as possible so you earn as much as possible. You need to know your average order value so you can find ways to raise it.

How do you drive this metric up?

Bundle products together so the customer gets a slight discount on the products as opposed to buying them separately.
Upsell your customer’s additional features or premium versions of your products.
Recommend products that complement their purchases.
Offer free shipping for higher total purchases. (E.g., If your AOV is $54, offer free shipping at $60 to tempt your customers to spend more.)

7. Shopping cart abandonment rate

This metric is the percentage of shoppers who add items to their shopping cart, but then leave your store without making a purchase. Nearly 70 percent of shoppers abandon their carts, but some of that revenue is recoverable, so it’s important to lower your abandonment rate as much as possible.

8. Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score is a simple survey that measures your customers’ satisfaction with your brand and products. It asks two questions:

How likely are you to recommend us to a friend? (Scale of one through 10.)
Can you tell us why you responded with that number?

Conclusion

Any store, small or large, should be paying attention to these metrics. As we noted initially, statistical significance plays a part in whether you can accurately measure changes in these metrics. Stores with smaller data sets should focus on improving non-rate metrics to start, like AOV, lifetime value, and customer acquisition costs. As your store grows to process a higher volume of orders and therefore has more data points, you’ll be able to more accurately track and influence change on other metrics, like conversion rate, to make the best decisions for your store.

Source: Jilt

The Importance of eCommerce Analytics

The Digital marketing space is ever-changing because new technologies, services, and tactics gain popularity and become the new standard. eCommerce businesses are one of the few affected by these changes. In order for them to survive, they need to be able to make better decisions faster. This is where analytics comes into play.

Ecommerce analytics simply refers to any tool or strategy designed to analyze large amounts of data in order to produce actionable insights. Because it exists in an almost entirely virtual space, eCommerce generates complex, comprehensive datasets — particularly those related to client behavior.

Importance of Ecommerce Analytics

Grow your customer base with SEO, SEM, and email campaign insights.

Do you know that almost 40% of online shoppers begin their shopping experience by performing an online search? As a result, any eCommerce business that is not focusing on SEO is missing out on a large number of consumers. Effective SEO starts with research into search volumes, competitor analysis, and searcher result. It also includes understanding SERP rankings, creating better meta tags, developing better site maps, and user-friendly URLs. There are a lot of SEO analytic tools that can help you accomplish these goals, but we recommend looking for those that include keyword planning, ranking trackers, and the ability to track bounce rates and conversions.

SEO should not be your only focus on new customer acquisition. Paid search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns can edge you ahead of the competition and help you win more shoppers. To succeed in this area, you will need analytic tools that measure search volume, cost per click (CPC), average ranking position, click-through rate (CTR), and again, bounce and conversion rates.

Reaching new customers is important, but holding onto them is crucial.

Acquiring new customers may give your business an extra edge, but customer retention is truly the backbone of your success. According to experts, 80% of future revenue will come from 20% of your existing clients. Therefore, it is important to focus on customer loyalty management, repeat business, and overall customer satisfaction.

In order to understand and cultivate customer relationships — and really tap into that valuable 20% — consider tracking KPIs like overall lifetime value, returning visitors, purchasing behavior, social shares, subscription renewals, and upgrades. Beyond click tracking, conversion tracking, and social media tracking tools, we recommend using a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

Optimize your website with data-driven insights.

Effective website design, UX optimization, and streamlined checkout flows help you connect shoppers to products and boost conversion rates, but how do you know what’s working and what’s not? Ecommerce analytics can provide you with data-driven insights into how shoppers interact with your site — both the good and the bad. These insights take the guesswork and subjectivity out of website optimization and uncover opportunities for improvement and innovation.

Key focus areas include a user-friendly checkout flow, optimal product presentation and recommendations, and overall usability. To truly maximize the effectiveness of these areas, we recommend tools that enable conversion rate optimization (CRO) testing, A/B and multivariate landing page testing, heat mapping, click tracking, visitor recording, and more.

Don’t be afraid to talk directly with your customers.

In many ways, there is no substitute for the oldest form of customer data: direct feedback. You can collect as much data as you want — and use it effectively — but if you are not listening to what your customers are saying, you will have a hard time giving them what they are looking for — and they may end up going elsewhere to find it. Directly engage with your users across all touchpoints with handy feedback tools like the voice of the customer (VOC) online surveys, live chat, review programs, and social media trackers.

Capture customer data no matter how or where they shop.

As the lines continue to blur between shopping channels, brands are turning to cloud-based unified commerce to deliver seamless, holistic customer journeys across every touchpoint — mobile, social, web, and store. Ecommerce analytics must also evolve to track shoppers wherever they may be, whether they are purchasing a product on Instagram, discovering a brand on their phone, or cashing in a gift card at a pop-up shop. We recommend adopting tools that integrate with your unified commerce platform, and that can keep up with the rapidly evolving customer journey.

Source: Salesforce