Ultimate Guide: Marketing Automation for eCommerce

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When your business is growing, to manage 1:1 connections with customers using the manual tools can be a complicated approach.

That’s when Marketing Automation comes in handy.

Acceptance and adoption of automation technology are rising at an astounding rate.

In 2020, marketing automation is constantly evolving. When leveraged successfully, it helps in generating more revenue, and driving traffic, and can help to boost your business to the top level by effectively rationally engaging with all your customers and steering them through your sales funnel.

However, for many new ventures to well-established companies marketing automation doesn’t work in their favor. The reason behind this failure is not because of any fault in the working systems of the automation tool, instead, they lack a clear marketing vision for their business.

So, to successfully incorporate automation in your marketing system you must have an in-depth understanding of what to expect from the automation, what you want to achieve from it, and what should be the outcome.

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What is Marketing Automation?

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Marketing automation software is an advanced platform developed to help marketers in various ways such as capture customers, nurture them further down the funnel, and analyze customer behavior and campaign performance

One of its fundamental objectives is to deliver the right content, at the right time, to the right customers, in return nurturing their trust for the brand. It is an essential resource for B2C and B2B marketers who aspire to grow their business productivity and want to have the ability to create a seamless cross-channel marketing journey to enhance customer engagement.

Marketing automation for eCommerce includes several categories of functionality such as email, social media, multi-channel marketing, analytics, and many others. 

Marketing automation allows marketers to streamline, automate, and evaluate their tasks and workflows and build relationships with customers across different channels (It encompasses all channels, from social media to direct mail) and provides them a notable customer experience despite their differing interests or needs. 

After customer segmentation is done, marketing automation offers you a great chance to establish more meaningful relationships with your customers by delivering customers with content that’s relevant to their interests.

Marketing automation withdraws the fuss from your marketing strategy and drives a much easier approach to generate leads, build customer relationships, enhance conversions at scale, and grow into a more robust brand. 

Now, let’s dig deeper into what recent Statistics reveal about marketing automation performance in the eCommerce industry.

Marketing Automation Statistics

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Take into account the latest statistics research that can provide you an ideal insight into the automation platform.

  • 51% of brands on average are currently using marketing automation and around 58% of eCommerce brands are planning to adopt automation technology. (Emailmonday)
  • “It’s very important,” as per 91% of users who have implemented marketing automation in their overall online marketing efforts (Demand Gen Report).
  • 80% of the time saving on arranging client appointments or meeting with an automated tool. (Google Books)
  • Increasing lead generation is the most important strategic goal of marketing automation according to 61% of surveyed marketers. (SocialMediaToday)
  • Marketing automation is one of the fastest-growing software industries; it’s currently worth 6.1 billion dollars and predicted to double in size by 2023 (SharpSpring)
  • By 2023, the disbursement of marketing automation tools is expected to reach $25.1 billion annually. (Martech Today)
  • Average 451% increase in qualified leads for the businesses that implemented marketing automation experience. (Business2Community)
  • Around 79% of high-performing companies have been using automation in their marketing strategy. (Venture Harbour)
  • Marketing automation per week search has increased nearly three times more over the past five years. (Google Trends)
  • 4 of 5 successful companies believe that the key contributor to their marketing success is automation. (Lenskold Group)
  • Open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate are the most widely-used metrics to measure return on investment with marketing automation. (Pepper)
  • The marketing automation technology is currently used in over 480,000 websites. (Bold Digital)
  • Marketing automation improved business productivity by an average of 20 percent. (Nucleus)
  • With automation in your social posts and ads, you save over 6 hours per week. (GainApp)
  • 250% on the average increase in reply rate by automating your outreach and follow up emails. (Google Books)

When Do You Need Marketing Automation?

To give you an overview of what automation can do for you in your marketing strategy. Here’s a quick test for you and you have to answer honestly:

  • Can you determine, monitor, and engage each buyer online?
  • Can you check in a single glimpse the customer list and prioritize them based on their preferences?
  • Are you screening customers based on engagement level and interest?
  • Can you estimate the revenue of each of your eCommerce marketing campaigns?
  • Can you do all of these things without investing your whole productive day?

No, right? but If you had marketing automation, It could have been possible.

For an elaborative discussion on this let’s take a look at a few major challenges that your company is facing without advanced automation technology. 

Red Flags – Your Company Need Marketing Automation

There are myriad challenges across the marketing channels that marketers constantly juggle to conquer every day such as emails, blog posts, social media, ad campaigns, and direct mail and it’s practically impossible to keep track of all your communications manually, thus automation is required.

Marketing automation permits you to not only automate your marketing actions but also supports your sales and CRM systems.

Now, the major question is how do you know when your business is ready for marketing automation?

For that consider the following signs you may notice when it is time to embrace the marketing automation revolution.

Your Sales Cycle Is Too Long

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A Sales cycle is the sequence of predictable phases required to sell a product or a service. It is the time between making the first touchpoint to closing the deal.

In today’s time mostly the sales cycle is driven by buyers who have already decided what they want to purchase and from whom. That can make your cycle long and complicated.

Other times without automation the sales cycle is longer so there will be more touchpoints then you’ll need. This turns into a more time-consuming process as soon as the customers get closer to completing an order payment.

With automation tools, the sales cycle will become shorter and easier resulting in huge profits.

Outdated CRM System

If your CRM lacks effective sales reporting and functionality, you’re hindering not only your marketing management but also top management’s ability to make informed decisions based on projected profitability. 

A huge number of outdated CRM systems function as a digital address book when it lacks automation workflow capabilities.

Without automated CRM tasks, sooner managing your customer base will become more difficult. Having an efficient CRM in place is best for task management and sales forecasting, and if you’re searching for a solution that offers supreme segmentation capabilities, along with an innovative way to identify and reach out to customers, then the best choice for you is marketing automation.

Leads Falling Through The Cracks

Nurturing unengaged customers without automation can be challenging.

If you can’t keep your customers engaged with activities and stay in front of these leads, your competitors will set foot in. On the other hand, correctly nurturing your leads, can increase both conversions and revenue. 

A nurtured lead is always beneficial according to recent research as 47% larger purchases are done by them as compared to non-nurtured leads. 

With the right automation tools, you can deliver relevant content based on how your leads interact with your website, social media pages, or marketing emails. When leads are finally ready to buy, there’s an automated message waiting for them.

The Need For More Customer Data

There are many skilled marketers but still cannot manage more than a few dozen customers without letting things slip through the gaps. And to build a profitable and growing business you need more than a few dozen contacts.

Also, you might wish to segment and target both existing and potential customers, but don’t have the right data to do so. For instance, apart from first name and last name or email address you’re going to need more customer data to properly handle the business. 

Segmenting leads with marketing automation can have a big and favorable impact on your marketing strategy.

With a marketing automation system set up, you can not only capture more leads through your website, segment your list, target your messaging but can also provide you with data such as location information, job titles, and makes that data more feasible.

Lack of ROI Insights

ROI (Return on Investment) is a simple ratio of the gain or loss from an investment relative to its cost.

Now drawing revenue numbers might not be a problem, but the main issue arrives when you’re trying to identify which campaigns have the most significant ROI, that moment you have no idea what to do and where to look. 

In such cases, Marketing automation provides invaluable insight into your marketing ROI.

Struggle In Measuring Consumer Interest 

Customer loyalty is paramount to a long and productive business relationship.

The prime element in customer loyalty is customer happiness.

Prioritizing customer interest and contentment based on the likelihood to convert can be challenging as the concept of customer happiness is complex and encompasses many different factors. It’s not as direct as measuring revenue or growth.

It might at times feel impossible to analyze just how interested potential customers are in your brand or whether they’re even a right fit customer for the product or not. 

But by implementing automation efficiently in your marketing strategy, you can achieve customer database insights and find out in advance how the outcome might look.

Difficult To Reach Your Target Audience

To stand out in the digital age it is most important to understand who your best-fit customers are and where they are online. If you try to lure all the visitors every time, then you might miss the potential customers who may decline your business and favor other brands who understand their specific needs.

Automation software is designed to help you identify and serve ideal buyers of your products and services. By tracking and reporting on the behavior of your website visitors, email responses, and customer purchases, you can begin segmenting the target audience more effectively.

Myths About Marketing Automation

Gone are the days where you have to keep in mind to follow up with a customer, or websites that offer the same products to every visitor irrespective of how they arrived on the page and this is all possible with Automation.

Automating your marketing campaigns has become a positive approach but it’s still important to understand what is true and what is not about the process due to a few myths surrounding the idea so you must know what to expect.

Myth #1: Marketing Automation Is Just For Email

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels as well as one of the easiest operations to automate but automated marketing is used across several channels, not just email. Other activities such as social media, lead generation, management activities, landing pages, and others can all also be automated to varying degrees.

Automation reaches and improves nearly every comprehensive metric of your marketing.. not just email marketing.

Don’t limit your ambitions to just email marketing—have conversations with your customers everywhere they interact with your brand, especially your web site, through contextual sign-up forms.

Myth #2: Once A Sale Is Closed, The Automated Marketing Process Is Over

Lead generation marketing aims to turn new visitors into customers and automated marketing is more than just closing the first sale. There are other opportunities as well such as upsells, cross-sells, and future engagement leading to repeat business.

Marketing automation is setting up a new era of marketing where the objective is less about the execution of the basics and more about thinking creatively. 

Myth #3: Marketing Automation As A Form Of Spam

Spam is many times considered as a message that appears “without warning” in your inbox. But in reality, irrelevancy is what spam is based on. If the content you’re sending to your targeted audience doesn’t reach them in a personalized way, it most likely isn’t worth sending at all.

Marketing automation permits you to share relevant content and information to your audience based on their preferences and interests, and even how they got to know about your business. 

Automation provides an ability to engage with potential customers conversationally while steering them progressively through the customer lifecycle.

So it’s time to dismiss the myths and embrace the challenge.

Must-have For All eCommerce Brands

For retailers, automation means more chances to get in front of the right consumers for higher conversion rates and increased revenue. Now let’s focus on how precisely can marketing automation platforms help you do more with less?

Scale Down Cart Abandonment Rates

The major downturn for any eCommerce business is the customer abandoning the cart before making any purchase.

According to a study in 2017, the average abandoned cart rate is around 79%.

Marketing Automation aids cart abandonment recovery by automatically sending triggered emails to those who left unpurchased items in their cart. 

It can also help in identifying how long after logout to send reminder emails, and even share compelling subject lines to ensure that customers open your emails.

Boost Email Open Rates

eCommerce business can enhance overall open rates of email by utilizing A/B testing across all email elements. 

The historical consumer data is stored by Automation tools, which, in turn, boost the optimization of email open rates. 

For the data-driven results,  it ensures an email is populated with the right content and shared with the audience at the right time.

Increase Revenue Through Up-sells

These days, every second email comprises a section that exhibits “others also bought” or “similar products customers viewed.”

Such recommendation emails are powerful personalization components that are automated and tailored as per each consumer’s buying preferences or earlier buying history.

Unlike the traditional manual approach, the right automation in place can analyze consumer purchase data while simultaneously sending out up-sell emails that are far more likely to drive conversions.

Automate Customer Loyalty Programs

Loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much as a first purchase (Annex cloud)

With Automation solutions, you can register customer loyalty information and share real-time, customized offers. and incentives through multiple channels.

Loyalty programs can also help scale down customer churn, produce advocates, and expand a true culture of retention.

Set Off Email Offers

Marketing automation is a key composed of actions and results.

Triggered email campaigns are a response of Consumers’ actions, which then make more progress and plan an around the clock engagement between customer and brand. 

Companies incorporating marketing automation notice a huge shift in traffic, more buyers, and urge greater retention and loyalty.

Along with personalization, marketing automation engages existing and potential customers through highly relevant content that, in turn, converts them into loyal customers.

Consistency

Sharing relevant information to every individual with the traditional approach can be time-consuming.

But with the right marketing automation tool, you can easily relax knowing that your online customers will receive the same, and consistent, experience based on their actions.

When a visitor signs up for your brand subscription, you can set up an automatic workflow that sends a welcome email to sharing a follow-up offer. This is all done on its own by marketing automation that manually sends out an email to your customer database.

It always ensures that regardless of when a visitor jumps into a workflow, they’ll always get optimized messaging.

By far we know why incorporating marketing automation in your marketing strategy is importation. Now let me walk you through another relevant section.

How To Use Marketing Automation In eCommerce

If you’re new and unfamiliar with automated campaigns set up, then it might take you some time to understand where you should start.

Fortunately, automated market campaigns have become so well-known that your efforts will make the most difference right away.

Welcome New Leads And Align Them To Your Brand

An automated Welcome series takes care of all the new email contacts. The welcome series allows you to set the stage for your new contact while increasing engagement and sales at the same time.

It gives you a great opportunity to make a remarkable first impression on a new customer or subscriber. 

If done properly, your recipient will be much more likely to open the rest of your emails in the future. On the other hand, if failed to impress, the odds of seeing a high-open rate from this recipient will drop gradually.

Before sharing the welcome mail, always think about the journey that your customers go through when they’re introduced to your brand, and then craft a welcome series to ensure they stay engaged.

Win Back Lost Sales

To compete, every marketer must lead in the revenue rates.

But the increasing eCommerce abandoned carts have become a huge problem, it is stealing away the store revenue that you’ve worked so hard to earn.

Look at the current breakdown of shopping cart abandonment rates of each device:

  • Desktop Computers: 73.1%
  • Tablets: 80.7%
  • Mobile Devices: 85.6%

This is worse as the problem grows more as the screen size of the user shrinks. 

To overpower this situation, implementing automated abandoned cart email can do wonders for your business.

Re-engage Inactive Customers

Think of a scenario where a customer is satisfied with his purchase, but can you guarantee that the customer will be a source of returning business. They may sign up for your eCommerce services but never really give it much attention 

That moment an automated re-engagement campaign can be such a robust asset. 

With an automated email even if someone is no longer interested then you can re-engage by offering an exclusive deal.  On the flip side, it could also increase the lifetime value of a customer who would have otherwise never contributed more to your revenues.

Collect Feedback

Feedback helps to evaluate customer reviews about the product and services to improve the company action plan.

 According to a survey, positive ratings and reviews increase eCommerce conversion rates. if you are not actively asking your customers to review their purchases, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table. 

With marketing automation, the urge for product reviews is easier with customers. Many automation tools enable you to automate the feedback collection process.

Now we know how to use automation but in this dog-eat-dog market, opting for the correct marketing software is essential to drive traffic and higher conversion rate. 

How To Select The Right Marketing Automation Software

In the burgeoning competition, selecting a best-fit marketing automation tool isn’t an easy task. 

Though It’s awe-inspiring to know that there are many tools and resources out there to offer marketing solutions. 

To give you better guidance, Consider the below five must-have functions and features to look for in a tool. 

1. Figure Out What You Need

Begin this process by asking a few business-related questions to yourself. For instance, what are your business goals? Which marketing activities are you performing currently? Which new strategies do you want to implement in the future? All of these are things you should keep in mind when selecting an automation software.

Now, figure out what you need to be related to your marketing automation software tool then use these to evaluate your options. Things you may want to consider include:

  • Blogging
  • Landing pages
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Forms 
  • Website page
  • SEO and Keywords 
  • Reporting 

2. Do Your Research 

According to Einstein, If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Market research is an important component when you’re looking for an automation tool

For a clear understanding, do a simple Google search for “Marketing automation tools” or for far better results search something like, “the best marketing automation tools available.” 

Some of the biggest players in the game right now are Wigzo, Marketo, and Pardot, and besides these, there are lots of other options as well for small businesses such as Mailchimp.

In the current digital age, our lives are driven by technology and, marketing automation is on a mission to support us.

Small businesses and marketers who are trying to climb higher don’t have the time to relax and send out one-on-one messages anymore. They require tools that can run and service their customers even when they are away from their system and Marketing automation can make it possible for them.

Among all the software, to easily streamline your marketing functions you must try Wigzo, an omnichannel marketing automation tool to propel your business to the top level.

3. Start a Free Trial

Many of the marketing automation tools mentioned above also offer a free Trial and trust me, you should take advantage of it. 

A free trial will shed a light on how the tool works and overview of do’s and don’ts before you invest.

Once you’ve got a free demo set up, integrate it into your business. Observe it and check if it’s worth investing in or not.

4. Connect With Someone From Their Team

Even if you don’t have many questions to ask about the tool, consider making the connection with a representative on their team.

Inform them what your goals are and what you’ve done with the tool thus far. 

With this connection, they might be able to mention to you if there’s a noteworthy feature you might be missing. 

5. Get Started!

After the conversation and trial If you think you have found a best-fit marketing automation tool that addresses all your needs and can enhance your business growth, then step up before it’s late. 

If you will delay the process, you not only miss great opportunities to improve your productivity but also marketing performance and an increase in your ROI.

If you want to be successful and want to be the leading business then choosing marketing automation tools is the best solution for you as sooner it will be the future of marketing. 

Cost of eCommerce Marketing Automation?

The cost of marketing automation depends on myriad factors.

Costs might differ based on the number of leads in your database, the campaigns you need to run. If you’re a new venture that just needs automated email campaigns, there are many platforms that can get you started with a low price at $10 to $20 a month. But as you grow your business the figure can go up to hundreds of dollars per month, depending on what all features you need.

Also, if you’re looking for the finest forms of marketing automation such as dynamic content, lead scoring, and nurturing, then you’ll need more powerful solutions that can do more than email marketing. Examples of such software providers include Wigzo, HubSpot, and Pardot.

Deciding on a Marketing Automation Platform

Once you’ve determined your choices, it’s time to dive straight into identifying which marketing automation solution is right for you. Here are a few questions you should ask:

How do I get set up?

Find a solution provider that helps you understand the process of getting up and running. In answering this question, you should be able to identify what you need to do on your end to set up the system.

For many good reasons, the details will differ from one solution to the next. Simpler platforms like Wigzo, for example, are far easier to set up compared to other solutions like Marketo.

How long does the implementation process take?

Plan a setup duration that will allow you to set aside time for incorporating the solution. Be sure to identify if the process requires some marketing downtime. In this case, you’ll need to ensure that you don’t have any critical campaigns coming while you’re getting up and moving.

How will your platform handle it?

This is a great question to ask your sales team as it gives you insights into what the system can do. Craft a marketing campaign or scenario and ask your vendor how the platform would handle it. This step is necessary if you’re planning to implement complex campaigns on different channels.

What features are on your roadmap?

If you want your system to improve and develop with you, it’s always important to learn about any offerings they have in the queue. Moreover, asking this question will help you determine if the platform is aligned with your marketing plans for the future. 

Start with Wigzo Marketing Automation Platform

Wigzo Has made Omnichannel marketing automation easy. Wigzo is the only personalized customer experience solution offering marketing automation, personalization, analytics, and adverts specialized for eCommerce.

Integrate Multiple Channels using a Single Platform

Provide your customers with a personalized experience by reaching them on their preferred channels, all while using a single tool. Wigzo allows eCommerce marketers to blend Email, SMS, and push notifications into their automation workflows together so they can drive more sales by staying up-to-date.

Time-saving Pre-built Workflows

Wigzo has pre-built automation workflows available that will be already in your account. With these automation workflows, it will take a few minutes to set up your shopping cart abandonment, shipping details, order confirmation, and welcome email series.

On-site Personalization 

Wigzo has a great channel to show your visitors that you’re paying attention to them and want them to be satisfied i.e. an on-site exit pop-up on your website that can entice viewers with one last offer before they exit. 

Interesting, isn’t it?

With automation, you can easily track the user’s mouse, and if they seem to be getting close to leaving the page, a pop-up will appear on screen that encourages them to sign up for your email list or perhaps offers them an exclusive timed discount.

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is one of the most powerful and preferred channels. 

With Automated SMS marketing, you can sell more with pre-built SMS flows, including a Welcome message, coupon reminder, abandoned cart, and customer reactivation.

Email Marketing

Personalized email marketing is one of the best ways to individually reach each of the subscribers.

Engage your audience with ready‑made email automation or customize your own to reach the right person at the right moment.

With this automation, you can deliver personalized emails and trigger them at the right moment with the right content

You can also build segmented data of email subscribers dividing them based on how often they indulge, the type of products they purchase, and much more.

Trigger Personalized Messages

With Wigzo you can communicate with customers when they most expect it through rule-based triggers. Trigger push notifications or email messages based on real-time user behavior, like abandoning a shopping cart or lack of activity shown in the past week.

You can also deliver relevant emails in time when your customers are most likely to engage. You can shut the conversion loop by automatically sending emails when visitors have stopped browsing or abandoned their carts.

Final Thoughts

As marketing automation has the potential to be the future trend, it can be a real game-changer for eCommerce businesses.

Marketing automation is a big deal when it comes to automating essential yet routine aspects of marketing.

It aids you to score, sort, and nurture leads throughout the sales cycle, uplifting conversions by targeting customers with the highest purchasing potential. Implementing the right marketing automation solution can do marvels for your eCommerce company.

With an ongoing cycle of testing, refinement, and feedback, marketing automation aims to provide workflows that are always changing and growing for the utmost impact and effectiveness. 

The automation tools help you take a massive jump forward in terms of efficiency, productivity, and revenue generation while your team meanwhile gets to focus on strategy, creativity, and content.

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Rashi Kundra

Rashi Kundra

Rashi is a literature graduate from Delhi University. She is a content writer at Wigzo. In her spare time, you will find her meditating while grooving on EDM beats.

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