ECOMMERCE MARKETING AUTOMATION

Transcription

1 ECOMMERCE MARKETING AUTOMATION How to Use Automation and Analytics to Predict Consumer Behavior and Increase ecommerce Sales A publication of Learn more about HubSpot s all-in-one inbound marketing software at /ecomm

2 ECOMMERCE MARKETING AUTOMATION By Meghan Keaney Anderson Marketing RELATED RESOURCES Death by Marketing Automation Rebooting Your Ecommerce Marketing in the Social Media Age HubSpot s ecommerce Hub

3 Table of Contents Introduction... 5 Shopping Cart Fetchback: Understanding customer hesitations...7 Free Shipping or Returns: Understanding customer motivations. 9 Time to Reorder: Understanding customer timelines...12 Rave Reviews: Rewarding brand advocates and driving repeat sales..15 Conclusion. 18

4 5 Introduction 1

5 6 HOW TO USE MARKETING AUTOMATION AND ANALYTICS TO PREDICT CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND DRIVE SALES Think for a moment about how you navigate websites. For most customers, online shopping is not a linear process. Purchase decisions today are increasingly made over time and after a number of different touch points. Customers may compare products reviews, check out the shipping page, or leave and come back after an offer. The old way of marketing to these consumers was to send them a barrage of direct mail and e-communications in the hopes of breaking through. Today s marketing, however, has to be more targeted and customer-driven. Getting found by customers and guiding their decision process now relies much more on being able to pick up on customer cues and deliver targeted, well-timed communications. This ebook will provide you with tips on how to leverage analytics and marketing automation to help prospects along in their buying cycle and drive brand loyalty and repeat purchases. Topics covered will include: I. Shopping Cart Fetchback: Understanding customer hesitations II. Free Shipping or Returns: Understanding customer motivations III. Time to Reorder: Understanding customer timelines IV. Rave Reviews: Rewarding brand advocates and driving repeat sales

6 7 Shopping Cart Fetchback 2

7 8 SHOPPING CART FETCHBACK UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER HESITATIONS The average delay between the first visit to an online retailer site and the final purchase is 33 hours and 54 minutes. 1 A lot can go wrong in that decision window. A 2010 Forrester Research survey reported that 88% of online shoppers have abandoned their shopping carts at one point or another. 2 So what is it that makes consumers stall or abandon their purchase all together? The chart below, based on data from Forrester survey, reveals the top reasons given for cart abandonment. Survey respondents were permitted to select multiple reasons. Top reasons given for abandoning carts (in %) Shipping was too high Not ready to buy Price too high Wanted to compare with other products Put in cart for later The good news is that cart abandonment is often just the beginning of the customer relationship. An econsultancy survey recently found that 84% of companies that sent s targeting cart abandonment saw an increase in conversion. 3 This is one simple step that goes a long way. Marketing automation tools have made these campaigns (often called shopping cart fetchback campaigns ) incredibly popular among ecommerce companies. However, fetchback campaigns aren t a silver bullet. Before you automate a shopping cart fetchback campaign, make sure you have all the information you need before hitting send.

8 9 Free Shipping or Returns 3

9 10 SHIPPING OR RETURNS? UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER MOTIVATIONS Forrester s study unearthed a number of different potential reasons for shopping cart abandonment, but until you examine your own analytics, you won t know the prime driver of abandoned carts for your particular site. Knowing these details can bring your shopping cart fetchback campaign from good to great. Typical marketing automation campaigns for abandoned carts look something like this. When a customer takes a given action, trigger a tailored communication. In the example below, we ve sent a discount to any customer who abandons his or her cart. But what if it wasn t the price of the item that motivated the abandoned cart? If the customer is most concernerd about the return policy, will a 10% discount do any good? ALIGNING AUTOMATED S WITH CUSTOMER MOTIVATIONS Technology can only take you so far. The best marketing automation campaigns are driven by content. One of the core tenants to inbound marketing is that content which is useful and relevant to the prospect will always be more effective than other communications. In the case of the shopping cart fetch-back, this means having marketing automation that is agile enough to respond to the individual motivations. For this, analytics are absolutely essential. The next section will take you through a few ways that your marketing analytics can help you better understand and act upon the motivations of your shoppers.

10 11 ANALYTICS + AUTOMATION = AN INTELLIGENT SHOPPING CART FETCHBACK CAMPAIGN When used in combination with your marketing automation tool, your marketing analytics platform can help you send highly targeted customer-serving s without much added time or effort. Use analytics to inform your marketing automation campaign. Before you hit send, use your analytics platform to answer the following questions: What pages or content contribute to shopper hesitation? Your marketing analytics platform should be able to tell you which pages led visitors up to the cart abandonment. These pages will give you a sense of the visitor s thought process prior to leaving your site. For example, if you know that visitors who abandon their shopping carts typically spend more time evaluating the shipping costs page that will influence what content your fetchback campaign should involve. What pages or content assist purchases? Now flip the equation. Take a look at the pages on your website that customers viewed prior to purchasing. Similar to the abandonment influencers, make sure you understand what pages positively impact purchases. Then prioritize that content for others. By scaling what s working, your automation can drive better results. How long does it typically take a customer to purchase after his or her initial interest? Is your product an impulse buy or does it typically require some research and the prospective customer has just placed the item in his or her cart for safe keeping in the interim? What supportive materials could you create and automate to help in that decision process?answer this question to get the timing right on your s. Note: If your analytics platform doesn t enable you to see a reverse funnel analysis or the pages that contributed to a purchase decision or an abandoned cart, you might want to take a look at HubSpot s Advanced Analytics (we re just sayin ). Oh look! A link!

11 12 Time to Reorder 4

12 13 TIME TO REORDER? UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER TIMELINES Beyond understanding motivations, it is important to make sure your marketing communications, whether automated or not, reflect the timing of your typical shopper s purchase cycle. There are two components to this: How long does it typically take a first-time customer to buy? Are there inherent timelines associated with the product purchased? HOW LONG DOES IT TYPICALLY TAKE A FIRST TIME CUSTOMER TO BUY? You could send the best possible, but if the timing isn t right, it may fall on closed ears. Frequently you ll hear that sending a communication immediately after a cart was abandoned results in the best result, but that guideline isn t true for every ecommerce site. Time elapsed before a shopper decided to buy [Example of a HubSpot time-to-completion report] Instead of basing your marketing automation timing on generic textbook guidelines, it s best to put your marketing automation timing in the framework of your specific company. Do you sell $40 accessories or $400 electronics? Do first-time customers typically visit your site and purchase in the same day or is the buying cycle much longer? Marketing automation campaigns that are staged out over the process of the typical buying cycle will do better than those based on arbitrary timelines. Did you know? 65% of all online shoppers wait a day or more to complete an online purchase. 4

13 14 ARE THERE INHERENT TIMELINES ASSOCIATED WITH THE PRODUCT? There are some particularly strong use cases for intelligent marketing automation as a way of working motivating existing customers -- not the least of which is driving repeat purchases. Product driven timelines: Understanding the buying cycle should go beyond the first point of sale. You can maximize the impact of your post-purchase communications by connecting a marketing automation campaign to the natural lifetime of a given product. 1. Take a look at your product line to determine which items come with an inherent expiration date or frequency of renewal. 2. Take your most frequently ordered products and estimate how long it typically takes for them to expire or run-out. 3. Automate re-order s to correspond with that typical product timeline. 4. Consider including discounts or incentives for re-ordering through your company. Customer-driven timelines: In addition to relying on the re-order timelines of given products, consider providing your customers with the option of setting up their own tailored reminder s. A central tenant to inbound marketing is to find ways to be useful to your prospects and customers. Providing an optional opt-in to helpful s is a great way to do that. NOTE: Remember to test and track these reminder s to ensure that they aren t overlapping with others and resulting in over-communication. If you re just getting started, try scheduling out these s with a smaller segment first before expanding. Case Study Alice.com: Clued into the shopping cycles of busy households, Alice.com is an online source for products like soap, cleaning supplies, batteries and other home essentials. The site enables you to set up alerts for products that frequently run out. Re-ordering these products then become much easier, typically requiring little more than the click of a button.

14 15 Rave Reviews 5

15 16 RAVE REVIEWS REWARDING BRAND ADVOCATES According to an etail and power-reviews survey the amount of outside research potential customers do on ecommerce products is rising sharply. Half of all 2011 respondents replied that they spent 75% of their overall shopping time researching products as compared to just 21% in Social media channels, from Facebook to Yelp, are comprising a significant portion of this research. SOCIAL SHARING AS A DRIVER OF SALES: 6 More than 35 million people have shared a product on Facebook. 35% of people say they are more likely to buy a product if it has more Likes. 22 million people have been driven to make a purchase based on a Facebook recommendation. Brand advocates, customers who promote your company s products or customer service online are a highly influential segment of your customer base. As marketers, we need to find new ways to empower these segments and encourage them to continue to stay engaged. USING TARGETED COMMUNICATIONS TO FUEL BRAND ADVOCATES One of the toughest steps to rewarding brand advocates is having a comprehensive understanding of who makes up the segment. Set-up alerts and multichannel analytics With a number of social media sites and a flurry of activity across channels, it can be difficult to ascertain just whom you should be thanking. Set up alerts to flag your marketing team whenever someone mentions your brand on social media. Then, positive or negative, assign a community manager to respond to mentions and empower individuals who help promote your brand. Over time you should develop a list of these brand advocates and regularly them advanced product notifications or special deals. Tie marketing automation to your multichannel analytics If you have a marketing automation tool, like HubSpot s, that enables you to trigger messages based on multichannel data, you can automate this sending thank-you s and special deals as comments and mentions are posted.

16 17 USING TARGETED COMMUNICATIONS TO FUEL BRAND ADVOCATES (CONTINUED) Take the example of the first-time buyer who has a good enough experience to promote you to his network of followers on Twitter. Take the opportunity to specially send him a tailored and Twitter message, then apply free shipping as a way of saying thank you for his next purchase. Note: Be careful to avoid quid pro quo rewards. Thank Yous should be sincere and independent of future promotion on the advocate s part. 1. Added item to shopping cart 2. Recommended site on Twitter 1 day later

17 18 Conclusion 6

18 19 CONCLUSION AND ADDITIONAL RESOURCES The one thing that has redefined marketing strategy today more than anything else has been the shift of control to the customer. The proliferation of social media tools and online tools help leads decisions on their own schedule and using their own combination resources. Amid this shift in consumer behavior the role of marketing has also changed, from one of uniformed mass communications to a more nuanced, customer-driven strategy. Using the tips mentioned in this ebook and the right mix of tools, ecommerce marketers are now able to scale personal attention in a way that was never achievable before. At the crux of any marketing automation strategy, however, has got to be the goal of making customers lives easier while driving sales. Too much focus on the output and not on the value to customers will always fall short.

19 20 HubSpot s Behavior-Driven Communications Marketing automation should be useful to customers, not just another interruption. It should focus on the entire experience of your prospects and customers, sending communications only when it is most relevant to their buying cycle. HubSpot's behaviordriven communication tool triggers s and other messages based on your customers full history of interactions on and off your site. Expand your marketing automation to include SMS messages and internal notifications Incorporate social media, helpdesks and billing systems into your campaigns Deliver information at critical moments in the decision process Integrate with your existing service provider Request a Demo

20 SOURCES /t/