The key to a sustainable e-commerce business is a consistent strategy with a great marketing toolkit. Insights on how customers navigate your store, how they react to particular offers, how to approach them via the best channels can help you better understand customer behavior and their needs. This knowledge directly correlates with an increasing number of signups, sales, and loyal customers.

So let’s see what you can add to your e-commerce email marketing automation toolbox.

1. Targeted signup forms

There is no need for telling how signup forms are important for your business. If you implement an email marketing strategy, you know how vital they are. However, simple signup forms that pop up whenever your website is being entered are not enough if you want to compete with your rivals seriously.

What you can simply do is to add a few advanced signup tactics into your email marketing strategy. It won’t take you a lot of time, but it’s effective.

#1 Don’t show popups to newsletter subscriber

By disabling signup forms to newsletter subscribers, you kill two birds with one stone:

1. You improve customer experience and don’t bother your visitors asking them to sign up when they have already done that.
2. You can be bold in your signup forms offering discounts for newcomers without your existing subscribers getting angry.

Now double-check if the tool that you use for signup forms has signup form targeting options.

For disabling signup forms for newsletter subscribers you have to use the specific part of your newsletter URL – the part with UTM parameters.

Usually, the email campaigns have these UTM parameters: utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter plus utm_campaign.

I recommend using only utm_medium and utm_source because otherwise your popups will be hidden only for one specific campaign recipients and you will have to repeat this targeting over and over again.

On Omnisend platform the signup form targeting looks like this:

When you paste in your UTM parameters into the field and save it, anyone coming that way to your website will not see any popups.

#2 Collect more data for more accurate segmentation and automation

You can neither segment accurately nor automate your marketing if you don’t have enough customer data. The more data you have the more relevant messages you can send.

So start collecting more data.

Usually, a standard signup form only asks for a visitor’s email address. Don’t stop here.

Add more fields into your opt-in forms. Ask for the name, date of birth, phone number. The recent study reveals how people easily share this kind of personal information for the sake of greater customer experience. Just make sure that you will use this information properly.

For example, customers enter the date of birth and they expect a birthday email with a special offer. Which is, by the way, one of the most effective automated workflows. They have a 45% open rate on average and 5x better the conversions than newsletters.

So start collecting information about your customers and use it for your advantage. Any bulk email campaign will withstand in front of targeted, data-based automated email.

2. Web Tracking and Customer Profile

Web tracking is like watching through the keyhole what your customers are doing on your website. It enables you to understand them better and even to guide them to the purchase.

One of the most popular tools for that is Google Analytics.

At Omniscient, entrepreneurs use Live View web tracking, which allows you to see your customers’ behavior in real-time.

So what can you do with this information?

1. Identify the most popular products on your site. They are magnets. You can use them in the popups, highlight in the email campaigns and other kinds of promotional material.
2. Understand your visitor’s buying intentions. If you see that the same visitor keeps visiting a certain product, it means they have a strong intention to buy. Approach him/her with an email and offer a deal that they couldn’t resist.

3. Providing Customers with Omnichannel Experience

The idea behind the omnichannel approach is that all channels that you use for business communication work together to convey a unified voice of your brand and to provide customers with the seamless shopping experience.

For example, the moment your customer has bought sneakers at your store, your marketing tool automatically switches the sneakers’ ad on Facebook into the fitting purse for that exact customer. And the post-purchase email offers the same purse. Plus this happy customer receives an SMS with a kind reminder that she has a deal for purses at your store.

And this approach is effective.  The data shows that customers who have integral omnichannel experience spend 10% more online than single-channel shoppers.

Moreover, the omnichannel approach increases customer retention rate. According to Aberdeen Group, “companies with an extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement have an 89% customer retention rate compared to 33% for companies with weak engagement”.

A smooth, integral, customer-oriented marketing communication, a.k.a, omnichannel marketing could be the next big thing in your e-commerce business strategy.

I hope, these strategies will inspire you to look for new paths to your customer’s hearts.

Conclusion

The more you learn about your customers the better shopping experience you will be able to provide. Also, you will acquire valuable knowledge about your own business. The knowledge that you won’t find in any of book or article on the internet. This will open even more doors to sustainable business success.

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Whitney Blankenship

Content Marketing Manager for Omnisend. When not writing awesome content, Whitney is reading up on the latest in digital marketing, e-commerce, and social media trends. Obsessed with pop culture, art, and metal. Powered by coffee. Fastest Googler in the West.

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• 3 Strategies to Add to Your Email Marketing Automation Toolbox - February 25, 2019