7 Ecommerce Marketing Tactics That Actually Get Results

Do you want more traffic and more sales in your ecommerce store? Of course, you do, everyone does.

That is why we rounded up 7 ecommerce marketing tactics that actually work, and the best thing is, you can implement them right away. These tactics range from conversion rate optimization to email marketing, and more.

So with these ROI drivers, get ready for more visitors, more revenue from your current customers, and a better shopping experience for your customers.

1. Abandoned Cart Emails

In a Baymard Institute study, analysis of 37 different ecommerce stores found that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 69%. This means that for every completed checkout transaction, there are two shopping carts that have been abandoned.

What does this mean?

It means you are losing out on potential sales! Your total sales are only one-third of what they could actually be.

Why do people abandon shopping carts during checkout you may be wondering?

The Baymard Institute study showed that:

• 61% of people left because of the extra costs being too high (shipping, tax, fees)
• 35% of people left because the website required an account to be created
• 27% of people left because the checkout process was too complicated
• 22% of people left because of website errors

One of the best ways we can recover lost revenue is by sending out abandoned cart emails.

Crafting a good abandoned cart email doesn’t have to be complicated. All you need to do is list the abandoned products and a link for your customers to get back to their shopping cart.

Check out this abandoned cart email by DiveStock.

The guys at DiveStock are using this one abandoned cart email and it is contributing 37% of their total revenue (from the last 90 days):

Although you might not have this kind of crazy success, you will at least recover a portion of revenue you would otherwise have lost.

Here are the three keys to an effective abandoned cart sequence:

• Send the first email one hour after abandonment
• Use 3 abandoned cart emails in total
• Offer some sort of discount (5% off, free shipping, etc). Introduce this in your second email.

One more thing: make sure to personalize your emails. Your customers will appreciate it and here’s why:

• Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10% (Campaign Monitor)
• 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement (eConsultancy).

To start utilizing abandoned cart emails, click here and start your risk-free trial of MageMail today!

Like what you're reading?

Download our FREE PDF with more e-commerce marketing tactics!

SUBSCRIBE

2. Collect And Grow Your Email List

Most customers won’t make a purchase on their first visit. That is why email marketing is highly important and is highly effective for ecommerce as you can entice them to make a purchase with your newsletters, promotions and other content.

Why email marketing?

Why wouldn’t you?

• The ROI for email marketing is 3800%. This is saying, for every $1 spent, you get a $38 return (Email Monday).
• When asked which medium consumers would like to receive updates from, 90% preferred an email newsletter (Nielsen Norman Group).
• 60% of marketers say that email marketing is producing an ROI for their organization (MarketingSherpa).
• Email conversion rates are three times higher than social media, with a 17% higher value in the conversion (McKinsey & Company).

However, the first half of the battle is getting your customers to sign up to your mailing list. You need to offer some sort of value to entice your readers on why they should join your newsletter.

Here is Duffle & Co’s pop-up opt-in form where they offer notification of new products and special offers.

You can also implement a smart bar. A smart bar sits at the top of any page you want and can be used for various purposes. We can take advantage of this by getting visitors to join your newsletter.

Social Triggers has a smart bar on all their blog posts containing an opt-in form to get their free ebook – alternatively, you can substitute this with a discount code.

Smart bars are less aggressive than a popup box and are more effective than email capture exit intent or scroll boxes. They follow the customer’s journey across your site until they sign up their email or until they make a purchase.

You can sign up for a free trial of Smart Bar by Sumo by clicking here.

Like what you're reading?

Download our FREE PDF with our guidelines for optimizing your eCommerce site!

SUBSCRIBE

3. Automate Email Campaigns

Collecting a bunch of emails is pointless if we don’t send them regular emails.

Having an automated CRM system for your email campaigns will serve your customers (potential and current) with specific, targeted information. This could include welcome emails, seasonal items, special offers, confirmation emails, etc. Whatever it is, having an automated email campaign will deliver the message to your customers at the right time.

A trigger usually causes these emails.

For example, when someone signs up to your mailing list, you send them an email right away to let them know it was successful. These emails tend to have the highest open rates.

Check out Food52’s welcome email.

Or you can send out order confirmation emails to let the customer know the order has been received and been processed. You can even send them a thank you email later on, to thank them for their purchase.

Check out Zulily’s thank you email:

Aside from triggered emails, make sure to send out a regular newsletter letting your subscribers know of new products, new offers, product tips, etc.

4. Product Reviews

Add custom ratings and reviews to your product pages. Let’s look at some statistics and see why customer reviews are highly effective:

• Visitors who interact with the customer reviews convert 58% higher compared to those that don’t (Internet Retailer)
• 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation (Bright Local)
• 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business (Bright Local)

Why?

Social proof. It’s a powerful physiological force that can convince your customers to make a purchase. This is one of the best ways to build trust in your visitors as the reviews are testimonials from past customers.

So, long story short, it will help increase your sales.

This is why Amazon, the biggest ecommerce company (if not, one of the biggest), has reviews below their product pages.

However, don’t just think faking your reviews will benefit you. Visitors will go great lengths to validate a product. If three websites say the product isn’t great, but yours is saying it is the best, visitors will realize the reviews are fake and will quickly abandon the purchase. Trust and reputation is something you cannot buy, and once it’s lost, it’s lost forever.

Instead, you can personally reach out to customers and ask them to leave a review.

Here’s a great example of asking for a product review by Biscuiteers:

Craft your post purchase review emails like this. It’s a win-win situation between you and your customer. It establishes a connection with them by asking them how you can improve your business and their review will build trust for future customers.

Even better – try to offer them some sort of incentive for leaving a review, such as a small discount on their next purchase.

5. Integrate Instagram

With more than 600 million active users, Instagram is closely following in the footsteps of its parent company, Facebook.

In addition, studies have shown that Instagram gives brands more engagement than any other social media platform:

• 10 times higher than Facebook
• 54 times higher than Pinterest
• 84 times higher than Twitter

By leveraging its massive growth and user engagement, we will see our sales increase. The key to mastering Instagram is engagement with users. By using the right filters, photos, posting time, hashtags, you will be on your way to building a big following.

Some ways to engage with your users:

Running campaigns or contests – give something away in exchange for them posting, sharing, or liking something.

User generated content – get people to post photos of themselves wearing/using your products and tag your company in the post. Their network of followers will see these posts, which will create a viral effect that spreads the message of your brand – this is a great way to generate social proof.

Daniel Wellington sells classic timeless watch pieces and built their company to $180M in 5 years. Now with 2.9 million followers on Instagram, they grew their company almost entirely on social media promotion – mainly through Instagram.

Daniel Wellington actively encourages Instagram users to post pictures of their watches.

Here’s an example of their user generated content:

6. A/B Test Your Checkout Process

Remember in Baymard Institute study, 27% of customers abandon their cart due to the checkout process being too complicated? A redesign of the checkout user interface of the page might be in need.

Split testing different checkout funnels is a great way to determine what works best and what doesn’t. It will remove a ton of friction in your store and increase your sales.

Some ideas that can be tested: call to action buttons that promote the next steps, minimizing information needed to complete purchase, etc.

Always look for places where simplicity can be introduced.

Asos, an online fashion and beauty store, has continually tested and redesigned their checkout process on a consistent basis. If you looked at their checkout funnel a year ago, it would like completely different to the current one. They know what types of buttons and words convince people to buy.

However, A/B testing is sailing blind without analytics to back up your conclusions. Find out at which point people abandon their cart. There is no point redesigning the entire funnel if one aspect is already optimized.

7. Make It Easy For Your Customers

Having a website that is clunky and not optimized for users will make your marketing efforts go to waste.

A badly designed store looks something along the lines of: difficult navigation, too many products on a page, badly written product descriptions and gives a sense of untrustworthiness.

There is no right way to design your store. However, what we can do is find what doesn’t work (backed by science) and avoid making these mistakes.

Product alignment – we perceive things differently when they’re laid out horizontally versus vertically. Studies show that things laid out horizontally lead to being perceived as more varied. Take advantage of this by grouping similar products together horizontally as customers will see more variety.

Amazon is a great example of this:

Too much choice – The more options you give a potential customer, the harder it is for them to make a decision. This study shows when you offer more products for sale, more people will visit your store, but fewer people will make a purchase.

If you show all your products all at once when visitors come to your homepage, it will overwhelm them. Instead, group your products and create separate category pages for them. Here’s a great example by Pure Cycles.

Show customers what they want to see, they came to your site for a reason.

Another strategy is to limit the amount of products on a page, and make your customers click to the next page. The products will look fresh and they will not feel overwhelmed.

Give visitors less choice, instead of too many options.

There are lots of ways to improve your store. If yours is converting well, take a look at the top authority sites in your industry and learn what they are doing that you’re not.

Conclusion

All in all, there are many ways you can do to improve your store. However, the main thing you should always do is test, test, and test again. There is no such thing as a perfect store. One thing that every ecommerce store has in common, big and small, is that they can always be improved.

Which tactic has worked best for you?

Like what you're reading?

Download our FREE PDF with more e-commerce marketing tactics!

SUBSCRIBE