Technology is changing and so is the eCommerce industry. Grab the opportunity and grow your business with the trending game-changing tools.
You have your eCommerce store up and running. You’ve identified a need with your target audience, set your price based on market research, and have your eCommerce landing page or website built.
But your store hasn’t taken off the way you thought it would.
Getting a store up and running is only half the battle, now you need to drive traffic to your page.
We’ve got you covered with these 5 game-changing tools that will skyrocket your eCommerce store.
1. Email Marketing
I know what you’re thinking, what’s so game-changing about email marketing. Nothing. Yet 60% of small business owners don’t use email marketing.
Email marketing is the backbone of any eCommerce strategy. Without it, you could potentially be losing out on 65% of your business. This is the percentage of sales that come from repeat business.
When you’re running an online business the best, most effective way to drive traffic back to your store is with email marketing.
Types of Emails to Drive Sales
Here are 6 types of emails that AWeber recommends to use to boost your online sales.
1. Promotional Email
Send a promotional email when you have a specific product or service you want to make available to your audience. This type of email is perfect for a new product launch or to highlight a hot selling product.
2. Discount Offer
Sometimes your audience needs a little extra nudge for them to make that purchase. Drive additional sales with a special offer or promotion.
Make sure your subject line mentions that this email contains a special promotion. This will help increase your open rate.
3. Transactional Email
A transactional email is sent after your customer takes a specific action such as purchasing one of your products. These emails are a great way to incentivize your customer to purchase again by offering a percentage off a future purchase.
4. Abandoned Cart Email
The average cart abandonment rate is almost 70%. An abandoned cart email is the perfect way to remind your customers that they didn’t complete their purchase.
5. Upsell Email
You can send an automated upsell email the minute a customer adds an item to their cart. Upsell emails are a great way to increase the average purchase amount.
6. Cross-sell Email
Soon after a customer makes a purchase, you can send a follow-up email offering a related or complementary product based on a product they just purchased.
Recommended Email Marketing Provider: AWeber
AWeber is an all-in-one marketing solution specializing in email marketing. Their platform is used by over 300,000 creators, side-hustlers, and small businesses around the world. Their web-based tools help businesses grow by staying in touch with customers and prospects.
2. Rewards Program
A customer rewards program is a quick and easy way to skyrocket those eCommerce sales. And the great thing about a rewards program is that it creates a lifelong, loyal customer.
But there are so many more benefits to a successful program:
- increases a customer’s lifetime value
- drives repeat sales
- boosts the average order for each purchase
Examples of Rewards Programs
There are so many ways you can structure your program. Here are just a few examples:
1. Special Occasion Rewards
Everyone loves to receive a gift on their birthday, anniversary, or really any special occasion. You can set up a rewards program to provide extra points once members reach these specific events.
Check out this birthday reward that RedRobin gives each member on their birthday. And this is sent through an email.
RedRobin sets this email up to automatically send the first of every month.
2. Reward and Redeem Points
Speaking of RedRobin, check out how they structure their rewards program to encourage repeat sales.
Points And Rewards Program Recommendation: MakeWebBetter
Points and Rewards for WooCommerce help merchants create a point-based loyalty program to reward customers. This reward system involves earning and redeeming store credits as points and discounts coupons on activities performed by customers. This WooCommerce rewards plugin increases brand loyalty, customer retention, and conversion rate at your online store.
3. Personalized Videos
There’s nothing better than email marketing to drive traffic back to your store or business unless of course, you are using personalized videos in your marketing strategy. While the majority of businesses have an email open rate somewhere between 15% and 25%. Even better, when you factor in emails with a video, it is shown to increase your return on investment by 300%. Adding a personalized video just makes business sense.
If you are trying to get more repeat customers, sending your audience a personalized video is a simple and powerful way to improve customer retention.
Here are 5 tips to remember when sending a personalized video:
- Be honest and authentic. Your audience wants to get to know the real you.
- Don’t use the script. Try different approaches and have fun.
- Include a call to action. Let the video recipient know how they can take action. How do they learn more about a new product, take advantage of a discount, or give a review?
- It’s okay to be imperfect. A perfect backdrop and lighting are not necessary. When you show yourself as being authentic, people connect with you more strongly.
- Put yourself in your customer’s shoes from start to finish. Use the “customer language” and avoid sales lingo.
Recommended Video Email Tool: Bonjoro
Bonjoro is a personalized video email tool that allows people to seamlessly record a personal video and send it out to a new customer, opt-in, or someone in their community. Their platform allows you to create and share personal videos from both desktop and mobile apps. You can track interactions with your Bonjoro videos in real-time, add eye-catching call-to-action to your Bonjoro videos to drive business, and integrate with many CRMs.
4. Chatbots
Chatbots are emerging as a bonafide tool more and more eCommerce businesses are using to increase sales.
The origins of chatbots were to provide better customer service by using A.I. (artificial intelligence) to provide an instant answer to a customer’s question. Now they are expanding beyond their initial purpose.
Remember the days before eCommerce exploded in popularity when you would walk into a physical store and a salesperson was there to answer your questions?
Chatbots are becoming a customer’s own, personalized salesperson.
Here are three ways chatbots are being used to increase sales:
1. Personalized Shopping Experience
When a potential customer arrives on your website, greet them with a personal message – “Welcome to my store. I’m your virtual shopping assistant. If you need anything just give me a shout.”
Let your customers know there is someone available to help answer their shopping-related questions. And be visible as they navigate your eCommerce store. Anticipate their needs. For example, if they’re shopping for a sweater, have the chatbot pop up with a message “This is a beautiful sweater. Did you know we have it in other colors as well?”
2. Cross-sell Recommendations
Use chatbots to make a cross-sell offer. If your customer just added an item to their shopping cart and you have a complimentary product you could offer, have your chatbot present the product.
3. Cart Abandonment Notifications
Cart abandonment is a problem for all eCommerce businesses. In fact, nearly 70% of online shoppers won’t finish the check-out process.
According to Tidio, a chatbot message can help reduce cart abandonment by 20% – 30%.
Use a chatbot to remind customers of any sale. Or if they come back to your site after abandoning their cart, remind them they still have items in their cart.
Recommended Chatbot Provider: Giosg
Giosg is a customisable engagement tool that offers live chat, AI chatbots, and interactive website content all in one platform. With the easy-to-use live chat and chatbot builder you can start conversations, ask questions, recommend products, and capture high-quality leads 24/7 before connecting them with the right agents and teams.
5. Web Push Notifications
Web push notifications could be one of the biggest opportunities for you to drive more traffic to your eCommerce store, resulting in more sales. Why, because only 22% of push notifications senders are eCommerce. This represents an opportunity for your business to capitalize on.
What are Web Push Notifications?
Web push notifications are notifications sent to your customers’ desktops as they are browsing the web.
In order for your email message to get opened, a customer needs to proactively check their inbox. But with a web push notification it pops up as they’re surfing the web, this leads to a higher engagement rate.
How to Setup Web Push Notifications?
Check out how Jay from AWeber explains how to get started with web push notifications.
Recommended Web Push Notification Provider: AWeber
AWeber allows customers to send emails, web push notifications, create landing pages, and collect payments online all from a single platform.
Ending Words!
There are plenty of tools and solutions available in the market that can help you in your business growth activities. Moreover, there are more game-changing tools like CRM integrations and sales-booster eCommerce plugins to fulfill your business needs and requirements.
Drop your favorite game-changing tools in the comments section below.