How to Leverage Marketing Technology to Grow Your eCommerce Business
Marketing Technology, for me, is the synergy of tools and activities that support marketing communications and sales.
When talking about technology, it is often associated with a high complexity of work, long-term implementation and the use of a large number of magical shortcuts. I decided to show an approach to technology with a more practical point of view – based on examples that involve specific marketing tactics.
The Recipe
Well designed and implemented technology solutions must always have a foundation. With eCommerce implementations, the right foundation is a mix of system analytics to bind each element of the software (ERP, CRM, logistics, customer service) and UX design and implementation.
The first element of my recipe is a framework to increase sales and conversions in eCommerce, through focusing on the three pillars of eCommerce business development: the first purchase; renewed purchase; and conversions and micro-conversions.
The second element is a division of media:
- Paid Media – paid advertising funded by a marketing budget, e.g. Google AdWords, price comparison websites, affiliate networks, remarketing;
- Owned Media – media, that allows us to implement an action without the marketing budget, eg. newsletter, social media, SMS;
- Earned Media – media, that acts independently and are initiated by customers, e.g. recommendations.
The last element that I want to highlight is the buyer’s journey, and specifically the imaging and mapping of the clients’ behavior in order to fully understand the interaction with the service, the use of the media and offline.
Campaigns for the first purchase
The cost of acquiring customers is often synonymous with the cost of generating the first transaction. In eCommerce, for many industries, the recovery of investment in acquiring a new customer is a matter of a few purchases.
Marketing Technology helps in those situations in several ways. By analyzing traffic sources, media and campaign, we are able to determine which marketing efforts have brought new customers and focus on media that generate the highest number of new customers. An analysis of the products bought at a first purchase can expose products and discounts (eg. a discount for the first purchase, free delivery), that usually appear at the first purchase.
In addition, an analysis of the expected average customer lifetime value (CLV) allows us to specify how soon the investment in acquiring new customers will “return”.
“Win-back” Campaign
In eCommerce, actions should be provided at all stages of the purchase to guide the customer through. A great example is marketing campaigns that re-engage customers who are close to discontinuing purchases altogether. SurfStitch, one of the top online fashion stores in Australia, implemented a win-back campaign that resulted in the company recording 72% decrease in customer outflow. They developed campaigns based on the time since the last transaction; a sequence of 4, 8 and 12 months from the date of the last purchase.
To counteract the outflow of customers we need two components. The first is a way to detect and calculate the probability of a customer leaving – the most common methods are to detect a significantly reduced frequency of visits or a complete lack of customer visits to the site and purchase probability analysis based on sales data. Measurements of web traffic are available in marketing automation systems or web analytics systems.
The second element of the campaign is communication e.g. email marketing, SMS or direct contact from your customer service team. Communication in win-back campaigns frequently takes the form of a discount or survey; something that incentives the customer to return to your site.
Campaigns that reinforce loyalty
Loyalty and the commitment of customers to your brand is indicated often by three variables: the total value of transactions, the total number of completed transactions and the time of the last transaction. This division corresponds to the RFM segmentation (recency, frequency, monetary), where each of the variables is given a weight. As a result, this division creates user segments, to whom in turn can be directed a different marketing communication. In an ideal world, we strive to maximize each of the parameters, so that the client purchases frequently, spends a lot and to minimize the time since the last purchase.
Product Feed Management
Product Feed Management is the management of all marketing media, which are based on the direct export of eCommerce Product List (XML files – feed product). The most popular product advertising tools are: Google AdWords sponsored links, Google ads, price comparison, deal aggregators, dynamic remarketing markets (eBay, Amazon).
Product Feed Management is a series of activities, including, optimizing the construction of XML, price management and response to competition, management within deal aggregator services assigned to a category, management of advertising rates.
“Reorder / Replenishment” Campaigns
The logic behind the reorder campaign is similar to the win-back campaign – analyzing the purchasing history, frequency of purchases and the general characteristics of the products, so that we are able to anticipate the moment when the customer “consumes” the product and at the same time meet their needs.
For customers who have just started to shop – we can determine the likelihood of recurrence of purchase of the product by analyzing the characteristics from the point of view of the product. As a result, the analysis produces a list of products with the probability “of being bought periodically” is the greatest.
Conclusion
With Marketing Technology, we are able to enter a higher level of communication with clients, increase the efficiency and speed of work, anticipate and respond to customer behavior and carry out marketing activities that were not possible previously.
