Webinar: Transforming Retail into ‘Me-tail’ Blog

As a follow up to the webinar Transforming Retail into ‘Me-tail’ we are posting this blog to recap key features and the Q&A session.

Key Takeaways from the Presentation:

The Growth of Online—in 2012 there was an 8% overall growth, leading to eCommerce sales of $231 billion. In 2017, sales are expected to rise 10% overall for sales totaling $371 billion

Personalization is a key component in the selling process:

• Choosing to tailor the shopping experience not only makes people feel special, ut also shows a 208% increase in conversion rate, 24% increase in revenue, and an increase of 21% retention

The ROR—Return on Relationship

• By continuing to add value and build trust with your customers, you can expect to see  a5% increase in retention yields profit increases of 25 to 100%

Welcome programs—3 step approach

• Create a conversation—welcome message, thank them for signing up or making the first purchase.
• Tailor content, educate users about what they can expect what shopping with you will be like.  Inform them of shipping time and costs.

Account creation

• Say thank you and explain the benefits of shopping with you
• Ask for additional information—by asking for their date of birth, you can interact with them on their birthday.

Cart abandonment email

• If you are not already trying to recapture sales via abandoned cart email, you absolutely should. end out within the first hour that the cart has been abandoned
• Include images of the products within the cart. The visual reminder helps reinforce the purchase.
• Use dynamic content, change the messaging for your customers who have purchased 10 times versus a guest checkout. Making guest emails more service oriented helps guests learn more about your company.
• Utilize product recommendation, best sellers and most viewed. Many abandoned carts are abandoned because the customer couldn’t find what there were looking for.

Transactional emails

• These emails have the highest open rate of all—everyone opens their tracking and shipping email
• You can build your brand and step ahead of the competition by taking advantage of transactional emails.
• Utilize dynamic content and custom templates.  Also, make product recommendations and take advantage of the high conversion rates.

Feedback

• Ask questions—make a relevant conversation. In the beginning do not bombard new customers with questions, rather make it meaningful throughout the span of a few months.

Service & Satisfaction

• Ask for feedback on products and experience—it is a crucial part of growing.
• If someone tells you they had a terrible shopping experience, they are taking the time to tell you, so there is a chance to win them back. Have your customer service team call them so that they can find out what exactly went wrong.

Retargeting, Re-engagement and replenishment

• Use dates and relevant browse behavior to have a better understanding of customers so you can make meaningful recommendations

• Replenishment—when a customer purchases a product , such as face cream, you can send them a reminder email to reorder cream right around the time they are about to run out.

Q & A

What are the benefits of sending transactional emails through an ESP?

• By sending these through an ESP rather than your eCommerce platform they have a better chance of being delivered. You can also change the styling on the fly and track who has opened it or forwarded it.

If my email service provider doesn’t integrate and automatically pass the data across, what can I do?

• This will depend on how flexible your eCommerce system is—at the very least you should be able to export basic information such as gender, date of birth, or geographical information, it can be uploaded to your email service provider. If you can export order or purchase history and upload to email provider, you can do a basic level of much of what was discussed during the webinar.