How to Grow Ecommerce Sales Using Actionable Marketing

Ecommerce—specifically, mobile shopping—continues to rival in-store purchases.

Understanding how to grow ecommerce sales is crucial to making the best use of your resources and marketing budget.

Read on to discover some actionable tips for growing your ecommerce sales right now and all year long.

1. How to grow ecommerce sales with seamless mobile browsing

Forty percent of all online marketplace sales happen on mobile devices, so a fully mobile-optimized experience from start to finish is critical.

Let’s say someone receives a promotional email. Only between 4% and 15% will buy the item right away. Instead, customers prefer to visit the website first or even wait until they get to their PC.

Since between 22% and 38% of customers like to check out your website before making a decision, you’ll need to optimize more than the landing pages you link to in your emails. Instead, create a seamless experience, so customers can easily browse different parts of your website and complete the checkout process from a mobile device.

Source

For mobile browsing and shopping, matter-of-fact navigation menus are key, along with a hurdle-free checkout process.

• Customers should be able to easily tap different buttons on your site without accidentally touching other links.
• Menu items should be clearly defined and not leave any room for interpretation.
• Don’t force customers to register an account to complete a purchase—let them check out as a guest.
• Take advantage of Google autofill forms.
• Use open fields where customers can type responses with tappable suggestions instead of lengthy drop-down menus.

2. How to grow ecommerce sales with a robust email marketing strategy

Fifty-nine percent of all consumers say they prefer to hear from brands through email over other channels like text. Email marketing is also important because it gives you an opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with your customers. Considering that 84% of customers say being treated like a human being is the key to winning their business, email is something ecommerce brands simply can’t do without.

To learn how to grow ecommerce sales through email, start with a few key features.

Segmentation

Segmented campaigns can improve your open rates by 203% and revenue by 760%.
First, you’ll want to break your audience up into distinct groups based on unique demographics. You have several options to find a segmentation strategy that best suits your specific brand, audience, and products.

• Gender
• Age
• Income level
• Whether or not they have kids
• Whether or not they’re a student
• Industry and job status
• Location and time zone
• Clothing sizes

You can also segment your audience based on different behavioral factors. Browsing behavior can give you plenty of clues about what kind of content your subscribers like.

• Which blog or lead magnet enticed them to sign up to your mailing list?
• Which products have they viewed?
• Which blog posts and web pages have they read?
• Do they follow you on social media?
• Who are your most/least engaged subscribers?

You can then design highly personalized emails with product recommendations and content based on different segments.

American Apparel sent this email with personalized women’s product suggestions.

Triggered customer journeys

Using automation, you can easily design and implement impressive customer journeys based on triggered events. These kinds of emails tend to have much higher open rates of 45.70%, on average, and a whopping click-to-open rate of 23.52%.

Triggered journeys include

• Welcome emails
• Onboarding sequences
• Thank you emails
• Transactional emails

Trade Coffee sets the tone nicely here with a warm and inviting image and introduction to their roasters and products.

Source: Really Good Emails

Abandonment and retargeting

About 70% of customers will add products to their cart, yet abandon the purchase process. We’ve found that most brands can recover about 12% of their abandoned carts with personalized retargeting campaigns, so understanding how to use them is key to learning how to grow ecommerce sales.

Abandoned cart emails are already highly relevant—which is good. However, you can also include some urgency by letting customers know that stock is running out or including a discount coupon with an expiration date.

It also helps to embed reviews into your abandoned cart emails. These provide social proof to help push potential customers over the edge.

Whisky Loot sent this abandonment email to entice the subscriber to complete their purchase. Although it doesn’t include emails, it does have a funny conversational tone and answers any potential questions a customer might have.

Source: Really Good Emails

3. How to grow ecommerce sales with preference centers

Sometimes people will sign up to your email list, decide that your content isn’t for them, and then want to unsubscribe.

Instead of simply writing them off as lost causes, provide a marketing preference center where your customers can decide how they’d like to hear from you.

You can include several options like

• SMS notifications
• Newsletter subscriptions or just promotional emails
• Which topics they’d like to hear about
• Their favorite products or types of products
• How often they expect to receive emails from you

Brooks Running asks for specific details about the subscriber’s age, demographics, and other athletic activity, so they can provide the most relevant content.

You can also ask your new subscribers to adjust their preference as they sign up to your list.

4. How to grow ecommerce sales with localized retargeting

You can learn how to grow ecommerce sales by targeting your customers and audience on a local level, as well.

Based on where your audience lives, you can send them relevant offers and communications through email. Segmenting your email list by time zone is wise because you can schedule your emails to go out at the best time.

You can also create targeted advertising through social media.

If your audience lives in specific areas, you could even create personalized content based on the region or city.

US Outdoor Store sent out this targeted campaign in October to subscribers who’ll likely need winter gear.

Source: Milled

5. How to grow ecommerce sales with valuable content marketing

Content marketing is important for understanding how to grow ecommerce sales because it lends credibility and authority to your brand. Customers can feel confident that you understand their problems and needs through valuable content. That’s likely why 86% of B2C marketers say that content marketing is a key part of their strategy.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop clearly knows its audience here. The newsletter is packed with valuable content about financial planning, women’s health, and skincare. Plus, it has personalized product recommendations at the bottom based on the season.

Source: Milled

6. How to grow ecommerce sales with marketplace listings

Building organic traffic through SEO and email is important, but it can also help to expand into already existing marketplaces to boost exposure and branding.

• Amazon
• Etsy
• eBay

All three of these massive marketplaces make it easy for small businesses to figure out how to grow ecommerce sales by accessing their massive audiences. You could also look for niche apps and websites to e-stock your products, like health food shops, for example.

SiriiMirri, one of Etsy’s top-selling print shops, has a well-branded Etsy store.

Source: Etsy

7. How to grow ecommerce sales with social media

Social media is frustrating for small businesses due to algorithm changes, but it’s not all bad. The key is to understand where your audience hangs out online.

If you’re looking for new tips on how to grow ecommerce sales, consider Pinterest for retail goods, if you haven’t already. Facebook is typically a go-to for most brands, but many retail stores neglect Pinterest, which has awesome marketing potential and targeted features.

Here’s how Whole Foods uses the potential of Pinterest:

Source: Pinterest

8. How to grow ecommerce sales with reviews and feedback

Reviews are the new word-of-mouth advertising. Unsurprisingly, 90% of people read reviews before deciding on a purchase and 88% of people trust them as much as recommendations from friends.

Not only do you have to work on collecting reviews, but you should also promote your reviews as social proof, where they fit. Embed them into your email campaigns, landing pages, and graphics, where appropriate.

Also, make it easy for customers to leave reviews:

CM Commerce

Wrap up

Standing out in the world of ecommerce can feel like quite a challenge. Fortunately, digital marketing channels give you plenty of opportunities to communicate with your target audience on multiple levels.

Here are a few takeaways on how to grow ecommerce sales with some simple digital marketing tactics:

• Make the most of email with personalized product recommendations, customer journeys, and segmentation.
• Optimize your marketplace listings on websites like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay.
• Create valuable content for your audience personas.
• Take control of your word-of-mouth advertising by encouraging reviews and feedback.

CM Commerce can help you take your ecommerce email marketing to another level with abandoned cart features, embedded reviews, automated campaigns, segmentation, and much more. Check out the full range of features.