Tag Archives: ecommerce

This is a guest post from Christine Aebischer at Fundera.

Email marketing is of crucial importance for ecommerce businesses—especially new ones that are still building a customer base and generating brand awareness.

There are many ways to get the word out about your products and services, but none with quite as much potential as email.

There are 3.9 billion email users worldwide today, with that number projected to exceed 4.3 billion by 2023. Sixty-one percent of online shoppers prefer that brands contact them by email and, with so many users, it makes sense that email marketing contributes to 20% of traffic driving ecommerce sales. Similarly, it’s a highly cost-effective medium, netting about $42 for every $1 spent.

A solid email marketing strategy is essential for any growing business. But, first, you have to build a list of email subscribers.

Email subscribers are simply people who’ve given you their email address and permission to email them with offers and information. Given that it costs 5 times more to attract a new customer than keep an existing one, it’s in any new ecommerce business’s best interest to build an email subscriber list as soon as possible.

You can’t work on customer retention if you haven’t acquired customers in the first place. Here, we’ll detail how to grow your email subscriber list, so you can garner brand loyalty and achieve long-term success.

1. Send a newsletter.

Many ecommerce businesses use a weekly or monthly newsletter to connect with their customers and keep them up to date on what’s going on with the business.

This is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg problem. Who do you send your newsletter to if you don’t have subscribers? How do you get subscribers to a newsletter that doesn’t exist?

First, create your newsletter and make your signup form as prominent as possible on your website. Put it in a notification bar at the top of your site, a footer, or a sidebar, ensuring it isn’t hidden behind other content. Be creative with the copy, using words like “Download,” “Featured,” “Exclusive,” and “Access,” rather than “Sign up” or “Subscribe.” (Who wants to sign up or subscribe to yet another junk email?)

Demonstrate your newsletter’s value by explaining that it provides access to exclusive product launches, deals, and other benefits.

Zola newsletter, via MailCharts

You may not have a large email list, but you likely still have some kind of network. Use other channels like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to promote your newsletter as well. Giving people the option to opt in by simply sharing their email address with your business in a comment or direct message can also help you grow your subscribers more quickly.

Finally, include a link to your newsletter in your email signature. It may go directly to an opt-in form, the newsletter itself, or a link to a blog post or landing page with subscription information. You communicate with many people every day via email, and you never know who might be interested in hearing more from your business.

2. Utilize pop-ups.

Offering discounts for first-time customers in exchange for their email addresses is one of the most popular ways that ecommerce stores grow their email lists.

Website pop-ups are a great way to alert potential customers of this discount and get their email. Keep in mind, though, there’s a fine line between a compelling, attractive pop-up and an irritating one.

Research shows that simple pop-ups offering discounts and newsletters typically convert less than 2% of visitors, while content-powered pop-ups convert traffic at a rate of 5% to 20%.

If you’re not sure which to choose for your business, consider doing both.

You can customize the type of pop-ups you surface to readers and when you deploy them. When visitors hit your homepage, you can offer first-time buyers a discount if they provide their email address. In the same pop-up, offer a piece of interesting content that helps visitors learn more about your brand.

Create additional pop-ups for visitors throughout their purchase journey, including when someone navigates away from your page or puts something in their cart and hasn’t yet purchased.

3. Create more landing pages.

Having a greater number of landing pages allows you to appeal to a wider demographic, through a wider variety of channels. Everybody who visits your ecommerce site is looking for something different.

More landing pages give you a better opportunity to show them more products, answer individual questions about your products, address specific concerns, and generate more email signups.

Via Campaign Monitor

Every individual product should have its own landing page, of course, but consider also building landing pages that don’t explicitly sell things. Pages that explain certain product series, detail a problem your products solve, or explore the technology behind your product help people connect with your brand and, in turn, make them more likely to provide their email in exchange for even more information.

4. Establish a rewards program.

Everybody from large-scale enterprises to one-person ecommerce operations can use rewards programs to foster brand loyalty and keep customers coming back. (Remember how much more expensive it was to get new customers?)

But rewards programs go well beyond customer retention efforts. Tools like Smile.io allow you to create rewards programs that incentivize shoppers to do many different actions, including signing up for your email list.

Using Smile.io, you can easily integrate a rewards program into your site that’ll offer special discounts, free shipping, or other perks if customers subscribe. You can even take it a step further and reward customers for referring other people to your site—which means more subscribers.

5. Leverage lead magnet content.

Lead magnet content is content created specifically to attract leads—or, in this case, email subscribers. You can use this content at any stage of the ecommerce marketing funnel, but, if you’re using it specifically for list-building, it should be at the top of the funnel.

That means this content shouldn’t be directly focused on selling products. Instead, it should speak to your audience about topics they care about.

For instance, if you sell shoes made through sustainable methods, you may create blog posts about the impetus for founding your company, discuss the shoe industry at large, explain the waste it creates, and its impact on the planet. Intersperse this content with opt-in forms for your newsletter to read more content like it.

Your lead magnet should appeal to your customers’ values. When you show them you share the same values, then you can explain why your product supports those values.

6. Consider gated content.

Media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post use gated content to increase their subscribers. Ecommerce businesses can do the exact same thing.

If you have a blog or are developing some longer-form resources like guides or whitepapers, consider requiring people to provide their email before they can read or download the content. This is an easy way to gain subscribers while leveraging the resources you already have.

Via Fundera

Keep in mind that you don’t have to put barriers in front of all of your content. If you feel your content is valuable enough to convert on its own, keep certain pages open. Plus, allowing users to read some content without providing their email can help you see greater conversions from your gated content, since you’ve already established its quality and value.

7. Try interactive content.

People love interacting with web pages. Interactive content like games and quizzes is irresistible to many site visitors and is an especially effective way to enlist new email subscribers.

Just think about BuzzFeed, one of the largest newer media companies in the world. A majority of their site is quizzes and games, with news interspersed. It’s extremely easy to get lost on their site for hours.

While you don’t want to distract customers from what you’re trying to sell, you can make their buyer journey a little more entertaining while they’re still in the decision-making process. (And, if they don’t buy, they’ll at least have to subscribe to play.)

Gamified content like “spin-to-win” pop-ups ask visitors for their email address in order to spin the wheel to receive a special prize. That prize may be a discount, free shipping, or maybe even a free product.

Similarly, if your products are more customized, ask site visitors to take a quiz in order to discover what’s best for them. For instance, Beardbrand uses a quiz to recommend products to potential customers. When customers are done, they provide an email address for the results.

Interactive content goes beyond games and quizzes to include calculators, recommendation engines, or anything else you can think of to explain and enhance customers’ experiences with your products.

8. Offer giveaways.

Just like games, people also love contests and sweepstakes. Giveaways are an excellent way to gain email subscribers and potentially attract new customers.

Giving away a popular product or a gift card allows you to build a new landing page, drive traffic to it, and demands that interested parties provide an email address to enter. It’s a great way to generate buzz for your business while giving your subscriber list a boost on a budget. You just have to be willing to offer something of interest—whether a free product, discount, branded swag, or something else.

Before you launch a giveaway, however, be sure to review your local laws and consult with a lawyer to compose your terms and conditions.

Wrap up

Email is one of the most important channels for ecommerce businesses. When you’re just starting out, building an email list is crucial for both your immediate and long-term success.

Hopefully, this guide gave you some ideas for how to generate new subscribers and customers, drive greater brand awareness, and help increase your bottom line down the road.


 

Author bio: Christine Aebischer is an editor at Fundera, a marketplace for small business financial solutions. Previously, she was an editor at the financial planning startup LearnVest and its parent company, Northwestern Mutual. Christine writes extensively on small business trends and personal finance, and has a degree in journalism and English from The College of New Jersey.

This is a guest post from Felix Langlet at Triggerbee.

One of the most effective ways of increasing ecommerce sales is by using discount codes.

Discounts help you increase your newsletter subscribers and win more first-time buyers.

However, discounts mean less profit, making it a strategic dilemma for most store owners.

In this post, we’ll show you 12 strategies you can use to generate newsletter subscribers and increase ecommerce sales, without using any discount codes.

The importance of email marketing for no-discount stores

If you want to get rid of your discount codes, you need to step up your email marketing game.

Capturing emails should be one of your top priorities as an online store owner.

Here’s why:

  1. You own the right to communicate with everyone on your list. You can send out whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want.
  2. Email is one of the highest-converting marketing channels right after direct traffic and high-intent organic search.
  3. Email is the most preferred channel when it comes to brand-to-consumer communication.

Source: 2019 Holiday Season

Shopping Report, McKinsey

Building an email list and a contact database means you’re building your own sales channel.

And as you’ll soon discover, you don’t have to give out discount codes to build your email list.

1. Create a launch calendar.

If you regularly launch new collections, products, or sell seasonally based items, a launch calendar strategy can help you both create demand and engage your customers.

The best part about this strategy is that it’s almost exclusively limited to the sneakers industry—so far.

In other words, it’s a huge opportunity for you!

Here’s a really good example from the Swedish store SneakersNStuff:

Source: Sneakersnstuff

They link to their launch calendar from the top navigation menu, and they include pre-launch products in their regular product lists, but with a countdown on top of the product image.

You don’t have to sell sneakers for this to work. You can modify this strategy to work for almost any industry, as long as you regularly release new products.

The biggest benefit of using a launch calendar strategy is that you’re creating demand for a product before it’s released.

Every item in your calendar should have its own product page, along with a form that says “Sign up to be notified when this product is released.”

This will help you collect new email addresses without even mentioning a discount. To make the offer even more compelling, you could even offer a 1-day early bird access to anyone who signs up.

Bonus: you could also use your launch calendar to test new products before you invest in new inventory. All you have to do is add a product (that you don’t have in your store yet) to your launch calendar and see how many people sign up to receive a notification when it’s released.

2. Utilize out-of-stock status.

Running out of stock is one of those problems that you’ll never get rid of as an etailer.

Depending on the size of your ecommerce business, it can even cause huge profit losses.

Imagine this:

You visit an ecommerce store, find a product you like, but, when you visit the product page, it says: “Out of stock.”

What do you do? You’ll click on the next tab in your browser and find a competing store that has your desired product in stock.

The worst part?

Most stores leave it that way.

Here’s the truth:

As soon as a product’s stock volume goes to zero, you have a massive opportunity to collect new email addresses from people who potentially want to spend money in your store.

When a product is out of stock, you’re left with two options:

  1. Let your visitors stare at a text that says “Out of stock” and let them leave you for a competitor.
  2. Let your visitors see that your product is out of stock, and display a form where they can sign up to receive a notification when the product is back in stock.

Not sure about you, but we’d definitely choose option 2.

Here’s an example:

This is, by far, one of the most low-hanging fruits for any ecommerce store and can help you win back a lot of business almost immediately.

By using every opportunity you have to engage your customers—like when a product is out of stock—you’ll not only have happier customers, but more email subscribers as well.

3. Use an identification layer.

Most ecommerce stores use a login to make the shopping experience better for their customers.

However, according to a 2019 study with 4,263 participants, the second biggest reason for abandoning a shopping cart was having to create an account.

Source: Baymard Institute

This is why an identification layer can come in handy.

An identification layer gives you a light version of a login.

It doesn’t have the same functionality as you might expect from a real account solution, but it provides some great benefits for smaller ecommerce stores.

Here are a few things you get with an identification layer:

  • Password-free “logins”
  • Customer profiles
  • Behavioral data
  • Accurate onsite targeting

An identification layer enables your visitors to “log in” to your site only by entering their email, without having to go through the traditional account creation process.

You, as the store owner, gain access to their behavioral information, which allows you to personalize onsite and email communication.

According to Harvard Business Review, personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5-15%, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10-30%.

An identification layer can provide you with a shortcut to those results without having to create and modify built-in CMS solutions.

4. Go physical.

According to a 2018 study, ecommerce influences up to 56% of in-store purchases.

If you’re a store owner that also sells online, there are a few super-easy ways to make people visit your physical store location.

1. Add a delivery option that says “in-store pickup.”

Swedish retailer Kappahl has figured out how to drive people to their physical store locations.

When you add a product in the cart, you can choose to pick up your goods in the nearest store. And, when you come to pick up your items, they always have an upsell offer ready.

You’ll collect an email address during checkout and, when that person also visits your store to pick up their order, you can also collect some more profit by having an up-sell offer ready.

2. Use your website to promote in-store open houses or viewings.

You can use callout or popup forms on your website to promote private in-store viewings. Similar to using a launch calendar to promote new product releases, you can host in-store viewings to show off new collections or products.

You’ll grow your email list and you get a chance to connect with your customers in real life as well.

5. Exclusive access

Your “brand” is the sum of every interaction you have with your customers.

That’s why it’s important not just to communicate with your customers when YOU want to sell something, but also try to engage them in other ways.

Your customers buy something when they need it. They don’t walk around all day thinking about which product to buy next.

You have to create a “need” for what you’re selling, and one way to create that “need” is to give potential customers exclusive access to something before they’ve even purchased.

Here are a few ways to give away exclusive access:

  • Create sneak-peek PDFs.
    If you’re adding new products to your inventory every now and then, select a few products and create a sneak-peek PDF that you can offer new visitors.
  • Invite people to exclusive events (online summits).
    Online summits and events are on the rise and, if you invite someone semi-famous or very famous to be interviewed in an online summit, you can use your website to promote your online summit. Give away tips and advice related to the products you’re selling.
  • Exclusive content in collaboration with influencers or partners.
    Everybody likes exclusive content, especially when it comes from someone they trust. If you regularly have influencer partnerships, you can partner up with them and create an exclusive guide or video series that your potential customers can sign up to receive.

Everybody wants to be part of an exclusive group and it gives you an edge when it comes to collecting new email addresses as well.

6. Future coupons

Future coupons are an alternative to regular discount codes. Instead of giving a new customer 10% off on their first purchase, future coupons allow you to set a spending limit before they reach a discount.

That way, you can minimize the loss in profits from up-front discounting.

Here’s an example from Patagonia. If you spend more than $75, you’ll get free shipping:

Source: Patagonia

If you want to collect emails with this strategy, just show a popup that says:

“10% off for members who spend more than $75.”

7. Raffles and contests

A raffle is the PERFECT way to collect new emails with $0 loss in profits.

Norwegian retailer Ymeuniverse ran a raffle where they gave away one pair of Original YEEZY sneakers.

The result?

They collected over 3,000 emails in under 6 hours. And they didn’t give away one single discount.

Raffles work GREAT when you can give away a popular product, and people are always eager to participate, just for the sake of it.

If you want to qualify the participants, simply add the signup form on your checkout page, like this:

The raffle strategy is also perfect if you’d like to gain some followers on social media, because you can have it as a requirement for joining the raffle.

And, even though you’ll have to give away a product, you can at least limit your loss by just giving away 1 product, instead of giving away a discount to every new subscriber.

8. “Email me my cart.”

According to the latest industry research, around 78.65% of your visitors abandon their cart for various reasons.

One good way to prevent this is with abandoned cart emails. However, for you to be able to send out an abandoned cart email, the visitor abandoning their cart has to be identified.

This means you have to have their email address. You can use any of the strategies above (or below) to capture your visitors’ email addresses.

A really smart way to collect an email address in the cart is by adding a button that says “Email me my cart.”

Source: trinity.one

Not only is it a great way to merge together desktop and mobile browsing, but it also makes it easier for your customers to save their cart and come back.

You’ll collect an email address and, most likely, make your future customers a little happier.

9. Product bundles

Why only sell one product when you can sell two, three, or even four?

The best way to increase revenue in your online store is by increasing the average order value.

One way to increase your average order value is through product bundling. And the easiest way to bundle is by offering additional accessories.

Take DSLR cameras, for example.

They have a lot of required accessories that usually come with the product when you purchase it. But they also have other essential accessories, like a camera stand, which is required if you want your pictures to look sharp.

Amazon has mastered the art of bundling. If you’re viewing a DSLR camera, they suggest you should buy a bundle containing a memory card and a protective lens filter.

Source: Amazon

They also offer software accessories like Photoshop Lightroom and the full cloud suite from Adobe.

It’s a great way to increase your average order value and increase the experience for your customers.

If you want to collect emails with bundling, you can create downloadable guides that explain how to use a certain product or offer free video training.

10. On-site shopping cart reminders

Shopping cart abandonment is a big issue for ecommerce brands worldwide.

You’re probably familiar with the classic abandoned cart email. It’s a great way to win back hesitant customers, and a must-have strategy for all serious ecommerce brands.

However, you’re probably less familiar with onsite shopping cart reminders.

It’s a great way to nudge your customers toward a specific action.

For example, if you’re a large retailer you might want your customers to pick up their order in-store. Use a tooltip to highlight the available options and tell them why they should select in-store pickup.

If you’re a small business owner, you might want to highlight an incentive. “Get a free T-shirt when you spend more than $50.”

Shopping cart reminders can be used in combination with almost any other tip in this post.

11. Create buyer guides.

Buyer guides are especially effective around the holiday season, but can work very well throughout the whole year.

Think about it: What’s the worst thing about buying presents?

Finding the RIGHT product to buy.

A quick way to provide value for your customers and, at the same time, capture a few emails is by creating a buyer’s guide.

What does a buyer guide look like? Here are a few examples:

Coolstuff is a small Swedish retailer, and they’ve built a gift generator that they update each year.

Cosmo writes articles about gift ideas. They’re pretty popular too!

12. Influencer hacks

Influencer partnership is starting to become a best-practice in ecommerce. But most companies who work with influencers do it to distribute discount codes, position their brand in a specific market, or create brand awareness.

However, only a few companies understand that a successful influencer partnership doesn’t stop at posting pictures on instagram.

Fashion giants Zalando and NA-KD are using influencers for social selling campaigns and content creation on their own websites (and inside Zalando’s app).

Zalando
When you open Zalando’s app, one of the first things you’re asked to do is follow a couple of influencers that dress the way you like. Based on that information, Zalando recommends outfits and specific products that might fit your style.

NA-KD
NA-KD is a fashion retailer from Sweden that uses influencers as models for their products. This allows them to sell their clothing directly on Instagram, while showcasing how a piece of clothing looks on influencers you like and follow.

NA-KD also collaborates with a few influencers to design limited clothing collections.

By taking your influencer partnership to the next level, you can tap into the already-existing interests of your audience and, as a result, increase sales with engagement.

Wrap up

There are many ways you can generate leads and increase sales without having to use coupon codes.

This post highlights over 12 strategies you can use. Some of them are instant and can be applied today, while others require a bit more preparation and work.

With that said, coupon codes are an extremely effective incentive to use for new customers, as long as you don’t give them out more than necessary.

The last question is: which strategy will you try?


Felix Langlet is the Head of Marketing at Triggerbee and is a self-taught marketer. When he is not sending out emails or talking to customers he writes blog posts about personalization, conversion optimization, and onsite engagement.

This is a guest post from Emily Carter at WebFX.

This year, US ecommerce sales are projected to reach more than $604 billion.

But with more online sellers in the market, how can your ecommerce store stand out from the crowd?

Read on to discover seven proven strategies for turbocharging your online sales this year.

1. Optimize product pages with SEO.

If you want to sell more in 2020, you need to make sure people can easily find your website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps you meet online shoppers at the top of results when they search for your products online.

Since SEO helps you reach people actively searching for your products, you won’t have to worry about wasting marketing spend on people who don’t want your items.

A few simple SEO tweaks can help your product pages rank higher in search results, so you can boost website traffic and sales.

When optimizing your product pages with SEO, be sure to add:

  • Page titles and meta descriptions that include your target keywords
  • Creative, keyword-rich product descriptions
  • Descriptive content and product specs
  • Engaging product photos with descriptive alt text
  • Product reviews and ratings to inspire trust with shoppers

Get extra value from your optimized product pages by linking them in emails, like fashion retailer Topshop.

One of our favorite Strategies for Selling More Online is to link a landing page directly in an email, like Topshop does

Optimizing your product pages with SEO and linking them in emails helps you boost website traffic and ultimately sell more online.

2. Send automated emails to connect with shoppers.

Crucial for boosting online sales in 2020, automated emails allow you to connect with shoppers at every stage of the buying funnel.

With automated email marketing, you can trigger emails to send when shoppers take specific actions on your site.

For example, you can use automated emails to:

  • Send welcome messages and special offers
  • Inform subscribers of important business updates and product launches
  • Remind people of products they viewed or placed in their carts
  • Recommend related products when people purchase
  • Encourage product reviews

With automated email marketing, you can reach people directly in their inboxes with personalized information that moves them down the purchase funnel.

You can also use automated emails to encourage repeat purchases, as you have a 60-70% chance of selling to an existing customer—and segmented, personalized emails inspire customer loyalty and repeat purchases too.

Whether you’re looking to engage new subscribers or encourage people to buy again, automated email marketing is vital to selling more online.

The best part? Automating your email marketing saves you time and money, so you can maximize your marketing spend and sales in 2020.

3. Showcase product reviews in abandoned cart emails.

Cart abandonment emails remind shoppers of items they added to their carts and, with ESPs like Campaign Monitor, you can automate abandoned cart emails with one click.

With CM commerce, you can easily add product reviews to personalized email messages to encourage shoppers to buy.

For example, try adding product reviews to abandoned cart emails. Or, when people leave your site without buying, you can send automated emails with reviews of products they viewed or placed in their carts.

Sell more online by including customer reviews like this brand

Product reviews can make or break sales—especially for on-the-fence shoppers. So go the extra mile to inspire trust by adding reviews to your emails and product pages. It could be your secret weapon for selling more online this year.

4. Leverage online selling platforms.

In 2020, you have more options than ever for maximizing sales with online marketplaces like Amazon, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

Just starting to sell online?

Platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce allow you to create and customize your digital storefront easily. CM Commerce seamlessly connects with these platforms too, so you can make the most of every customer interaction.

With CM Commerce, you can easily send:

  • Supercharged receipts to encourage upsells
  • Automated abandoned cart emails
  • Follow-up emails to showcase recommended products
  • Personalized newsletters to keep your brand top of mind with buyers
  • Product reviews to encourage purchases
  • Emails to encourage product feedback

Connecting your online selling platform with automated email services from Campaign Monitor will help you maximize product sales and repeat purchases this year.

If you run an established ecommerce site and want to sell more online, consider leveraging online marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart.

Ecommerce store owners may be hesitant to sell on online marketplaces in addition to their own websites. But keep in mind that you can leverage the site traffic of ecommerce giants like Amazon, which receives more than 150 million unique monthly visitors in the U.S. alone.

So, if you want to boost awareness and sell online, don’t discount online marketplaces—even if you have an existing ecommerce site.

Online marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart also offer fulfillment and shipping options that can help you maximize profits.

5. Make sure your ecommerce site is mobile-friendly.

Today, mobile devices account for nearly 60% of online searches.

This means, if your ecommerce site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re missing out on valuable traffic and sales. And, with Google’s mobile-first indexing, it’s more important than ever to make sure your site is mobile responsive.

Not sure if your site’s mobile performance is up to par? Just enter your website URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to find out if your site is mobile-friendly, as well as identify any page loading issues.

Making your site mobile-friendly allows people to purchase from their mobile devices seamlessly. They can also click to view your site and buy directly from your marketing emails.

In 2020, mobile-friendly design is essential for boosting sales, so be sure to test your site and product pages to make sure they provide a great mobile experience.

6. Streamline your conversion flow and online checkout.

A complicated checkout process will send your cart abandonment rate through the roof.

To sell more online in 2020, consider testing and streamlining your online checkout.

Tools like Google Analytics allow you to identify weak points in your conversion funnel.

Take a look at site pages with high exit rates. Can you identify trends that contribute to poor user experience (UX) and abandoned carts?

Remember to pinpoint pages driving the most conversions for your ecommerce business too. You may discover messaging or UX elements you can use to revive low-performing pages.

You can also conduct user testing to uncover pain points in your checkout process that cause shoppers to abandon their carts. Maybe your fancy new pop-up distracts shoppers or perhaps you require too many form fields.

Frequently testing and streamlining your checkout process makes it easier for shoppers to buy. By identifying and fixing weak points in your conversion flow, you can sell more online this year.

7. Share products on social media.

Finally, be sure to share product offerings on social media to increase online sales.

In addition to organic posts and social media ads, consider selling directly on social media with platforms like Facebook Marketplace for Business.

With Facebook Marketplace for Business, you can:

  • Showcase inventory for retail items
  • Advertise your store on Facebook Marketplace
  • Show items from your Facebook Page shop on Marketplace
  • Allow people to purchase without leaving Facebook

Selling directly on social media allows you to streamline the conversion process to make it easier for people to buy.

You can also leverage your email list to encourage social sharing. Try adding social sharing buttons and calls to action to your marketing emails or include a recap of top social posts in your newsletters.

In the example below, surf company Rip Curl added easy-to-spot social sharing buttons at the top of their email newsletter.

If you want to sell more online this year, consider using social proof like Rip Curl does

This is a great way to increase brand exposure and highlight your product offerings to sell more online.

Social media gives you instant access to ready-to-buy shoppers, so make sure you have a robust social strategy in place to help maximize online sales.

Wrap up

Ecommerce sales show no sign of slowing down any time soon. But, with more people selling online, you need to make your store stand out.

If you want to maximize online sales in 2020, try these strategies:

  • Optimize product pages with SEO
  • Send automated emails to connect with shoppers
  • Showcase product reviews in abandoned cart emails
  • Leverage online selling platforms
  • Make sure your ecommerce site is mobile friendly
  • Streamline your conversion flow and online checkout
  • Share products on social media

Set yourself up for success and start selling more online in 2020 with these tips and CM Commerce from Campaign Monitor.


Emily Carter is a Web Marketing Consultant at WebFX. With an M.S. in digital marketing, she specializes in content and email marketing. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, road trips, and drinking strong coffee. Follow her on Twitter @emcarter16.

Ready to take your online store to the next level in 2020? If you operate an ecommerce store through the platform BigCommerce, chances are you’ve spent hours researching the various apps on their marketplace.

Online shopping provides consumers a convenient and less expensive way to purchase goods. Why is this important? By 2021, it’s expected that there’ll be 230.5 million online shoppers in the United States alone, positioning the country as the leading ecommerce market.

While there’s vast opportunity for online retailers to enter the marketplace, ecommerce stores also need to keep up with consumer demands to stay relevant.

Between marketing, store maintenance, customer service, and more, ecommerce marketers have a lot to consider when creating a seamless experience for customers. By providing a positive buyer journey from start to finish, you have more of a chance to earn customer loyalty and stimulate repeat business.

Depending on your business needs, there are countless apps to choose from that all promise to help your business run more efficiently and increase your bottom line. So what are the top BigCommerce apps for sales and conversions? How can you provide your customers with the best experience? Read on for a list of the most essential apps that’ll boost your ecommerce ROI.

What is BigCommerce?

Before jumping into the best BigCommerce apps, it’s important to understand what BigCommerce is and how it helps grow online businesses. BigCommerce is a SaaS ecommerce platform that lets business owners and marketers create an online store with built-in features like payment management, shipping options, security, and more.

With competitors like Shopify and Wix, BigCommerce boasts an average annual growth of 28% for its clients. Additional features include:

  • Scalable platform for businesses looking to expand
  • Built-in integrations and third-party apps to fulfill most consumer needs
  • Multi-channel selling through Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, and more
  • Search engine optimization tools to grow your store organically

BigCommerce has four pricing plans, starting at $29.95 per month, and offers a 15-day trial period for new online shops to try before committing to the platform.

Top BigCommerce apps for sales and conversions to help grow your online store

Investing in the right technology and services as an ecommerce store is crucial in the ever-changing competitive landscape of online shopping. Not only will this provide customers with a positive buying experience to promote repeat business, but it’ll also help ecommerce marketers cut down on time-consuming tasks.

Read on to discover some of the top BigCommerce apps that’ll boost sales and conversions in 2020, as well as how you can optimize your time, so you can focus on other important business matters.

1. CM Commerce

CM Commerce is a comprehensive email marketing platform that’s trusted by over 20,000 ecommerce business owners and entrepreneurs throughout the world. With the ability to create high-performing automation workflows, you can develop an email series for every stage of the buyer’s journey. This includes welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, and review invitations. The CM Commerce platform also allows marketers the ability to send segmented emails based on your customer’s purchase history, demographics, and preferences to ensure your emails are sent to the right people, at the right time.

Additional app features:

  • Develop on-brand templates, receipts, and even coupons to drive results
  • Nurture your clients with marketing automation technology
  • Give your customers an easy way to upload photos and reviews
  • Create powerful newsletters to nurture and convert customers

Price: free trial for 90 days, $9.00/month recurring.

CM Commerce Automated Workflows

Source: CM Commerce

2. QuickBooks Online

Tired of spending time on manual bookkeeping and accounting errors? Bookkeeping is both a time-consuming task if you go at it alone and expensive if you hire it out. This is where Quickbooks Online steps in to run everything in the background and send the data to your accountant during tax season. Quickbooks Online is the preferred accounting software of many ecommerce owners and entrepreneurs seeking to streamline their accounting in a cost-effective way.

Additional features include:

  • Manages sales and income by creating invoices to track sales by customer
  • Monitors your bills and expenses
  • Runs profit and loss, balance sheet, and statement of cash flow reports
  • Calculates and runs payroll
  • Takes online payments
  • Automatically syncs orders, products, customers, and refunds

Price: free, pricing plans offered

Quickbooks Online Accounting Platform for Ecommerce

Source: Quickbooks Online

3. Facebook Ads Extension

With the Facebook Ads Extension, you can open your business up to millions of potential customers to increase your conversion rate and brand awareness efforts. The app allows ecommerce marketers to advertise products, website visitors, and increase sales.

Additional features include:

  • Connect your product catalog to develop dynamic listings
  • Remarket to your website audience using the Facebook pixel
  • Measure the results of your ad with extensive reporting features

Price: free, ecommerce stores set own budget depending on the ad

Facebook Ad Extension App on BigCommerce

Source: BigCommerce

4. Yotpo Reviews

Did you know displaying your customer reviews can increase conversions by 270%? More and more online shoppers treat online reviews like a recommendation from someone they trust, which is why asking for reviews and utilizing them will drive more traffic to your website and boost sales. Yotpo Reviews helps ecommerce stores generate photos, reviews, and other user-generated content to help increase conversion rates.

Additional features include:

  • Generate more reviews with an in-mail form
  • Create mobile-friendly communications so users never have to leave their email app
  • Integrate with all your social media platforms
  • Build a community Q&A page to interact with customers immediately

Price: free, additional packages available

Yotpo Review Platform for Online Stores

Source: BigCommerce

5. LiveChat

Consumers in 2020 want answers, and they want them immediately. How many times have you reached out to a company only to get a response many days later? It’s frustrating and can turn off potential customers forever. With the BigCommerce app LiveChat, online stores can offer a chat feature for customers to get their questions answered. A live chat option not only helps the customer’s experience, but it also provides a higher conversion rate.

Additional features include:

  • Transfer questions between customer service agents
  • Pre-program common questions and answers
  • See what customers are typing, regardless of whether or not they hit “send”

Price: $16/month

 LiveChat Provides Chat Feature For Ecommerce

Source: LiveChat

6. Sellbrite

Tired of constantly updating all your selling platforms? Sellbrite is a multi-channel listing platform that streamlines your inventory throughout different sales channels, like eBay, Walmart, Amazon, Etsy, and more. With a simple interface, Sellbrite’s technology allows ecommerce marketers to prevent overselling, simplify listings, and optimize fulfillment needs. You can sync as many sales channels as you want and have access to multi-warehouse support.

Additional features include:

  • Bulk listings your full inventory and save listing templates
  • Revise, relist, and monitor all listings
  • Sync all inventory quickly from all sales channels
  • Fulfillment by Amazon

Price: $49/month for the basic package

Sellbrite Offers Multi-Channel Listing Software

Source: BigCommerce

7. Optimizely

The ability to A/B test your ecommerce store’s appearance allows you to better understand how your consumers interact with your website, which can result in higher conversion rates. Optimizely helps ecommerce marketers test the color of their “buy now” button, the design of the checkout page, the value proposition, and more to create a better customer experience. Otherwise, it’s a shot in the dark hoping something will stick and result in a purchase.

Additional features include:

  • Personalized marketing campaigns to impact the entire buyer’s journey
  • Detailed performance metrics for each element you test
  • Full A/B testing capabilities

Price: pricing is customized to match your needs

A/B Test Website Experience with Optimizely

Source: Optimizely

8. ShipStation

Shipping is one of the most important aspects of your ecommerce store. Online retailers must be able to quickly and reliably ship orders out to customers, or otherwise risk negative reviews and lose future business. ShipStation is software that allows you to import, manage, and ship your orders on all selling channels. With ShipStation, you have access to discounted shipping rates, branding tracking pages, and international capabilities.

Additional features include:

  • Intuitive interfaces and dashboards to streamline shipping
  • Automate every step of the shipping process
  • Cloud-based and mobile capabilities
  • Self-service returns portal

Price: $9.00/month

Streamline Shipping and Fulfillment with ShipStation

Source: BigCommerce

Wrap up

BigCommerce apps are ideal for ecommerce stores looking to convert more customers, decrease time-consuming tasks, and save money by avoiding hiring outside developers. However, the right BigCommerce apps to increase sales and conversions boil down to who your audience is, what kind of store you have, and what capabilities you’re currently using.

Overall, you need to think about what your customers need and how you can better enhance their experience on your website. A customer who’s had a positive experience with your brand is more likely to purchase from you again and recommend your products to their friends.

When looking to invest in new BigCommerce apps, consider apps that:

  • Allow you to personalize every stage of the customer’s buying journey
  • Decrease time-consuming tasks like accounting and shipping
  • Connect you to multiple platforms, so you can advertise at the right times
  • Offer users an enhanced customer service experience
  • Provide detailed analytics and reports, so you can continue to improve

If you’re ready to improve your ecommerce website, check out CM Commerce. CM Commerce allows you to communicate with your customers throughout their most important moments with your store. Try it for free!

This is a guest post from Jake Rheude at Red Stag Fulfillment.

Shoppers want a quality experience, and if they don’t have one, your sales are going to take a hit.

Today’s modern online shoppers are more tech-savvy than ever before, looking to connect with you and your brand, as well as read plenty of reviews.

They’ll check out your company on forums, ask their friends, and even research your customer service before showing you they’re interested in buying.

If you want to learn how to satisfy the modern online shopper, you’ll need to meet their demands. Among the growing list of demands: fast or same-day shipping options, social media activity and support, exciting web design, and more. It can feel impossible to cover it all, especially if you’re a small but growing ecommerce business.

The key isn’t to do it all—just to find what’s right for you and most effective for your immediate needs.

To figure out what those are and start tackling them, let’s look at five significant shifts that your site and customer strategy can benefit from while keeping things sane and affordable.

Sort customer demands into two buckets.

Before we tackle any specifics for your online store or shoppers, we should create an approach to addressing all the things they’ll ask of you.
The best method we’ve found is to take the massive list of demands that you’ll see and cut it into two specific sections (throwing out the rest):

  1. Things you can reasonably afford to offer that customers want most
  2. Things that directly benefit you too

When you start looking across all the channels you have, you should hopefully see patterns in the requests. Customers might want clearer information on your site, the ability to see the colors you’re offering, social media updates, coupons and discounts, better shipping, or support for PayPal.

When you generate the total list, start Googling options for resolving them. You’ll quickly come across solutions as well as blog posts (like this one) that show how certain tasks will cut your costs too.

Shipping partners, for example, get goods to customers faster but also tend to save you because they have better rates with carriers that you can’t get until you’re a giant operation.

The good news is that there tends to be a lot of overlap. Define your elements and look for intersections with the data, so you can cover as much ground as possible. This is about walking in with the idea to match needs and capabilities.

It’ll be easier on your budget, and you’ll have a more straightforward case for getting leadership to back your move.

Customers have demands.

Every online shop is a little different, so let’s briefly take a look at the improvements that customers tend to want in general. They’re items you might be able to tackle, though the exact solution will be a bit different even from your competitors.

Based on the research, here are the big ones:

  • 97% of ecommerce site visitors don’t convert, with the top reasons being shipping costs too high or that they were simply doing research.
  • 88% of Americans say shipping price and speed are very influential in determining ecommerce habits
  • 63% of all customers want you to have up-to-date information on your website.
  • 66% of millennial customers are okay with you having their data, but you have to ask them to share it.
  • 60% want your mobile site to load quickly.
  • More than half of your customers want to find you via search.
  • 5% of users will trade email for a competition entry, and 4.3% will do it for free delivery.
  • A faster website can improve conversion rates by up to 78%.

And those are just a few of the things to consider. They tend to be process-focused improvements around clarity and website development.

Your store itself isn’t always getting judged on products—many of these concerns occur before someone even browses your collection. Work on everything it takes to get people to your store pages and then get out of the way.

Make it easy for people to find your amazing goods, so they can sell themselves.

Seek improvements that benefit you too.

There are several changes and improvements you can make to your site to address customer needs that also enhance your day-to-day operations.

Consider problems customers have and think about creative or fundamental ways to solve the issues.

Improved site performance, for instance, helps customers find your products. So, you have roughly three to seven seconds to capture and keep their attention.

This helps the customer find what they’re looking for and helps your business by enhancing conversion rates. Optimizing your photos and other site details will load pages faster to give the customer a more enjoyable experience, while potentially reducing your costs per site visitor.

Hiring a specialized ecommerce fulfillment partner can help you offer better shipping rates and faster shipping times to your customers, which they’ll love. For you, it means more reliable orders and fewer returns, better insight into shipping habits, and the ability to scale, even if your current warehouse or site doesn’t have physical space.

Shipping partners also take care of the integrations with shopping carts for you, allowing you to provide accurate tax and shipping costs, as well as dates earlier on in the checkout process.

This is smoother, and customers can automatically get tracking details. You’ll get those details too, meaning you can track how fast orders are shipped and received, verifying that you’re getting the service that you pay for too.

One of our other most significant pieces of advice is to make the returns and any other vital policies 100% transparent on your site.

Make these easy to find too. When customers know what they can and can’t do, they go into a sale with better expectations.

For example, if they have to agree that all sales are final, you’re going to get fewer calls and emails about returns. You’re also less likely to get poor ratings online around customer service (we can’t help you out with product quality, unfortunately).

Site improvements can also go hand in hand with this transparency push. Think about product images, whether you’re selling specific goods or it’s a software dashboard.

Real, honest photos help people know what to expect and be more satisfied when they get your product. When things are up to date and clear, there’s far less chance of misunderstanding or concern.

Great photos improve your site too by encouraging more sales and even giving you high-quality ways to make a case for an up-sell or cross-sell when the time’s right.

Ask what your customers want most.

It’s never been easier to ask people, so don’t neglect this step.

You have things customers want and they have the information you need, so encourage a swap. Offer coupons for surveys and social shares.

Send out emails with questions to prompt personalized style guides or packages. Follow up from a sale by thanking your newest customer and ask what you can do better next time.

The customers who engage with you can quickly become repeat purchasers. You’re raising the customer lifetime value by asking and listening.

That second part is essential. If you just ask what they want and how they want it but don’t follow through, then it’s a waste of time.

Customers may even grow frustrated when you’ve sent them the same survey a half-dozen times, but nothing’s changed.

Incentivizing a conversation will help you get some baseline answers. Social media conversations give you a chance to find happy and frustrated customers as well.

Review sites and forums also show you how customers are talking about your brand. They’re talking. Make sure you’re listening and adapting.

When in doubt, talk it out.

Every change and shift in information can introduce issues or concerns. Avoid this by talking with your customers about the problems they’re having.

They’re ready and willing to tell you what they need or want, any concerns they have, and what’s confusing about your site.

You want to talk to customers about what they need in order to complete a sale with you. This is your chance to get all of those concerns out of the way.

One of the best ways to start talking with them more regularly is to add chatbot support to answer customer questions.

These tools have become readily available and affordable. They can help you deliver better customer service and you may lose fewer sales by offering them.

Chatbots record all of their conversations and customer details, so many now come with their own analytics capabilities to help you determine what customers need.

They’ll find the most frequent questions, biggest complaints, and other data you can use to adjust your site and improve its performance.

If everyone is asking your chatbot for a size chart, it’s time to add one to every relevant product page.

When they routinely need help with something like fast, reliable shipping, then ask to get more details.

Explain your process and what’s available, and keep the conversation going. The more you’re talking, the better you can de-escalate situations and improve relationships.

The internet is nothing if not noisy. It’s time to turn all that noise about your brand into something useful, by encouraging customers and listening to what they have to say.

Use their words to guide your other efforts, and you’re ready to deliver your best service while meeting customer expectations.


Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing for Red Stag Fulfillment, an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse that was born out of ecommerce. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. Find him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

This is a guest post from Andie Katschthaler at Walls.io.

You may not be familiar with the term “user-generated content” or UGC, but UGC is all around us in the marketing materials we consume.

Even resources we don’t necessarily perceive as user-generated content often help companies sell more products.

This can include a product review, a star rating on Amazon, an unboxing video, or social media posts about products.

UGC is everywhere, and it’s up to brands to find it and harness it in their marketing.

Bonus: Below we’ve listed a few additional (but lesser-known) types of user-generated content:

  • Tutorial videos using specific products
  • Blog posts
  • Product unboxing videos
  • Animated GIFs

Has your business ever used these? Let us know in the comments below.

Sustainable British clothing brand Lucy & Yak is resharing a snapshot of a customer wearing a Lucy & Yak coat:

This Instagram post perfectly encapsulates what user-generated content is: using customer photos to market products.

Source: Instagram

What exactly is user-generated content (UGC)?

UGC is defined as any content created by the users of a website, a product, or a service, whether it’s posted on social media or anywhere else online.

But what’s the big deal about user-generated content? Why are we so into it? Where can you collect it, and how can you make it work for your brand?

User-generated content is authentic, and buyers trust it.

Brands love content created by their users for two main reasons:

  1. They get to reuse great-looking content and share it as part of their own marketing efforts.
  2. By sharing UGC created by happy customers, brands can convince potential customers to buy.

Simply put, the trick behind UGC is that people trust other people most when it comes to making buying decisions. Whether that’s actual in-person recommendations by someone they know or an online review by another customer—potential buyers rely on social proof.

According to a 2017 survey by TurnTo, 90% of U.S. consumers say their purchasing decisions are influenced by online recommendations. Plus, our own original research found that social proof is important to both millennials and Gen Z buyers.

This graph shows why user-generated content is important for buyer decisions

And some consumers even prefer UGC to original brand content, which is often seen as too pushy and promotional.

The younger the consumer, the more important UGC becomes. Gen Z buyers want to support brands that resonate with them, which often means authenticity and transparency.

How to collect user-generated content

Having user-generated content to use in your marketing is great. But, to have it, you have to first collect it.

It may sound counterintuitive, but one of the best ways to get UGC is to ask. Request reviews and ratings from your fans and customers, and incentivize when you can.

Ask customers and newsletter subscribers for reviews.

The most straightforward way of getting reviews is to ask people who’ve just bought something from you to review it, for example, in an email set to arrive at a reasonable time after purchase.

For example, trendy mattress and pillow brand Casper sends out post-purchase emails asking buyers to review their purchase:

This Casper email asks for UGC by asking customers for reviews

Source: Really Good Emails

Another group of people that can create great user-generated content is your newsletter subscriber list, even if they haven’t bought from you recently.

You can publish the reviews you get on your own website, ask people to review your brand on aggregators like Capterra or G2, and even use tools like Reevoo, Olapic, Stackla, Mention, or Livefyre to collect reviews.

Create a fun hashtag campaign for great content.

If you’re looking for content other than reviews, a hashtag campaign can be a great way to motivate and collect user-generated content.

Come up with a good campaign idea and create a hashtag campaign around it. Promote the hashtag and ask your fans to take part and share it.

The Birkenstock website features a section dedicated to the #MyBirkenstock hashtag, encouraging shoppers to share their pics and embedding a gallery of posts shared with the hashtag:

Birkenstock has a hashtag-related UGC site section: #mybirkenstock

Source: Birkenstock

Be clear about what you want people to create, whether it’s images, videos, or written content. People want to know the guidelines for creating content for a brand.

The better you explain what you’re looking for and how you’re planning to use it, the better the content you get will be.

The #KidsInTheKitchen hashtag campaign by NatureFresh™ clearly lays out what kind of content they want to see and how to submit it:

Give people steps to provide user-generated content, like NatureFresh.

Source: Kids in the Kitchen

Reward the best submissions with exciting prizes to motivate users, creating content that you can use in your campaigns later on. Incentives are a great way to coax content out of fans.

Collect existing brand-related content posted by your customers.

Sometimes, you get lucky, and your fans are already creating great content about your brand, without you even asking. Don’t miss out on it and monitor social media for mentions of your brand and your hashtags.

Use a social media monitoring tool to keep an eye on your brand mentions or a social media wall to collect any posts mentioning your brand, your hashtags, or defined keywords on a social wall.

You can repost or share the great content you find this way as well.

How to put UGC to good use

Now that you’ve collected all that great social proof, it’s time to put it to good use. You can even reuse UGC print ads, but the most common placement for fan content will likely be your online marketing efforts.

Convince your website visitors to buy.

Imagine a potential customer browsing your online store. They’re already on your website. They like your product or service.

They’ve looked at all the specifications and information. But somehow they’re still hovering over that buy button.

To get them to click on it, you’ll have to convince them that you really are the best. And that’s where your UGC comes in.

Strategically place reviews from other customers on your website or your online shop, or collect the best posts from social media and embed that on a section of your website.

You can even connect UGC to ecommerce using a social wall, by linking directly from the posts on your wall to the corresponding product in your shop.

Here’s an example of how beyerdynamic—an audio equipment manufacturer from Germany—is collecting user-generated content on a social wall to draw attention to the brand’s products.

They collect user posts which mention beyerdynamic, embed them on their website and then link each post created by their customers to relevant products in their online shop.

This is an example of a social wall that features examples of UGC. User-generated content is anything buyers make about your company.

Source: beyerdynamic

Turn your newsletter readers into customers.

You can use your newsletter to recruit reviewers but, similarly, email is a great way to garner reviews as well. So include UGC in your abandoned cart emails to lure customers back and entice them to finally buy.

Adidas includes user reviews in an abandoned cart email:

Adidas shows how you can use UGC reviews in your automated emails.

Source: Really Good Emails

When you introduce a new product or service, share what others have said about the product or your brand. It livens up the email and acts as social proof for future buyers.

Keep sharing that social proof on social media.

Social media is a great and logical place for sharing content posted by fans, and it’s effortless to reshare the posts.

Retweet content happy buyers have posted, include Instagram reviews by fans in your own Stories, or feature great user contributions on your Facebook page.

Here are two brands cleverly using UGC in their Instagram Stories: On the left, mara_seaweed reshares a post by a fan showing off their lunch made with the product.

On the right, oVertone shares a review by a user and includes a CTA encouraging people to sign up for the product’s waitlist.

These examples show Instagram Story UGC examples

Source: Mara Seaweed Instagram & oVertone Instagram

Just remember: with all your user-generated content, make sure you ask for permission from the creator before using it.

Wrap up

User-generated content can do great things for you. Use it to your advantage.

What existing fans have to say about your brand provides social proof for potential new customers. It shows that your brand is worthy of their time and effort. And that means you get more customers and more conversions.

You can collect user-generated content, such as reviews or social media posts, by asking your customers to share content.

Try asking them for feedback in your newsletter, collect reviews using an aggregator, or create a whole hashtag campaign built around visuals created by fans of your brand.

The clearer you are about the type of content you wish to see, the higher the quality of the submissions will be.

Then, use your social proof on your website, your emails, your social media channels, or even your print ads to show potential buyers how awesome your brand is.

Andie Katschthaler is a freelance copywriter and consultant living in Scotland. She has been the head writer behind the Walls.io blog for more than five years, helping people learn about how social walls can elevate and enrich their marketing efforts. You can connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

This is a guest post from Robert Brandl at WebsiteToolTester.

Interactivity can be very powerful thing in web design.

Interactive elements can help you to transform a static and forgettable page into something that captures the imagination of users and holds their attention.

Not only are interactive features fantastic for adding practical functionality to a site, but they can also be incredibly useful in terms of personalization.

And let’s not forget the added entertainment value. Some of the most interesting sites we’ve come across have made interactivity a priority, and the results are quite something.

Increasing user engagement with interactivity

Interactive elements are far more than simple visual tools. They’re also brilliant ways to increase user engagement.

A study published by the Content Marketing Institute found that 45% of marketers would rate interactive content such as assessments, calculators, quizzes, or contests as “either extremely or very effective.”

Evergage found that 87% of marketers reported “a measurable lift from their personalization efforts.”

This uplift in engagement is crucial. Increased engagement means a simplified sales funnel, and a boost in sales and, ultimately, profits—that means a higher ROI for marketing professionals and great results for the business, overall.

Looking to increase user engagement on your own website? Read on to discover some interactive elements you can use to improve user engagement at your website.

1. Interactive infographics

Infographics are nothing new in the world of web design, but interactive infographics go one step further.

By adding layers of interactivity to visual aids like these, the information on display quickly becomes far more interesting and engaging.

The options here are varied. Infographics can be as simple or as complex as they need to be, and there are endless ways in which information can be brought to life.

There’s no perfect way to display information in an infographic, which means you can really get creative (as long as you don’t go so far that you sacrifice user experience for cool design).

For a little inspiration, take a look at this guide on how to design an interactive infographic.

Simple interactive tweaks can be used to draw attention to certain parts of the page or encourage a user to keep clicking through to discover more information.

More complicated versions include personalized infographics, designed to transform data according to a user’s specific requirements.

For example, a user might input specific data relating to their financial status, age, or location, and this could transform the information displayed on the infographic.

Interactivity can also be used to display the effect of other factors on the data, like time, location, financial status, life stage, and so on.

To get a better idea of what we’re aiming at, take a look at this intriguing infographic designed by Goldman Sachs.

This infographic about millennials is a good example of Interactive Elements That Can Increase User Engagement

In this example, users are taken on a journey through the minds of Millennials, to learn how this demographic might reshape the economy in years to come.

The infographic is immediately engaging, asking a user to click to “get started.” As they scroll down, the animations bring the information to life and keep a user’s interest.

2. Virtual product testing

Virtual product testing presents incredible opportunities for ecommerce stores.

Consumers are increasingly shopping online for all kinds of different products now, with the only obvious drawback of this trend being the inability to try before they buy.

Virtual product testing seeks to change this, by enabling users to try out products in the online world before committing to a purchase.

Product testing tools are already in use for many different items, ranging from interior design and furniture to hair and makeup.

For example, online makeup stores, such as NYX Cosmetics, now use interactivity to offer consumers the chance to see how products might look on their own skin.

Nyx provides users the chance to see how makeup will look on them, allowing user engagement even online.

Users are asked to upload a photograph, which is then used as the backdrop for product testers.

This idea is immediately engaging for a user, and encourages them to spend far more time on the website exploring different products than they might otherwise have done.

For more ideas on how to implement interactive elements on your product pages, check out this post from Landingi.

3. Interactive animations

In today’s crowded marketplace, companies need to work incredibly hard to stand out from the competition.

First impressions are everything, and websites have a very short window of time to impress.

In fact, Sweor has reported that it takes just 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion on a website and decide whether or not they’ll stick around or hit that close button.

Animations can really enhance the first impression that users have of a website.

Interactive animations immediately show a user that a site is offering something different, and might just pique their interest long enough for them to start diving into the information on display.

With competition fiercer than ever, a simple animation could be the difference between an engaged new customer and an abandoned Google search.

To see what a difference animations make, take a look at new banking site Wickret.

This mobile banking app’s website has already attracted high praise for its original design.

Animations take pride of place on the homepage and are used to create a dramatic first impression that quickly demonstrates that this bank offers something a little out of the ordinary.

Banking reimagined image

This is hard to explain in words, so we highly suggest you check out their homepage for yourself.

4. Quizzes and calculators

Few of us can resist a quiz or an interactive calculator, particularly when we’re looking for a way to procrastinate for a few minutes.

Tools like these have been used to get the attention of users for some time now, but, as technology has advanced, we’ve begun to see more personalized, bespoke versions of these engaging elements.

Quizzes are particularly useful, as they can be utilized to gather invaluable data on existing customers and new prospects.

Such data can quickly be turned into actionable strategies designed to enhance the customer experience and boost business overall.

Quizzes can be designed according to any target audience, for any brand or company.

They range from educational tools designed to educate a user on a company, such as the Hiscox small business management quiz, to light-hearted and entertaining quizzes that help get users talking, such as this Buzzfeed quiz which promises to guess your emotional age based entirely on your pasta preferences.

Hiscox survey - this is a great example of Interactive Elements That Can Increase User Engagement

Buzzfeed survey - Which pasta are you?

That being said, if you don’t have the time or resources, you can implement a simpler version of these quizzes.

For example, we have a post that discusses Wix pricing options and, at the end of the article, you can find a simple quiz that’s implemented directly in the text:

Smart Finder has a 6 questions to find your wix plan - a perfect example of interactive elements

Quizzes aside, calculators are another useful way of increasing engagement, by presenting users with a practical tool that helps them solve a particular problem.

We often see calculators in use on websites for financial services, but these can be used in almost any niche.

Tools like calculators can also be used to help with budget planning, as this example from the Money Advice Service demonstrates.

In this case, users are quickly engaged with a series of questions that then help to plan their monthly budget.

It’s informative, useful, and provides a real service to users who may be struggling financially.

This interactive element is a budget planner

Quizzes and calculator tools are particularly useful in building an engaged audience of newsletter subscribers.

As the tools often require a user to input their email address, it’s easy to link such interactive elements directly to a marketing newsletter account.

The data can even be used to create segmented, highly specific lists depending on users’ specific interests and requirements.

Email lists that are built via interactive content tend to be incredibly useful, bringing in real results from marketing communications.

Just take a look at this recent article to learn more about using interactive elements like quizzes and calculators to segment leads and build newsletter audiences.

Building interactive quizzes and calculators isn’t as tricky as it might appear. In fact, there are plenty of user-friendly tools out there to help you.

Some of the top tools available include Outgrow, Calconic, or Involve.me.

5. Surveys

Customer feedback is crucial in any business, but gathering this information is often more difficult than it sounds.

Surveys are a great way of encouraging customers to share their views and opinions, as well as learning how best to improve over time.

These short questionnaires also play an important role in enhancing the customer experience, by ensuring that all customers feel listened to and valued.

Many companies choose to share surveys automatically as soon as a consumer purchases a product or service.

For example, when a user reaches their intended destination following an Uber ride, they’ll immediately be asked to rate their driver and give feedback.

This helps to engage a customer and makes it more likely that they’ll continue to use the service.

Similarly, online accommodation marketplace Airbnb asks users to rate their hosts and give specific feedback on the availability of items.

This enables the site to provide a better service for future guests, and gives the company the opportunity to resolve any issues.

Airbnb survey - Interactive Elements That Can Increase User Engagement

If you want to go for a more standard survey that you can embed in a blog post or a feature page, you can use tools like Typeform, SurveyAnyplace, and SurveyMonkey.

If you don’t want to spend anything and need something fairly simple, you can always create a simple form in Google Forms or check one of many free survey tools.

6. Social sharing buttons

Social media remains an incredibly powerful tool, in terms of improving brand awareness and encouraging word-of-mouth recommendations.

For this reason, many websites encourage users to share pages by adding social sharing buttons throughout their website.

Sharing buttons are incredibly quick and easy to implement, and they make it simple for users to engage with the content on your website.

For maximum engagement, consider adding bespoke sharing buttons beneath high-interest elements, such as infographics, quotes, or statistics.

Take a look at Share This or AddtoAny to learn how to add sharing buttons to a website and discover a huge range of different options, when it comes to design and functionality.

Here’s one example with small and unobtrusive sharing buttons on the Campaign monitor blog.

An example from the WebsiteToolTester article on Interactive Elements That Can Increase User Engagement

And here’s an example from Pure Residuals with bolder sharing buttons.

Interactive Elements That Can Increase User Engagement

If you want to take this a step further, you can implement in-text Tweets and shares, like in the example below.

Interactive Elements That Can Increase User Engagement

Image source

Take advantage of interactive tools to maximize engagement.

Interactive elements can really power up user engagement, which will definitely improve the ROI of marketing strategies.

There are endless options when it comes to introducing interactivity to a website, so it’s worth investigating different ideas and taking the time to consider which interactive elements would resonate best with your audience.

The good news is that you don’t have to be a technological wiz to add interactive elements to your site.

If you can create a website with a website builder, adding interactive elements isn’t any different.

Basically, every interactive element can be designed using one of the many tools we mentioned and quickly embedded on any page you want.

Wrap up

No matter which elements you choose, you can be sure that your site will rapidly improve in terms of user engagement, as well as in your ability to pick up useful contact information.


Robert Brandl headshotRobert Brandl’s passion has always been web tools that make your life easier. That’s why he founded the WebsiteToolTester, where you can find reviews and tutorials for the world’s best website builders and ecommerce platforms. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

This is a guest post from Tatiana Podus at Promodo.

The advantage of email marketing is its low cost and high efficiency, especially when looking for a tool to attract active traffic. And depending on the size of your list, investments in email marketing can start at a very low price.

This is a win-win when considering the incredible ROI that email offers. Not to mention, email has a 2.5% conversion rate, ranking first among the best-performing marketing channels.

7 Ecommerce email tools to improve conversions

In today’s data-driven world, simply sending the same email to your entire list isn’t enough. Subscribers are fed up with generic emails: They’re far more selective and demanding than they used to be.

Read on to discover 7 advanced ecommerce email tools to help you make your email marketing campaigns truly effective and get a competitive edge in the market.

1. АМР for email

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a technology designed to make web content load faster on mobile devices.

In email marketing, it enables you to create interactive emails—ones your subscribers can interact with in a variety of ways, such as: browsing through a gallery, placing or modifying an order, filling out forms, and completing surveys.

According to Litmus, mobile devices account for up to 42% of email opens. This means that almost half of the opens can be converted into orders directly from within an email, without visiting the website.

And, with the help of AMP, you can modify the emails that have already been sent to your subscribers.

For example, let’s say you send an email with discounted items, but the items that were showcased in the email sell out quickly. In this case, you only have to change a few lines in the code to replace the sold-out items with available ones.

And this even works in emails that have already been sent.

It is important to note, however, that at the time of this publication, AMP pages are only supported in Gmail and Mail.ru.

But this shouldn’t stop you from sending emails to other email clients. If the AMP version isn’t supported by an email client, it will be replaced with a regular HTML email.

Soon, this technology will likely be introduced to Outlook and Yahoo Mail.

2. Geomarketing, geo-targeting, and geofencing

Geomarketing is a way to send email and Viber messages, as well as push notifications, based on the subscriber’s real-time location.

Why is localization important? Find out here.

Currently, one of the only tools actively used in geomarketing is geo-targeting, though geofencing will soon be available for implementation. Let’s take a look at the key differences between the two.

Geotargeting is used to send notifications to subscribers based on their geographic location (country, region, or city). The subscriber’s location data is obtained based on the actions they take. It can be recorded when a user opens an email or clicks a link. If the user’s location changes, the data in the system will be updated, too.

Take, for example, a contact has changed their location and moved to another area of ​​the country. A business could send them notifications about the nearest gas stations or diners in the updated location.

Geofencing is also used to send automated notifications to subscribers based on their current location. The difference is that users will only get notifications when they’re within a radius of 1-2 km from a gas station or a diner. This allows businesses to deliver maximum value to customers, as well as improve brand awareness and brand loyalty.

This format is perfect for businesses in the service sector, such as beauty salons, gas stations, or car repair shops.

For example, if you run a food delivery business, you may want to share a discount on pizzas on a Friday night in a particular residential area where sales are low.

Geofencing will enable you to target your customer engagement efforts only at this particular area, without having to segment your database manually.

What’s more, you’ll be able to save your marketing budget by narrowing the target audience for sending.

3. Advanced segmentation

Advanced segmentation is an email marketing staple, but it’s also one of the most important ecommerce email tools, allowing you to send targeted emails to users based on the dynamic data about their behavior.

You can learn more about segments in the video below.

 

With the help of advanced segmentation, you can track the following:

  • Basic data: the data imported from a user profile or a contact list
  • ESP data: the data about subscribers’ interactions with emails
  • CRM data: the internal sales performance analytics data including the data about offline purchases
  • External data: the data about user interactions with the website or mobile app

With a special script placed on each page of the website, you’ll be able to obtain and process more information about the actions of your subscribers in real-time, and then automatically insert content in emails depending on the level of detail of the data you have.

This table describes advanced segmentation: one of the best ecommerce email tools you can use.

Advanced audience segmentation allows you to offer your subscribers related products based on the actions they take, which will help you increase transactions and email-generated revenue.

For example, say a subscriber has purchased a vacuum cleaner. This data can be processed so that the next email would contain information about the purchased product and a content block with related products: a bag, additional nozzles, etc.

Now let’s say another user has only viewed vacuum cleaners on the website. In this case, an email would contain information about this vacuum cleaner, as well as special-priced cleaners or more functional counterparts.

4. Hyper-personalization in email and push notifications

Content personalization refers to creation and distribution of messages targeted directly at a specific group of users.

By segmenting your audience into such groups, you’ll be able to send them emails depending on their specific characteristics and the objectives of your business.

Hyper-personalization implies creating individually customized emails based on an analysis of subscriber behavior. According to SocialMediaToday, personalized emails generate up to 14% more revenue and help improve open rates by 29%.

This personalization guide will take your emails to the next level.

In email marketing, hyper-personalization enables marketers to make individual offers to each individual subscriber based on the history of their purchases. For example, you may receive replenishment emails when you’re out of your favorite product.

Push notifications can also be based on user interactions. These push notifications may include reminders of products that users have added to their favorites or abandoned cart notifications.

5. Gamification

Gamification is an effective eccomerce email tool that grabs reader attention and increases user loyalty through interactivity. When applied to email marketing, gamification can help drive engagement of new subscribers and activate dormant ones.

Such interactive elements aren’t designed for direct sales, but in the end, users should be able to use the rewards to get discounts or bonuses for their purchases.

There’s a variety of different puzzles and games, such as:

  • rebuses
  • puzzles
  • crosswords
  • lotteries

Some of these interactive elements can be implemented directly within an email, while others may require a separate page or publication.

Gamification in emails shouldn’t be too complicated, because the primary goal is to entertain readers, not to make them anxious.

Just make sure that the conditions for participation and claiming an award are clear and transparent.

6. Omnichannel and multichannel marketing

Omnichannel and multichannel marketing approaches are often confused with each other.

However, recently, the term “omnichannel” has been getting increasingly higher rankings, in terms of popularity among search queries, and, the demand for omnichannel marketing is likely to grow even more in 2020.

Multichannel marketing allows you to communicate with users using multiple communication channels, including email, SMS text messages, social media networks, search engine marketing, and so on.

At the same time, multichannel marketing implies that these channels aren’t synchronized with each other: They have separate sales workflows, and customers who are attracted through each channel may be treated as separate entities.

Omnichannel marketing also means that marketing experts connect with users using multiple channels. The difference is that these channels are connected into one single, holistic user-centric structure.

This makes it possible to get as much information about customers as possible. And with that information, you can provide them with the best, most comfortable way to make orders, ask questions, and communicate with a company in every possible way across all channels and devices—from the very first touchpoint to repeat purchases and beyond.

Advantages of omnichannel marketing:

  • All communications are maintained via channels that are convenient for each particular user at their most convenient time.
  • Omnichannel marketing reduces the risk of losing a subscriber by leveraging multiple channels in a seamless experience.
  • All data about subscribers’ interactions with emails is stored in a single place.
  • Omnichannel marketing provides for a more detailed analysis of customer lifecycle and lifetime value (LTV) based on comprehensive data across all customer touchpoints. As a result, you’ll be able to send more relevant information to each individual subscriber.

Omnichannel marketing has a huge advantage over multichannel marketing, as it makes it possible to analyze each channel in conjunction with others.

Plus, you can set up a unified user service system, increase customer loyalty, and provide an opportunity to establish individual and personalized communication with users.

However, the omnichannel marketing approach has one significant disadvantage: the difficulty of implementation from the technical perspective.

That’s because you’ll need tools that’ll allow you to collect data from different marketing channels and combine this data into a single source of information for your marketing campaigns.

Learn how to combine email marketing and social media. 

7. Email marketing analytics

Analytics is the right thing to do if you want to develop your marketing strengths.

Conducting an analysis of your email marketing efforts will enable you to see the whole picture, measure your current marketing performance, and make informed decisions for the future.

Email analytics allow you to monitor the success of your email marketing efforts and make timely adjustments.

In order to keep an eye on your email marketing performance, pay attention to the following indicators:

  • email open rates
  • click-through rates
  • conversion rates
  • number of unsubscribes
  • delivery errors

To increase some of the metrics and reduce others, you should conduct A/B testing for your emails, apply a deeper segmentation, and automate your workflows in general.

Analytics can help you make objectively reasonable forecasts, for example, for a year in advance, as well as set goals and achieve them by applying the tools you need in email marketing.

Get the introduction to email insights and reporting here.

Wrap up

Email marketing is one of the most efficient channels for business communications. Not only does it drive good engagement and conversion rates without significant investments, but it also has great automation capabilities.

We hope that the ecommerce email tools described in this post will help you improve your email campaigns, making them easier to read and more useful to your readers.

If you’re having any difficulties setting up your email marketing campaigns, it’s best to contact experienced email marketing specialists.

Tatiana Podus is a marketing manager digital marketing agency Promodo.

This is a guest post from Megan DeGruttola at Stackla.

For as much as our digital landscape has evolved over the last couple decades, email remains one of the most effective channels for marketers across all industries.

Yet every year people’s inboxes get more crowded and their brand expectations continue to grow. Not to mention that companies send more and more emails annually—and more emails means more they need more images to support that scale.

Since 65% of marketers struggle to consistently create engaging or well-designed visuals and it’s often expensive and time-consuming to do so, many have begun turning to the abundance and influence of user-generated content (UGC).

What is user-generated content?

Although you may not have heard of it, you’ve most likely created it. You know that photo you shared on Instagram from your latest trip, the unboxing video you posted on YouTube, or that picture you tweeted during the last event you attended? Those were all user-generated content.

Simply put, user-generated content is any form of content—posts, images, videos, reviews, etc.—that consumers create on social networks.

What is user-generated content? This image defines it as any form of content created by consumers online or on social media.

Put user-generated product reviews directly into your emails with Campaign Monitor Commerce.

Everything you’ve been sharing on sites like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Weibo, and more is UGC. And you’re not the only one.

It’s estimated that 3.2 billion images are shared on social media every day—making user-generated content a goldmine of authentic and visually engaging customer experiences for brands to tap into.

Why is user-generated content so impactful?

So what is it that makes this wealth of content so valuable to marketers? UGC has proven to be the most trusted, memorable, influential, and scalable form of content.

It’s trusted.

At the end of the day, people trust other people more than they trust brands. This simple fact is the reason word of mouth has always been the most powerful form of marketing.

In today’s internet age, user-generated content serves as a digital form of word of mouth—reaching exponentially more people with the ubiquity of social networks. And, according to Nielsen Research, 92% of consumers trust earned media, like UGC, more than any other form of content.

This Stackla statistic says 92% of consumers trust earned media more than owned media.

It’s memorable.

Marketing is a constant battle for consumers’ attention.

Since it’s more challenging than ever to grab and hold people’s attention, visuals have become a crucial way for brands to cut through the online noise. Not only does content featuring relevant visuals tend to get 94% more views, but studies have also concluded that ads containing user-generated content are 31% more memorable than ads with traditional content.

It’s influential.

Engaging people is one thing, but motivating them to take a desired action is often the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign. When it comes to influencing people’s purchasing decisions, UGC is proven to be the most effective form of content.

Providing a trusted source of visual social proof, 79% of consumers say their purchasing decisions are highly influenced by user-generated content—up from 60% in 2017 (and 9.8 times more influential than social media influencers).

Stackla graph on purchasing decisions.

It’s scalable.

While creating compelling visuals is a persistent challenge for marketers, the volume and velocity needed to keep pace with an “always on,” omni-channel strategy helps to compound the issue—particularly if you’re also trying to deliver increasingly personalized customer experiences.

Meanwhile, consumers have become the world’s greatest content creators.

As I mentioned above, there are literally billions of pieces of unique consumer-created content across the dozens and dozens of popular social sites people visit every day. And consumers are adding fresh visuals to these sites daily—making UGC a self-replenishing source of authentic, trusted, and influential content.

So how can marketers begin leveraging this content to boost the performance of their email campaigns? Here are five creative ways to infuse your emails with the power of user-generated content.

1. Provide some visual inspiration.

Because visuals are so effective at breaking through the noise and staying at the front of people’s minds, they’re an incredibly effective form of inspiration for consumers. And what’s more inspirational than a beautiful travel photo?

Popular Australian airline, Jetstar, taps into the inspirational value of authentic travel visuals in their destination email campaigns, showcasing UGC from places like Singapore to help audiences discover the many attractions these countries have to offer.

Highlighting genuine and compelling photos from other Jetstar customers serves as a powerful way to spark interest and a bit of FOMO into the minds of potential travelers.

Jetstar email example with user-generated content.

2. Bring people power to promotional emails.

There are seemingly endless kinds of promotional email campaigns marketers can run to re-engage audiences and drive sales. Yet the average person receives 121 emails per day. So how can you start setting your promotional emails apart? By tapping into the power of people.

U River Cruises, a subsidiary of Uniworld, regularly runs promotional email campaigns advertising their eight-day cruise packages. Sometimes, that means offering discounted prices, but U River Cruises doesn’t stop there.

To help bring those trips to life for potential passengers, they also show—through user-generated photos and testimonials—other cruisers enjoying the scenery, food, and cultural adventures that specific trip has to offer.

U River Cruises email example with user-generated content.

3. Turn abandoned shopping carts into realized sales.

Shopping cart abandonment is a problem that plagues most online retailers. People visit your site, add some items to their online cart, then exit your site before completing their purchase.

In cases where the shopper is known, email is often the most effective way to keep those items top of mind and bring that person back to complete their purchase. But, if you’re only featuring the same old images from your product page in those emails, you could be squandering a prime opportunity to make a sale.

What if the reason they never followed through on the purchase was because your branded product images weren’t convincing enough or left them with unanswered questions about the quality or usefulness for your product?

To remedy this issue, consider pairing fresh copy with authentic user-generated content.

4. Conjure more excitement with transactional emails.

While promotional marketing emails afford a lot of space for creativity, the inherent function of transactional emails tend to favor information over flash.

But what if your transactional emails could provide customers with necessary information while also including visually appealing (and personalized) content experiences?

As one of the most trusted names in travel, Expedia is continually working to further personalize their customer communications—and UGC has been the perfect tool to help them do so.

To make their personalized travel itineraries more visually engaging and unique, Expedia Hong Kong dynamically displays relevant user-generated images alongside each of the destinations on customers’ tailor-made travel emails.

Expedia uses user-generated content in their emails to encourage travel.

By showing real photos other travelers have taken at each of the stops on the customer’s planned itinerary, Expedia provides a deeply personal email experience that helps to build excitement for the customer’s impending trip.

5. Celebrate your community of passionate fans.

Social networks have become the go-to place for people to post about the brands they love. But, to amplify the collective enthusiasm of your customers’ social posts, you need to start cultivating that community beyond social platforms.

Kmart Australia recently started “Loved by YOU,” a marketing initiative and email campaign that recognizes and celebrates their customers and the Kmart products they love.

Not only does the retailer encourage customers to share their favorite Kmart finds with the hashtag #Kmartaus, but they also then use their emails to shine a spotlight on the great content those customers create—while helping others to purchase these loved items as well.

Kmart compares product images to user-generated images.

Wrap up

Email is still one of the most powerful tools in marketers’ tool box, helping to educate, engage, promote, and sell to new and existing audiences.

Yet email marketers face a lot of the same challenges as broader digital marketing roles: a lack of compelling and unique content, an inability to create truly personalized experiences, and trouble creating meaningful connections with audiences.

User-generated content has been proven to help marketers overcome all of these email challenges in a way that’s scalable and sustainable.

On average, Stackla customers who leverage UGC throughout their email campaigns have seen a 13% average increase in email click-through rates and a 35% average increase in email conversion rates.

What would those kind of email results mean for your brand’s bottom line?

Megan DeGruttola is the Head of Global Content & Communications at Stackla, the world’s smartest visual content engine. Stackla helps marketers save time and money by fueling all their marketing activities with authentic user-generated visuals. As a marketing and social media enthusiast, Megan has a passion for telling compelling stories that educate, engage and motivate audiences.

This is a guest post from Addison Burke.

The holidays are fast approaching, and so are the biggest sales events of the year.

If you’re looking to compete with Amazon’s 49.1% of all online shopping sales, you need to get your campaigns ready in advance.

But standard campaigns won’t cut it. You need unique, exciting, and fresh campaigns that customers haven’t already seen before.

Capturing sales with email campaigns requires more creativity than ever, as people now receive more emails than ever before.

Read on to discover some of the most unique email campaign ideas that you can draw inspiration from and implement this holiday season to improve sales.

1. Run your campaign early.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are holidays you can’t miss when it comes to online sales. Each year during this season, people spend over $700 billion.

Hundreds of millions of emails are sent during the holidays, so driving valuable clicks during this time leads to an even more competitive season. With all competitors going full force during the holidays, what’s your best option to stand out?

Running campaigns early.

You can see how Vida runs an early campaign in this great example:

This Early Black Friday deal is an example of an unconventional email campaigns

Source

Sending out this sale two months before Black Friday does two things: it prompts more sales and generates awareness that Vida will provide Black Friday sales all season long.

Since few competitors are doing pre-Black Friday deals this early, customers will likely remember Vida for their holiday-friendly deals.

Running your campaigns early can also help you gauge a few key factors to improve your actual holiday campaign:

  • Inventory: do you have enough, did you beat projections, and should you plan for more?
  • Offer: was the offer valuable? Did it resonate with people? What was your conversion rate?
  • Send times: test multiple email campaign sending times to see which drives the highest engagement.
  • Site: did your site handle the jumps in traffic? Or did your uptime and speed fail you?

Sending campaigns early gives you far better insights with less risk.

If you’re waiting until the day of to test these factors with your standard campaigns, you’re facing more competition, more risk, and less profit.

2. Give to your customers (and you shall receive).

Most email marketing campaigns around the holiday season are the same:

“Come buy this,” “Come spend your money on X,” “Get 15% off if you spend a fortune.”

You’re effectively asking something of the user without giving them anything (of real value) in return. In short, you’re asking your user for a purely transactional relationship.

Unfortunately, transaction-based relationships don’t foster positive brand awareness, and they don’t create loyalty from customers.

And, when consumers are blasted with promotions, loyalty becomes more important than ever.

This holiday season, run campaigns where you personalize and give back to your users.

For example, showcase to your loyal customers that you notice them and how loyal they actually are, as Lyft does:

Lyft uses data to send unconventional email campaigns

At the end of your email, reward them for their loyalty without forcing them to spend money.

Don’t give them a coupon that they can use on orders over $XX. Instead, just give them a coupon or a discount that’s worth their time.

This fosters even deeper loyalty and recognition.

3. Create custom audience landing pages.

Whether you’re selling digital items or selling direct-to-consumer goods, custom landing pages convert (over 200%!).

What are custom landing pages?

Custom landing pages are sales pages that target either a specific product segment, target audience, or both.

For example, take a look at this landing page from Bay Alarm Medical:

This is an example from Bay Alarm Medical's safety email campaign

Now take a look at this landing page for a separate product:

This is an example of an email template from Bay Alarm Medical

Notice how each landing page follows a templated theme, but the content is customized for the specific product and segment.

Doing so allows you to better customize your CTAs and send the right landing page link to the right audience.

See Campaign Monitor’s free templates here.

Sending customers to a more general page might lead to fewer conversions.

Why? Less personalization. Generic landing pages or your homepage aren’t specific enough, and it can be more difficult to find specific items.

Customers need to feel you’re tailoring your content to their pain points and specific needs. And by using templates from page-building tools, it takes just minutes to scale for different audiences.

Typical development costs for websites start at $2,000 on the low end, according to Website Setup. Using an inexpensive website building tool, on the other hand, allows you to create dozens of landing pages for different target segments or product niches:

Examples of website builders

Source

This way, you can design a single page, duplicate it, and customize the offering for each individual segment.

No need to spend thousands on custom development. Simply design one page and scale it for your needs.

4. Shift your focus from selling to brand building.

Holiday sales can be great for your business, but they can also damage your reputation.

Every business wants those holiday sales, and some may send batch-and-blasts to see what sales they can achieve.

These are often ignored, and many companies tend to inflate their listed prices, making discounts worthless. This isn’t just bad for your brand, but also for trust and loyalty.

When running your next holiday campaign this year, consider taking a different approach—one that focuses on your brand development in the long term, rather than short-term sales.

Case in point, Everlane:

This example from Everlane is an unconventional email campaign for the holiday season

Source

Even more daring, the Everland subject line stated, “This is not a sale.” Consumers can’t help but click.

Instead of a standard attempt at driving sales via coupons, Everlane changes the game, promising to give every penny earned on Black Friday to their factory workers for better benefits.

Yeah, that’s a lot of money, but it’s money spent on the well-being of employees who make the product.

That translates into better company culture, brand awareness, and a better product in general.

While you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) copy this idea as is, you can modify it to fit your needs.

Can you partner with a local charity (if your business is local)? Are there certain causes that your company employees can vote on? Or causes your consumers might be interested in contributing toward?

Look for ways to build your brand and make the world a better place.

Consider investing in the long game: It just might be your next home run.

5. Develop an interactive and ongoing campaign.

Standard campaigns can work, but they aren’t very engaging or exciting for most recipients on your list. And while small discounts are nice, they’re not especially unique.

So, how do you stand out? Luckily, the delivery method can be just as impactful as the actual discount.

Boring emails net boring and dull engagement rates. Take a hard, honest look at your last holiday campaign.

How was the engagement rate? Was the open rate low? How did it compare to your industry benchmarks? If so, your offer was probably not compelling enough.

If you fall into the lower engagement category, don’t worry—you have plenty of time to spice things up this year.

For example, Forever 21 takes its Black Friday campaigns to a whole new level:

Try using interactive content for your unconventional holiday campaigns

Source

Instead of just emailing customers a coupon code to redeem, they drive engagement that leads up to Black Friday, helping to build hype for the sales to come.

By using a scratcher-style game, users can win up to 25% off their shopping, in addition to already existing sales.

This gives people the psychological feeling of commitment and, once they’ve won the prize, it’s highly likely they’ll put it to use.

Can you develop interactive content to engage subscribers and unlock more leads?

If so, try this for your next holiday campaign. Ditch the cookie-cutter templates and produce an unforgettable experience for your existing and potentially new customers.

Wrap up

The holidays are fast approaching. Now’s the time to get ahead of the competition and run holiday email campaigns.

But you can’t just recycle and repeat old tactics.

If you want to stand out this year and drive more sales than ever, it’s time to get unconventional.

Start by running your campaigns early, building up hype and brand awareness before you fight for precious, thinning inbox space.

In your campaign, don’t ask them to do anything. Instead, provide them value with zero strings attached.

Create custom audience/product landing pages to better personalize your offers.

Shift your focus from selling to brand awareness. While sales are great, so is long-term awareness of your company and steady growth.

Lastly, develop something interactive that people look forward to each holiday.

Want better holiday sales? Run these unconventional email campaigns.

Addison Burke is a freelance writer that teaches businesses how to grow through better digital marketing.