E-commerce marketing automation – the use of software technologies and tools to automate routine marketing tasks. These tasks are personal emails, cart abandonment follow-ups, and similar ones related to recommending a product or other general follow-ups with the customers. The ultimate goal of automation lies in streamlining work processes, boosting efficiency, and proper, on-time contact at the shopping path.

With stiff competition setting in, the automation of marketing activities allows e-commerce brands to scale their operations without losing that personal touch when it comes to customers. Through the proper tools and strategies, businesses will be able to hold on to more customers, increase sales, and lower the overhead costs of running operations.

Why is E-commerce Marketing Automation Important?

E-commerce marketing automation brings forth several key benefits to the e-commerce business, which enable them to:

Improve Customer Experience

Automation provides businesses the potential for delivering personalised messages and offers based on customer behaviour. For instance, a customer who browsed a category of products will soon receive a targeted discount or recommendation by way of an e-mail.

Increase Revenues Through Abandoned Cart Recovery

Online shoppers abandon about 70% of their shopping carts. Automated systems can alert customers with reminder emails, thus recovering lost sales, getting them to complete their purchase.

Save Time and Reduce Labor

Marketing teams liberate the time from routine activities to strategize and think creatively. For example, a business can easily handle multiple campaigns at the same time.

Customer Engagement Continuity

Automation keeps the customers engaged through various email newsletters and follow-ups post sale for loyalty building and trust.

Optimization of Campaigns through Data Insights

Most automation tools possess rich analytics, so the business will be able to monitor campaign performance as improvement is seen over time.

How Ecommerce Marketing Automation Works

E-commerce marketing automation works based on trigger-based actions and customer segmentation while orchestrating the message to be communicated at the appropriate time for the customer. This usually happens in the following ways:

Gathering Customer Information

Automation platforms collect data such as purchases, browse history, and interactions with marketing channels.

Segmenting the Audience

Customers are categorised into groups-for example, VIP customers, first-time buyers based on behaviour and preference, which enables highly relevant campaigns by the businesses.

A trigger is an activity that will initiate an automated workflow. Examples of triggers are abandoned carts, customers who have just signed up, or some product purchase.

Automated Delivery of Campaign

Once the trigger has been encountered, the system delivers the pre-set message which may be a welcome email or even a recommendation of one product without some manual interference.

Lead generation is what marketing is all about!

1. Targeting the right audience
2. Building brand loyalty
3. Creating a full pipeline of leads
4. Personalising your brand message

‍A lead generation strategy can bring about a 133% increase in revenue as compared to brands without one.

But what’s the best way to get there?

It’s achieved when a brand masters AUTOMATION and in this blog we’ll understand more on Mastering Marketing through Automation.

Let’s dig into how that works.

‍E-commerce Marketing Automation: The Benefits and Best Strategies

What is e-commerce marketing automation?

E-commerce marketing automation refers to the use of software tools and technologies to automate various marketing tasks and processes within an e-commerce business. These tools are designed to streamline marketing efforts, improve efficiency, and enhance the overall customer experience by delivering personalized and targeted messaging across multiple channels.

Benefits of eCommerce Marketing Automation

With those being the basics, let us convince you of the ecommerce marketing automation benefits that your brand can get:

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Increased Efficiency: Automation reduces the need for manual intervention in repetitive marketing tasks such as email campaigns, social media posting, and customer segmentation. This frees up time for marketers to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Personalized Customer Experience: Automation allows e-commerce brands to deliver personalized content and recommendations based on customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history. This enhances the customer experience and fosters stronger relationships with buyers.

Improved Lead Nurturing: Marketing automation enables e-commerce brands to nurture leads throughout the customer journey by delivering relevant content at each stage of the sales funnel. This helps move prospects closer to making a purchase and increases conversion rates.

Optimized Cross-Selling and Upselling: Automation tools can analyze customer data to identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling related products or services. By automatically suggesting complementary items or upgrades, e-commerce brands can increase average order value and revenue.

Enhanced Retention and Loyalty: Automated email workflows can be set up to engage customers post-purchase, such as sending order confirmations, shipping updates, and follow-up surveys. This helps keep customers informed and satisfied, leading to higher retention rates and increased loyalty.

Better Analytics and Reporting: Marketing automation platforms provide insights into campaign performance, customer engagement metrics, and revenue attribution. This data allows e-commerce brands to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions for future strategies.

Types of e-commerce marketing automation

With ecommerce marketing automation being a deal breaker with it’s benefits, it’s time that we move on to the types of marketing automation framework, or you can call it marketing automation strategy.

Let’s understand them below:

Marketing Across Channels

A common starting point for a marketing automation framework is streamlining marketing activities.

• Does a user receive a welcome notification, when they subscribe to your newsletter?
• Do you have a sequence set up to convert top-of-funnel leads into customers?
• Are all relevant trigger and transactional emails in place to address multiple user interactions with your product?

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Well Get started on these and various other different user touch points, and implement a marketing automation strategy for integral user experience across channels - based on the consumers’ preferred platform(s). Learn more about this in our article on Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns and CRM

Campaign Automation

A significant opportunity for automation lies in your advertising, outreach, and social media campaigns.

Remarketing and marketing automation strategy to specific audiences with:

• Personalised messages
• Implementing use-case specific automated chatbots
• Creating tailored engagement flows at scale

All these can help your product grow while minimising required operational efforts.

For detailed insights, read our guide on D2C Ecommerce RFM Automation.

Lead Scoring & Personalisation

Analysing multiple data points, such as online behaviour, email and social habits, demographic or company data - we can pragmatically filter incoming leads and prioritise engagements with them. For more on effective strategies, see our article on Data Analytics and Omnichannel CRM

Categorise the leads across channels into the below 5 brackets:

1. New leads or potential customers who visited your site, landing page, email or subscribed to a newsletter.
2. Working leads or people who already follow you on social media or are having active conversations with a sales executive.
3. Nurturing leads who may not make a purchase at the moment but may become customers in the future.
4. Disqualified leads who have not expressed any interest.
5. Qualified leads or potential customers who have shown intent to buy your product.

Once high priority leads are identified, we can create a personalised user experience for different brackets of a brand’s customer base and present their sales team with detailed data for each potential customer.

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Achieved through data across the funnel - from not 1, but 300+ brands

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Contact Management & Nurturing

Once the lead scoring framework is in place, a brand can proceed with establishing a comprehensive lead nurturing strategy.

The typical process includes segmenting high priority leads into groups and developing targeted outbound and inbound campaigns with unique call-to-actions delivered through multiple channels as preferred by each group.

And in the digital age, you can segment audiences on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook too.

The ultimate goal for the lead nurturing strategy is to successfully convert promising leads into paying & returning clients.

Marketing & Sales Tools Integration

With the growth of your business, the customer management framework expands to include the website, CRM, email marketing, lead management, behaviour analytics, content marketing, and other platforms.
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To bring results, marketing automation strategy needs to collect and store the data on each potential buyer in one integrated solution.

A single dashboard to view & seamlessly collect data from different platforms to make it available in one place to achieve transparent and efficient customer interaction.

‍Analytics & Reporting

The success of marketing execution lies in testing different customer engagement approaches, analysing the results, and building on the ones, which create the most value.

In order to achieve the highest ROI, brands need to set up the tools and reports to support informed and timely decision-making.

Tools that analyse every stage of marketing journey, to optimise future marketing potential.

E-commerce Marketing Automation Best Practices

To fully harness what marketing automation brings, here are some of the best practices to consider:

Customer Journey Mapping

Core touch points where automation could be of value-would be say, welcoming new customers emails or post-purchase surveys-and workflows can be created around that.

Start Small and Scale Gradually

Start with simple workflows such as an abandoned cart email or welcome sequence. Grow once you get into the swing of things, then begin more intricate automation like multi-step campaigns.

Focus on Personalisation

You must ensure that your messages are relevant to customers based on names, purchase history, and preference. Personalised emails will generally have higher engagement and conversion rates.

Test and Optimise Campaigns

Monitor campaign performance and experiment with A/B testing on open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Integrate to your E-commerce platform

You want to ensure that the automation tool can work seamlessly alongside your website, CRM, and payment systems in terms of exchange of data with flawless workflow management.

Compliance and Privacy

Collect and store only as much customer data as necessary in compliance with GDPR and other data privacy legislation. Make sure that your automated messages have opt-out options clearly included.

6 Top E-commerce Marketing Automation Tools & How to Pick the Best One

Here are six top e-commerce marketing automation tools, along with some advice on which one might be best for your business:

Klaviyo

Personalised email and SMS marketing.

Key Feature: It integrates pretty well with Shopify and advanced segmentation.

HubSpot

Good for: A business requiring an all-in-one CRM solution and marketing.

Key Feature: Analytics/lead management in-built

Omnisend

Good for: Multi-channel campaigns - email, SMS, push notifications

Key Feature: It comes with pre-built automation workflows for speedy setup.

ActiveCampaign

Good for: Small to mid-sized businesses

Key Feature: Advanced automations that focus on journeys of customers.

Drip

Good for: B2C e-commerce

Key Feature: It comes with strong personalisation and a visual automation builder.

Mailchimp

Ideal for: Startups and small businesses.

Core feature: A simple to understand interface with free starts for the first users.

Selecting the Perfect Tool:

Keep Your Budget in Mind: Several of the platforms have tiered pricing based on the features or the number of contacts.

Consider Look for Integration Capabilities: Find out whether the tool allows you to integrate it with your e-commerce platform, which can be Shopify or WooCommerce.

Scalability: Use a tool that scales up with your business, and grows with volumes.

Ease of use: Choose a platform whose interface is intuitive so that one can easily manage their campaigns.

Good customer support and related documentation: Tools with good customer support and documentation are likely to be the ones that can deliver good outcomes.

Effective marketing automation strategies for e-commerce brands

Welcome Series for New Subscribers: Set up automated email workflows to welcome new subscribers to your email list and introduce them to your brand, products, and promotions.

Abandoned Cart Recovery: Implement automated email campaigns to remind customers about items left in their shopping cart and encourage them to complete their purchase.

Product Recommendations: Use data-driven algorithms to automatically recommend personalized products to customers based on their browsing and purchase history.

Re-Engagement Campaigns: Identify inactive or lapsed customers and create automated campaigns to re-engage them with targeted offers, content, or incentives.

Post-Purchase Follow-Up: Send automated post-purchase emails to thank customers for their order, provide order status updates, and solicit feedback or reviews.

Segmentation and Personalization: Utilize automation tools to segment your audience based on demographic, behavioral, or transactional data, and deliver tailored messaging that resonates with each segment.

By leveraging e-commerce marketing automation effectively, brands can streamline their marketing efforts, drive sales, and build long-term relationships with customers.

Future Trends in Marketing Automation

As e-commerce continues to evolve, marketing automation is advancing. Here are some future trends to watch:

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: These technologies allow for more sophisticated segmentation, predictive analytics, and personalization, enabling highly targeted marketing messages.
• Omnichannel Automation: Integrating marketing efforts across email, social media, SMS, and other platforms ensures consistent messaging and enhances engagement.
• Voice and Visual Search Integration: As these technologies gain popularity, marketing automation tools will incorporate features for voice search optimization and visual recognition.
• Hyper-Personalization: Using real-time data and AI to deliver highly relevant content and offers to customers.
• Data Privacy and Compliance: Tools will need to adapt to comply with regulations like GDPR and CCPA, offering robust features for managing customer consent and data security.
• Integration with AR and VR: As these technologies become mainstream, automation tools will start incorporating AR/VR elements to create immersive shopping experiences.

That’s the end of our glance into 'Marketing Automation'...

‍Be Pragmatic. Be Pragma.