Yesterday I participated in a webinar hosted by Fast Pivot. I focused on items you can implement in time for the holiday rush.
I focused my recommendations on automation. Retailers are busy enough during the holidays, the goal is to give some stuff that can be setup in advance and let the machine do the work for you.
The 4 items I recommended were:
1. Create a "drip" campaign to instill confidence in shoppers.
2. Take advantage of a shopping cart abandonment email program.
3. Send product review follow up emails.
4. Send targeted and triggered follow on emails to interested subscribers.
The idea is to look at customers at different phases of the customer lifecycle. One of the presenters offers feed management which in turn drives shoppers to your website. Since 95%+ of those visitors are not going to buy, what are you going to do about it? Well, you should definitely think creatively about getting them to sign up to your list. And, once you get them on the list you should send them content that is relevant to their phase of the purchase decision....
Another presenter was Power Reviews Express with whom we already offer follow up reviews emails. Although the goal of reviews emails is to get reviews, since you are targeting your most recent customers, it has the added benefit of driving additional sales.
I've already covered shopping cart abandonment in a blog post called Shop and Abandon Cart Study - do you follow up on abandoned shopping carts?.
I also covered reviews emails with a blog post - Is your Product Review Follow-up Email Automated?. What you may not know is that if you are just getting started with any reviews program, you can send a "historical blast for free" to help seed your reviews program. Contact Us for more information.
Over the next few days, I'll be writing blog posts and detailed tutorials on the other two recommendations - the shopper DRIP and the follow-on offer. That's our goal, if we recommend something, we'll tell you EXACTLY how to do it. There are lots of people who offer best practices, we want to make sure the best practices are doable!
