Get 3x the Conversion Rate During the Holidays with Orchestrated Marketing Automation

By Keith Roberts, US Director, emBlue (www.embluemail.com)

November and December account for almost 20% of overall yearly retail sales, which means that this peak shopping season provides an excellent opportunity to consolidate the efforts of any brand during this recovery year. The shopping season is coming fast, officially starting with Halloween then Black Friday, CyberMonday and through Christmas and the New Year.

If online retailers want to succeed during the holidays, they need to start thinking about their Marketing Automation strategy as soon as possible. For almost 20 years, emBlue has worked with more than 2,000 brands around the globe, collecting valuable insights, that along with recent trends, can be adapted to orchestrate the best Marketing Automation during this recovery year.

The six most essential actions companies should start to increase conversion rates for the holidays include:

1. Personal Touch: Know your customers thoroughly to give them a ‘Wow Experience’: Keep record of each customer’s interests, products browsed and purchases based on their interactions through different sources, like email and Web Browsing. Unify that information and connect with them based on their actual preferences. Those customers that are segmenting based on each customer preference show an open rate between 60 to 80% and a conversion rate above 5%.
2. Tailor-Made Experience: Past years, messaging personalization was a nice option. Now personalized messages are a must-have if you want to get the best possible results from your marketing efforts. The only possible way to achieve that is when you systematize and simplify it. Consumers are more engaged when they receive personalized messages. 72% of consumers only engage with marketing messages that are customized to their specific interests. In our experience at emBlue, personalized messages have a 4X ratio to convert compared with a massive message.
3. Omnichannel: More than ever, people are connecting through multiple channels, and most of the time a customer has to be touched more than six times to engage with a brand. Brands have to think of a multichannel marketing strategy without getting into the nuts and bolts of every interaction. Having a Multichannel Strategy speed ups the possibility to convert a customer faster. 77% of the respondents said that they use among 4 to 6 channels in their strategy. At emBlue, we see increasing results when our customers combine channels like OnSite PopUps, email, Text Messages, and Push Notifications. Our customers see 9x more leads with a multichannel strategy.
4. Automated Customer Journey: Automation creates communication steps engaging your customers with flows through Omnichannel, building personalized messages for every step of the way, resulting in an enriching experience that changes the game forever. Accomplish better results and save time. Sending the perfect message at the perfect time with automation translates to focusing more on your business. This may require you to improve your mobile signal so messages are sent in a timely manner.
5. Personalize Customer Feedback: Get your customer feedback in real-time and act immediately on it. The past year through the pandemic has increased the customer experience competition among brands. Customers are more demanding than ever, and only the brands that listen carefully will win the battle. NPS or Net Promoter Score is a great tool to get your customers’ feedback and act immediately. Combining an NPS poll with an automated messaging flow based on each customer answer will help you engage better with your customers.
6. Integration Is Power: Optimizing your marketing is also optimizing your business. Integrate and connect your channels, strategy, and systems, avoiding silos, elevating your sources and your team’s efforts. Synching data among platforms, giving you a 360 degree view of your customers interactions, for far more efficient communication. This lets you focus on a deeper connection with your customers. The above six actionable tasks can easily be implemented this holiday season. Although some customers will go to brick-and-mortar stores looking for instant gratification and the experience, digital will continue to grow. The numbers show that consumers are shopping more and earlier than they have in years past and now is the time to prepare with the advantage of a complete Marketing Automation strategy.