3 Lead Generation Tactics for E-commerce Retailers

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to nurture leads and drive sales for e-commerce retailers. But in order to start an email marketing campaign, you need to gather email addresses from your potential customers. Here are three lead generation tactics that can help you collect email addresses from your website visitors:

Offer a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a piece of valuable content that you offer to your website visitors in exchange for their email address. Lead magnets can take many forms, such as look-books, free trials, quizzes, etc. The key is to create content that provides real value to your target audience and solves a problem they're facing. To collect email addresses, you can create a landing page that promotes your lead magnet and requires visitors to enter their email address to access it.

Use Pop-Up Forms

Pop-up forms are a highly effective way to collect email addresses from website visitors. You can set up pop-up forms that appear when a visitor takes a specific action, such as scrolling down a certain percentage of the page or trying to exit the website. To increase the chances of visitors providing their email address, you can offer a discount code or other incentive in exchange for their information. It's cheaper to retarget an email subscriber than spending large sums in paid media campaigns.

Create an Exit-Intent Pop-up

An exit-intent popup is a form that appears when a visitor is about to leave your website. These popups can be highly effective in capturing email addresses because they give visitors one last chance to engage with your brand before they leave. To make the most of exit-intent popups, you can offer a special promotion or freebie that encourages visitors to provide their email address. You can also use messaging that emphasises the benefits of joining your email list, such as access to exclusive sales or early product releases.

By implementing these three lead generation tactics, you can effectively collect email addresses from your website visitors and start nurturing them with targeted email marketing campaigns. Remember to always provide value and make it easy for visitors to opt-in to your email list. With consistent effort, you can build a loyal customer base and grow your e-commerce business.

2 Journeys Tactics That Boost Customer Loyalty In E-Commerce

No matter how exceptional your product is, how affordable your prices are, or how amazing your customer service is, there will always be another brand (or more likely, countless brands) attempting to lure your hard-earned customers away. Therefore, it is crucial to make customer loyalty a continuous priority in your marketing strategy. To help you cultivate and retain loyalty within your customer base, I have once again delved into our extensive collection of e-commerce journeys and compiled this array of impressive customer loyalty journey examples.

Reward Spending

Incorporating rewards and loyalty programs into your email marketing campaigns can be a powerful tool for increasing customer loyalty. By incentivising spending and offering special perks, such as exclusive discounts or early access to sales, customers are encouraged to make purchases and feel valued for their loyalty. Additionally, sending personalised emails that offer rewards based on a customer's spending habits, like a discount on their favourite product or free shipping on their next purchase, can create a sense of personalised attention and encourage customers to continue engaging with your brand. Ultimately, by prioritising rewards and loyalty programs in your email marketing strategy, you can create a positive feedback loop, with satisfied customers more likely to return to your business and share their positive experiences with others.

IKEA for example sends a thank you email with a €10 voucher if you shopped at least 3 times in the last 12 months for a minimum of €100. This only if you are part of the IKEA Family. This is an excellent way to get customers (usually with their families) to come back in and buy the missing accessories or decorations to their homes as well have a meal. Considering IKEA claims to be the world's sixth largest food chain, you could consider this to be a double win!

Provide Curated Content

Offering curated content is an excellent strategy to enhance customer loyalty in email marketing. By presenting tailored and personalised content based on a customer's past purchases, search history, and preferences, you can show that you value their individual needs and interests. Curated content can also serve as an effective tool for providing educational resources, highlighting new products or services, and providing useful tips or advice. Through regular and targeted communication, customers feel appreciated and understood, leading to an increased sense of trust and brand loyalty. Overall, a strong email marketing campaign that prioritises curated content can go a long way in building a loyal and engaged customer base.

For example, when selling scented candles or reed diffusers, it would be of high value to send a replenishment journey, based on the the amount and buying cadence of your customer base. This in combination with a discount makes it incredibly convenient for a customer to buy straight from the brand rather than looking for deals through a third-party seller.

In today's digital age, data has become one of the most valuable assets for any business. It is the key to understanding customer behaviour, preferences, and buying patterns. In this context, first-party data is especially critical for companies looking to gain a competitive advantage in the market.

First-party data refers to information collected directly from customers through various sources, such as website visits, customer interactions, and transactions. It is a company's most precious resource because it is unique, valuable, and directly linked to their business operations. However, many businesses still ignore the potential of first-party data, failing to recognise its critical importance in driving business decisions.

The reason first-party data is so valuable is that it provides a complete and accurate picture of the customer. This allows companies to tailor their marketing and sales efforts to the specific needs and interests of their target audience. By leveraging first-party data, businesses can create personalised experiences that build trust and deepen customer relationships.

Another advantage of first-party data is that it is more secure and privacy-friendly compared to third-party data. In recent years, privacy concerns have become increasingly important, with consumers demanding more control over their personal information. With first-party data, companies have complete control over the data they collect, ensuring that it is used responsibly and in compliance with privacy regulations.

Despite its many benefits, many businesses still struggle to fully leverage first-party data. A lack of investment in data management systems and skills can result in data becoming fragmented and siloed, making it difficult to extract value from it. Additionally, organisations may struggle with collecting, storing, and analysing vast amounts of data, making it challenging to turn it into actionable insights.

The good news is that it's not too late to start leveraging first-party data. Here are some tips to help you get started:

» Invest in data management systems: Invest in technology that can help you collect, store, and analyse your data. This will allow you to make better use of your data and turn it into valuable insights.

» Develop a data-driven culture: Encourage your employees to make data-driven decisions. This will help you turn your data into a competitive advantage.

» Use data to personalise experiences: Use your first-party data to create personalised experiences for your customers. This will build trust and deepen customer relationships.

» Compliance with privacy regulations: Ensure that your data collection and management practices comply with privacy regulations. This will help you build trust with your customers and reduce the risk of data breaches.

In conclusion, first-party data is a critical asset for any business looking to gain a competitive advantage in the market. By leveraging this valuable resource, companies can create personalised experiences that build trust and deepen customer relationships. Don't wait any longer, start leveraging your first-party data today!

Advantages of Bringing Customer Service and Marketing Together

When customer service is used as a marketing strategy, it helps a lot in improving customer retention alongside acquiring new customers. A customer driven marketing strategy with a greater focus on customer service holds great importance for businesses in many ways.

When customer service and marketing go hand in hand for a business, it not only helps delight the existing customers but also wins future prospects as well. Your business can positively affect the bottom line by combining the virtues of customer service and marketing.

Customer Service vs. Customer Retention

Many businesses make the mistake of focussing only on customer acquisition while neglecting the need of keeping the existing customers happy. By providing great support & customer service, it’s possible to make customers stick with your business and spend more.

The math is very simple: it’s multiple times more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one. But how do we achieve this with Salesforce?

The answer is by coordinating marketing objectives, sales promotions and excellent customer service, you build trust with customers. Even though a client may be drawn to a competitor’s advertising offer, they’ll likely be reluctant to change brands if they consistently have a positive experience with you. The more customer service help they receive, the less likely they are to defect to the competition. When the bonds between customers and brands are strong, your teams can even make a mistake or two and still keep the customer. Be sure to keep tabs on changes in the marketplace and your competitors so that your customer service and marketing teams can make adjustments as necessary.

Customer Service vs. Customers Acquisition

There is a wealth of information available in your customer service teams. They are the ones talking to your customers, getting feedback from your customers and solving their problems. So how do we leverage this for customer acquisition? The answer lies with the analytics customer service provides.

Put simply, customer service analytics is the process of collecting, tracking, and analysing customer feedback to find valuable insights. By doing this you better understand your customer’s wants, needs, and expectations, and can build a great marketing strategy. Rank the top 10 most common questions your new customers ask? And how does that compare to old(er) customers?

Several data sources can be used to gain key insights. For example, live chat data, chatbot data, NPS surveys, CSAT scores, emails, social media comments, and feedback from the customer service team. You can bring together qualitative and quantitative data to get a good picture of your customer base. Once you have this data you can work to improve your marketing & its ROI.

It allows you to develop strong content marketing ideas, supported by real-life customer examples which adds a level of authenticity and value. Same goes for building a wiki or a ‘frequently asked question’ section on your website. Think about how much better a chatbot could perform in replying questions directly to prospective customers. In short, it adds to the development of the Buyer Persona of your potential customers. Bring all of this together and you have the basis of a new lead funnel for your organisation.

Why work with a Salesforce Partner?

Speaking to someone in the process of deciding whether to implement Salesforce and or looking to automate processes, strengthen customer relationships, and more; you probably know how intimidating it can be, especially when you do not have experience working with CRM platforms. 

This led you to learn about Salesforce partners and whether you should work with one or not. But before answering your question, let’s first take a look at what exactly a Salesforce Partner is.

According to salesforce.com, partners are an elite community of certified Salesforce professionals who work with companies across products, industries, and everything in between. This definition is correct but a Salesforce partner is a lot more than that. A Salesforce partner can also provide a fresh perspective on why you do and what you do; and whether your existing processes are the best approach or not. Determine your long-term and short-term goals and maximise adoption of the platform but most of all, this investment!

Now, let’s take a deeper look at why working with a Salesforce partner could be beneficial for you.

Time saving

Implementing Salesforce requires a lot of work and time, and as we all know, time is money. It’s very expensive to self implement an in-house resource, especially when you consider the inexperience of beginners who need to implement correctly and efficiently an advanced and complex ecosystem like Salesforce.

You are able to overcome all of these problems by hiring a Salesforce partner who has successfully implemented the platform hundreds of times. Rather than waiting for internal processes to mature, you can let your experienced Salesforce partner implement and customise Salesforce to suit all of your business needs.

Get exactly what you want

Every company is unique and specialised in different industries, just like every Salesforce partner. Therefore, finding the right partner that perfectly matches your company's needs is an important step towards the success of your business. For example, Transformative is specialised in Marketing Transformation, meaning we implement Salesforce products in the context of marketing. There is a world of difference in using Salesforce in the context of a bank, insurance, retail or pharmaceutical company. They are all different but Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud is flexible enough to cover all of it. The partner with the right experience and expertise will show you exactly how.

Boosts in revenue

Ultimately, it's all about the customers. One of the best aspects of working with Salesforce partners is their capabilities to effectively use Salesforce to drive user adoption, increase customer loyalty and satisfaction, accelerate the sales productivity and increase the growth level of your business. In addition to providing continuous support and training, Salesforce partners make improvements to the system for a more user-friendly experience. An integrated system ensures long term success for your business.

Innovation

The goal of a company is always to evolve and be up to date with today's requirements. The same concept applies to Salesforce, with multiple releases of updated features every year.  With the help of your Salesforce partner, who is best positioned to see how these new features are being used, your business can grow together with Salesforce, guiding you in the right direction.

Salesforce Approved
Becoming a Salesforce partner is a long process. Before any company can be registered as a Salesforce partner they must meet the necessary requirements and provide the requested information in order to be accepted. This requires a significant effort in terms of time, financial investment, training, staff and certifications.  As a result, this long and strenuous process can provide a good indicator of the company's value. After all 91% of Salesforce customers already use partner applications and certified experts.