The Customer Journey Has Changed — Has Your Marketing?

Let’s face it; the traditional linear model of the customer journey is no longer accurate. Today’s consumers shop how they want, where they want, and when they want—all while facing distraction at a moment’s notice. They are choosing how they interact with brands and on which channels they do so. They have all of the power. Who said being a marketer is easy?

Today’s model more closely resembles that of a spiderweb, with its zigs, zags, and non-uniform strands. As chaotic as it may look, everything is connected and working in concert with one another. 

This is the new digital customer journey—unique, non-uniform strands that are all connected to serve a common goal. 

Because of the multitude of siloed channels, the distraction, and increased global competition, marketers need to rethink how multiple channels, like email and SMS, can work in unison with one another to create a relevant experience that meets consumers’ ever-increasing expectations of retailers. 

How The Journey is Moving Beyond Single Channels

According to a report by Omnisend, marketing campaigns utilizing three or more channels have a 287% higher conversion rate than campaigns relying on a single channel. For retailers, ensuring that campaigns have multiple cohesive channels working together can have a significant impact on the bottom line. Multiple channels matter, but how they’re delivered matters more.

While retailers are using multiple channels to communicate with and retarget consumers, many of them are working in silos. For example, an email subscriber may click on an email and then abandon the website. In response, they begin seeing ads on their social media platforms. But if the consumer comes back and makes a purchase, often these retargeting ads follow them around the internet, sometimes for days or weeks, while still receiving generic promotional email messages.  

Consumers increasingly expect communications from brands to be both timely and relevant. The example above is not that. 

Retailers need to understand how consumers naturally interact. Take Gen Z, for instance. These digital natives make up more than a quarter of the US population, and being digital natives means SMS is a natural communication channel. Even so, 83% expect to increase or maintain their email usage over the next several years. Both channels hold importance to them.

Retailers who have adopted SMS as a marketing channel have reported over a 2,700% ROI, and omnichannel campaigns that involve SMS are 47.7% more likely to end in conversion.

It’s time for retailers to break down these silos and make available additional channels for customers to opt into. Adding channels that appeal to their customers is just the first step. Creating relevant messaging is another. 

The Rise of Multi-Channel, Behavior-Based Messaging 

Consider that customer who is on a website and browsing products only to leave without placing an item in the cart. The consumer has shown some level of interest. Recognizing this, a retailer would traditionally continue sending them standard promotional emails and retarget the customer through search and social media. But this experience has challenges. Paid retargeting can be expensive, the strategy is siloed, and standard promotional emails are not always relevant. 

But this relevance matters. The same Omnisend report showed that that segmented campaigns earned 62% higher order rates than non-segmented ones. The reason—segmented messages are more relevant.

This is where automated behavior-based, multi-channel messaging can deliver a more user-friendly experience and guide the customer along their purchase journey. 

Consider the impact of sending abandonment messages via the channel(s) of the customer’s choosing—after all, no one chooses to see ads on their social feeds. Retailers can easily send automated reminder messages (e.g., email, SMS, push) for the products they were viewing via any, or all, channel(s)—and if the consumer completes their order, the other channels recognize and cease their retargeting efforts. 

Automated behavior-based messaging, such as browse abandonment, delivers segmented, relevant, and timely messaging to customers. Consumers recognize the value in them. That’s why it is not uncommon to see retailers drive over 25% of their email revenue on these messages alone.

This is just one example of automated, behavior-based messaging. Others include cart abandonment, welcome series, post- and lapsed-purchase, and re-engagement messages. I expect to see a continued increase in behavior-based automation adoption and the use of data, such as cart total or purchase history, to make these messages even more relevant than they naturally are.

Paving the Way for the Future

Utilizing behavior-based marketing automation to create relevant messaging and delivering it via the channel(s) of the customers’ choosing is going to be essential for catering to the modern-day online customer journey.

Tomorrow’s successful retailers will be those who cohesively incorporate other channels into their traditional siloed pillars of email, paid search, and paid social to create one unified, spiderwebbed e-commerce journey. After all, if you’re trying to catch flies, it’s good to be the spider who makes the web.

3 Easy Yet Effective Ways to Create Transactional Emails

Relevant, personalized and timely transactional emails are virtually impossible to over-hype as they can generate five times more revenue than non-transactional messages. Even though these messages are some of the most highly read emails sent by retailers, because they're so common improving them is often an afterthought. However, their value shouldn't be overlooked, as each additional open holds the potential to increase engagement and generate sales.

What’s a Transactional Email?

When used in e-commerce, transactional emails are automated messages based on some sort of transactional relationship between the consumer and the brand, such as an order or shipping confirmation. Because of the personal nature of the messages, transactional emails always deliver value for recipients. When they demand attention and are engaging, these types of emails often have higher open and clickthrough rates than promotional emails.

By optimizing three key elements of transactional emails, retailers can see greater return on investment and results, such as increased open rates.

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47 Ways to Prepare Your Email Marketing and Ecommerce Store For The 2020 Holiday Season

The holiday shopping season is fast approaching there is a lot of uncertainty about what will unfold. Questions surrounding the health of the economy and what a resurgence of COVID-19 might have on the supply chain make planning for this holiday season unique. 

One thing I do expect from this season is for ecommerce to further increase its already-increased share of retail sales. We saw email become a go-to channel for consumers during the COVID pandemic with a nearly 23% lift in conversion rates, and I expect this to carry over into the holidays. If you are an email marketer, here are 47 ways you can prepare your marketing program and ecommerce store for the holiday shopping season.   

General:

1. Start marketing early — e.g., late October
2. Pay attention to the Cyber 10
3. Pay close attention to the feel of the nation (COVID, economy) and adjust your marketing copy accordingly
4. Don’t wait until Black Friday to start marketing—again, start early

Technical Prep:

5. Collect SMS numbers along with email addresses—grow your trusted marketing channels
6. Audit website forms (e.g., sign-up, exit-intent)—how to edit them and who has access to do so
7. Test sign-up forms and ensure they work properly

Email Design:

8. Use emojis in subject lines
9. Use emojis in the preheader text
10. Make your emails mobile-friendly
11. Include a “top gifts” or similar section in your nav bar
12. Create a custom, holiday-themed header
13. Keep the CTA obvious in emails (let people digest the message quickly)
14. Make sale exclusions obvious—avoid misleading people and frustrating them at checkout
15. Acknowledge that self-gifting is real and design your messaging to account for it

Promotional Marketing Messages:

16. Promote value-adds/differentiators in your emails (e.g., extended return policies, always free shipping)
17. Use remails—but not every time (think about when it makes sense)
18. Send multiple emails on peak days (Thanksgiving Day, Back Friday, Cyber Monday)
19. Utilize SMS marketing, both as a stand-alone channel and to complement email
20. Utilize a sense of urgency (subject lines, CTA, copywriting)
21. Use product recommendations in your emails (for self-gifting, of course)

Automated Email Marketing Messages:

22. Adjust workflow timing (are you suppressing new signups from Black Friday emails?)
    Welcome series
    Cart abandonment
    Lapsed-purchaser
    Product review emails
23. Create seasonal automated messages (e.g., holiday-specific welcome series)
24. Optimize your transactional messages for sales (shipping and order confirmation)
25. Adjust abandoned cart timing rules
26. Increase the number of abandoned cart messages
27. Adjust the discounting strategy in your cart abandonment messages (is the discount worse than your holiday everyday promotion?)
28. Use browse/product abandonment messages—please, use them!
29. Integrate SMS messages into your email automation workflows, especially cart abandonment

Paid Search/Social:

30. Monitor your ROAS
31. Retarget email contacts on social and paid search
32. Test different/new social channels and search engines (e.g., Bing, Pinterest, YouTube)
33. Use influencers

Customer Service:

34. Implement live chat on your website
35. Extend your return policies
36. Solidify your BOPIS strategy/expand BOPIS offerings
37. Collect info for gift-reminder messaging

Discounts/Benefits:

38. Test different incentives (% off, & off, tiered discounts, deals of the day, X days of deals, flash sales, free shipping, free express shipping, VIP-only, SMS-only, email-only, for BOPIS-only orders, etc.)
39. Understand that free shipping has increasingly being used as THE incentive as the season winds down. Test it and save yourself some margin.
40. Make a holiday playlist on Spotify (for both your customers and employees)
41. Offer free gift wrapping

Prepare for the Unexpected:

42. Prepare an “oops” email in advance
43. Have backup promotions and coupon codes already created and loaded in your ecomm platform
44. Identify potential shipping challenges and have a contingency plan in place
45. Identify possible supply chain chokepoints and prepare for the “what if”
46. Prepare for a pandemic resurgence — and what that measns for your business

Finally:

47. Have fun and enjoy the season!

If you have any specific questions around the holiday season, please feel free to contact me!

And, of course, some of these tips from 2019 may still be useful, so check out this post, “Top Holiday Email Marketing Planning Resources”

8 Ways the Retail Landscape May Change After Coronavirus

Marketers have adjusted their marketing campaigns over the recent weeks, but those will eventually revert back to normal. Retail and e-commerce, on the other hand, may be in for more permanent changes. The aftereffects of coronavirus are sure to be felt long after it’s gone, surely changing how consumers shop, interact and prioritize lifestyle choices.

In this article, I discuss 8 ways retail and services may be impacted near term and in the years to come by the coronavirus aftermath. I’ll explore topics such as:

• Local shopping

• Online grocery

• BOPIS and curbside pick-up

• The in-store experience

• At-home fitness

• … and more

Click here to continue reading “8 Ways the Retail Landscape May Change After Coronavirus.”

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AMA Webinar Recap: COVID-19: What It Means for E-commerce

On April 2, Omnisend hosted its first AMA (ask me anything) session on the topic of ecommerce during the COVID-19 crisis. During the session, we covered questions on a variety of topics, from how to appropriately approach your email and SMS marketing campaigns to ways to properly maneuver customer acquisition via different channels.

I was a part of a four-person expert panel with wide-ranging backgrounds where we answered questions from retailers about doing business during the crisis.

The four-person panel consisted of: 

• Ron Dod, CMO, Visiture

• Paige Harris, Merchant Marketing Manager, Smile.io

• Philippe Roireau, Head of Partnerships, Gorgias

• Greg Zakowicz, Marketing Strategist & Content Team Lead, Omnisend

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Email Marketing During COVID-19: How to Send Emails During a Crisis

Marketing in a crisis, any crisis, is not easy. Marketers need to balance their human side with business needs, and knowing where that line sits is not always clear. But know this — what you do now will determine how your brand is perceived in the future.

This post by Whitney Blankenship explores the right way to approach your customers during a crisis, whether it’s COVID-19, or another future catastrophe, and how you can add value to your customers while trying to maintain your needs as a business.

In this article, she discusses:

• How to adjust your marketing during a crisis

• Ways to adjust your message

• How to still promote without alienating customers

• Considerations to make around pricing

Click here to continue reading on Omnisend

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2019 Email and E-commerce Holiday Season Recap

The 2019 holiday season has concluded, and once again ecommerce experienced record-breaking sales. This online holiday season registered just above $142 billion in online sales, a 13% increase from last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

But what made the 2019 holiday season so successful, and which trends have become the new normal? In this recap I’ll discuss:

• The Subtle Nuances of November

• The Cyber Five expanding into the Cyber Ten

• The new daily online sales benchmark to be aware of

• The growth in smartphones

• Why email marketing is so important during the holidays

• Top takeaways and how to use them

Click here to continue reading “2019 Holiday Season Takeaways and Ecommerce Marketing Action Items”

Dreams That Last

Look at this picture. What do you see?

It was 1997 in Atlanta. I was 19. I had recently moved there, with my questionable hairstyle and 42” JNCO jeans (although I still spike my hair), when a couple of my friends came to visit. We did what tourists do: went to Stone Mountain, the Conyers Monastery, Centennial Olympic Park, Underground Atlanta, the Westin rooftop restaurant, CNN, Coke’s HQ, etc.

This day was a bit gloomy. It was cool and overcast and featured on-and-off misting. It didn’t matter, our plans stayed the same. We ventured down to Centennial Olympic Park and Underground Atlanta where we joked around like 19-year-olds do and posed for funny photos to document the trip.

But back then, photos were a bit different — they came with a cost. We took ours with disposable cameras. There were no smartphones, no Instagram, and no selfies. After all, without Instagram, there was no use for them. Back then you had to be thoughtful about pushing that “take photo” button. One after another, we posed, turned the wheel until we heard the camera click, and pushed that precious take photo button.

As we made our way through Centennial Park and Underground Atlanta we had one last stop planned. It was to King Plaza, the gravesite of MLK Jr.

We made the quick drive from downtown to the site, parked, and began to walk around. It was eerily deserted, with the lone exception of one security officer casually patrolling the grounds. We walked around processing what we were seeing. It became real that this young man was killed advocating for something that seems so inherently basic: Equality. Justice. Freedom.

But during that time, he was judged, labeled, and, dare I say, feared for going against the status quo, for questioning what is deemed “right.” He was labeled by some, or many, a troublemaker. A radical. A villain.

He fought for something all people should have. And he paid the ultimate price because of it.

We took out our cameras, but something stopped us — our earlier inability to save pictures for the next stop. There were no photos left in the cameras. This was going to have to be one of those moments we simply experienced (something more people nowadays should do). But then it all changed.

We were no longer alone.

A lone figure appeared and slowly made her way toward us. As she approached we gave each other one of those quick hello nods and welcoming smirks — you know the kind. We continued to look around for a few moments and then I noticed something. She was holding a camera of her own.

I walked over and introduced myself. I explained our camera situation and made her a proposition: If she would take a photo of us and send me a copy, I would mail her the money for developing her film (yep, we used to have to PAY to get our photos, even if your thumb covered up the shot).

She gladly accepted. Was it sincere, or did she just not want to be rude to an odd request? I didn’t know.

As she snapped a photo of our group, I asked if I could take a photo with her. I can still remember her face. She smiled and said that she’d love to — proudly posing with me and my friend Kevin.

We continued talking for a few moments. She told me she lived in Baltimore but was considering relocating to Atlanta. She traveled from Baltimore via bus and was heading back home the following day. Before we parted ways, I provided this stranger with my home address. We chatted for a brief moment and went our separate ways.

One month later …

I received an envelope in the mail. The Baltimore return address was unfamiliar to me. I had mostly forgotten about the pictures. After all, even though the task was small, it was a lot to ask a stranger to do. Inside the envelope were four copies of each photo (one for each of us) along with a handwritten note.

I had saved that note for many years, but between repeated moving and organizing it had gone missing. The note was heartfelt. In essence, it remarked how grateful she was to have met us on that overcast day in Atlanta. How, at the grave of the man who advocated for basic human rights and race equality, race did not matter between two strangers. How one stranger asked for some form of help (as trivial as it might have been), and another gladly provided that help. How, on some tiny scale, he did not die in vain.

I responded with a note of my own (along with more than enough to cover the photo developing). I echoed the same sentiments to her. That no matter what you see on the news, most people do care and share the same belief in equality.

As I post this on MLK Jr. Day, I reflect on days like these that truly matter, yet seem insignificant at the time. I hope this woman from Baltimore/Atlanta remembers this day as fondly as I do.

So now, when you look at this photo, what do you see?

To me, the photo is more than a photo. It’s a story. A feeling. A moment of peace. A small representation of all that is good in the world. While there is a lot of progress that needs to be made, this moment of unconditional acceptance and kindness is what MLK Jr. worked so hard and gave his life for.