Member Article

When The Customer Wins, The Marketer Wins: 5 Top Tips For Making Marketing Magic

In this article Mike Harris, VP of EMEA for Monetate shares his 10 years of experience in the web optimization market and offers some top tips for personalisation online.

According to the British Retail Consortium online shopping in the UK reached record levels in December. Online stores saw a 19 per cent growth from a year earlier. With this being the fastest increase in four years, 2014 is looking promising for online retailers.

For me the potential for online retailers to make the most of the global and rapidly expanding online market is only increasing. The continuous rise of mobile devices and increased internet speeds means more people than ever are choosing to shop online. In this article I have outlined what I believe to be key techniques to attract audiences in the year ahead.

1. Learn from your mistakes

Analysis of successful strategies last year, and building on those, is one of the best ways to convert website traffic into sales, but learning from what didn’t work is equally as important. A combination of using proven techniques whilst always trying something new is a sure fire way to succeed.

Try running a selection of different adverts and measure their success using factors such as click-throughs and sales generated. Once you know which kind of ads people are receptive to then try running variations of this type until you are getting the best levels of audience engagement.

2. Work with the weather

Remember that nature can be a marketers best friend. Look at busy periods for certain seasonal items; this could be coats in winter, umbrellas in spring or sunglasses in summer. Ensuring the right items are being marketed at the right time of year is key to a digital marketing strategy. Using personalisation technology like Monetate it is even possible to calculate the weather on an individual website visitor level, by identifying IP addresses and cross referencing with geographic location, allowing you to tailor banners, offers and images on the landing page.

3. Define your customers

As a retailer, you should acknowledge that a customer has visited your website before to make them feel valued. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, such as greeting the customer with a personalised welcome back message or using their shopping and browsing history to guide them towards relevant and complementary products.

New customers also provide a valuable opportunity to increase revenue. If specific activation programs, such as highlighting on-site functionalities with tips, are included on the website there is a greater chance of new customers completing a purchase.

4. Maximising email

Unsurprisingly email marketing still remains one of the largest drivers of traffic; eMarketer predicts that the number of email users worldwide will grow from 2.4 billion this year to 2.8 billion by 2017.

This means potential sales are lost every time a site fails to drive customers toward an email sign-up. One way to encourage sign-ups is to offer customers a redemption item, such as money off vouchers or free delivery. A key way to avoid looking like spam and encouraging audience engagement is to ensure email’s are personalised and relevant to their recipient. Relevance and context are critical. Adding location, browsing and/or purchasing history, social media data, and more can turn un-engaging email into relevant messages that move consumers - regardless of device - from the email to the website, increasing traffic, conversions and revenue. Marketers that want to outperform the market must focus on delivering a winning customer experience and that means being more relevant.

5. Making relevant changes to website navigation

This is a generation where choice is everything so online retailers must stand out from the crowd as soon as a customer visits their site. This means that design and website navigation need to be perfect. A site should be personalised with relevant images, ads and offers, allowing visitors to access tailored deals in as few clicks as possible.

Sales can also be driven through the use of banners that add a sense of immediacy to a user’s shopping experience. This could be a countdown to an upcoming event such as Valentine’s Day or Christmas.

Follow this advice, add your own twist and work with the best technology providers to ensure your business is positioned to take full advantage of the rise of e-commerce and the changes in user spending habits. Good luck and if in doubt, come and talk to the experts.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mike Harris .