Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
This is just too funny not to share
As you probably know, one of our products is a shopping cart abandonment solution, which sends triggered emails to people who leave items in online shopping cart without completing the purchase.
A couple days ago, we received the funniest voice mail ever. We just couldn’t stop laughing.
Hear it for yourself here:
Shopping cart abandonment voicemail
Checkout using Facebook login on skechers.com
There is an opportunity for online retailers to leverage Facebook login (formerly known as Facebook Connect) to streamline the checkout process. I wanted to share what skechers.com did and while not perfect, it’s a good start.
The first checkout screen presents the traditional options but adds the option to use Facebook/Twitter.
When clicking on the Facebook login button , the user is prompted to grant Skechers permission to access his/her account
Next, the user is taken to the account page which I found a bit confusing. I would expect to arrive directly to the next page where I can fill additional data and submit my order.
So I had to click “checkout now”, and then we see the value of Facebook login. Skechers fills some of the information for me (First and Last name) and it also has my email address (from my Facebook account). For some reason , the country was not automatically selected for me.
Next steps are the typical additional checkout pages you would expect to see. What do you think? Do consumers prefer to checkout using their social network profiles on skechers.com?
Major update to the behavioral targeting product
Today we are announcing a major upgrade to the behavioral targeting product. The goal of this release is to make it as simple and quick as possible to get value from the product, especially for new customers.
Often, we’ve been asked for best practices that could be implemented using our BT product so we added the “Opportunities” feature which is a collection of pre-defined best practices that customers can use out of the box.
The second feature is the “Offer Zone”. The Offer Zone is a dynamic content zone which allows marketers to create targeted messages quickly without the need for external designers. It also supports tokens, which means that you can create a single rule that shows the message: “We ship to %country%” , and visitors from different countries will see their respective country names and flags. In the screen shot below you can see an example of the offer zone on our website at the bottom right corner.
Barilliance offer zone
The combination of the Offer Zone and Opportunities features, allows you to benefit from best practices and ideas that worked for other customers and get to test them on your site real quickly.
Auto applying coupons for eligible customer segments
Back in November we released a new and powerful feature as part of the behavioral targeting product. It allows marketers to automatically apply coupon codes only to eligible segments of customers, and to create a sense of urgency and scarcity around the offer. It also provides better control of codes distribution since you don’t need to communicate the actual code to customers – our software fills the code and applies it automatically.
The screen below shows an offer to international visitors who arrive to GolfMena.com – $20 off on international shipping
When they click on the banner and arrive to 3balls.com , this segment of customers see the offer and that it expires in 24 hours
Next when they add products to the cart (value over $99) , the coupon code is applied automatically for them. This is just one of many segments you can target with this feature. Other examples will be discussed here in the future.
Increasing Email CTR from 6% to 50%
A customer of ours found out that his email marketing efforts were becoming less and less effective. During the last year he sent out 50% more emails than the year before but generated less visits and lower sales. He thought that by better targeting and personalization the email communication with his customers he can increase the ROI from this under-performing marketing channel and boy he was right!
Instead of sending emails to everyone, he now sends emails only to customers who visited the website in the last X days ( we produce this list for him). And these customers receive relevant and personalized product recommendations based on their activity on the website.
Not surprisingly in the very recent campaign, CTR increased from 6% to 50%
cart abandonment due to high shipping cost
A recent customer used our targeted feedback forms functionality to survey shoppers who abandon the checkout process. Very quickly, the top reason emerged and not surprisingly it was high shipping charges.
Many websites in the US offer free shipping when a certain purchase amount is reached but there are more creative tactics one can use. Here are a few ideas that can drive loyalty and payback in the long run:
1. Offer free shipping to first time visitors who are nearby
2. Offer free shipping to customers who purchased in the past.
3. Offer country specific discounts on shipping based on order value
The power of a personalization platform
Personalization is all about listening and understanding the individual customer which is key to any B2C company. Barilliance provides a personalization platform and our customers can leverage strong synergies between our products.
Here are 2 examples:
- Our product recommendations service, includes rich segmentation capabilities (from our behavioral targeting product) which allows our customers to setup sophisticated merchandising rules based on Geographic locations or on-site search terms for example, and to promote specific products for these visitors
- Customers who use our cart abandonment emails functionality , can use post click marketing tactics, and show a banner on the website to customers who clicked on the email, with the same offer they promoted in the email
Now think about feedback forms, the pop-ups that ask customers for feedback. Add a personalization platform underneath and suddenly this simple application becomes a channel to start relevant and proactive conversations with your customers. Instead of showing the same feedback form to everyone, you can start asking very specific and relevant questions. For example: shoppers who abandoned the cart and are first time visitors or customers who bought stuff in the last week or someone who arrived from an email campaign and is about to leave the site. Instead of starring at Google analytics and wondering about the low conversion rate of French visitors, you can be proactive and ask them why they are leaving or if they got confused.
Personalization changes the game and touches everything; that’s why we are so excited about it.
growing your email list
There are several common practices online retailers use to grow their email lists. Offering first time visitors a coupon is probably the most effective one and it can also create a nice conversion lift for this particular segment.
Yesterday, I came across a less common practice which could be also very effective. The merchant added an “email cart” button on the shopping cart page.
email my shopping cart
Most shoppers who abandon the shopping cart do not even start the checkout process and by using the “email my cart” value proposition, you can grow your email list, but even more importantly you get a chance to remarket to these shoppers .
Global expansion
Q1 has been great for us. We deployed our services on 16 new e-commerce sites across 7 new countries (Brazil, France, Germany , Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) .
We now have customers in 13 different countries in 8 languages, we are excited!