eCommerce Innovation
By thinking out of the box and adapting to the local market, Tesco was able to dramatically increase its share in South Korea.
Social Targeting and Personalization
Most of the targeting done today is based on intent and behavior. For example offering promotions to new visitors or changing landing pages banners dynamically based on search keywords or Geolocation.
We think that the next level of targeting and personalization will be based on information derived from the shopper’s social network profile.
60 Million people used Facebook connect in 2009. This number is amazing if you consider the disaster Facebook Beacon program created not long ago. The main difference is that now, users explicitly allow Facebook to access their information and have full control over the information that is published to their wall.
While the basic Facebook login provides is a 1 click signup process, it presents many untapped opportunities for online retailers to differentiate themselves using this technology, and personalize the shopping experience.
Here are a few ideas to get you started thinking about the new possibilities Facebook login opens up:
- Welcome shoppers who have upcoming birthdays, with a special message or even better with a credit towards their next purchase
- Show shoppers pictures of friends with upcoming birthdays and recent products they added to their wish list (Amazon already does that)
- Identify shoppers with high social capital (for example more than 500 friends) and offer them incentives to perform social actions on the site such as “become a fan”
- Music stores could promote products based on artists and bands the shopper “likes”
- Simple viral promotions that use “invite friends” functionality will be much more effective than asking users to enter email addresses of their friends to get a discount
These are just a few examples we have started to experiment with . There are many creative ways you can engage customers who login using Facebook.
Can a simple banner increase conversion rate by 935%?
It’s not a secret that targeting visitors with relevant messages could have a big impact on conversion rates. One of US customers has been targeting selected countries with a very simple message - “Yes, we do ship to the <country>, and it’s fast and affordable!” the result?
You can see the report below:
UK conversion lift
UK visitors really liked the message and converted at 4.9% while the control group (UK visitors who did not see the message) converted at 0.5%.
That’s a big change. It did not involve promotions just a simple message that reassures customers that you ship products to where they live.
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.
Do you treat your best customers differently?
You probably know that good feeling when you are a regular at a restaurant or a shop. When you come in, you’re treated differently and you feel important. I always wonder why most online retailers do not reward their best and most loyal customers.
There are a few ways you can identify and value your repeat customers. The most naive way is by frequency and amount of purchase. The image below shows how you can do it using our behavioral targeting product.
Most online retailers tend to focus on converting their first time visitors and do not reward their existing and often most loyal customers. Studies have shown that top converting e-commerce sites do so well because of their focus on repeat customers. It’s a good practice to reward repeat customers and offer them discounts to increase their loyalty, if you don’t do it, think about it!
There is another activity that it is becoming more and more important to measure and should be taken into account when evaluating the value of customers – it is their social activity. A like or a tweet from a customer who has many real friends/followers could result in increased sales. A customer that posts a good review about your product can help convert future visitors who read this review. These customers are valuable even if they are not big spenders themselves and should be treated accordingly.
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 .