Where to find new email subscribers

May 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment

For most merchants, email remains the most reliable workhorse in their stable of online marketing techniques. More than one third of online consumers report reading brand emails, and according to data from marketing services firm Monetate, those campaigns convert at a 50% higher rate than search and seven times the rate of social media.

So it would seemingly behoove merchants to encourage shoppers to subscribe for email updates prominently on the eCommerce site — but fewer than one in four merchants feature signup links in the global header.

Another popular solution has been to use a pop-up window on the home page to entice visitors to to join the email list. This feature once seemed ubiquitous, but in reality, it’s now even less popular than the global header option: just 20% of top merchants from both Internet Retailer’s Top 500 and Second 500 lists feature a pop-up window.

Data on usage of home page popup email invitations

So what’s a merchant to do to drive email signups? A few solutions worth considering:

Use a moving window, but positioned differently. The pop-up window is attention-grabbing, but can also disrupt the shopping experience if visitors can’t figure out how to make it disappear. As an alternative, merchants should consider positioning the invitation differently, spotlighting the signup form without blocking access to shopping features. Abercrombie & Fitch uses a drop-down window at the very top of the home page; visitors can scroll down slightly to access shopping content, close the email signup window, or subscribe on the spot.

Email invitation example from AF

Dedicate prime real estate. With email such a lucrative form of marketing, merchants should consider biting the bullet and anchoring a signup promotion above the fold within the center content area. 1-800-flowers.com gives prime positioning to its email signup invitation, positioning it alongside featured best-sellers immediately beneath the top promotional window and succinctly stating the benefits of signing up.

Email invitation example from 1800flowers

Use interior pages, too. With more shoppers bypassing the home page altogether and linking directly to category and product pages via search engines, it makes sense for merchants to distribute email signup invitations throughout the site. L.L. Bean is among the merchants that have stepped back from the pop-up window technique. Last year, the home page featured an invitation to “Be the First to Know” that listed the benefits of email signup. Now, the home page email signup link is relegated to the global footer — but the invitation is also placed on category pages in the left-hand column beneath secondary navigation, and echoes the “First to Know” theme of the original promotion.

Email popup example from 2012

2012, above

Email invitation example from LL Bean

Go off-site. Merchants should get creative in their search for email signups, and leverage every available touchpoint to engage new subscribers. Among the potential sources to consider:

  • Transactional emails – as mentioned in a prior post, customers now expect emails containing order confirmation and delivery details to contain promotional messaging. It’s an ideal time to encourage continued engagement with the brand via email updates.

  • Social media – merchants should go beyond merely posting an email link to Facebook and highlight the content subscribers can access that’s not otherwise available, such as exclusive email discounts or expert content that doesn’t fit in a 140-character Tweet. Eco-friendly merchant Gaiam promotes an instant 15% discount with its Facebook email signup form, and stresses that subscribers receive a newsletter to help them “live fit, healthy, green and happy.” The company’s privacy policy is linked prominently, along with a pledge not to share email addresses with outside parties.

Facebook email invitation from Gaiam

  • Existing subscribers – subscribers’ friends are likely to share interests, preferences and tastes – and therefore are likely to be interested in brands subscribers endorse. Make it easy for subscribers to pass along savings, and give recipients of forwarded email an incentive to join the list. The Gap’s “friends and family” campaign does both by offering an enticing discount for subscribers with a one-use-only code, and then giving a slightly smaller discount to friends who are forwarded the message. Recipients of the forwarded message have the opportunity to save instantly, and can also see how being a subscriber gives them access to even better deals.

Email invitation example from Gap
For more email signup strategies, download the Optimizing Email whitepaper. What techniques have worked for your brand to drive subscriptions?

Filed under Email Marketing, Social Commerce

Webinar recap: the top priority for building community

May 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment

This week’s webinar on building community, part of our Competing with Amazon series, covered a wide swath of best practices for merchants to consider as they attempt to engage shoppers and build lasting brand relationships. While the format and functionality of communities depend in some part on the merchant’s product offering and target audience, MarketLive founder Ken Burke said there’s one strategy in particular that most merchants should prioritize in the next six months: social integration using Facebook’s Open Graph. As Burke said in the webinar, this single technology implementation opens up a world of options for engaging community throughout the shopping experience.

 

Part of the power of the tool lies in Facebook’s continuing domination of the social landscape. , according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project; that’s more than half of the population as a whole. By contrast, the next biggest social network, Twitter, attracts just 16% of online adults, Pew found. That usage translates into huge potential shopping synergy: half of shoppers are logged in to Facebook as they browse eCommerce sites, according to social marketing firm Monetate.

But it’s not just Facebook’s critical mass that makes Open Graph integration so potentially effective. It’s also the variety of ways that social sharing can be woven into the shopping experience, from consideration to post-purchase.  As we’ve written previously, merchants must adopt , and ask for only the information they can use to power a more intelligent shopping experience. But given that caveat, the tactics Open Graph enables include:

Gifting with confidence. With holiday season and other gift-giving forming a significant portion of eCommerce sales, facilitating gift purchases should be a priority for merchants. Open Graph informs gifting for both givers and receivers. Shoppers can opt to actively share their wish lists with their Facebook networks, increasing wish list visibility and encouraging purchases; in addition, shoppers can receive gift recommendations based not just on friends’ wish lists, but on past product “likes” or other products popular on social media. Merchants should use available data to populate gift recommendations even when shoppers’ friends haven’t supplied wish lists or product picks to mine, as CafePress does with its educated guesses based on Facebook interests, using “like” or “may like” to indicate the level of confidence in the suggestions.

Social integration example from Cafepress

Shared consideration.  Using Open Graph integration, merchants can let consumers collaborate with others in their network to make purchasing decisions – empowering shoppers to solicit feedback from those they trust most. Macy’s gives shoppers the means to create a product poll to gather input about several items under consideration. Shoppers pick the items to feature and post the poll to their Facebook timeline; the poll is open for 48 hours, after which the results are shared with the shopper. Not only does the shopper get valuable feedback to spur a purchase decision, but friends are exposed to the brand and to individual products.

 Social shopping example from Macy'sSocial shopping example from Macy's

 

 

Post-purchase connections. Often, social media is considered an acquisition tool — but it can also help drive retention and loyalty, providing a crucial link to the brand in the post-purchase phase and thereby transforming a one-way “funnel” into a self-sustaining customer lifecycle.  Open Graph integration enables customers to share their purchase experiences with friends, potentially creating powerful word-of-mouth tools. Merchants should give shoppers the opportunity to share:

  • Purchases. When shoppers complete a transaction on Amazon, they’re invited to share the items they’ve just bought with their social networks – a tactic that seems simple but has not been widely adopted.

Social sharing example from Amazon

  • Reviews. Amazon’s email notification letting customers know their review has been published includes a link for sharing the review on social networks — another way to let customers pass along their endorsement of the brand.

Many other strategies and tactics were shared in the webinar; download to learn more. Have you used Open Graph to enhance the shopping experience? If so, how?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Connected Commerce, Social Commerce Tagged with , Facebook

May 21, 2013 by

If you caught in our , then you know that the online giant dominates U.S. eCommerce like no other brand, with – more than double the rate of U.S. eCommerce sales overall for the same time period. Amazon is the biggest of the mega-brands attracting the lion’s share of online sales revenues, even as the number of small- and mid-sized merchants continues to grow.

But specialty merchants have some distinct advantages when compared with the mega-merchant — and one of them is the capacity to forge strong ties with shoppers through a brand community. Because Amazon warehouses so many disparate product categories, the brand is largely impersonal; there’s little opportunity for its customers to unite around a common lifestyle or passion.  Whether via social media or on the Amazon site itself, interactions among shoppers are limited. The only trait many Amazon customers share is the desire to earn free shipping. By contrast, small- to mid-sized merchants who focus on a particular product category or audience have the opportunity to provide their customers a platform for meaningful interaction and a shopping experience that connects them with other like-minded consumers.

In , we’ll examine key strategies for building community — and not just via social networks. While social networking sites provide broad exposure and the opportunity to entice new shoppers to follow brands, brand followers tend to be passive; just they follow, according to marketer ComBlu. By contrast, branded community experiences provide a platform for committed brand advocates to shine, and for customers to contribute meaningful input on products and promotions.

Among the methods for creating on-site community the webinar will address:

  • “Socializing” the path to purchase with integration tools. One increasingly popular way to marry community and commerce is to use tools available from social networking sites to integrate consumers’ social networking data with the shopping experience. Taking advantage of these tools gives merchants a means to create a community hybrid that incorporates the best of both worlds – the critical mass represented on Facebook and other social sites combined with the ownership control of their own eCommerce sites. Shoppers on the Macy’s site can poll their network of Facebook friends about which products to buy — giving the shopper a recommendation from trusted friends as well as introducing the shopper’s friends to products on the Macy’s site.

Social shopping example from Macy's Social shopping example from Macy's

  • Deepening the conversation via branded communities. Merchants should tap their deep knowledge of the customer lifestyle to find unique ways to build community around specific activities and passions. That community can take many forms, from customer reviews that spawn in-depth discussions to mobile apps that encourage members to engage with the brand, as Nike’s Nike Plus running community tools do. Runners download an app that tracks their runs via GPS and enables sharing with the main community site, where the fastest times for popular runs are spotlighted via “leaderboards”.

Community example from Nike

for more strategies for building one-of-a-kind communities. Meantime, how do you encourage shoppers to engage with the brand and each other?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Social Commerce Tagged with , Facebook

How to spotlight customer service for mobile phone shoppers

May 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In case you didn’t catch it, MarketLive founder Ken Burke has published an instructive piece in Multichannel Merchant called “” The article notes that while mobile phone sales are forecast to reach $31 billion by 2017, that number represents just 9% of predicted ecommerce sales — a relatively small figure, given that roughly half of U.S. consumers use the Internet on their phones. Burke argues that while part of the challenge is inherent to the small-screen format, merchants can and should rise to the challenge by streamlining the checkout process and earning customer trust.

The latter proposition seems tricky given limited screen real estate, so the series of examples detailing how to integrate customer service links were particularly helpful. Here’s the section in question, along with the relevant screen shots:

“Shoppers on mobile sites should have the same instant access to customer service options that they do on the eCommerce site, including the ability to finish their transaction using the phone built into their devices. Apparel merchant Peruvian Connection puts customer service front and center on its mobile home page, giving shoppers access to live help within the first screenful.”

Mobile customer service example from Peruvian Connection

“As they proceed along the path to purchase, shoppers should have access to relevant customer service information, even on the small screen. Apparel merchant V.I.M. achieves this feat on the mobile product page with tabs featuring information on shipping rates and returns — proactively addressing shoppers’ questions to encourage the add-to-cart.”

Mobile customer service example from V.I.M.

“Finally, in the shopping cart and checkout, access to customer service is especially crucial — so merchants should feature a link to live help prominently, as MarketLive merchant BeachBody does in the shopping cart with a large “Contact Us” button and a click-to-call 800 number in the footer.”

mobile customer service example from Beachbody

for more mobile strategies designed to drive purchases. How do you earn customer trust on the small screen?

Filed under Client Innovations, Mobile Commerce

Two ways to test the international waters

May 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment

As the eCommerce market matures, more and more leading brands are selling online internationally. According to technology researcher Forrester, 75% of merchants said international eCommerce was somewhat or very important to their companies, and for good reason: while Forrester estimates that U.S. eCommerce growth will average 9% from 2012 to 2017, Europe’s growth is forecast to average 11% — and in emerging markets such as China and India, the number soars above 20%. Online commerce revenues in China alone are set to top $200 billion, Forrester predicts — more than all of Europe’s countries combined.

 

But the path to international revenues is strewn with significant hurdles, from site experience basics such as translating copy and converting currency to logistical hurdles such as shipping restrictions and import duties, to subtler issues of understanding local markets and cultures. It’s not surprising, then, that fewer than 10% of merchants that made Internet Retailer’s Top 500 list of the largest online brands offer sites in multiple languages — and only 2.2% of those on the Second 500 list of small- to mid-sized merchants do so.

But the challenges shouldn’t dissuade merchants from sizing up global opportunities and finding ways to serve brand enthusiasts wherever they reside. There are plenty of ways to glean whether brands are attracting international interest, from analytics data to customer service inquiries to social media interactions. And then, once target audiences have been identified, merchants have options other than establishing full-bore international eCommerce sites. Two ways to establish an experimental presence beyond the border:

Sell on local marketplaces. Merchants can take advantage of Amazon and eBay’s extensive regional marketplaces to establish a foothold, even using their fulfillment services to help negotiate international shipping and tariff hurdles. And as Jordan Weinstein of ChannelAdvisor noted in his MarketLive Summit presentation, in the Asia Pacific region, country-specific marketplaces are leading eCommerce hubs that can connect merchants with new audiences.

Even merchants who go on to invest more significantly in overseas markets can piggyback off marketplace services, as Perricone MD does in Japan. The beauty manufacturer has launched a Japanese Web site that includes information about the brand, customer testimonials, and product information; the “buy” buttons take shoppers to Amazon’s Japanese marketplace to complete their orders, which are fulfilled by Amazon.

International example from Perricone MD

International example from Perricone MD

Ship internationally from your U.S. eCommerce site. Before launching a new country-specific Web site or considering whether to open foreign fulfillment centers, merchants can iron out other logistics of international trade by shipping internationally from the U.S. This option is already popular with merchants of all sizes; nearly 60% of merchants in the Internet Retailer Top 500 and more than 45% of merchants in the Second 500 already offer some form of international shipping.  Among the Top 500 merchants, Canada is by far the most popular international option offered, with the U.K. and other European destinations, Japan and Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand rounding out the top 20.

Internet Retailer 500 data on international shipping

Usage of international-logistics vendors such as BorderFree has grown more than 50% from 2010 to 2012, according to Forrester; such services can help ease the transition into international operations, and are well worth considering. However they do it, merchants incorporating international shipping should test and re-test checkout flow to streamline as much as possible for both domestic and international audiences. Among the best practices:

  • Promote the availability of international shipping. Merchants should let shoppers know throughout the shopping experience that they service countries outside the U.S., as Toys R Us does with its global banner that highlights free domestic shipping options as well as international delivery.

International example from Toys R Us

  • Offer multiple paths to setting the country. At a minimum, let shoppers set their shipping destination from within the cart as well as in checkout — and integrate international destinations into estimated tax and shipping calculators so shoppers can derive the total order cost up front, regardless of their location, as ThinkGeek does on its shopping cart page.

International example from ThinkGeek
Merchants should also explore allowing shoppers to set their destination earlier on the path to purchase with global elements or promotions that invite interaction. Cooking.com features a flag in its global header that gives shoppers access to the list of shipping destinations. Shoppers selecting a country other than the U.S. see prices in their local currency and automatically see shipping prices factored into the total price in checkout.

International example from Cooking.com

  • Provide plenty of customer service backup. Merchants should proactively address international shippers’ questions about topics specific to overseas delivery, such as how taxes and duties are applied and how returns can be processed, in addition to common concerns such as delivery speed and costs. Saks Fifth Avenue provides extensive international shipping information, including a FAQ and country-by-country delivery timeframes.

International example from Saks Fifth Avenue

Are you selling internationally, and if so, by what method?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Client Innovations Tagged with International

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