Are you an eCommerce business owner or associated with eCommerce businesses? You must check this article that will help you to plan additional revenue generation channel for your eCommerce portal.

You must be utilizing various acquisition channels like SEO (Organic result), PPC (Pay Per Click), Affiliate marketing, Email Marketing etc to drive traffic to your website. Now think about the acquisition cost! yes, every visitors count when you are spending tons of money to acquire visitors to your website.

Do you have a strategy to target visitors:

• Who visited your website but didn’t make a purchase?
• Who bought a product from your website but before long time!
• Who added a product into cart but did not place an order

For eCommerce businesses, email marketing is also considered as the best medium as it gives the maximum conversion rate if you have a proper targeted list. Many eCommerce businesses still don’t know how to use email marketing in a proper way and still sends the common email to their customers which may or may not drive the proper conversions. It is an art to utilize this opportunity and if implemented properly, you can definitely generate good number of order from these audiences as well. In this article we will talk about how to use event based email marketing which opens several doors to grab conversions for your eCommerce business.

Event-based marketing or EBM refers to marketing strategies that are directed towards an event in the life of a customer. Event based marketing is very crucial in ecommerce marketing. An event can be something predictable and basic such as a birthday, an address change, a news story, a social trend, end of contract, a blog share, or the purchase of a product. It can also be something more personal and detailed such as a marriage, a pregnancy, or a large withdrawal from the customer’s bank account but in ecommerce business these events won’t be much helpful. The events that you will use as reasons or triggers to reach out to your customers will vary greatly depending on your customer base. As mentioned earlier, for ecommerce business events would be different and here is the complete guide of using various event based marketing for your business.

The benefits of event-based marketing in eCommerce

EBM focuses mainly on individual behaviors and this makes it more of a marketing pull than a marketing push. This is because customers initiate communication depending on something that they do, instead of being targets segmented or identified by marketers for a specific service or product. Event-based marketing can boost brand recognition and drive profits efficiently and quickly. It generates impressive ROI since marketers engage every customer depending on his/her actual interests or behavior instead of pushing sales promotion or marketing campaigns based on a targeted segment. Event-based marketing is usually a more personal form of advertising and can enable businesses to form personal connections with their customers. In addition, EBM is a great strategy that allows e-commerce businesses to respond to the needs of their customers at precisely the right moment.

Types of customer events to focus on

Event-based marketing begins with a variety of events in a client’s life. Ecommerce businesses need to identify meaningful events, associate with the right interaction channels and use the necessary information content to provide an optimal response and constant dialogue with every individual. Events are usually external to the individual client, but they will also trigger a precise action by the marketer. Customer events will vary greatly depending on the business. Some examples include the following

#1 Welcome after signup and after purchase

Marketers can welcome customers after they sign up and even after they make their first purchase. This can be achieved by sending a welcome email. You can also send them promotional items that are meant for new customers depending on your business, for example, a free trial follow-up from Grove below.

Or, you can send one simple welcome mail after sign up just like Berricle. Check below example.

For clients that sign up but have not yet made a purchase, a sequence of email nurture series will help to educate your customers about your brand, product, and niche. A welcome message or email should follow a service or product-centric customer activity, for example, inquiries or interactions with the business through a webpage, or mouse-clicking on specific items. Once the customer clicks on mail and visit landing page then welcome them with some good offers like below.

#2 Anniversary of first purchase

Ecommerce businesses can take advantage of the first anniversary of purchase to market their existing or new products to their customers. Reminding your clients about the purchases they made in the past may trigger them to make a new purchase, particularly if they are regular buyers. Don’t forget to send some good ecommerce promotion offers along with it.

#3 Customer’s birthday

Ecommerce businesses can use customers’ birthdays as an opportunity to make a sale or market their brand. You can send a birthday wish, printable gift cards, coupons or special offers to your customers to celebrate their big day. Many customers will remain loyal to businesses that remember personal events such as birthdays.

#4 Pre-order promotion

A pre-order promotion can be beneficial for businesses that have a growing audience because they can help you start building buzz before the actual release of your product. Brands frequently provide perks for preorders to help them get more purchases. For example, providing items or discounts on purchases available to people who pre-order at no extra cost. This strategy is used successfully in the gaming industry for new video-game preorders. Exclusive items are used to generate large preorder sales and still generate earned media around the new product launches.

#5 Refer a friend

A referral program can be an excellent way of getting new customers for your business. Most clients will readily refer their friends and family to brands that they love. Make sure that you endorse your referral program to ensure that everyone knows about it. Share it on all your social media pages and send them to your business email list.

#6 Abandoned basket

Businesses lose money whenever visitors abandon their carts without buying. Research by the Baymard Institute confirms that about 69.23% of shopping carts are abandoned. Ecommerce businesses need to address hesitations by shoppers to remind them to complete their purchase. Don’t worry you can still reach out to audience who abandoned carts.

This can be achieved by persuading them with free shipping or discounts. Craft a cart abandonment email that will entice visitors to return to their carts and remind them of what they were buying in the first place and why. Here is one such Abandoned cart email example sent by Flipkart.

#7 Almost-out-of-stock wish list

You can use a wish list reminder email to convince customers to take the final step in buying the products that they had shown interest in buying and they are now almost out of stock or selling out. This may just trigger the need for shoppers to make the final purchase. ModCloth always alerts its shoppers when products are almost selling out. This motivates customers and minimizes regret because people do not want to miss out on products they have been eyeing for a long time.

#8 Price change on wish list

If prices of products in your inventory change, you can use this opportunity to alert clients who had listed the products on their wish list. They may be motivated to make purchases, especially if you are giving great discounts or promotions.

#9 Back in stock

You can also alert your customers about products that are back in stock. KEEEN, a company that sells hiking shoes, gives its clients the option of receiving an email when their products of choice are back in stock.

#10 New color/style in previously purchased line

Clients may be interested in new styles or new colors in previously purchased products. Alerting them about the new designs or colors can trigger them to make purchases, especially if they had shown interest in the past. You can always get information by sending a customer feedback email to help you know what your customers want from existing lines. An example is the Airbnb customer feedback email template

#11 New lines in previously purchased brand/subcategory combo

If you have the ability, you can expand your product line by introducing new lines in the brands that were previously purchased. You can evaluate the market demand to determine whether a new line or subcategory is worth the cost. You can then alert customers who had purchased these products previously about the new lines or subcategories that you have introduced. If they bought these products, they may also purchase the new products.

#12 Cross-sell follow up

Cross-selling involves getting customers to purchase services or products in addition to other products that they have already purchased or have agreed to purchase, for example, complementary products and service add-ons. By using a cross-sell follow up, you can motivate your customers to make additional purchases. In Ecommerce business it’s called as product recommendations. If you have shown interest in any product or previously bought any product then ecommerce store will send you similar product recommendations.

#13 Business Anniversary Offers

Many ecommerce businesses also sends email on their business anniversary with good discount and offers. This tactic often works as most business enjoys their success on every anniversary and gives good discount to their customers.

Any changes in a specified customer event could be used as a potential opportunity to contact the customer. Since marketers set the rules, they should choose event opportunities that perfectly suit the strategy and objectives of their business. After implementing event-based marketing strategies, you need to closely monitor them. This will help you in determining their effectiveness and also making necessary adjustments. Furthermore, this data will be useful in the future as you will eliminate guesswork when implementing new strategies for reaching out to your target market. Transform your business today by harnessing the immense benefits of event-based marketing.