Daily ArchivesNovember 7, 2022

So you’ve decided to harness the power of email marketing to help you make more sales through your WooCommerce store. Smart move!

All things considered, email is an unparalleled digital marketing channel. Email marketing can boost your brand in a big way, and most importantly, it can drive your WooCommerce sales sky-high.

But you can implement a solid email marketing strategy, and leverage many of the right tactics for that strategy, and still fail at email marketing. To succeed, you need to consider and act on one very important fundamental step, choosing the right email marketing software.

Ecommerce Optimization Is Critical

First things first: Is your email platform optimized for ecommerce? Many email software providers integrate seamlessly with WooCommerce — and those providers should be at the top of your list.

Read on for some additional considerations.

List Segmentation Is a Crucial Email Marketing Capability

Subscriber list segmentation is a big consideration. You need the ability to segment your list based on the different stages of the buying cycle.
You will have “tire kickers” who like to shop but may never buy. You will have recent, first-time buyers. You will have seasoned customers and repeat buyers. You’ll have customers who are different ages, genders and live in different locations. Your email marketing approach to each of these segments will be different.

For example, if you sell apparel, you might find your male customers in northern Ohio are more interested in buying knitted caps in the winter than your female customers in southern Florida.

You want a targeted email marketing service that will help you market effectively to every segment of your list. You want to be able to cross-sell and upsell new customers efficiently.

Automation Is Important, Too

When your customers are making a purchase, they are prime candidates for additional sales. You want to send post-purchase thank you emails with messages such as “Customers like you also found these similar items very interesting.” This could lead to a lot of additional sales for you; sales you might otherwise lose.

The best email marketing software providers give you the option to automate emails for common scenarios like these. Other emails that successful ecommerce stores automate include welcome emails, and abandoned cart emails.

Bottom line: Choose an email marketing program specifically designed to help you maximize your ecommerce success by speaking to different types of customers in ways that are meaningful to them.

Scalability for Your Future Growth

If you are just starting your WooCommerce store and your email marketing journey, you may want a very basic “bare bones” free email marketing tool, but it’s quite possible your needs will change over time.

Will you want to get in a situation where you have to switch programs “mid-stream” in your campaign? Would you be better off selecting a program that may be a little more difficult to get started, but is more scalable and will accommodate your needs as your business grows?

Ask yourself these questions as you are making your initial selection of the right email marketing software.

Pricing That Fits Your Budget

Whether you are just getting your email marketing efforts ramped up, or have been at this a long time, you will want to take email marketing software cost into consideration.

Some email marketing tools are free up to a certain list size or number of emails sent. Those with a more robust feature set require a considerable monthly investment. Happily, many email software providers allow you to start small — even for free — and then pay more as you scale up.

Reliability: Get Your Emails Delivered!

This is critical. Especially from the standpoint of inbox message delivery. The world’s most persuasive, compelling email won’t help you if it never gets to your subscribers’ inboxes. The best email providers give you tips on making sure your emails are staying out of spam folders.

Customer Service and Support When You Need It Most

What happens when you have a time-critical situation and you need help from the company that sold you the email marketing software? You don’t just need it, you need it now!

When this happens, you will need your problem solved ASAP. This is not the time you want to get the unwelcome surprise that your email marketing software provider has really poor customer service. Determine the level of service and support before you make your final purchase decision.

Ease of Use: Make Your Life Easier

Whether you are new to email marketing, or you are a seasoned pro, you have no shortage of challenges running your business. Do you really want to be shackled to an email marketing software platform that’s a pain to use? No, of course not.

So look for a program that you find easy to use. It will make your day-to-day life in digital marketing a lot easier!

In light of these criteria, how will you come to the conclusion that a product is the best email marketing platform for your needs? Do your homework!

Seek out independent, third-party reviews, including end-user product reviews. Read the provider’s website, blog, and downloadable content thoroughly. Take full advantage of any free trial you are offered, and ask the customer support team relevant questions.

What’s the Best Email Marketing Software for You?

Now let’s take a look at some individual email marketing platforms and examine the pros and cons.

MailChimp

If you are just getting started with targeted email marketing, and want an easy-to-use program at an affordable price, take a good look at MailChimp.

“We use the premium version of MailChimp to send our emails,” says Stephen Hart, CEO of Cardswitcher, a payment processing comparison website. “I like its relatively simple design and layout, and find that it’s pretty easy to pick up if you need to teach new team members how to use it. It’s also not too expensive which for a startup like us, is really important.”

This program is the most popular on the market, especially with startups and small to medium-sized businesses. It has a free option that accommodates up to 2,000 list subscribers and 12,000 emails per month with no shortage of useful email marketing tools.

Its automation features include welcome emails, abandoned messages, and product recommendations. Automation makes it an ideal choice to integrate with ecommerce programs, including WooCommerce, and here’s some great news: MailChimp’s integration with WooCommerce is free!

Plus, MailChimp’s robust segmentation, A/B testing, reporting, and personalization features make it easier for you to optimize your email marketing results.

Keep in mind that the free option, although it may be right for some customers, offers support (email only) for a 1-month period. There is no tech support option after that.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit targets their email solutions toward creators of content, music, and art. The service offers customers the ability to create custom forms to offer incentives, and tag and segment users. On the back-end, you can view your email marketing funnel as a flow chart with their visual automations tool.

The company has more than 80 integration partnerships, notably with WooCommerce and WordPress. It works with the tools many ecommerce businesses already have.

The company is aware that many potential customers may already be using a different email provider, so they have created guides on how to switch your account over from the main players.

ConvertKit charges based on the number of email subscribers your business has. Their lowest-priced plan, for customers with 1,000 subscribers or fewer, is $29/month — which includes email and live chat support. They offer a free 14-day trial to test out their services.

Drip

A moment ago, we talked about how important it is for you to choose an email marketing platform designed to support your ecommerce efforts. Drip is just such a program. It is specifically engineered with automation features to help you enjoy more success with your WooCommerce store. It offers a host of integration options including Facebook ads, payment systems, etc.

Drip offers you a free, 14-day trial. After that, you can subscribe to three different tiers of service, including the basic plan that allows unlimited emails for up to 2,500 users for $49 per month. You also have a money-back guarantee with every plan.

One potential drawback is some startups and small businesses might find the basic plan price point too expensive.

GetResponse

GetResponse describes itself as “An All-In-One Online Marketing Platform To Grow Your Business”. It offers subscribers the ability to do email marketing, create landing pages, and hold webinars.

It gives users scalable automation features including the ability to build intuitive workflows. You can also use the GetResponse ecommerce tools to track cart abandonments, website visitors, and successful purchases. GetResponse also integrates with WooCommerce.

You have the choice of four different pricing plans, from basic/beginner to enterprise level. The most basic pricing plan offers a list size of 1,000 users for $15 per month. It gives users a free 1-month trial, no credit card needed.

Keep in mind that GetResponse’s most basic plan does not include ecommerce or CRM integration, or most of the platform’s automation features.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a successful, well-established company that has been in business for over 20 years. It has a number of features that can help make email marketing much easier for you, including an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editing tool and over 100 email templates which you can access with the free trial. It also integrates with WooCommerce.

Constant Contact’s solid automation features include welcome emails for new subscribers and the automatic re-sending of emails that did not get opened the first time they were delivered.

No contracts are required and Constant Contact requires no credit card for its 60-day free trial. Once you join, you have a 30-day money-back guarantee, with a discount of up to 15 percent. The most basic program is $20 per month for 0 to 500 subscribers.

One caveat: This plan does not include email automation or subject line A/B testing.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers email marketing must-haves like templates, segmentation, dynamic content, and robust reporting. They have also branched out into other important customer engagement touchpoints.

The service can act as a sales and CRM platform, with tools to automate the sales funnel, including integration with major email services. ActiveCampaign has also developed lead scoring and win probability to help sales teams prioritize more efficiently.

ActiveCampaign also provides SMS messaging and on-site messaging setup.

The full-funnel service helps you be more consistent with your customer messaging, and make sure no one falls through the cracks.

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial.

Smart Approach, Successful Business

As online marketers, you and I have different needs, situations, and circumstances. Even so, we can all benefit from a solid email marketing strategy backed by the right tactics and tools. Choose the right email marketing software for you as part of a smart approach to digital marketing, and be prepared to see your sales skyrocket!

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Which version of these introductory sentences do you prefer?

(A): “Online store owners must conduct tests of their marketing elements with scientific precision.”

(B): “Online store owners are really just mad alchemists—standing in the lab of their websites, trying to find the magical elixir for converting website visitors into customers.”

Version A is a little dry, but it delivers the point quickly. Version B is more engaging, but it also takes longer to read. Maybe you like your sentences to get to the point, or maybe you like them more poetic. (Remember your answer. You’ll need it later.) Either way, you just participated in a round of A/B testing. We hope you feel smarter.

As both of these sentences suggest, A/B testing is a scientific approach that every marketer and online store owner needs to master to improve their conversion rate optimization (CRO). Why? Because it’s a proven strategy for converting more customers and selling more products and services.

Now that we’ve covered a real-world example of A/B testing, let’s look at an academic definition.

What Is A/B Testing?

A/B testing is the process of identifying the more preferred version of two or more examples of marketing content. During the A/B testing process, marketers run versions of a web page, observe which gets more interaction (e.g., likes, clicks, views), then use that version to optimize conversion rates. A/B testing is also known as split testing, variant testing, or bucket testing.

Although web pages are a common subject of A/B testing, you can split test virtually any marketing element. At the micro-level, a store owner could try varying the color of a “Buy Now” button to see which one got more clicks. At the macro-level, a firm could run two versions of their checkout process to see which one resulted in fewer carts abandoned.

Why A/B Test at All?

A/B testing is not just a thing you do. It’s an attitude towards your business that keeps you dedicated to constant improvement. Plus, split testing is simple to execute, affordable to maintain, and applicable to every part of your business. These qualities make it a low-risk endeavor. A/B testing is the way you can fail fast and break small things. Use it to improve these areas of your business:

• Engagement
• Traffic
• Marketing ROI
• Bounce rates
• Conversion rates
• Sales
• Content quality

The A/B Testing Process

A/B testing is basically an experiment following the scientific method. Here are the seven basic steps of A/B testing.

1. Identify What You Want to Test

Gather what conversion rate optimization (CRO) data you currently have. What specific conversions are you trying to raise? More subscriptions? Higher email opens? Increase your newsletter sign-ups? Now, identify the marketing asset responsible for these conversions—like form field design, email copy, and landing page layout.

2. Decide What “Success” Looks Like

You’re doing testing because you’re dedicated to improving your site. So, you know what underperformance looks like. But what does success look like? You have to decide on that before you continue with testing. Otherwise, you can’t correctly interpret the results. You won’t have any data points to compare. Is it a percentage increase in page opens you’re after? Maybe it’s a rise in revenue over the quarter. It could simply be a true vanity metric, like more positive customer feedback on your website redesign. Whatever “success” looks like, decide now.

3. Find a New Strategy

You may know what your goals are, but do you know how get there? Start by gathering best practices. For example, if you want to split test a landing page, include best practices for a highly converting landing page. Maybe you want to try out a new blog post format. Make some hypotheses about your outcomes that match up with your success goals.

4. Create a “B” Version of the Original

Create a variation of the asset you want to test. Find online tools like a CTA Button Generator or Headline Analyzer to test out new approaches. If you’re using WooCommerce, try an A/B testing plugin to manage your tests. Or use complete A/B testing platforms like Unbounce or Optimizely, which have easy-to-use page builders that don’t require developer resources or site integration. Of course, you can have a version C, D, E,…, which can give you more data points, but that’s more creating, tracking, and analyzing you have to do.

5. Deploy Your New Strategy

Run the test and take measurements. Randomly assign visitors to interact with your control version (A) and experimental (B) version. To keep your test valid, control all variables external to any changes you’re making.

For example, you’ll usually want to test both variations at the same time and for the same duration, unless time is what you’re testing. If possible, target customers using the same browser and devices (e.g., Chrome and Desktop). Different browsers can vary in page load speeds depending on bugs, fixes, and software versions.

6. Analyze the Data

Now that you’ve run your experiment, it’s time to look at the results. But just because landing page A got more newsletter sign-ups than B doesn’t mean you’ve got a winner. The difference in the two may not be statistically significant. You can’t control for every variable, and randomness could be the explanation for different results. Upload your data to a free A/B test calculator to see if your results are actually meaningful and not the result of random chance.

7. Repeat Ad Infinitum

If you want real results out of your CRO strategy, make A/B testing a mainstay of your overall marketing efforts. A/B testing is never finished, only abandoned. It’s a simple idea: The more you optimize, the better your conversion rate will get.

A/B Testing Example

Here’s a real-world example of the A/B testing process at work. The analytics company ComScore wanted to increase leads for their sales team through social proof and customer testimonials. So, the company decided to A/B test around the effectiveness of these campaigns.

ComScore’s Director of Web Marketing, Ferry Gijzel, began by gathering existing company data. Gijzel ordered an audit of demo requests to see how effective the company’s lead forms on their product pages were at generating requests.

The audit revealed lower numbers than were expected—something definitely needed changing. But change how? The answer lay in A/B test results.

Gijzel and team investigated their existing product page design, researched ways to adjust them, and hypothesized probable outcomes.

At the time, ComScore’s pages included a product description, customer testimonial section, and a CTA for a demo request. Gijzel hypothesized that making the customer testimonials more prominent on the page would lead to an increase in demo requests. If more prospective leads saw a recognizable brand singing ComScore’s praises, then demo requests should increase.

The ComScore marketing team created three product page variations—changing the placement of customer logos on the page—and kept their current one as a control. Then they tested the new variations on 2,500 new visitors and tracked the page views of the last step in the funnel—the “Demo Request Confirmation” page.

The A/B test results showed a clear winner—a variation using a vertical layout with a prominently displayed logo on top of the testimonial. The new product page increased leads by 69% compared to the original one.

Google-Safe A/B Testing

When running multiple variations of a landing page, you’re redirecting traffic to multiple URLs. If you’re thinking that A/B testing might affect your SEO ranking, you’re right. Google understands and advocates for split testing. But you have to follow Google’s Webmaster rules for A/B testing if you want to keep from being penalized. If you follow the rules, you’re good to go.

Here’s how:

No Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human visitors versus Google Bots. Basically, Google doesn’t want you dividing your audience up this way because it can’t accurately “read” your pages if you send its bots to different content than your human users see. The mismatch creates inconsistent search results. Cloaking is banned by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and will get you demoted and possibly removed from the search engine completely.

Use rel=“canonical”

When running an A/B test with multiple URLs, use the rel=“canonical” link attribute on all of your alternate URLs to show that the original URL is the preferred version. Google recommends rel=“canonical” rather than a noindex meta tag because it matches your intentions better.

Avoid 301s, Use 302s

When your A/B test redirects users from your original URL to a variation URL, use a temporary (302) redirect not a permanent (301) redirect. This tells Google you’re only diverting traffic for a short amount of time—that you’re experimenting. The 302 will keep the original URL in Google’s index rather than replacing it with the test page.

Keep Your Tests Short

Google advises site owners to keep testing periods as short as possible. The search engine suggests two weeks as a guideline for most tests.

Once the test is finished, update your content to the preferred versions and remove all of the other variants. If you wait too long, Google will think you’re trying to trick them.

Google gets especially suspicious when you have only one variant that you’re serving to a large percentage of your visitors.

A/B Testing Tools

There are plenty of A/B testing tool options to choose from depending on the size of your site and testing needs. These tools fall into two categories.

A/B Testing Platforms

All-in-one platforms like Optimizely or VWO have plans to meet the needs of small or enterprise- level stores. These paid testing platforms make it easy to manage multiple experiments at once. And most feature a page builder or visual editor for customizing your page variations with your own branding. So, building out your variations won’t require developer resources.

Testing platforms track your incoming A/B testing data, reporting on results and automatically testing for statistical significance. These platforms are easy to use and integrate with your site, but their monthly pricing plans may cost more than you’re willing to spend.

A/B Testing Plugins

Testing plugins are an affordable alternative to all-in-one testing platforms. If you’re using an ecommerce solution like WooCommerce, you have access to WordPress-supported A/B testing plugins like these:

Content Experiments With Google Analytics

If you’re into using Google Analytics, you can use Google’s Content Experiments to track changes to features of your website. The process is a little complicated and requires some experience with Google Analytics. But Content Experiments is free to use, and you can do things like this:

• Compare how web page variations or app screens perform using a random sample of your users
• Define what percentage of your users are included in the experiment
• Choose which objective you’d like to test
• Get updates by email about how your experiment is doing

To use Content Experiments, you’ll need to get a Google account, create a Google Analytics account, and add tracking codes to your web pages. After you set up Content Experiments, you can manage your experiments more easily by setting up A/B testing with WordPress page builders like Beaver Builder.

A/B Testing Keeps It Real

Testing removes the subjective component from your decision making. It eliminates common contaminants within the decision process—like relying on the highest paid person’s opinion. Ideas can actually move from whiteboard sessions to real-world implementation. In short, A/B testing keeps your marketing real.

Store owners who attribute their success to making “gut decisions” won’t be in business long. It’s a romantic notion that is quickly being replaced by experimentation and testing, which brings us back to this question:

Which version of the sentence did you pick? A or B?

(A): “Online store owners must conduct tests of their marketing elements with scientific precision.”

(B): “Online store owners are really just mad alchemists —standing in the lab of their websites, trying to find the magical elixir for converting website visitors into customers.”

On a gut level, version B is the more engaging, less bland introductory sentence, but it may be the worst at converting. Or, it may make no difference at all. The point is, you can’t know unless you test it.

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Most people don’t think about what happens with a customer after they’ve made a purchase – whether it’s offline or online. But for online store owners, thinking about post-purchase customer engagement shouldn’t be an afterthought or a missed opportunity. It should be a critical part of their strategy.

What Does Post-Purchase Customer Engagement Mean?

Post-purchase customer engagement is exactly what it sounds like – the engagement with a customer right after they’ve made a purchase. Unfortunately, for most online stores, their idea of post-purchase customer engagement is the automatic emailing of a receipt.

A 2016 Harvard Business Review (HBR) article highlights the gap from purchase to product delivery, and why post-purchase customer engagement is so critical.

When a customer makes a purchase online, there’s an “experience gap” from the time the customer checks out to when the product arrives. This is the new moment of truth for online shoppers. Providing a positive experience at this time of anticipation is a tremendous opportunity for retailers to deepen their relationships with customers and build loyalty for their brands.

Surprisingly, only 16% of companies are focused on customer retention, even though it costs at least five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.

Why Is That Engagement So Critical?

Over the last two decades, I’ve built enterprise SaaS products. Over that time, if there was one lesson we all drilled into anyone and everyone’s head, it was this: it’s always easier to sell back to the base.

Once someone trusts you to solve one of their problems, you earn the right to solve another. But only if they know you can. This is why enterprise salespeople learn the “did you know we also…” technique. Because most of the time, clients don’t know all of what you can do.

This reality is true whether you’re selling products or services. And there’s no better time to educate a customer than after they’ve demonstrated they’re willing to trust you (with a purchase).

And it’s true whether you’re selling to an enterprise or to a consumer.

The marketing professionals at MainPath shared the metrics that matter. Existing clients are more likely (60-70%) to buy your product or service than new clients (5-20%), at lower costs (6-7 times less).

A LinkedIn article written by Colin Shaw noted that it costs a company 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. The same article also mentions that, according to Marketing Metrics, the probability of selling a product or service to an existing client is in the neighborhood of 60-70 percent, while the probability of selling to a new client is only 5-20 percent.

This is why the post-purchase moments and interactions are so critical. Building that trust, leveraging the relationship you’ve already started, helps bring your costs down and increases the overall lifetime value of a customer.

What Are Examples of Post-Purchase Customer Engagement?

Beyond the normal delivery of a receipt, we all know the benefits of sending a welcome email. But imagine getting that welcome email every time you make a purchase. It can start to break trust and feel disingenuous pretty quickly, right? After all, how many emails from the CEO do I need? And will I believe?

Here are four examples that aren’t very difficult to implement.

1. First Purchase Emails

So sending an email after a purchase, but only after a first purchase, and only to someone who purchased a product where they actually spent money (as in, no 100% coupon), would be a good idea.

And you can even, as you see in this example, prep them for the follow up that you’ll schedule.

2. Follow Up Emails on First Purchases

In this example, we’re following up and asking what questions they have. But let’s be clear – it’s only for the first time buyers of an online course. So we can shape the message effectively – and we delay it by 10 days (from the purchase) so we know we’ve given them time to dig into the content.

3. Special Deals for Special Products

One of the tricks I share with people who sell online courses or memberships is that it’s always more engaging if you can talk to someone else about the work you’re doing.

The logical approach here is to create an offer that allows a customer to invite a friend. And you can do that with a coupon code and a custom email.

Notice in this example that we’re also making sure that no coupon codes were used to make the initial purchase.

4. Bringing Back Old Customers

Another great example of post-purchase engagement is the email you might send to someone who has made a certain number of purchases in the past (in this case 4) and spent a certain amount of money with you (in this case $500), and yet hasn’t made a purchase in the last 6 months.

What you see here is the ability to target those customers either with an email or with a coupon that was created just for them.

Don’t just take my word for it. Here are ideas from those same folks at MainPath:

“Email marketing software provider SilverPop mentions seven frequently used post-purchase email messages:

Service satisfaction survey – Ask your customers to complete a quick survey about their experience. This not only engages your customer but gives you valuable feedback about ways you can improve customer service even further.

Product/service review request – Similarly, you can ask your customer to provide a review of the product or service they received from you. Not only does this engage your customer and give you valuable feedback, but it also can be used to generate more interest and leads.

Review posted notification – If your customer provides a review, email them to let them know their review has been posted and provide a link. It can also be helpful to enable social sharing so they can spread the word if they choose.

Cross-sell/recommendation – Recommend a product or service related to what your customer has already purchased. Show them that you appreciate their purchase and are looking out for other ways to help them.

Replenish reminder/short-supply notice – Whether your product should be replenished on a regular basis or you offer a service that should occur routinely, help your customers out by sending them reminders. In heavily packed schedules of the modern day, this thoughtful engagement tactic will be appreciated.

Bounceback – Send a special offer or incentive to customers who have recently purchased something from you so that they’ll come back again soon.

Purchase anniversary – A purchase anniversary email acknowledges your customer in a personalized way and can include any of the above engagement tactics.

With each of these post-purchase messages, the basic strategy is to create additional touch points to keep customer engagement fresh while encouraging feedback and incentivizing future purchases.

How Do You Automate Post-Purchase Engagement?

What you’ve seen in the examples above are not just notions of what you could do. The screenshots demonstrate an automated way of approaching the post-purchase engagement. This is done with triggers, rules, and workflows.

These examples are what people meant when predicting the power of marketing automation years ago — the stuff that your best salespeople used to do by hand, and now can be managed by software.

Think of marketing automation as email marketing on steroids. Gone are the days of a single, monthly newsletter promoting the same product to the same audience. Marketing Automation allows you to personalize your customer communications based on their behavior and profile.

To enable this marketing automation, you need three things:

1. An ecommerce system (like WooCommerce)
2. An automated marketing solution (like MailChimp or AgileCRM)
3. The integration between the two for triggering the rules & workflow

As an example, here is another rule that is based on first-time buyers. It takes a customer’s data and places a new record into my CRM solution (AgileCRM).

And if by some chance, they’re already in my system because of some purchase on a different site, this solution will update their record (in case I don’t have their shipping address, for example).

If You’re Using WooCommerce, Try AutomateWoo

If you’ve never heard of AutomateWoo, don’t worry. The good news is that it’s the glue you need to connect the dots between your ecommerce system if it’s WooCommerce and your CRM system.

They provide not only several triggers, rules, and workflows but also let you create your own, if you’re so inclined.

Check out the list of workflows they support.

That’s not a small list.

Having configured several of these workflows, I can assure you that the automation of your post-purchase customer engagement is only limited by your imagination, not the technology.

AutomateWoo is an excellent solution, at a price so low ($99) that you’d be hard-pressed to find a better way to spend the money. After all, it’s 6 to 7 times easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one. And that’s what AutomateWoo does for WooCommerce stores.

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Shipping and return policies are vital to the bottom line of an ecommerce business.

Many ecommerce stores create their small business shipping and return policies the way people sign their names after a credit card purchase — without much thought (and pretty much just because they have to).

Not only do they impact purchasing decisions on the customer side of things, they also have a ripple effect on your inventory and supply chain management. And the effect of a good (or bad) policy is often overlooked.

That’s why we’re sharing all the details for why all ecommerce businesses need a successful shipping and return policy and how to create one for your store.

Why You Need a Clear Small Business Shipping Policy Shipping

for small businesses should not be treated as an afterthought. There are three major reasons you need a shipping and return policy that’s clear and easy to find.

1. Your Customers Are Looking for It

You might think that customers don’t want to read this boring section on your website, but the opposite is actually true. Customers shopping online care a lot about shipping and return policies, and they’re likely to seek out yours.

According to the National Retail Federation, as much as 65% of customers actually look up a store’s shipping policy before adding anything to their cart.

2. Bad Shipping

Policies Are a Culprit for Cart Abandonment The dreaded phenomenon of customers leaving a store without following through on buying their cart items happens at a rate of about 75%.

Two of the most common reasons for cart abandonment are related to shipping and returns: Either there’s no clear option for express shipping or the return policy is deemed “unsatisfactory.”

3. A Good Shipping Policy Saves You and Your Customers Time

When a customer can’t find your shipping policy, your policy is hard to understand, or it just doesn’t give enough information, two things can happen: The customer can leave your store, or they can contact your company to get answers.

While the second option is definitely preferable, it means that your team will be spending a lot of time fielding question after question about shipping and returns. That’s time they could be spending on more profit-driven activities.

How to Write a Great Shipping Policy

You could resort to a small business shipping policy generator or download a generic shipping policy template that’ll cover your bases. But, if you’re here, you probably want to write a great policy, which requires more thought and effort.

Here’s what you can do to write a great shipping and return policy.

Prioritize Customer Service When Creating Your Policies

When it comes to creating the “meat” of your policy (i.e., what’s allowed and what’s not), it’s best to think of your customers first and the bottom line second.

You’ve heard that it costs five times as much to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one, right? One of the best ways to keep customers who are already buying from you is to have as generous a shipping and return policy as you can. Of course, you still want to make sure your policy makes financial sense.

Look for Ways to Do Better Than Your Competition

Just like any aspect of running your business, you should be aware of how your competitors are handling shipping and returns. From there, look for ways that you could improve on what they’re offering.

This doesn’t have to mean offering a more generous shipping and return policy (though it could). It may mean just communicating the policy better, making it easier to find, or going above and beyond with the information provided.

Consider the Questions You Have About Shipping and Returns When Buying Online

You’ve bought things online before — probably plenty of times. So when you sit down to create your shipping and return policy, go back to the moment when you were shopping at an ecommerce store, and remember what doubts and questions you had.

Likely, your customers will have similar questions for your store. At the very least, you probably wondered:

• If you could return the itemif you didn’t like it
• When your item would arrive
• If you’d get shipping updates
• Who would be delivering it

Make sure you answer all the questions in your own policy.

Write a Clear Small Business Shipping Policy in Your Brand Voice

If your shipping and return policy sounds like a lawyer wrote it, your customers will, at best, be a little frustrated trying to understand it. At worst, they’ll find it disingenuous or scary.

It’s not a bad idea to have a lawyer review your policy before publishing, just to make sure there aren’t any loopholes. However, it should still read like the rest of your website content, and be written conversationally and in your brand voice.

The 5 Signs of an Amazing Shipping and Return Policy

Do you have a shipping and return policy already? Make sure it meets the following criteria.

1. It’s Easy to Find

Don’t hide your shipping and return policy from customers. Put it where they’ll expect to find it. Usually, that’s in your website footer (like in the example below from The Yoga Warehouse). Bonus points if you include it at checkout or on product pages as well.

2. It’s Easy to Read and Understand

Keep language simple, sentences short, and the information organized. Great policies are visually designed to be skimmable. That might look like putting the information in a table, using headings and subheadings, or a FAQ format.

3. It Sets Clear Expectations

Because small stores don’t have the credibility of huge brands, shipping for small businesses is extra important to get right. Preemptively answer any questions your customers may have so there are no gray areas.

Common Questions to Answer in Your Shipping Policy

• Where do you ship?
• Do you ship internationally?
• How long does it take for items to arrive?
• How much is shipping?
• Do you offer free shipping?
• Can you combine shipping on more than one item?
• Do you put receipts/invoices in the package?

Common Questions to Answer in Return Policy

• Do items need to be returned in the original packaging?
• Who is responsible for paying the S&H?
• How many days from delivery can items be returned?
• What happens if items arrive damaged?

4. It’s On-Brand

Don’t miss the opportunity to infuse your policies with your brand voice. This is a great way to build more trust with your customers. The policies will feel familiar to customers rather than like scary legalese. Also, customers recognize that you put time into crafting the policies — and believe you care about their experience.

5. It’s Actionable and Honest

Make sure that whatever you write in your shipping and return policy, you’re able to follow through on it every time. Otherwise, word will start to spread that your store is not trustworthy.

Admirable Shipping Policy Examples From Small Ecommerce Businesses

If you’re still stuck finding the right words or format for your shipping and return policy, we’ve shortlisted the 4 shipping policy examples we love for inspiration.

1. Minted

Here’s what this artist-designed stationery brand does right:

• They introduce their shipping page with a special, on-brand tagline: “Great design delivered right to your doorstep.”
• They provide easy-to-find tabs for “U.S.” and “International” shipping since that information is different.
• They include different shipping costs for different sized items — with clear labels.
• They spell out how their products are packaged because some items are fragile.
• They explicitly mention that no invoice or pricing is included in the package because it might be a gift.

2. Dearborn Denim & Apparel

This American-made denim company also does a few things right:

• They offer a reminder of the company’s main value proposition that their clothing is crafted by a small team of experts: “Your order ships directly from our sewing floor, not a dropshipper or warehouse.”
• They use humanizing language to address concerns: “Some orders may be delayed due to a temporary shortage of a specific style or size. Rest assured we will be working hard to get those items through production and on their way to you as fast as possible.”

3. Will’s Vegan Store

A vegan shoe and clothing company in the U.K., this store has an excellent shipping policy:

• They arrange their three shipping options in an easy-to-read table.
• They include the dates packages would be expected to arrive, depending on the shipping type (instead of just saying 2 to 3 weeks). This way, the customer doesn’t have to do the math on their own.
• They use an interactive drop-down menu to make it easy to change the ship-to country for accurate details.
• They make sure to highlight their environmentally friendly mission in their shipping policy: “All our shipping & returns are Carbon Neutral and plastic free. We do not use plastic bags or plastic packaging. All the materials in our deliveries are environmentally friendly, sustainable, and can be recycled.”

4. Heart Coffee Roasters

This ecommerce coffee bean company does one big thing to make their shipping and return policy customer-focused:

• They organize their entire policy into FAQs with detailed explanations for why their policy is as it is. This means they can share a ton of information without it being daunting for customers.

Don’t Assume a Shipping Policy for Small Business Isn’t Important

Hands down, the biggest mistake ecommerce companies make when creating a shipping and return policy is not treating it as important.

Instead, they craft a policy or download a shipping policy template simply to have one without putting their own spin on it or considering the customer journey. These basic policies won’t delight customers or build trust with your brand, and they’re likely to lead to higher cart abandonment rates.

So if you haven’t already, make sprucing up your shipping and return policy a priority for this quarter. Hopefully, you’ve found plenty of inspiration in this article to make the job a bit easier.

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My husband always teases me, saying that I’m a point-of-purchase marketer’s dream prospect because I’ll stick anything in my shopping cart if it tugs on my emotions or reminds me of happy times or fond childhood memories.

Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on toys, candies, foods, and even clothes for my kids because they represent something I loved, thought was cool, or always wanted when I was a kid. It’s why I introduced my kids to movies like Goonies, Princess Bride, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, and cartoons like Duck Tales, Tailspin, Rescue Rangers, Gummy Bears, and Fraggle Rock. It’s why I buy superhero t-shirts, wall mount lightsabers, and have more Legos than any one family should ever own.

Marketers selling to my demographic — well-off adults age 35-50 —understand one thing better than anyone else: buying decisions are based on emotions.

Consumers make decisions, especially buying decisions, with their heart. Their decision to make a purchase or invest in something is tied to how it makes them feel or how they believe it will make them feel. They then justify the buying decision with their brain, identifying features, facts, and logic to back up their decision and affirm it was a good one.

More simply put:

People buy with their heart (“I loved that video game as a child!”) and justify the purchase with their head (“And I need to get Jamal something for his birthday anyway.”)

Understanding Emotional Brand Triggers

At one of the very first marketing conferences I attended, I discovered a valuable resource for identifying emotional brand triggers for my clients. It’s a list of 50 emotional reasons people buy from the book Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. And I have used this list to help my clients sell more products and services.

After you identify the emotions that motivate your customers to buy, you can craft your brand narrative to elicit them. You can fashion your sales funnels to trigger powerful emotions at key conversion moments. As a result, customers convert faster and more consistently. Like me, they’ll add the Star Wars Death Star Christmas Tree Topper to their cart—not because they need it, but because they love it.

List of 50 Reasons Why People Buy

Effective marketing triggers the emotions that consumers like me feel when we think about childhood pop culture brands and products. Nostalgia is contagious—we desperately want to share such bygone feelings with our friends and family. It’s a powerful motivation to buy. But nostalgia is only one of the many reasons why people purchase. Here are 50 other emotional needs consumers fulfill by purchasing products and services. Use these emotional triggers to win consumers’ hearts—and explode your conversion rate.

1. To make more money
2. To save time
3. To become more comfortable
4. To become more fit and healthy
5. To attract praise
6. To attract the opposite sex
7. To increase enjoyment
8. To protect their family
9. To possess things of beauty
10. To emulate others
11. To avoid criticism
12. To protect their reputation
13. To make work easier
14. To feel superior
15. To speed up work
16. To be trendy
17. To keep up with the Joneses
18. To look younger
19. To preserve the environment
20. To become more efficient
21. To satisfy an impulse
22. To buy friendship
23. To save money
24. To avoid effort
25. To be cleaner
26. To escape or avoid pain
27. To be popular
28. To protect their possessions
29. To gratify curiosity
30. To be in style
31. To satisfy their appetite
32. To avoid trouble
33. To be an individual
34. To access opportunities
35. To escape stress
36. To express love
37. To gain confidence
38. To be entertained
39. To be informed
40. To be organized
41. To give to others
42. To feel safe
43. To feel younger
44. To conserve energy
45. To pursue a hobby
46. To be accepted
47. To leave a legacy
48. To be excited
49. To feel opulent/affluent
50. To communicate better

Leveraging Emotional Brand Triggers

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’ve heard marketing adages like:

• “Speak directly to your ideal client”
• “Use targeted messages”
• “Communicate the emotional benefits over the logical features”

Together, these nuggets of wisdom point to the main goal of marketing: Matching the right person with the right message at the right time. To do this, you need to know three things:

1. Your customers’ emotional triggers: What motivates them to act
2. Effective messaging: What customers need to see and hear to trigger those emotions
3. Timing: The moment in the funnel to deliver your messaging with maximum impact

Emotions Matter

The idea of triggering emotions in consumers isn’t just some fashionable business trend. It won’t be replaced by next year’s “it’s all about the logical argument” marketing craze. Emotions are primal; they’re deeply connected to our motivation. And they’re always present at some level in our decision-making process. Even the most stoic and rational among us are vulnerable to effective marketing that triggers our deepest fears and desires. Science has proven this is the case:

• According to Psychology Today, fMRI neuro-imagery shows that consumers use emotions rather than information to evaluate a brand.
• A 2016 Nielson report states that emotions are at the heart of the relationship consumers have with brands, influencing conscious decisions and driving non-conscious decisions, and that more often than not, consumers base their decisions on less-than-rational considerations like instinct, gut-feel, fit, and impulse. The same study showed ads with the best emotional response scores were associated with a 23% lift in sales volume over what an average ad would generate, while ads with below-average emotional response scores were associated with a 16% decline in sales volume.
• Another study proved that successful advertising campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content, and a little better (31% vs 26%) those that mixed emotional and rational content.

A brand’s long-term success depends on the emotional connection it forms with its audience, for it’s the emotions associated with the brand that will drive repeat purchases, referrals, and social shares.

Every piece of marketing content you create, every website you design, every sales page you create should be designed to influence the audience, invoke specific feelings, and influence decisions. Whether you want to make them angry, get them excited, make them sad, encourage them to persevere, increase confidence, inspire change, or create any other emotion, the better you are at tapping into their emotions, the more successful your marketing campaigns and website calls to action will be.

When your website, sales, and marketing content resonates with your audience and triggers the right emotional response, your ideal clients will:

• Believe in your story and message
• Feel like you know, understand, and “get” them
• Connect with your message and want to know more
• Have greater trust in your brand
• Think, “Yes! This is for me! This is what I have been looking for!

How To Create An Emotional Connection

Once you understand the core reasons behind why your clients buy, you can begin to shape the brand story and brand experience around those motivators and the associated emotions.

You can do this with:

• Choice of words and tone of voice: “I do X faster than the competition” is much different than saying, “I’ll save you time” or “you’ll save time.” One is all about you and one is about the benefit to your client.
• Color: All colors have meaning. For example, blue is associated with open spaces, freedom, intuition, imagination, expansiveness, inspiration, and sensitivity, and represents depth, trust, loyalty, sincerity, wisdom, confidence, stability, faith, heaven, and intelligence. While red is associated love, passion, desire, heat, lust, romance, assertiveness, strength, leadership, courage, aggression, vigor, willpower, rage, anger, danger, and stress, and represents action, confidence, courage, survival, and self-preservation.
• Imagery: When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.
• Typography: Just as color have meaning, typefaces have meaning. Sans serif typefaces are seen as modern, corporate, innovative, forward-thinking, and advanced, while serif typefaces feel classic, traditional, established, historic, and trustworthy.
• Design: Whether the design is clean and simple, flat and modern, cute and whimsical, or layered with lots of drop shadows, every choice you make in the design of a website or marketing piece creates emotion and meaning, and every element can either cause distraction or move a prospect toward a buying decision.

The Bottom Line

What motivates your clients? Is it fear, leadership, guilt, value, trend-setting, time, competition, belonging, trust, or instant gratification?

When you understand the motivations behind why your clients buy and the emotions attached to those motivations, you will have the power to create powerful marketing messages, emotional brand stories, targeted sales, advertising campaigns, and compelling sales funnels that attract ideal clients like crazy, compel them to take action, and skyrocket your conversion rates.

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Dropshipping is an increasingly attractive model for ecommerce. That’s because it’s easier (not to mention less expensive) to start a dropshipping business than to maintain inventory for a conventional digital storefront.

The pros and cons of dropshipping are well established, but the most important aspect of starting a dropshipping business — finding the right suppliers for your WooCommerce store — has been much less clear. Until now.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Suppliers

Dropshipping is a unique model for ecommerce. Conventional online retailers pay to maintain their own inventories. Dropshipping all but eliminates those expenses, so dropshipping doesn’t require significant startup capital.

On the other hand, dropshipping means you’re putting the fate of your ecommerce store in others’ hands.

With the dropshipping model, retailers are dependent on the wholesalers, suppliers, and distributors that handle fulfillment for the retailers’ orders.

There are many pieces to the dropshipping puzzle, and each piece is crucial for the bigger picture. Among those pieces, dropshipping suppliers are one of the most important. In fact, the best dropshippers come to realize that the quality — and overall reliability — of dropshipping suppliers will make or break a dropshipping ecommerce store.

So how do you find the right dropshipping suppliers for your digital storefront?

How to Find Your Dropshipping Suppliers

Starting a dropshipping business requires you to partner with suppliers, wholesalers, and distributors. You want to find suppliers that will strengthen rather than compromise your dropshipping business.

1. Research Your Products

Before you ever start finding and partnering with suppliers, you need to figure out what kinds of products you should offer.

In particular, you want to answer questions like:

1. Where does the product come from?
2. How is it made?
3. How long does manufacturing take?
4. Is there size or weight considerations that could make fulfillment harder or more expensive?

The goal isn’t expertise; instead, you want to get acquainted with the products so you can better decide which are right for dropshipping.

2. Know the Supply Chain and Understand Its Considerations

After nailing down your products, you need to get acquainted with the dropship supply chain. In other words, you need to know how dropshipping works.

With dropshipping, the products never actually pass through the retailer’s hands. Instead, the retailer receives an order and initiates fulfillment by a supplier that handles packaging and shipment. In this way, the retailer is like the conductor of a dropshipping orchestra.

If you don’t have reliable suppliers, you can’t offer products which means you have no dropshipping business.

3. Research Dropshipping Wholesalers on Google

With a Google search, you can find the major suppliers for your chosen products or product categories.

As you create a preliminary list, take note of the different attributes of the dropshipping suppliers by researching the next several questions.

• Where is each supplier located?
• Can the supplier integrate with your WooCommerce store so that new orders are sent for fulfillment automatically?
• What (if any) is the minimum order quantity (MOQ)?
• What support does the supplier offer (e.g. phone, email, chat, etc.)?
• What kind of product selection does the supplier offer?

4. Subscribe to Directories of Dropshipping Suppliers

Even if your Google searches turn up lots of options, directories can offer even more options. These directories consist of online databases of dropshipping suppliers and wholesalers for a wide variety of products.

You should know that some of the best — like Salehoo and Worldwide Brands — are premium directories, meaning they require paid subscriptions. There are free directories available, including Wholesale Central, that you can browse at no cost. However, free directories are sometimes outdated. Newer suppliers don’t appear and suppliers that are no longer in business are still listed.

Premium directories typically range in cost from $20 per month to a few hundred dollars for lifetime access. With free directories being hit-or-miss, you may find the cost of a premium directory to be worthwhile. There are even premium directories specifically tailored to dropshipping, including Doba.

5. Figure Out Which Suppliers Your Competitors Use

If you want to be competitive in the dropshipping space, it follows that you should see what your competitors are doing. In particular, do some reconnaissance to see which suppliers are fulfilling their orders.

There are a couple of ways to do this, but the easiest is to check marketplaces where your competitors sell.

When a dropshipping retailer sells on B2B marketplaces like Global Sources, AliExpress, Alibaba, or even Amazon’s Marketplace, you can usually see the supplier fulfilling each product.

If the supplier isn’t indicated on the listing, you can still uncover the supplier by placing your own order. Since it’s fulfilled by the supplier, the shipment will likely include an invoice or packing slip from them. Then you can contact that supplier directly to inquire about a partnership for your own dropshipping business.

6. Attend Trade Shows

Trade shows have long been known to be an effective way for retailers to establish and expand their businesses. So if you’ve not yet been to a trade show, add it to the top of your to-do list.

At trade shows, you network with other players in the dropship supply chain, including manufacturers and dropshipping wholesalers. You get an insider’s view of new and upcoming products that you could add to your online store. You also get to “talk shop” with dropshipping companies face-to-face, which is still the most effective way to conduct business.

Tip: Check out the Trade Show News Network to see when and where trade shows are happening.

7. Join Industry Networks and Groups

Trade shows help with finding suppliers for dropshipping businesses, but industry networks and groups are another effective resource.

Most retailers aren’t eager to divulge the secrets of their success, including the names of their dropshipping suppliers. However, the people who join industry communities want to share, learn, and grow. You can gain valuable insight from industry veterans by becoming part of the dropshipping community. For example, your peers could suggest better suppliers or warn you about suppliers to avoid.

8. Connect with Product Manufacturers

Not all manufacturers sell directly to retailers, but there are some that do. Before choosing suppliers for your dropshipping ecommerce store, consider reaching out to the manufacturers of the products you’ll be selling.

When a manufacturer agrees to be your supplier, you see much better margins than with a typical supplier or wholesaler. On the other hand, manufacturers often implement minimum order quantities which may require larger orders. In this case, you could find yourself with significant inventory to manage, which dropshipping is meant to circumvent.

If a manufacturer won’t partner with you, ask the manufacturer to recommend suppliers for you. After all, a recommendation implies that the working relationship between a manufacturer and supplier is positive. For that reason, recommended suppliers are surely worth including on your list of prospects.

9. Order Samples for Validation

No matter how many reviews or testimonials you find, there’s no substitute for firsthand experience. That’s why the next step in finding the right dropshipping suppliers for your business is to order samples.

Ordering samples tells you a couple of important things about a supplier. The first is you get to experience the quality of the product yourself.

The second is you get to see how the supplier handles fulfillment, including what shipment packaging is like, whether a separate distributor is involved, and how long shipping and delivery take. Suppliers will be fulfilling your orders, so ordering samples gives you an indication of what your customers will experience.

10. Confirm Contract Terms and Fees

You compiled some options, eliminated all but the most viable prospects, ordered samples to test those suppliers, and settled on the best supplier (or suppliers) for your dropshipping business. The only thing left to do is to negotiate contract terms and fees.

Compared to mature businesses with developed customer bases, new businesses with unproven customer bases have less negotiating power. This is particularly true when it comes to negotiating your margins.

Because dropshipping means you don’t have to maintain your own inventory, those margins will be low. Your supplier(s) bear the brunt of inventory costs as well as costs associated with fulfilling your orders. Since costs are lower with dropshipping, profit margins are likewise lower than if you stocked and shipped orders yourself.

With margins consistently low, the main difference between suppliers could be the fees involved. For example, some suppliers charge flat per-order fees, which are added to the wholesale cost of the products. Per-order fees usually range between $2 and $5 (although large or unwieldy products may warrant higher fees) to cover fulfillment and shipping costs.

Ultimately, you want to choose the supplier(s) that meet your needs and offer contracts with agreeable terms.

Special Considerations

Never hinge the future of your ecommerce business on just any unknown supplier you find.

Choosing an inexperienced supplier will negatively affect the reputation of your store. Inversely, better suppliers that are experienced and trustworthy will result in longevity and growth.

Dropshipping is almost like a Rube Goldberg machine. It’s a system with many separate parts that work together so your customers can make purchases, and if one single part of the machine isn’t doing its job, the entire system is compromised.

With this in mind, these are some considerations you should remember while choosing dropshipping suppliers for your WooCommerce store.

Be Wary of Fake Suppliers

Yes, fake suppliers are out there, looking very much like real suppliers. Be careful not to invite them into your dropship supply chain.

There are ways to distinguish fake suppliers that will scam you if given the chance. First, suppliers almost never sell products at wholesale prices to the general public. Be wary, when a supplier is advertising products at wholesale prices to the general public.

Fake suppliers often offer memberships, subscriptions, or some other monthly fees in exchange for access to their products. Experienced, reputable suppliers don’t require potential partners to pay monthly fees just for access to their products. Instead, legitimate suppliers more commonly charge per-order fees and might invoke minimum order quantities.

Your Reputation is at Stake

Remember, when you partner with dropshipping suppliers, it’s the reputation of your digital storefront that’s in those suppliers’ hands. If a customer has a bad experience, the customer will blame you rather than the supplier that fulfilled the order.

From the customer’s perspective, it was the retailer — which is you — that took his or her money, not the supplier. So even though you’re not fulfilling the orders, customers will see their orders as your responsibility.

This is one of the biggest drawbacks to dropshipping, and one to always keep in mind.

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Every entrepreneur dreams of seeing his or her business grow, but business growth doesn’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen without a plan and a strategy.

We’ve collaborated with experienced business owners, and gotten their tips to help you learn how to grow your business using the most effective business growth strategies for ecommerce.

The growth hacking strategies that are most effective for online and ecommerce businesses are:

• Market Penetration Strategies
• Market Expansion or Development Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Product Expansion Strategy
• Diversification Strategy
• Acquisition Strategy

Market Penetration Strategies

The term “penetration” refers to how many units of a product have been sold compared to the total number of potential sales for that market. For example, if a business sells to 20 out of 100 possible people, then penetration would be 20 percent.

To grow a business, you must sell to a greater number of people than you do currently. In other words, business growth is correlated to increased sales and market penetration. So if you want to increase market penetration, ultimately, you want to focus on ways to boost sales for your business.

Adjusting Prices

One of the most frequently used strategies for boosting sales and market penetration is to adjust the prices of your products. In most cases, this means lowering the prices of your products to make them more affordable and attractive to prospective buyers.

Increasing Promotion

Another way to boost market penetration is to increase brand awareness through marketing and promotion. Depending on the nature of the campaign — whether it advertises a business, a product, or a temporary promotion — these campaigns can facilitate either short-term or long-term sales growth.

Broadening Distribution

Besides pricing and promotion, you can increase market penetration by adding more distribution channels to your business model. For example, if your products are currently sold at one retail chain, finding another chain to sell your products will likely boost sales.

Improving Products

Most buyers will periodically upgrade to newer products from older ones; this purchasing behavior mirrors our innate desire for self-improvement. For this reason, bringing even small improvements to your product can also increase sales.

Increasing Usage

This strategy can be tricky because you don’t have control over how your buyers use your products. However, if you can find a way to increase usage rates for your products — which is easiest with consumable goods — you will likely see a sales boost from customers needing to replenish.

Market Expansion/Development Strategy

The purpose of expansion is to find new opportunities for growth once sales have peaked. To continue growth, market expansion strategy often sees the business move into a similar or related market. Since the new market is somewhat related to the existing one, the business can mitigate some of the risk that comes with exploring new territory.

Market development, on the other hand, is when a business creates a new market or technology. More specifically, the business identifies a trend or consumer need and attempts to capitalize on it.

With a market expansion or development strategy, the first step is to conduct research. From there, you can find the best opportunities for growth. After all, you don’t want to target markets that will end up costing money instead of increasing sales and revenue.

Targeted Marketing Strategy

Marketing is fundamental to owning and running a business so a more targeted approach can be an effective growth strategy.

Consumers are bombarded with marketing material on a daily basis. Advertisements clog their inboxes, fill up their social media feels, and interrupt their YouTube videos. But the problem with most of these advertisements is that they’re incredibly generalized. They don’t tap into something with which the audience can relate so as a result, the marketing content is easy for the audience to ignore.

Targeted marketing is when you tailor your marketing content to the audience. The idea is to deliver content that’s more relevant to the audience, resulting in more engagement and higher conversion. In turn, targeted marketing drives growth for your business.

The best thing about using targeted marketing as a growth strategy is that it can drive growth without requiring potentially risky changes to your business model.

In spite of the specificity inherent to targeted marketing, it’s actually a versatile and flexible growth strategy. But the forms of marketing that are particularly effective for driving business growth include influencer marketing, geo-targeted marketing, and affiliate marketing.

Influencer Marketing

In short, influencer marketing is a way to promote products or services by partnering with social media influencers. How does it work, exactly? Katie Schmidt — owner and founder of Passion Lilie, an ethical clothing boutique — explains the benefit of influencer marketing.

“Work with influencers to get your products in front of a wider audience,” she says. “Because the review of your product is coming from a trusted source, followers of these influencers will be … more likely to make a purchase.”

In other words, influencers have built trust with their audiences, so you tend to see much higher conversion and business growth with influencer marketing. Meanwhile, you’re targeting audiences to which you may not have had access.

Many businesses that are using influencer marketing have seen immense increases in sales. In fact, Mark Tyrol, President of Battic Door Home Energy Conservation Products, saw a 50 percent sales increase from influencer marketing alone. So if you’ve not already considered influencer marketing as one of your business growth strategies, you probably should.

Geo-Targeted Marketing

The advanced advertising platforms available today give business owners the ability to do geo-targeted marketing. With geo-targeting, you’re able to deliver your marketing content to the right audiences. In practice, it’s about making sure that the people who see your marketing content are the people who are most likely to act on it. For instance, ads for swimwear aren’t going to convert individuals who live in cooler climates.

Affiliate Programs

Instead of partnering with influencers, affiliate marketing is when you partner with other businesses targeting a similar audience. The idea is to promote mutual growth by referring customers who have converted to partnered businesses while also receiving referrals from those same partners. This arrangement is attractive for those partners or affiliates, because they earn a percentage of every sale they refer to your business.

Depending on the strength of your brand and your industry, you could see considerable conversion from affiliate marketing.

Product Expansion Strategy

There are a number of ways to approach product expansion as a source of business growth, from adding new features to a product to tapping into new audiences. However, every approach comes down to broadening the audience for a product or service.

Mark Tyrol boosted sales for Battic Door Home Energy Conservation Products by adding more distribution channels for his products.

“Starting initially with my website, I began adding online sales channels and grew sales dramatically,” Mark says. He cited eBay, Amazon, Rakuten, Sears, Home Depot, Walmart, Facebook, Shopify, and other sales platforms that allow retailers to “integrate, manage, and optimize their merchandise sales across hundreds of online channels.”

Another approach to product expansion would be to find opportunities to appeal to new markets. A prime example is the Skin So Soft product line by Avon. After discovering the product repelled insects, Avon began marketing Skin So Soft to campers for outdoor activities. Since then, the company started a line of Skin So Soft products that are explicitly designed as insect repellents.

Diversification Strategy

Simply put, diversification is about not putting all your eggs in one basket. The idea is to find multiple stable income channels to drive business growth. Meanwhile, you’re increasing your reach by broadening the target audience.

Mark McIntosh of LocalWear considers diversification to be the “holy grail for ecommerce.” According to Mark, “Some products can be hot at first but lose traction. So a healthy, growing business will have a few different growth drivers over time.”

In addition to your products, you can diversify your customer touchpoints, too. For example, adding social media marketing or a live chat feature to your website can drive substantial sales growth.

Brandon Ackroyd, Head of Customer Insight for Tiger Mobiles, used live chat to increase customer engagement and sales. In fact, Brandon noted that “the number of people using live chat increased by 400 percent over six months” and of those who use the live chat feature, “20 percent of customers ended up placing an order.”

Acquisition Strategy

For larger or more established businesses, growth through acquisition is an effective strategy. By taking a separate business — with its product lineup, customers, and workforce — and rolling it into a larger company, you increase your market share.

Acquisition might not be a viable growth strategy for every business because it requires considerable availability of liquid capital. However, when it’s feasible, acquisition can drive growth by letting you expand into new markets, diversify your product portfolio, or increase your production capacity.

Words of Advice for Growing an Ecommerce Business

As we wind down this overview of how to grow your business online, we want to leave you with some final advice. The following tips were provided by the helpful business owners and entrepreneurs referenced throughout this piece who have employed many of the above business strategies to great effect.

Try New Things

Tahnee Elliott — founder and CEO of T.C. Elli’s, a Texas-based ecommerce fashion retailer — considers willingness to experiment essential to business growth.

“In 2009, the financial crisis hit my business hard,” says Tahnee. Facing a substantial decrease in foot traffic, Tahnee “shifted gears by reducing price points and opening an online store.” From there, she experimented with digital channels. Advertising on Instagram and a brand ambassador program have been particularly successful for Tahnee’s business. Ultimately, her willingness to adapt and experiment is why T.C. Elli’s continues to thrive today.

Be Patient

The growth you want to see isn’t going to happen overnight or without time spent creating a plan. So Keval Baxi, CEO of Codal, emphasizes patience.
“Even with 100 percent determination, it can be hard without patience or a proper process” Keval says. “Without a proper process for implementation, and the patience to follow that process, businesses will not succeed.”

Stability Over Trends

Many entrepreneurs have made the mistake of jumping onto the latest bandwagon, but the most successful businesses are those that provide continuous value to stable, consistent markets.

“To grow consistently, you need a compelling value proposition that taps into a long-term customer trend,” says Rick Watson. “Think about the things that have staying power [and] will be true for the next five or more years.”

Rick owns and runs RMW Commerce Consulting, an ecommerce consulting firm.

Build Trust

Today’s consumers are savvier than ever and extremely skeptical of market content. For this reason, if you take the time to build trust with your audience, you’ll be rewarded with more sales. Trust is something especially important to keep in mind when it comes to content marketing.

“There’s nothing wrong with a little self-promotion,” Katie Schmidt says, “but shoppers grow to trust brands that offer them useful advice [instead of] just trying to sell to them. As consumers come to you for valuable content, they’ll begin to trust your site and make a purchase. Build trust and share knowledge with your audience, and you’ll win yourself some potential customers.”

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Live chat is pretty remarkable when you think about it. You can have a back-and-forth, real-time conversation with a business—all for no charge. Calling into a business comes with the maze of “press 1” menu options and endless strains of muzak. With live chat, you simply type your question and wait for a response.

With simplicity like this, it’s not surprising consumer demand for live chat grew 8.3% in 2017. In fact, recent surveys show more consumers (41%) now prefer live chat over calling (32%), email (23%), or a social media (3%).

Smart ecommerce owners want the best live chat software to meet customer demands.

How Can Live Chat Help Ecommerce Businesses?

Here are some ways live chat benefits your online business.

Increase Conversions

Online stores that use live chat convert more. Visitors who chat are 82% more likely to convert than customers who don’t. And chatters pay 13% more! Customers like having a direct channel for getting questions answered. The access and transparency increase trust in the brand and its products. Use live chat on landing pages to nudge visitors to explore a product, download a PDF, or subscribe to your newsletter.

Lower Cart Abandonment Rates

Around 70% of online shoppers will abandon a product in their carts. There are many cart abandonment solutions to recover lost revenue. And live chat is one of them. Use live chat to engage hesitant customers at checkout. For example, prompt idle customers with full carts the question: “May I answer any questions about the products you selected?”

Replace Lead Generation Forms

Customers hate filling out forms. They’re impersonal, confusing, and one-way communication. Forms with many options may not include a customer’s specific answer. Or a form may ask too much information or have confusing instructions. Live chat is a less formal, more direct way to gather the same customer information and provide instant feedback for questions. You can also integrate live chat software with your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Export information you gather during the live chat to your CRM for lead gen purposes.

Data Gathering

Use your live chat to gather customer feedback data. Customers are more likely to fill out a “moment of your time” survey if you’ve answered their question. Use post-chat surveys to rate/identify things like:

• Your agents’ effectiveness at solving a problem
• The live chat’s effect on the customer’s purchase decision
• Customer interests and confusions
• Specific ways to improve the live chat experience

Discount Offers

Offering incentives like discounts and coupon codes convert more visitors to customers. Online businesses like LogoDesign.net use their live chat software to deliver these incentives in real time. CEO and Founder Zaheer Dodhia says offering incentives through live chat helps them customize customer orders on the fly.

“For example, if our list price for a design is $100, we often offer a 50% discount. But the visitor might want some tweaks to the stock design. With live chat, we can immediately customize the package and give them a new quote on the spot. Instant customer conversion!”

And, if you’re willing to negotiate prices, live chat offers an effective communication channel. You need immediate feedback to win a retail price negotiation. Imagine price haggling through email. Direct back-and-forth negotiation raises the stakes for buyers, prompting them to buy. Live chat is the closest thing you can get to a real life, brick-and-mortar sales rep.

Live Chat Software for Ecommerce

Here are some of the best live chat software for ecommerce businesses today.

Nextiva

Nextiva chat software is a full-featured live chat software that works for any size ecommerce store. It includes a shortcut feature that lets you type out often-used responses with the stroke of a few keys. That can save your chat agents hours of time each week. Nextiva is a modular platform with add-on tools including CRM, analytics platform, and surveys. So, you can build your chat platform around your current needs, with pricing plans ranging from basic to enterprise.

Nextiva helps cut down on cart abandonment by offering proactive chat, letting you reach out to customers before they start chatting. Activate Nextiva’s proactive chat feature on specific web pages to engage customers at critical conversion moments. For example, set prompts to trigger a live chat message after a visitor has spent a minute on your homepage with the message: “What type of products are you looking for today?”

Bold360

If you need a 24/7 live chat service and/or full automation, Bold360 is a good option. The app uses chatbots to answer customer questions. So, you can use artificial intelligent (AI) to have realistic conversations with site visitors. Or, you can mix it up—using human agents during peak sales hours and chatbox support for slower times. The platform’s AI directs questions it can’t answer to a human agent. This mix of approaches keeps costs low while making sure your customers get the answers they need.

Bold360’s integration features make it ideal for your customer service teams. It connects to your email and text. So, your human or robotic agents can respond to multi-channel inquiries. Or you can set up automated responses. Bold360 also integrates with Facebook Messenger and Twitter. Agents can respond to questions inside social media accounts. No third-party software needed.

All three of Bold360’s pricing plans are “request a quote” options. So, they’re willing to work within your budget to a point. But AI and social media integration aren’t cheap. Also, you’ll need to opt for the more expensive plans to get high-end features like AI.

Tawk.to

Tawk.to is a free live chat app and service that is easy to get started with. The service can also staff you with call agents for $1/hour. So, it’s a workable solution for small startups with little or no customer service. Tawk.to offers automated messaging triggers so you can initiate live chats with visitors. Customize Tawk.to’s chat widget to match your store’s branding. Tawk.to has Android and iPhone apps for responding to customer questions on the go.

Tawk.to runs ads on your chat widget if you use their free service. But you can remove the ads for $12/month (annual payment) or $15/month (monthly payment). Tawk.to doesn’t have as many features as other chat services—it doesn’t include email, social media integration, or chatbots. But if you want a low-entry price and hiring flexibility, Tawk.to is worth considering.

SnapEngage

SnapEngage designed its live chat to connect your sales and customer support teams. It comes with features like reporting, website monitoring, and team chats. SnapEngage streamlines the lead generation process, too. Use the software to capture names and emails addresses through the chat box. SnapEngage will then deliver that lead data to your sales team. The chat platform works in an internet browser, so there’s no software to download.

SnapEngage integrates live chat with in-house team messaging. Help desk members can message customers while having open chat windows with other members of your organization. Cross-team integration gets your customers better answers. You can also use SnapEngage to conduct post-chat surveys to rate agents or ask about interests or product preferences.

ZenDesk Chat

It’s likely you’ve heard about ZenDesk or used this popular customer support software. But the company also offers a robust live chat feature you can use as a stand-alone service.

Like Bold360, Zendesk Chat lets agents engage customers through social media platforms like Facebook Messenger and Twitter. And it integrates with popular CRMs like Salesforce and website creation tools like WordPress.

ZenDesk Chat excels in delivering in-platform analytics. Besides evaluating individual agent performance, you can also track visitor activity on your site. For example, you can track which product pages were driving higher chat rates, then optimize those pages to convert higher.

Use the same data to identify problem areas on your website. If a specific page is prompting similar questions, answer the question on the page. This will increase your page’s relevance rating and rank it higher in organic search.

The Rise of the Chatbots

The rise of the chatbot is going mainstream in ecommerce. AI improvements are making chatbot “talk” difficult to distinguish between human speech. And chatbots excel at completing simple, recurring tasks like answering basic product questions. This makes them a cost-effective alternative to human agents.

While enterprise-level companies are meeting consumer demands, smaller businesses are dropping the ball. Small online stores have seen a 19% increase in the number of missed chats in 2017. You may have a live chat service, but if you miss a quarter of your customer engagements, you’re not taking full advantage.

Choosing the right live chat software helps you solve the missed call problem. Live chat isn’t just a tool for answering customer questions anymore. It’s becoming an important “voice” of your brand—robotic or otherwise.

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Finding customers is a challenge faced by businesses of all sizes.

Sure, there’s the initial buzz and influx of new customers that comes in the early days when your brand is shiny and new, but how do you sustain that interest over time and bring in new faces month after month?

That’s where most companies look to a customer acquisition strategy.

The trouble is, if those efforts are impacting how you maintain your relationships with current customers, you could be leaving money on the table. Obtaining new customers is important, but acquisition is not the only focus. Other activities around customer experience and content should be top-of-mind, too.

And for many, it is. According to Econsultancy’s Digital Trends 2018 report, 38 percent of companies cite content and experience management as a top priority.

What does this tell us? It tells us it’s not enough to sell customers on a product and expect them to continue to make future purchases based on that sale alone. Instead, you have to think about how customer journey will evolve over time, across touchpoints, and through different channels. That’s customer experience.

But let’s circle back to the value of customer acquisition. We know it’s a critical part of growing any business, but how is it possible that something so important can sometimes be so distracting?

How Much is Getting New Customers Really Costing You?

You know the familiar song and dance. Your team spends time, money, and effort trying to get potential customers to convert … only to be met with little return. Cue the frustration and crescendo of pressure to fulfill this month’s quota around new customers.

There’s no denying that acquiring new customers is a facet of sustainability and growth for any business. However, there can be a major (costly) downside when it comes to finding them.

Customer acquisition can cost up to 7 times more than selling to existing customers — while the probability of selling to a new customer hovers around a mere 5 to 20 percent. Meanwhile, the likelihood of selling to an existing customer is between 60 to 70 percent. That’s quite the jump.

Despite these figures, there’s still hope for cost-effective customer acquisition.

With the recent influx of analytics software and tracking tools, marketers can now monitor every move potential customers make, and gain insight from their various journeys. This insight can then help determine how much is being spent on customer acquisition. Businesses can more accurately calculate ROI, and make data-driven decisions.

By calculating your customer acquisition cost (CAC), you can accurately determine whether your efforts are profitable. This simple calculation can not only help you identify your best and worst efforts, but it can also help you make smarter investments that widen your profit margins.

Calculating Customer Acquisition Costs

Your CAC can be found by dividing all costs spent on acquiring more customers, otherwise known as your marketing expenses, by the number of customers acquired during the time that money was spent.

For example, if your company spent $1,000 on marketing in one year and acquired 500 customers as a result, your CAC is $2.00.

This simple calculation makes it easy to see how your money is being spent and if you’re actually seeing a return as a result. It may seem counterintuitive, but spending the majority of your time trying to attract net-new customers may end up costing you more in the end if you don’t have a pulse on your CAC.

What About Customer Retention?

You can’t let existing customer relationships fall to the wayside. After all, data shows repeat buyers can be some of your biggest spenders over time, making up for around 40 percent of a company’s total revenue. The same report showed that repeat customers often spend an average of 30 percent more per purchase than first-time buyers.

It’s clear that maintaining positive relationships with your existing customers can be one of the best things for your business. Finding net-new customers isn’t always the right way to grow or increase your profits; there is a lot to be said for the customers who know your brand and have made a purchase in the past.

Did you know that U.S.companies lose around $136.8 billion per year due to customer switching? That’s a ton of cash out the door for no good reason.

So how can you prolong those existing customer relationships? The answer is simple: provide unmatched customer service.

Top-notch Customer Service as a Retention Strategy

Customer service is one facet of the overall customer experience, and 89 percent of companies see it as a key factor in driving customer loyalty and retention. It is also significant that more than half of U.S. consumers have decided not to go through with a planned purchase or transaction due to bad customer service.

Our world of constant connectivity demands customer service that can keep up with customer behavior, and the difference between good and bad customer service could cost you.

From live chat to designated customer service agents, there are several ways to take your customer service to the next level. Customers expect their issues and questions to be resolved on their schedules to make it easy for them. Provide a variety of channels where they can contact you.

In addition to making it easy for customers to reach you, it’s important to collect feedback at different touchpoints. One example is after a customer makes a purchase.

Customer feedback provides insight and can help you resolve key customer experience issues.

This email from car2go makes it easy for customers to provide feedback by encouraging them to share their experience and ideas. This feedback creates a dialogue between the brand and customer which can be beneficial for both parties. Giving customers a voice can help you improve your customer experience and shows them their opinions are important and valued.

Ways to Increase Customer Retention

Let’s take a look at a few other ways you can improve your customer retention and nurture your existing customers.

Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

Whether it’s a tailor-made shopping experience in the form of product recommendations, a roundup of articles they are likely interested in, or a series of discounts based on a customer’s shopping history, personalization is powerful and makes every interaction feel tailor-made.

Amazon is an excellent example of the power of personalization at work. Based on data it collects from the time you spend browsing the site, Amazon creates a list of high interest items which encourages more purchases.

Use Referral Programs

The “you win, I win” mentality is one that can work for you twofold when it comes to customer retention. By leveraging referral programs, you can inspire brand advocacy and gain new customers as well.

Incentivizing existing customers to refer friends who may be interested in the brand can build brand loyalty and grow your customer base. Your existing customers have relationships with people you may not otherwise be able to reach.

A/B Test Everything, Then Test It Again

A/B testing can be used for a myriad of purposes. Whether you want to test the layout of an email or the effectiveness of a CTA button, you can learn what works best (and what doesn’t). As you make more money (and have less to spend on re-engaging customers), it’s crucial to understand the entirety of your online shopping experience.

Consider A/B testing the following elements:

• Copy on landing pages, product pages, ad copy, etc.
• Site format and layout
• CTA buttons and other icons like social buttons
• Website pop-ups
• Images or photos

Split testing will reveal how existing and potential customers interact with your site as they shop. You can use that information to optimize your pages and create a better overall online experience.

Find a Balance Between Customer Acquisition and Customer Retention

You can’t rely solely on your existing customers for revenue and sales, but they can be your most profitable customers. As for potential customers, you must grow your customer base at a sustainable rate and price.

Finding a way to maintain a balance between acquiring new customers and nurturing your existing ones will help you maximize your profitability and grow your brand loyalty.

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Congratulations! You did it. You opened your online store, you have sales starting to come in, and you are ready to step up your marketing strategy.

Today we will discuss email marketing, one of the most effective tools available to help you make more sales through your ecommerce store. We will talk about email marketing best practices — the tactics that will help you implement your email marketing strategy.

Let’s dive in!

What is Email Marketing?

If you are new to online marketing, email marketing (in a nutshell) is simply the practice of sending emails to a defined list of subscribers with the ultimate goal of boosting your sales results.

Despite all the “hype and hoopla” over various forms of social media and the “shiny objects” of other digital marketing tools, and despite the digital pundits and gurus who have declared email marketing dead and finished, it is not. Far from it.

Targeted email marketing can still be a very effective way to drive traffic to your WooCommerce store and help you win more sales, but you need to have a solid email marketing strategy and follow email marketing best practices.

Email Marketing: Strategy vs. Tactics

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. – Sun Tzu

Online marketers often confuse strategy and tactics. They are complementary but not the same. Strategy refers broadly to the goals you want to accomplish. Tactics refer to the specific tools and best practices that will help you get there.

Email Marketing Best Practices

To paraphrase online marketing legend Dan Kennedy, you want to be “a welcomed guest, not an uninvited pest.”

With email marketing, you are a welcomed guest. Your subscribers chose to opt-in to your email distribution list. They decided they want to hear from you. Doesn’t it make sense that this will give you an advantage over other marketing channels?

Indeed, email can be a very effective addition to your online marketing toolbox. But you have to do it right.

Once you’ve determined your email marketing strategy, it’s time to start harnessing the power of email marketing best practices. Keep reading to learn valuable tips that will help you get the sales results you want and need.

Finding the Right Email Marketing Tools for You

Good news! You have a lot of options in searching for the right tools to help you implement your email marketing strategy. There are so many choices you might feel confused and overwhelmed.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution here, so consider your unique situation. Determine what you need before you begin your search.

1. Are you on a tight budget and able to get by with a program with limited features?
2. Or do you have a large budget and need the benefits that more features can deliver?

Regardless of your needs, you can find the program you are looking for — if you know what you are looking for before you begin your search. Knowing will save you a lot of time, confusion, and frustration. It will also help you choose the right email marketing program for you.

How You Can Identify, Attract, and Grow Your Email Audience

It has been said, “you can’t sell steaks to vegans.” Translation: you need to have the right audience for your email marketing campaign. Their perception that you are relevant to them is crucial to your success. If they don’t fundamentally care about your product or service and what it can do for them, they won’t buy from you. Your email marketing results will tank.

So do a “deep dive” and really learn in detail whom you are trying to attract. Mentally put yourself in their shoes. Do surveys of your current list members and previous buyers, and ask them what’s important to them in relation to your offering.

Visit the online forums and social media pages they frequent. Read the online and print publications they read. Watch the TV programs they watch. Observe and analyze what your competitors are doing.

Then put together a detailed “ideal buyer profile” (sometimes referred to as an avatar) and write your email content and copy accordingly.

Ask yourself, “What problems do my audience members have that I can solve?” Then give them what they want. If they are “vegan” list members so-to-speak, don’t try to convince them to buy “steak.”

Email List Quality vs. Quantity

You want to grow the size of your email subscriber list, but that’s not the most important goal. Think about it. Would you prefer a list of 10,000 indifferent subscribers who never opened your emails and bought from you? Or would you rather have an email list of 1,000 rabid fans who bought from your WooCommerce store often and couldn’t wait to tell their friends about you?

Here’s a tip you may find counterintuitive: don’t cast a wide net with your email marketing and try to be “all things to all people.” Be targeted and laser-focused on giving your audience what it wants. Be bold, be unique and original, be courageous. Take strong stands and have firm opinions.

Yes, you will lose some subscribers who were never going to buy from you anyway, but your core audience will grow more loyal to you and more enthusiastic about your emails!

Once you have the fans on your list, give them a reason to remain on it. How? With stellar content that they anticipate breathlessly. Content that is so good, they would gladly pay for it, but you generously choose to freely give it away instead.

These tips will help you build and keep a very enthusiastic subscriber list that buys from you.

What’s in it for Me?

Remember the acronym, WIIFM? It stands for “What’s in it for Me?” Every single time you try to persuade your potential customer to act, including opting into your email list, he’s asking himself WIIFM? Make it clear how he stands to benefit from joining your list.

And don’t keep your email list signup form only on your home page or buried in some hard-to-find spot on your site.

1. Put it clearly and prominently on every page of your website
2. Put it on your blog
3. Put it on your social media pages
4. Make mention of it in your offline marketing

Look for unique and creative ways to proactively get the word out about your email list, and in keeping with the WIIFM principle, make it abundantly clear to people why they would want to sign up with calls to action that convert.

Writing vs. Copywriting

The difference between the almost right word & the right word … it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. – Mark Twain

Copywriting is the art and science of selling through the written word. You need good copywriting to help ensure the success of your online store whether you choose to learn the craft yourself or hire a professional copywriter to handle this crucial aspect of your online marketing. Copyblogger has lots of valuable resources that can help you in your quest to understand more about this important topic.

How to Test Emails for Success (A/B Testing)

A huge benefit of email marketing is it gives you the ability to test and refine your approach, so you can enjoy increasingly better results. Email marketing programs from the most basic to the most advanced offer you A/B testing, or “split testing” capabilities.

When you run an email marketing A/B test, you compare two versions of an email blast with the goal of learning which one performs better in terms of open rate, click through, conversion, etc.

It’s important that you only test one variable at a time. For example, send out two emails that are identical, except for different subject lines. Or in one, including a P.S. or a different call to action, etc.

A Word on Email Marketing Metrics

Email marketing programs generate a ton of different metrics you can use to help in your quest to optimize results. So which ones most deserve your attention? And more importantly, which metrics require action? Let’s look at three.

Open Rate

This metric is the percentage of your emails that actually get opened by subscribers. It’s critical because if your message never gets opened, nothing else matters. Your email marketing efforts will fail.

This article has some brilliant ideas to help you craft compelling, eye-catching subject lines that get opened more often and help boost your email marketing results. As you read it, pay special attention to the concept of combining curiosity and benefits.

Click-Through Rate

Your message has to get opened, obviously, but it also has to “convert” your reader into doing the thing you want them to do. When they have finished your email, do you want them to go directly to your Woocommerce page to make a purchase? Do you want them to register for your webinar or live in-person event? Do you want to redirect them to your website to download your latest white paper or case study?

To accomplish any of these through your email marketing, you have to first persuade them to click through your email to another place on the web. This is where powerful copywriting and a strong call to action come into play.

Conversion Rate

This metric is dependent on success with opens and click-throughs. Once your readers have done these first two steps, have they then taken the next action you wanted them to take in order to convert? Did they make the purchase? Did they register for the event? Did they download your white paper?

If so, that was a successful conversion. This is the ultimate goal of email marketing, so pay special attention to this crucial metric.

Stick to a Winning Strategy and Find Success

Email marketing is still the king of the online marketing world. While not everyone succeeds at it, you can! Implement a solid email marketing strategy and follow best practices including those in this article, to help you carry out your winning strategy, and you will enjoy a great deal of email marketing success.

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