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Are you a retail business owner? Leverage retail marketing automation to increase conversion rate and improve total revenue.
Today, as per startupbonsai, 79% of companies use marketing automation. One of the major reasons behind it is streamlining the marketing and sales efforts. Marketers feel the constant pressure of getting things done perfectly; however, sometimes it can reduce efficiency and lead to poor results.
Imagine yourself juggling with some important tasks of your business. It’s not a surprise that you won’t be able to pay attention to other parts of business like, sending marketing campaigns, working on clear messaging, retaining customers, remembering their special days, and more.
So, how do you stay connected with these customers and turn them into regulars — Through Retail marketing automation.
Leveraging marketing automation can help in increasing productivity, customer engagement, and total revenue.
According to webfx, the automation industry is expected to be worth $25billion by 2023. It’s no surprise that its usage is increasing by several companies. Keep reading to know how marketing automation can help retail businesses in increasing revenue.
What is Marketing Automation?
Before we dive further, let’s understand its meaning briefly.
Marketing automation refers to software platforms that perform various manual tasks like email marketing, customer relationship management, customer engagement, etc. These software platforms automate repetitive tasks and do not require any human action.
Welcome emails, feedback, birthday emails, and lead magnets are some of the best examples of marketing automation.
How Can Marketing Automation Help Retail Businesses in Increasing Revenue — 4 Secret Hacks!
1. Timely automated communication
If you are a retail business owner, remember the last time you invested your time and efforts into sending the right message to your customers at the right time. You can’t remember it, right? Well, we all know that it is not practically possible. This is where automated campaigns come into the picture.
Perfectly-timed automated campaigns can encourage customers to keep coming back to the store. It is an effective way to reach the potential audience at the right time. In simple words, you will never miss an opportunity to increase customer engagement.
You can create different campaigns based on different events.
For example, you can send a series of automated messages via WhatsApp, emails, and SMS based on a particular event through Reelo. It can be birthdays or anniversaries, winning back customers, welcoming new ones, or bringing back customers.
Bonus: You can select different communication channels and choose if you want to send them the communication message immediately after their visit or after a few days.
It is important to develop a long-lasting relationship with customers. These events are effective ways to encourage customers to be repeat shoppers.
Blue Apron creates a short and simple win back email for their customers with a clear CTA and right usage of words. A win-back campaign is an email campaign that aims to bring back inactive customers and get them to interact with your business again.
2. Birthdays or anniversaries email
Retail businesses often don’t have time to remember every customer’s birthday or anniversary. Because of it, many companies avoid sending birthday messages to their customers. This is why most companies fail to build customer relationships and leverage one of the effective marketing auto campaigns i.e., birthday SMS, Whatsapp, and email marketing campaigns.
Birthday campaigns, as per smartrmail, result in 481% higher transaction rate and generate 342% more revenue per email.
Sending a birthday or anniversary email shows your value towards your customers. It is a positive experience that increases customer satisfaction along with revenue.
Just like we expect gifts from our loved ones, customers expect rewards, discounts, and other incentives on their special day from their favorite brands.
For example, say you own a restaurant and want to send a birthday auto campaign to your customer(s). To make their birthday more special, you can offer them a special discount or reward that they can redeem on their birthday itself. Automation takes care of it along with remembering their birthday.
Moreover, through platforms like Reelo, you can even have access to thousands of pre-built templates and send your campaign via different channels like SMS, email, and WhatsApp, that will make your brand stand out.
Take a look at this birthday email from one of most loved brands around the world - H&M.
This automated email has all the required elements:
- Eye-catchy design
- Simple messaging
- Birthday offer
- T&C
- Clear CTA
Give your customers a reason to celebrate their special day with you.
3. Send messages based on different events
Birthday emails or SMS are great ways to nurture customer relationships and increase conversions; however, businesses need to focus on other important events along with it.
For example, welcome new customers, bring back customers, and win back customers. Let’s understand all the 3 in detail.
Welcoming New Customers: When a customer visits your store, restaurant or salon for the first time, you will want them to come back sooner. Because 60% of customers don’t come back after their first visit and it’s time to change the same.
Sending a welcome email or SMS can help your business make a long-lasting impression. These campaigns garner more engagement and more click rates. For example, welcome emails have 14.4% click rate compared to 2.7% in other emails.
Thus, when a customer makes their first purchase, send them an offer after 24 hours and encourage them to visit you again.
Bringing Back Customers: Many customers turned to regulars after their first visit; however, sometimes these customers stop coming back due to various reasons. No businesses can risk losing retaining customers.
This is where you need to bring back these customers. For example, when you see that certain customers haven’t visited for a long time, send them exciting rewards or offers. Incentives are definitely a great way to motivate customers to make a visit sooner and become a regular again.
Winning Back Customers: The main aim of win back campaigns is to make your lost customers active again. After all, it costs more to acquire new customers than to retain old ones.
It’s important to regain their interest in your business and that can happen easily through retail marketing automation. Remember, rekindled interests can lead them to visit your store and turn into a retaining customer again.
4. Get campaign summary report easily
Through automation, you can easily get track campaign results and total revenue generated.
Campaign summary report can help you to collect total visit rate, revenue earned from the campaign, customer visits, and more. It will help you fine tune your future campaigns, satisfy customers, and drive success.
3 Marketing Automation Strategies to Scale Your Retail Business
Now that you are aware of the ways marketing automation can help retail businesses in increasing revenue — Here are top 4 marketing automation strategies that can give effective results.
Offer rewards and coupons
Coupons and rewards are one of the effective automation marketing strategies. These strategies are classic and haven’t yet lost their essence.
Discounts, exclusive deals, rewards, and loyalty points are great ways to lure customers to repeatedly purchase from their favourite brands. Designing an engaging, relevant, and personalized loyalty program can turn all the potential customers into regulars.
Furthermore, marketing automation can help in sending the communication via different channels like Whatsapp, email, and SMS in seconds. It clearly helps in eliminating the delayed communication to customers.
Focus on product highlights
We understand that everyone talks about avoiding direct promotion. But, in the end, every business’ goal is to increase their profits and generate revenue. It can only happen with an increase in sales.
Therefore, choose the 80/20 rule i.e, 80% of your communication should focus on educating or entertaining the customers. While the remaining 20% should focus on directly promoting the products. After all, customers need to be fully aware of the products that a company is selling; or else they won’t be able to make the right buying decision.
Leverage A/B testing
Customers are unpredictable. Market is dynamic.
You won’t understand their needs in just one communication. A/B testing helps in knowing what kind of communication is working the best for the retail store. In simple words, it allows you to compare two variants and choose the one which performs the best.
Let’s say, company A wants to do a retail SMS marketing campaign. They can test two types of SMS, send it to a selected target audience, analyse the campaign results, and see which has outdone the other.
3 Reasons Why Retail Marketing Automation is a Must
We have established the marketing automation strategies and how they can help retail businesses. So, take a look at how it can benefit the retail businesses.
Great ROI
Studies from webfx say that companies using automated marketing tend to see 53% higher conversion rates than others.
So, there is no reason for retail businesses to avoid it because the higher the conversion rate, the more sales and customers for the business. Marketing automation allows businesses to personalize messaging and send it to the right customers.
It helps in creating a smooth customer experience because there is no room left for error.
Tracks marketing performance
Businesses need to create marketing campaigns frequently to reach a wider audience and turn them into regulars; however, sometimes we are unable to track campaign performance and take the necessary measures.
Here’s where automated marketing comes to the rescue. It not only helps in tailoring the message but even gives detailed insights into campaign performance. Capturing real time data will allow retail businesses to constantly work on the shortcomings of the campaign to avoid future problems.
Not limited to email marketing
One of the common myths about marketing automation is that it is limited to email marketing.
Automation is more than emails. Businesses can use it for different purposes like lead generation, Whatsapp marketing, social media, SMS marketing, and more. It is designed to eliminate manual work and make repetitive tasks less time consuming.
Summing Up…
Today, consumers have become more specific about their time and purchasing decisions. They prefer brands that value both.
Therefore, retail businesses need to ensure that they create incredible customer experiences, which is possible through marketing automation. For example, use customer retention platforms like Reelo to send automated campaigns, design personalized loyalty programs, gaining real time customer insights, and more.
It will eliminate the workload and make the entire process comparatively smoother. Marketing automation can undoubtedly elevate any retail store. So, to keep improving these processes and customer experiences, sign up on Reelo today.
