Effective E-Commerce Marketing Strategies to Bling Out Customer Engagement

For any brand to thrive, it needs to get repeat orders from loyal customers while also attracting new visitors. Holding on to existing customers is tricky while your competitors are waiting to snatch them away when you slip up. It would be difficult if you're stuck with performing repetitive tasks instead of innovating a customer engagement strategy. In this article, I list some of the e-commerce marketing strategies that are easy to implement and quite effective for driving business.

Effective E-Commerce Marketing Strategies

1. Understand your customer’s journey.

For any visitor to your website, the purpose of their visit speaks volumes. By understanding your customer’s purchase journey, you can understand the requirements of a visitor at a certain point of time based on which stage of the purchase cycle they're in. This knowledge will help you craft the correct offer or promotion, which better connects with them and leads to conversion.

Source: Vendasta

2. Take it or regret: Generate urgency.

Imagine a scenario where a visitor arrives on your site and is notified that the product they're looking for can be bought anytime in the next 14 days. There's a good chance that they may forget about it as soon as they leave your website — without having made a purchase. People tend to take action when there's urgency, which can come in the form of requirements (self-induced), deadlines (induced by either you or them), or crisis (self-induced).

When you generate a sense of urgency with your copy, consumers realize that they'll lose a good deal if they don't act fast.

3. Streamline the checkout process.

Consumers standing in long lines at the checkout of a supermarket wish to complete the process with the least amount of interruption as possible. The same is true for the visitor who wishes to make a purchase on your e-commerce site. If you ask them to create a profile when they reach the checkout page, you'll discourage them from completing the purchase. Either ask them to create a profile beforehand or provide an option to log in using any existing social media profile.

In the example below from ASOS, the customer has the option to either create a profile manually or import their social media profile to speed up the process.

4. Opt for minimally invasive data collection.

A good nonintrusive way to collect customer data is by studying a shopper's online behavior and past purchases, leveraging e-commerce analytics tools to process the collected data into relevant conversation starters. Cart abandonment emails are a great example where a tool reveals which products were abandoned, and based on the trigger, sends a personalized reminder email.

5. Ask for reviews and showcase them.

By asking for customer feedback or reviews of your products, your brand accomplishes the following:

• builds trust in your customers that their thoughts matter (i.e., increase customer value); and
• by featuring their reviews, you thwart any concerns in the minds of other visitors about your brands (i.e., build trust).

The more customer testimonials and reviews you feature, the more credible your products will look to site visitors.

Wrapping Up

A good marketing strategy may not get you success overnight, but the best day to implement it is today. While the above described marketing strategies are effective, they're just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to effective e-commerce marketing strategies. What are the common strategies that you use on a daily basis? Start the conversation in the comments below.

Stephen Meyer is the head of the sales and marketing departments for QeRetail, a company that provides internet marketing services, e-commerce website development and e-commerce solutions, and multistore e-commerce website management solutions.