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The Ultimate Guide to E-commerce Marketing Automation Software

Marketing automation ecommerce guide

The evolution of ecommerce has accelerated rapidly. The post coronavirus ecommerce marketplace is exciting. Many brands have shifted their focus from physical to online storefronts to sell their products and reach their audience. eMarketer estimates that the global ecommerce market generated $4.89 trillion in 2021. In 2019, online purchases comprised only 13.6% of sales, but in 2021, 19.5% of sales were generated online (a 48.5% increase).

As consumers continue to shift to online marketplaces to buy anything from a new Kindle to groceries, many businesses are lost on how to capitalize on the shift or even where to start. A brand may know the ins and outs of selling their products from a mall storefront but coordinating 3pl fulfillmentmobile responsive website design, or EDI software integration can sound like a foreign language.

Digital Marketing: Where to Begin?

Perhaps the biggest challenge for most businesses is online marketing. Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Snapchat are powerful tools ecommerce businesses use to reach their target audience. Google PPC campaigns help brands connect with their ideal customers based on the keywords users enter in search engines.

Although brands can still leverage traditional marketing strategies, many companies still want to utilize the latest marketing analytics to guide their advertising campaigns. Platforms like Facebook and Google analyze user data through cross-site tracking and third-party cookies to guide campaign targeting. However, the new iOS 14 update adjusted the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, allowing users to choose whether or not they want to share their personal data with advertisers.

Businesses will have to get smarter with their marketing efforts, and marketing automation is the ultimate solution. Marketing automation is one of the fastest-growing technologies, and it has become more practical for small or medium-sized businesses. Marketing automation technology shows a 14% compounded annual growth rate over the next five years and solves dozens of challenging ecommerce problems.

There are many ecommerce business platforms to use, but if you want the best marketing automation software and marketing automation software, an intelligent commerce solution is the best option for independent brands. Part of our Commerce as a Solution (CaaS) infrastructure is the world’s first multichannel automation tool. It helps create better customer experiences through automated campaign management, machine learning, and A/B testing. It will help with customer retention and reaching your ecommerce KPI goals.

Let’s discuss the ins and outs of marketing automation, how it works, why it’s essential, the benefits, and why you’ll need it to stay competitive in your retail space.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation uses automated messages and workflows from email, web, social, and text touchpoints. Marketing automation saves time and money while increasing both revenues and maximizing your marketing efforts.

Marketing automation is ideal for helping businesses scale, but it also helps create more personalized marketing experiences while increasing the overall ROI of your campaigns. Brands can streamline and automate marketing efforts while gathering rich segments of data. Excellent marketing automation software automatically assesses and refines campaigns based on data collected.

Automated marketing will segment audiences to create ideal nurture sequences to increase lead generation. Coupled with an ideal ecommerce marketing funnel and product listing strategies, brands can expect better marketing returns and more conversions from their customers.

How Marketing Automation Works

Marketing automation starts by collecting data across your various marketing channels, including email, website visits, social media interactions, or app engagement. Once enough data is collected, your marketing automation software will begin to analyze the data and segment audiences based on how they interacted with your content or how they fit within your ideal marketing profiles. The software will deploy customized messaging tailored to each customer across your marketing channels with supreme efficiency.

Partners on the Nogin intelligent commerce suite leverage our multichannel marketing automation tool that maximizes returns based on their goals and budget. Our software integrates with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms and uses intelligent campaign management. It combines real-time and historical inventory, sales, and traffic data to maximize sales and customer acquisition.

Our proprietary marketing automation tool uses continuous testing and machine learning to automatically refine your social and paid media campaigns. The software analyzes consumer behavior and shopping interactions to execute optimal campaigns that maximize conversions and marketing returns without the need for an expensive marketing team. The intuitive dashboard makes it simple for partners to view their campaigns without any marketing expertise. Simply put, it’s your own supercharged marketing agency without the conflated costs and errors.

Workflow Marketing Automation

Marketing automation uses workflows that automate manual tasks based on the conditions and criteria the marketing manager sets. For example, suppose a visitor performs a specific task such as downloading an ebook or clicking on a link. In that case, a workflow can automatically perform a response based on the action, such as sending a follow-up email.

Workflows use the touchpoints in the brand’s marketing funnel to trigger an action that coordinates with the user’s behavior. Marketing automation is effective because it can test various follow-up actions based on the conditions and refine the sequence that reflects the campaign’s most effective results.

Why Marketing Automation is Important

Marketing automation is essential because it allows brands to quickly scale their business and execute highly effective campaigns without an expensive marketing agency. Most brands have to outsource their marketing, which means they have to pay for the marketing budget fueling their PPC and social media ads and the agency overseeing and managing their campaigns.

Is Marketing Automation Easy to Use?

Marketing automation is effortless to use. You can create campaigns from your marketing dashboard. After the automatic marketing audit, all you have to do is specify your budget, and the campaign automation tool does the rest. It will assess your brand’s current marketing spend and returns to determine the best growth opportunities.

Brands can also plug in their specific growth goals, and our marketing automation tool will use predictive analytics to determine the budget needed to meet them. It uses cross-references of historical revenue to generate a customizable campaign calendar that will meet your monthly revenue goals.

Schedule promotions and adjust your campaigns based on recommendations that align with your goals. Our tool creates assets across your multiple ad channels, which are deployed automatically. Our intelligent commerce suite tests your campaign tactics and adjusts your plan based on the data to refine your marketing collateral until it is a conversion-generating machine.

Can Small Businesses Use Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the best option for small businesses. It is an effective way to produce effective marketing advertisements across advertising channels that don’t drain too much time, money, and other resources.

Some of the top reasons small businesses should use marketing automation include:

  • Build rapport and trust with your audience. More personalized messaging and workflow sequences that align with visitor interests develop stronger relationships.
  • Keep potential customers engaged and increase the likelihood of future conversions. Workflows with follow-up sequences can encourage visitors with abandoned shopping carts and keep users in your sales funnel. Automated reminders, exclusive offerings, and other tactics will help facilitate site transactions.
  • Advanced analytics and machine learning better track customer journeys. Syncing your marketing channels into your marketing automation software allows brands a complete view of their customer journeys. From your dashboard, you can easily access how long your customers interact on your site, what landing pages lead to higher conversions, what keywords drive clicks, and other crucial information to lead to better marketing ROI.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

There are numerous benefits of marketing automation. Let’s discuss the five biggest benefits and why you should invest sooner rather than later.

1. Better, More Personalized Customer Journeys

Marketing automation allows brands to tailor their customer journeys to fit each visitor. By utilizing workflows and customer data, brands can engage users with content and offers that maximize conversion opportunities. Automatically generate ideal product recommendations for each user and reach individuals with content that resonates with them at each stage of their journey.

Marketing automation uses retail pricing strategiesretail markdown strategies, and other pricing tactics without actively adjusting your campaigns. Customers will receive relevant content at the right time through omnichannel touchpoints integrated directly into your storefront. Visitors will automatically receive the right correspondence from mobile messaging, emails, push notifications, group messages, and more to convert prospects into loyal customers.

2. Free Up Internal Marketing Resources

Marketing automation allows brands to free up internal marketing resources. Automated tasks mean that marketers don’t have to spend hours creating, testing, and executing campaigns. Brands can create their campaign goals, budget, and workflows and let their marketing software do the rest.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence will analyze the data for you and generate ideal test campaigns. Once workflows and campaigns are tested, your marketing automation platform will refine them until they generate maximum results to meet your ecommerce KPIs.

3. Limit Marketing Inefficiencies and Get the Most Out of Your Budget

Automated workflows based on specific criteria of customer interactions ensure your marketing messaging resonates with each visitor. Marketing automation uses buyer personas and omnichannel messaging to create personalized communication at each stage of your conversion funnel.

Your staff will no longer have to review touchpoints and parse through dense marketing data manually. AI and machine learning will ensure your marketing is the best it can be while boosting your bottom line.

4. Track User Engagement and Deliver the Right Content at the Right Time

Digital marketing automation software tracks user engagement across your marketing funnel. You’ll be able to capture, manage, and assess leads and implement marketing messaging based on their engagement. Machine learning will determine all your marketing touchpoints and processes and deliver the ideal content at the right time to increase the chances of conversions.

You can also use retargeting and recirculation to engage with consumers hovering around in your funnel. 97% of visitors leave without buying anything or returning to a website, but retargeting helps continue the conversation. Retargeting ads receive 10-times higher CTR than regular display ads, and retargeting can increase conversions by almost 150%. Marketing automation is the easiest way to launch retargeting campaigns and the most effective.

5. Better Qualified Leads

Finding qualified leads is the biggest goal of marketing, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. 37% of marketers cite budget restrictions limiting their ability to create an efficient marketing automation strategy, and 61% of B2B marketers claim the acquisition of highly qualified leads is their biggest challenge.

Marketing automation is a scalable solution to lockdown qualified leads and gain conversions through personalized offers, content, and interactions. Delivering the right messages at the right times through the proper channels based on segmentation and machine learning ensures your online storefront becomes a magnet for qualified leads.

When Is The Right Time to Invest in Marketing Automation?

There is no better time than now to invest in marketing automation but to make sure you are set up for success, follow our quick checklist:

  • You have mapped out your ideal marketing funnel.
  • You have optimized landing pages following SEO best practices.
  • You have informative, long-form content that qualifies leads and builds rapport and trust with your readers.
  • You are struggling to capture qualified leads.
  • Your marketing resources are exhausted and costing too much money.
  • You are spending too much time on tedious and repetitive marketing tasks.
  • You have comprehensive marketing channels set up, including email, content, social, and PPC accounts.

How Do I Choose the Best Marketing Automation Solution for My Ecommerce Business?

Nogin is your ecommerce partner that offers comprehensive enterprise solutions. We offer superior ecommerce talent combined with a full-stack ecommerce platform that includes R&D, sales optimization, and machine learning, along with artificial intelligence-driven marketing and fulfillment. Known for helping global brands keep pace with big retail and drive predictable profitability, Nogin gets brands to be world-class and profitable within 90 days of putting them on their platform.

We’ve helped notable brands, including Hurley, Bebe, Justice, ModCloth, and Kenneth Cole, not only meet their goals but exceed expectations in all facets of their ecommerce business operations.

In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about partnering with our company of ecommerce experts (AKA, Nogin Nerds), contact us to see if you qualify for a free consultation and site audit. We will come up with a game-winning ecommerce strategy to increase revenue and lower internal operating costs. Take the headache out of ecommerce and use your Nogin.

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