Successful customer engagement marketing strategies consistently create personalized shopping experiences for the modern consumer. As an experienced eCommerce merchandiser, you stay on top of technology that allows you to collect and manage data that keeps your company in touch with your customers.
In today’s world, it’s not uncommon to see a situation where a consumer who sends a digital invitation to a wine party will be served an ad inviting them to read an article about “How to Pick a Great Inexpensive Wine.”
These types of communications are personalized customer engagement strategies that consumers have come to expect. Here are four key tactics that eCommerce merchandisers need to know to be at the top of the customer engagement game:
1. Act on Real-time Data To Boost Sales
eCommerce retailers should quickly adjust the look and layout of web stores to take advantage of holidays and seasonal specials, move underperforming items into a more advantageous spot in the store and reach out to customers with upsells on items related to what the shopper has just bought.
A good example of a successful upsell campaign is the “customers who viewed this, also bought this” feature found on many eCommerce sites today—a feature that strategically combines related items to boost revenue per order.
2. Offer A Complete Picture
Customers expect to be presented with product details and reviews. Utilizing smart website technology provides the information consumers require to make a buying decision in that moment.
Where a consumer might once have had access to a brief product description and a handful of tiny color swatches to choose from, the new customer engagement tactics require robust product descriptions and full-size images representing every available color of a product. Customer reviews and product ratings are also becoming standard and expected by online shoppers.
3. Adjust Your Storefront Based on Real-time Data
While the consumer sees a picture of the product and the description, new eCommerce visual add-on technology allows merchandisers a peek behind the curtain to see at a glance how a particular product is performing.
This critical feature provides information on sales of a particular color of a product, as well as abandonment rate, conversion rate and social media sentiment.
4. Don't Guess. Ask Questions.
As long as you aren’t too intrusive, asking people for their opinions can be a great tactic for understanding the motivations and habits of your customer base. The answers can help shape future catalog layout strategies, as well as inform buyers about which trends may be on the upswing or on their way out.
Finding the best ways to engage your customers is an ever-changing frontier that can be made less stressful and more successful with the use of real-time data and visual add-on tools that provide a strategic boost to your IBM WebSphere Commerce software.
Download The Digital Merchandiser’s Guide to Maximizing Margins with Visualized Data eBook today to learn how you can use customer engagement tactics to build a more robust eCommerce merchandising strategy!
