Marketing with Ecommerce Shopping Carts
Most shopping cart software offers several built in marketing features that help you market with less effort. Keep your name in front of your customers using these advertising techniques. Below are a few tips from our Hawaii web design firm on content, shopping cart features, and paid advertising. Let’s look at these marketing techniques individually.
Autoresponders
Very easy with most shopping carts. Autoresponders are emails sent to customers after a specific amount of time. What a wonderful way to show exceptional customer service. After they have gotten home with their purchase, check up with them. Did everything arrive in good condition? Did we meet expectations? Do you need anything else from the store?
Most shopping carts allow for the merchant to provide a custom message and specify a time lapse. Many of them allow unlimited amount of autoresponders, so this could continue indefinitely if you set up enough of them. Your name continuously goes out to your existing customers, with minimal effort.
Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way to keep your customers and investors informed of business trends. Newsletters are usually larger – i.e. more content (then add it to your site!) – than autoresponders and provide valuable information about your product, industry and other relevant pieces of information. Of course, your customers recognize your subject, name and logo, so your business identity is presented to them on a regular basis.
Broadcasts
Broadcasts are usually announcements of significant business changes or events. This is a good place to advertise trade shows, seminars, promotions, new staff, etc. They provide special information about your business, product, or industry. A great way to send a reminder in the middle of slow month.
Affiliate Programs
Have other people sell your product! Affiliate programs promote your product by offering cash reward for referrals. You can build an army of affiliates (think of them as chain stores or retail outlets). This feature is often built into shopping cart administrative tools so there is little extra paperwork or management.
Popups
Get the last word in on your customer by leaving them with a popup ad, questionnaire or simply a logo and slogan. Repetition is often very successful method of advertising; used in appropriate places, pop up ads and promotions can be an effective way to entice you customers into action.
Promotions
We all know promotions, “Buy one, get one free!” “Act now and get 10% off your next purchase!” These can be added and tracked onto most shopping cart softwares. Promos will lure your customers into purchasing more items, more frequently than they would if there were no incentives. These are easy to set up, track and maintain. They can correspond with business trends – promos for holidays, birthdays, seasons and more!
Ads
Similar to promotions, ads are usually on other people’s sites. You can pay to have them on other high traffic sites, such as industry publication sites. Shopping cart softwares should be able to track CTR (click through rate) to see if your pays a good ROI (return on investment). This is a good way to build incoming links, also associated with search engine “importance” ratings.