ECOMMERCE EMAILS SHOULD BE MOBILE OPTIMISED
Email is still one of the biggest ROI drivers in ecommerce. Referral schemes or email offers sent via newsletters can often start a new relationship with a business, or they can bring a lost client back.
Presenting new products and deals in the form of a newsletter can help to maintain a businesses’ relationship with current customers. All this comes with one giant caveat which is mobile optimisation. According to Experian’s Quarterly email benchmark report, 65% of email openings occurred on a mobile phone or tablet in Q4 2015, compared to 54% in Q3 2015.
Businesses that do not optimise ecommerce emails for mobile devices are jeopardising customer experience and potential sales. The recent study by Adestra on Consumer Adoption & Usage 2016 showed that 71.6% of consumers are likely to delete emails if they are not formatted for mobile.
INSTANT MESSAGING FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE
Emails are an effective customer experience tool but being available in real-time is a proven way to accompany a customer throughout their buying journey. Instant messaging services are swiftly becoming the first choice for consumers to contact businesses.
This is not surprising as instant messaging apps play a big part in consumers’ everyday life. It is only natural that consumers increasingly want to engage with organisations on their own terms. WhatsApp handled more than seven trillion messages last year, about 1,000 per person on the planet, and Snapchat currently claims to have reached 100 million active users. Instant messaging services meet the rapid response expectations of today’s consumers.
Businesses can use them to interact with consumers at crucial points of the customer journey. An IM service should offer consumers a choice of how they interact with businesses including a click-to-call, chat or video option and should include a wide range of criteria to determine targeting rules, such as, number of pages viewed, time spent on site, basket additions etc. It should also deliver visitor navigation analytics for businesses to establish consumer patterns.
ONLINE CUSTOMER REVIEWS
Utilising customer’s feedback can help improve all aspect of a business. Whilst the feedback is important for a businesses’ growth, development and Google rankings, it’s also a significant part of the customer experience.
Online customer reviews both matter at the start of new interactions with a business and at the end of their buying experience. According to iPerceptions 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews. It is a new norm that that 84% (Dunnhumby) of shoppers regularly look at reviews to help decide which products to buy. As 47% of Britons have reviewed a product online (Econsultancy) it is clear that consumers want to read and leave reviews on what they buy.
When choosing a review tool a business should look for, adaptable email sending settings, i.e. being able to send a review request after an order has been placed or upon reception, the number of items to review, a threshold amount for sending requests and personalisation options.