Top 5 Essential Ecommerce Automations That Will Turn Your Ecommerce Store into a Money Printing Machine!

In the fast-paced world of ecommerce, it is crucial to stay ahead of your competition to ensure the success of your business. Since there is no face-to-face contact running an online business, it is important to ensure the customer’s journey through your website and marketing automations are optimized for conversions.

Having the proper email marketing automations in place can turn your store into an automated, money-printing machine. The best part? This automated process is completely hands-off once properly set up by an expert and will be printing you money 24/7. Sounds too good to be true right? Trust me, I get it! Here are the top 5 ecommerce automations email marketing experts advise you to implement to maximize your revenue, increase CLTV, and increase the conversion rate of your store! 

1. Welcome Series Automation

Your Welcome Series is your chance to make a strong, first impression on the customer. This automation starts as soon as someone subscribes to your mailing list (via a sign-up form on your website). This automation is extremely important to tell your brand’s story, build trust, engage new subscribers, and to try to convert them to a paying customer. It is a very common practice to offer an incentive to the subscriber in the welcome series to increase the chances of them becoming a paying customer. Statistics show that ‘Welcome’ emails have the highest open rates of any marketing email, so it is crucial to capitalize on this when a user is the most receptive.

Ultimately your SEO, PPC, and/or organic advertising does the ‘heavy lifting’ to get a new lead onto your website, and it’s the job of the email marketer to convert this lead into a paying customer. Some various topics you can include in your welcome series consist of: the unique story of your brand, a discount or special offer (as stated above), tips/educational content, reviews, and other various practices.

2. Abandoned Cart Automation

In the ecommerce world, people would argue that this is the most important automation to have set up. This automation is essential for several reasons, but the biggest reason is to help recover lost sales. According to a report from Klaviyo, businesses that have abandoned cart automation set up earn back 3-14% of lost sales with an average revenue per recipient of $5.81. This number might not seem high, but multiply that by the thousands of cart recoveries this automation collects over the span of a year! The average cart abandonment rate across all industries is 72%, with the beauty and personal care industry having the highest at 82% average cart abandonment rate.

Also, this automation allows you to have a personalized approach. You can send the user personalized emails with specific products they left in their cart because of data tracking capabilities. A common practice with abandoned cart emails is to offer a limited-time discount code or give a ‘low-stock warning’ to create a sense of urgency for the customer to purchase. If the customer goes through the automation without making a purchase, these emails will still help keep your business in their mind for a potential future purchase. 

3. Post-Purchase Automation 

The customer’s journey doesn’t have to end after they make a purchase. Post-Purchase automations are a great way to build brand loyalty, encourage feedback/reviews, and also cross-sell/up-sell other products on your store! This is how you increase the CLTV of your customers, which is a crucial aspect of email marketing. Post-Purchase email automations typically start with a ‘thank-you for purchasing’ email, and then it opens up the door to potentially up-sell/cross-sell another product. 

This automation is essential for several reasons. First, as I stated before, it’s an excellent opportunity to upsell or cross-sell products. You can offer the customer special offers or specific related products based on what they purchase to try to increase their customer lifetime value. Next, it helps build customer loyalty by showing appreciation. You would not believe how far a simple ‘Thank You’ email can go. It is important to make the customer feel appreciated and cared for when purchasing from your store to increase the odds of them returning.

4. Browse Abandonment Automation

Browse Abandonment Automation is best described as sending marketing emails to people who are caught ‘window shopping’ on your store. This automation is designed to re-engage these ‘window shoppers’ to try to convince them to purchase! According to experts, a popular practice for browse abandonment automation would be hitting the customer with an urgent, limited-time discount code on the product they were looking at a couple of hours after they abandoned.

This automation will help capture and convert hot visitors that showed an intent to purchase but didn’t fully follow through. If it’s a low-ticket item, offering the customer a simple discount code might help them convert. If it’s a higher ticket item, sending them an email with product info or customer support contact information might be more beneficial. These automated emails will be tailored towards their browsing behavior,  which significantly helps increase the chances of the visitor converting to a paying customer. Typically, this automation consists of 2-3 emails sent over the next couple days!

5. Customer Win-back Automation

The customer win-back automation is exactly how it sounds, its objective is to re-engage (or win-back) a customer that has become inactive and has not made a purchase in a specific number of days. This automation is beneficial for various reasons.

First, it is a very cost-effective marketing opportunity. More than likely, this is a customer you have already spent money on to acquire. If you can ‘win-back’ the customer and get them re-engaged with your business, this will generate your business more revenue and also increase the CLTV of your store! Next, this can also help you understand why they became inactive and how you can improve your business! It is essentially a ‘free’ marketing channel to take advantage of that has infinite upside potential.

In the world of digital marketing and ecommerce, leveraging your business’s email marketing automations is no longer an option, it’s a necessity. Having the proper automations in place can significantly increase your business’s revenue and turn it into a profitable, money-printing machine! 
There are various other automations that can significantly improve the customers’ experience with your business. Having these automations in place can help free up your time, which allows you to focus more on the development of your business. The initial investment (whether its time, money, or both) heavily outweighs the long-term benefits these automations produce! These automations will increase the customer lifetime value, build a stronger brand reputation with the user, and help increase the profit margins of your store.