eCommerce Marketing automation trends in 2022

Technology trends in 2022 have brought digital marketing new tools for eCommerce marketing, no matter what platform you might have in your online store. Lead generation has grown to be more competitive as businesses have invested themselves in having their online presence focused, and using all the marketing tools such as social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and Google Ads with the goal of ranking at the top of Page 1 in Google search. The automation of bringing your products and services alongside your brand to your audience has reached new heights, and has shown key trends to note, and possibly consider.

The rise of Marketing Automation

When building a digital marketing plan, the goal is for marketing campaigns to be executed during the planned year, and the activities that support these goals are measured in traffic, conversion rates, and average basket value such that revenue and profit goals can be attained. While that's a high-level goal to achieve, automation deals with the resources applied to achieve them. In the past, Email marketing automation was the first area where tools were built to assist the marketing department, now it has grown to various areas in social media marketing strategies and advertising systems.

Social Media Automation

Facebook Pixel technology is a key component to today's digital automation of your marketing efforts that allows Facebook Ads to connect back to your online store, and track conversions of your advertisement on that platform. More importantly, Facebook has its own algorithms for remarketing when interest is detected on its own platform. With the detection of interest in your brand, product, or service, profiling takes place since Facebook enables your online business to target your audience better with a refined profile for more effective target marketing strategies.

Onsite automation

Additionally, in 2022, the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence) has become more commonplace when it comes to Sales and Support via the Chatbox. Therefore the customer journey now involves some form of automation as well as records inquiries and the types of needs interested parties are looking to have, giving the brand additional knowledge of requests, types of support, and needs customers may have - refining your methods to cater to your audience.

Meaningful communication (or more relevant to the users intent or purpose) takes place when you have the additional analysis real-time by your online store apps that can perform the following:

• Abandoned Cart SMS Alerts, or Emails reminding you of the abandoned cart, some of which have a discount coupon to finalize the checkout process.
• Page-closing popup coupons when you are looking to navigate away from the journey to checkout, to provide an incentive in finalizing your purchase.
• Flyout cart product recommendations when a customer picks out one item so that a completed set can be made. Helping customers find the other items that are relevant to the selected item.

eCommerce businesses are having to be tech-savvy in order to understand the automation tools that follow audience behaviors and how the data is collected, analyzed, and how it can be used. Then having to learn the tools that can be applied with this information, and how to maximize its effectiveness in targeting the right audience, getting their interest engaged to come over to your online store, and then being able to convert them.

Email marketing automation is still King

Additional insights are being gathered by Email marketing tools such as how many have opened, how many have clicked, and been able to take action on the lists that have engaged. Additionally, the avid readers that engage regularly are being monitored and collected. You now know who in your Email marketing list is engaged, and be able to take additional promotional actions to bring them closer to engage further. With 2.2% of the Sends, automated Email resulted in an average of 29.6% of total orders (Omnisend study). These results are based on audience behavior based on purchase patterns, loyalty tiers and points, and products or services that have a relationship to new announcements being made. Omnisend did a case study to compare promotional Email campaigns. On average, Promotional Email Marketing campaigns can generate 72 orders per 1000 Emails. Compared to 343 orders for every 1000 Automated Promotional Email Marketing campaigns.

Marketing campaigns using Facebook Ads, and Google Ads with the goal of having Email registrations so that customers can receive promotional emails is a key way to grow your audience, and with the email addresses being a low-level commitment, your ability to remarket to them is endless.

With the ability to personalize your Email messaging to your audience, micro journeys are devised on how to best funnel your customers to their interests, as well as offer the right kind of promotion to them. Sales funnels are no longer just "generic" which traditional marketing used to be satisfied with, the Automation element has brought new advanced capabilities in messaging, promotion, and the ability to track and refine the journeys.

SMS marketing is growing

With the continued growth of smartphone penetration, alerts and SMS messaging is becoming a more direct method of getting notified. In today's digital world, you get bombarded by every app, every service, and every type of engaged brand you have subscribed to. Choosing and elevating what matters to you personally where you want to be aware of when a new product comes out, or when a parcel is being delivered, SMS is the way to go. Therefore offering a SMS service for being notified of key promotional events, the ability to engage with the brand on VIP offerings, and other ways to make the experience more personal and exclusive adds additional value and greater intent of converting. When this takes place, margins can be healthier and can drive your average basket or order value upward.

Conclusion

While most online store owners use Email marketing, you will find that a larger portion hasn't had the opportunity to dig in further on the automation methodologies, or the ability to dig further into the micro-messaging and smaller funnels. SMS Marketing is now a much bigger "thing", and might require consideration as part of your messaging portfolio. Last but not least, digging into Social Media Marketing, the technologies used and how effective they can become is an important aspect in reaching your Ads campaigns. The good thing is that a lot of it is configuration management with just an App Store installation on your Shopify or BigCommerce platform. Working smarter and not harder would best be served in taking these new trends and seeing how they apply to your business and start planning for 2023. If you need assistance in understanding or applying these tools and methodologies, feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com