Is it time to revisit your retail promotion strategy? You have probably heard that email marketing is not enough to reach all your retail customers anymore. You need to have a comprehensive retail presence over many channels of communication. With an all-in-one retail marketing automation solution, manage all your marketing, communication and analytics from a single place.
Do you really need multiple channels, though? What benefits does each channel provide? And what can you really do with each channel to engage your customers? Let's review. All the following retail promotion ideas are easily realized by using an all-in-one marketing automation solution.
Email marketing is still one of the most popular types of retail marketing. It has the highest ROI and the cheapest cost. It has its disadvantages: it's not immediate because emails may be overlooked or ignored, it's challenging to make your email stand out from the rest because everyone uses email marketing and so on. But if you can do it right, email brings in big returns. Marketing automation makes retail email much more personal and interactive. So how do you make your email marketing promotions stand out? Check out email tips here. Here are a few unique automated email promotions you can do.
Personally targeted product promotion: Email promotions are most effective when they are personalized. By tracking which products customers look at on your retail website, you can learn about their preferences. Select a product which the customer has viewed online or showed interest in but has not yet purchased. Send them an email with several relevant links: reviews of that product, videos of people using the product, safety information and so on. Also include a discount for the item to get the customer interested.
Educational content: These days, advertising isn't what sells. Customers want to learn and get connected with your company, not to have products pushed aggressively at them. Provide educational content in your email, based on the products you sell: how to create a blackboard wall in your house using simple blackboard paint, how to choose between different styles of espresso machines based on your needs, how to select a bathing suit that flatters your body and so on. No matter what type of retail products you offer, you can always work them into different types of educational content.
Survey
How can you learn more about your customers' needs and wants without actually asking them? Gain real feedback by creating an online survey. Many customers won't want to spend the time taking a survey, so provide an incentive that they will receive at the end. A coupon or a retail discount code is a great incentive, and it drives business back to your store.
Create simple questions that customers can easily understand. You want real feedback so stick to things you can measure and change if needed. Ask customers about their preferences, their customer experience at your store or your online site, new products they would like to see and so on. Your automated solution collects and organizes all the results so you can analyze your customer feedback.
Live Chat
Imagine how useful live chat can be to provide assistance to customers who have questions about their product purchases. Rather than customers wasting time in long customer service lines at the store or waiting on hold on the phone, provide more immediate retail service with live online chat. When customers have questions or feedback, they simply go to your website and enter their text. Then your staff can chat in real time and look at the customer's profile and history online.
Social Media
Social media is an effective way to keep customers up to date. It is also an essential tool for reaching out to new potential customers. Keep your retail promotion pages exciting with automated posts several times a day. What types of content stand out on social media? Social media is best for customer interaction, so you need to provide content that involves your customers.
Pictures and videos are always engaging. Ask customers to share their own pictures of their favorite products or videos of them giving a review of a product. Contests are very popular on social media. Create contests that get your customers to share your content or tag your business to gain more visibility. "Share this picture of our newest purse for your chance to win a free new wardrobe!"
Text Message
Text messages are a very immediate way to reach customers, because most people open text messages in the first five minutes that they receive them. This makes text messages great for quick reminders and flash sales. "Today only! 50% off all earrings!" You can use text messages to remind customers to pay bills, renew their subscription before it expires or update their preferences. You can also use text messages for text-to-win contests.
Voicemail
Voicemail is most useful for customers who do not have email or cell phones. Use voicemail for customer reminders, retail updates, contests and promotions. Just make sure you have permission to call each customer so you don't get reported as a scam artist or unwanted telemarketer.
What are the Benefits of Automation?
More personalized communication: With automation, you can give each customer a unique experience based on their own needs. This takes far too much time and too many staff if it's done manually.
Provide consistent support: With autoresponder email and text messages, customers receive an automated message immediately when they take specific actions. This could be making a purchase, downloading a resource or whatever. You may not always be available, but a quick automated message confirms that the customer has successfully completed the action and provides additional information.
Affordable marketing solution: You need to communicate on multiple channels but that can quickly get expensive. Automation saves you money because you don't have to hire staff to do everything manually. An all-in-one retail promotion solution is even better because you don't need to deal with multiple providers.
Detailed customer tracking: An automated solution tracks and stores an infinite amount of data. This creates detailed customer profiles that you can use to reach out more effectively and boost sales.
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