Data is a big deal now that we are living in an increasingly connected world. Businesses have to be able to collect the right data so that they can streamline their marketing efforts. The most important thing to think about is how to collect the right user data and analyze it so that the conclusions that come from that analysis can be used to make marketing decisions. Below are a few ways of collecting the right user data.

Use
a Form

If you
already have a website, it is a good idea to set up a form so that users can
enter their data before or after a sale. A good form should collect simple data
like their name and address. If you want to go deeper, you could set up the
form so that you can collect more data like what products and services your
customers need. You can use this form for user feedback too.

There are
also other places where you can create forms online, like Google forms. This is
a good option for businesses that do not have a website but still need user
data.

Businesses
can also set up surveys
using forms. Surveys that are set up like this are usually very successful
because customers know that they are giving you their data and thus will not
have any problem doing so.

Use
Social Media

If you
have social media pages, you can use them to collect user data too. Running a
poll or even asking for data upfront can lead to a good amount of data that you
can then use as you wish. Just remember to let your customers know that you are
collecting their data so that they see you as transparent and trustworthy. If a
user tells you they do not want you collecting their data, you must respect
their decisions.

Integrate
More Tools

There are
so many different tools that you can integrate to gather user data. These
include software like email marketing software. You can also use a webhook
to connect different marketing and automation software like If This Then That
so that you can get notifications when users fill out a form or send you their
data.

Webhooks
are also important for integrating data analysis software because they can help
send data to these analysis tools automatically.

Buy
the Data

There are
lots of companies that sell user data. These include companies that harvest
data from social media and other places for analysis purposes. Although some
businesses might not agree with these practices, buying data
is a very good option for new companies that have not yet started collecting
their user data. They are also a good option if you do not have the right tools
to collect the right user data.

One
Thing to Keep in Mind

Most
countries have some form of data collection and privacy laws. Ensure that you
are always following the law and let your users know that you are collecting
their data for analysis purposes.

Data is very valuable to businesses that would
like a better insight into their customer base. The tips above are a good place
to start so that you get the data you need to enhance your marketing and
decision-making.

The most successful businesses don’t sell the products and services they think customers will buy. Instead, they find out what their customers need and sell to them accordingly. While getting to know customers can be a challenge, it’s certainly worth undertaking for the sake of greater brand loyalty and higher revenue. It can start by taking advantage of social media and break your echo chamber by sharing your stories at The Doe site.

Modern Businesses Must Have a Social Media Presence

What better way to interact with and get to customers than to be in the same place where they hang out online. With a business account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other major platforms, businesses can learn more about the habits, interest, and buying habits of customers without ever asking them a thing. It also gives customers the chance to interact and give recommendations to each other.

By conducting social listening, then responding to inquiries, praises, and complaints publicly, the brand can demonstrate its firm commitment to customer service. Creating a private Facebook group for select groups of customers makes it even easier to learn who they are.

Turn Unhappy Customers into Loyal Customers

Before the Internet era, an unhappy customer might grumble to a few friends and leave it at that. Today, hundreds or even thousands of people can read his or her poor review of a business almost immediately. That can feel discouraging and intimidating to a business owner, but it doesn’t have to feel that way. 

Looking at the negative review as an opportunity to reach out to see what went wrong can turn everything around for the better. Customers are often so impressed that a business wants to improve because of their feedback that they return as loyal customers from that point forward.

Create a Short, Open-Ended Survey

People often don’t want others to see them as a complainer or feel too modest to share their honest feedback with a business. Unfortunately, the lack of authentic feedback can be detrimental to brands and prevent customers from getting what they really want and need. Giving customers the opportunity to complete an anonymous survey with open-ended questions is one way around this dilemma. Be sure the survey is no more than five questions to avoid taking up a lot of customers’ time.

Hold or Sponsor a Community Event

Any business with a physical location has an excellent opportunity to get to know its customers better by attaching its name to a local event. It could host a family carnival on a Saturday, for example, or sponsor a Little League team. This not only gets the business name out there it also brings management and customers together on a closer level. Brands should be certain to take advantage of the extra time with customers to learn more about them.

Create a Profile of the Typical Customer

After gathering data about groups of customers, creating a profile of a composite customer can help to serve everyone better. It should include a thorough understanding of customer likes and dislikes and demographics like age range, income, and family status. When used correctly, the customer profile is often the first step towards improving service and increasing profits.

Anyone who wants to run a financially successful business needs to keep a close eye on their costs, no matter how experienced you are in running one. It is particularly important, however, for startups to cut costs where possible.

This doesn’t have to mean cutting out essentials, but rather
getting smarter in the way you make your purchases. Overhead costs, which are
those that are not linked to the creation of your product but rather running a
business in general, can be surprisingly expensive and eat up a large portion
of your overall budget. Prevent this from happening by utilizing our tips and
tricks on reducing costs to keep your startup successful.

Own-brand vs branded

It’s always tempting to choose the most raved about name
brand, but they’re usually an expensive investment. While some elements, such
as computers or essential pieces of technology, are worth spending extra on,
there are some swaps that are well worth making in order to save some money.
For example, you can find non-branded alternatives to expensive branded ink and
toner on Toner
Giant, which are more affordable but produce the same results.

Things like stationery, storage and some furniture don’t
have to come from premium brands but rather from other reputable companies that
offer a similar product for a lot less. Oftentimes we’re simply paying for the
name of the brand when the cheaper alternative is just as good.

Buy in bulk

Every office needs a stocked up supply cupboard consisting
of stationery, printing paper, notebooks and other essentials, but keeping on
top of everything can be time consuming and expensive. Solve both issues by
purchasing items in bulk through a speciality wholesale website. Doing so is wise
as you often get a significant discount on big purchases and they’re typically
listed cheaper than in high street stores, making it easier to grab a bargain –
or 100.

Stocking up in advance means you can wait for sales to make
your next big order, making it even cheaper in the long run. This is also a lot
less stressful than making last-minute purchases when you realise you’ve run
out of stationery before the next big office meeting.

Invest in automation

Technology has changed both the job market and businesses
themselves, with many turning to program over people when it comes to
repetitive administration tasks. Not only is using automated systems cheaper than putting someone
on the payroll, it eliminates the risk of human error and is typically a
one-off cost unless you choose a pay monthly program. Other tasks that can be
automated are email marketing, payroll, accounting and social media posts, of
which you can find a variety of automated systems to take over for you.

Set and stick to
budgets

Before doing any of the above, however, it’s important to
figure out your budget. This gives you a figure to work around, plus you can
haggle with sellers as you’ll always have a top price to stick to. While you
may have to overspend in emergencies, it’s important to stick to your budget as
much as possible. If you’re noticing an issue where you always overspend on one
area, such as printing or stationery, it’s wise to rethink your budget as it
may be too low for what you need. Having a budget makes it easier to keep track
of your money while ensuring each sector of your business is fulfilled.

Getting your
overheads sorted in advance could be the key to getting the best deal, but
don’t panic if you’ve already started. Implement our tips on your next
purchase, whether it be for ink or diaries for the team, and you’re sure to
save some money to spend elsewhere.

Running an eCommerce business is a job with colossal responsibilities. Especially in the current scenario where there is massive competition from both domestic and international brands, you can’t expect to stand out without adapting to modern trends and strategic eCommerce solutions.

E-Commerce
Automation is one such strategy. Even as a one-man army, you can’t manage
everything about your business manually. Even if you could, you would always
find yourself lagging behind your rivals on one or the other grounds.

Therefore, if not all then at least certain aspects of your operation deserve automation to keep things seamless and competitive, especially, when your business grows big with time. In this article, we are going to enlist five such marketing automation ecommerce hacks that you can implement in your business and win conversions much better than your competitors.

Benefits of eCommerce automation for entrepreneurs

Automation might
seem like a deep word that demands hefty investments in AI and expensive custom
developments. However, automation is not always about expensive solutions.
Whether you are operating in the inventory model or multivendor marketplacemodel,you
can adopt various small and inexpensive automation strategies to streamline an
array of complex tasks with simple clicks of buttons:

• You can reduce human errors
  from repetitive tasks
• You can streamline your
  business for expansion
• You can save a lot of time,
  money, and effort
• You can increase your overall
  productivity

E-Commerce automation hacks for your business

Be advised that automation and benefits of eCommerce automation are not limited to your back-end processes alone. You can enhance your eCommerce marketing strategy, shipping infrastructure, conversion optimization strategies, and many more things with simple automation.

1.
Automating your welcome notes

Greeting your
new customers with a warm note seems like a trivia. However, not many
entrepreneurs realize that this could be the first step towards acquiring a
loyal customer and building trust in your business. It looks like nothing, but surprisingly,
only 75% online stores greet their new customer and newly registered users with
a welcome note. It’s because sending welcome notes is a repetitive task and
requires manual labor traditionally.

Did you know that welcome emails receive 400% better engagements than any other kind of email you would be sending to your prospects at any time? It’s time you automate your welcome notes and use the opportunity to gain happy customers, promote your business, and build trust factors. You can automate your email notes with simple SMTP settings from the back-end of any decent eCommerce platform you are using. Here is a screenshot from the Magento back-end interface where you can set up your email SMTP with simple steps.

All other
popular eCommerce platforms have a similar setting that you can use to automate
your emails. In fact, many of these platforms also have the option to
streamline different welcome email templates either. If not present, you can
always install a custom module, plugin, or extension to get this feature; they
are not expensive.

What’s more interesting is you can add yet another channel to this automation with web push notifications as well. Besides welcome email, you can also start sending welcome push notifications to your customers and new users. The best part is push notification does not require any personal details of the customers or users. With a simple click on the ‘Allow’ button of a push notifications subscription dialog box, users agree to receive push notifications from your website.

Once allowed,
you can send any number of push notifications to such users at any time you
wish too. Remember this tool, as we will discuss further in this article about
how you can automate many other things with push notifications.

2.      Automating your drip campaigns

Once you sort
your welcome campaign with email and push notifications, it’s time to order your
permanent communication channel with your customers in the long run. Drip
campaigns are all about streamlining a seamless conversion funnel for your
website that encourages a newly joined user to finally become a customer and
keep coming back. We are talking about restructuring your conversion funnel with
small automation.

The same email
and push automation tools we used for step one can also help you create smart
drip campaigns. You can set up different email, push, and even SMS templates to
keep in touch with the prospects in different stages. Here is an example:

• Day 1: Send a welcome note
• Day 2: Send an exclusive offer
  for the new users. You can also club this with a welcome note.
• Day 8: If converted, send yet
  another offer or an update about new stock, other product recommendations, etc.
  However, if not converted, send a gentle reminder with some FOMO elements, such
  as limited time.
• Days 15: It’s time to engage
  with customers by being useful. You can send tips, links to shopping guides, or
  anything that doesn’t sound like a sales pitch. You can also ask them to follow
  you on social media, participate in polls or contests.
• Day 20: Send new offers and
  deals based on their past purchase history. Encourage them to shop more.

Get started with
drip email, push, and SMS campaigns. Some examples of email, SMS, and push
automation tools you can use for creating drip campaigns are MailChimp,
HubSpot, Twilio, iZooto, etc.

3.      Automating your social media FOMO campaigns

Social media is
the best place to create FOMO among your prospects. This is the place where
they remain updated of your new stocks, new offers, and about what everyone
else is buying these days. In simple words, you can use your customers to
encourage others to purchase by simple FOMO automation via social media.

Encourage your
customers to follow you on social media, tag you in their posts, and share your
offers and deals. You can use some motivation factors like exclusive discounts
or entry into an exclusive membership plan and events. When others will see
these people engaging with your business, they would also develop an interest
in knowing what’s going on. You can use different social marketing tools to
automate this entire process. For example:

• A tool to schedule your social
  media posts
• A tool to track social media
  mentions about your brand
• A tool to fetch your social
  media feeds on your website
• Social media Ads re-targeting
  tools and services

Examples of the
tools you can use are CoSchedule, Hubspot, FOMO, Buffer, BuzzSumo, Hootsuite,
etc.

4.      Automating your referral and affiliate marketing programs

Referral and affiliate marketing have become an eminent part of any eCommerce marketing strategy these days. Whether you run a small online store or a giant multivendor marketplace, you need these two components to entice your prospects.

By giving some
benefits to both referrers and referred users, you can expect to gain quick
popularity; thanks to the strong influence of word of mouth marketing on online
shoppers these days. Users can reoffer other users to join your store or
purchase a product and gain exclusive discount coupons, or affiliate
commissions.

Luckily, many
eCommerce platforms have inbuilt systems for discount coupon management,
affiliate marketing, and referral programs. However, those who lack these
features have the option to install certain modules and extensions to acquire
these features.

For example, you
can search on Google about Magento affiliate marketing extensions, PrestaShop
referral program modules, WooCommerce discount coupon add-on, or for any other
platform you use. There are also standalone solutions in the market that you
can integrate using their provided APIs, such as ReferralCandy, RewardStream,
etc.

5.      Automating your abandoned cart recovery

It’s now a fact that small web stores as well as massive multivendor marketplace.

sites can’t
avoid the cart abandonments. You can reduce them up to an extent using some UX
optimization strategies, but some of the abandonments are just eminent.
Therefore, you shouldn’t stop optimizing your store but also create an
abandoned cart recovery strategy in parallel.

One such strategy is creating automated email and push campaigns to send gentle reminders to the users who abandon your shopping carts. There are two ways to create such campaigns, and you must use both for better results:

Email: You can use a shopping cart recovery module or extension in your eCommerce platform for tracking the abandoned carts. Such tools are capable of capturing the email address of the users who add products in their carts but don’t complete the purchase. The module will create a separate email list of these users in your database, which you can integrate with your email marketing tool to create an email drip campaign.

Push notification: There are push notification tools and services in the market that possess inbuilt abandoned cart tracking systems. You can program these tools to track such users and send automated push notifications using set templates. You can create a drip campaign and set different push templates that the tools will use accordingly at different stages of the cart recovery campaign.

In either of the
cases, you have to create some templates and tweak some settings to design your
campaign. You can program the tools to use certain coupon codes, the timing of
the reminder, frequency of the messages, and segment users based on different
behaviors. Strategic utilization of a mix of these tools can automate your
abandoned cart recovery and help you win back your conversions without manual
labor. If you want to stay competitive in the market, that’s the kind of eCommerce
automation you should aim for today.

To conclude

There is no
shortage of ways to acquire useful eCommerce automation for your business.
Let’s not forget about the AI chatbots. Although they are expensive, but have
proven to be one of the biggest automation tools in not just eCommerce but
every other domain. Besides, there are tools to automate certain pop-ups on
your site either. You can trigger exit intent pop-ups, newsletter subscription
pop-ups, stock alert pop-ups, and many more.

In short, AI chatbots and virtual assistants maybe the ultimate automation solutions for the entire business process automation, but they are not accessible to small ventures easily. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t automate your eCommerce marketing strategy and many other aspects without spending a fortune. There are ways to do it, and we saw that in this article.

Want to learn shopify drophipping and Amazon FBA?

Checkout this thorough discussion on dropshipping vs amazon fba pros cons! It’s an informative read that will save you getting down the research rabbit hole!