Ecommerce Playbook

[Imelda Matchett]

Butunless you are someone who reviews the 10,000+ marketing studies published each year, buys each research paper for $30+, and knows how to interpret academic research - you will have never heard of most of these techniques.

No. Most of the insights in the playbook (not all) have been covered in the newsletter. But in the playbook they are enriched with more examples, focused on Ecommerce, and explained so that you can rapidly apply them to your store.

All the studies covered in the playbook have survived rigorous statistical analyses, peer-review (i.e. picked apart and challenged by other scientists), and been published in a reputable scientific journal (e.g. Journal of Marketing Research).

Desperate organizations try to repeat old tactics that have long exhausted their use. Businesses still run banner ads, despite abysmal click-through rates hovering around 0.05%. Others pour their efforts into Facebook pages, hoping that an army of likes will somehow transform into actual sales.

Companies who have forged ahead have different problems. The need to engage customers across dozens of platforms has led to a data and portal crunch. From email marketing to CRM databases to customer support, your data is all over the place, and it can seem impossible to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person.

Aspiring ecommerce brands can cut through the noise by listening to their data. Your data can tell you whom to market to next, what promotions or pricing strategies to test, what the key dates in your customer lifecycle are and more. Your data will also tell what to stop doing, and highlight what is not working optimally. You simply need to calibrate your growth engine to a data-driven approach.

The Sales Flywheel takes its name from the simple mechanical device designed to store rotational energy. The amount of energy the flywheel contains is dependent on how fast it spins, the amount of friction applied and its size.

Ecommerce integrations with HubSpot allow you to gather valuable data about your site visitors and customers. You can use this data to identify patterns in shopping behavior and take action to reduce potential sources of friction that can slow down your Ecommerce Flywheel.

For instance, you can see where shoppers are abandoning their shopping carts, enabling you to improve the buying process (i.e., reducing friction) and to launch re-engagement campaigns to get those users back on the site to make a purchase.

While you can find several different pieces of software that can port your data into HubSpot, Unific is the only one that tailors your account specifically to your ecommerce business. It offers the most reliable, fast, easy and deep integration available.

Unific automatically segments your customers for you across 30+ categories (and you can add new ones customized for your data). From the moment Unific syncs your data, you can access valuable insights to build data-based marketing plans that engage your best customers.

HubSpot allows you to create Smart Lists based on Contact, Company, Deal/Order and Ticket information, along with engagement data. You set the criteria for the list and HubSpot compiles a list of the contacts that meet it. Smart Lists are automatically updated with new contacts whenever their information changes to meet the list criteria.

HubSpot has robust reporting capabilities that allow you to access and visualize your data in real time. HubSpot includes templates for common report types but you can create custom reports to see the data that is most meaningful to you. And you can compile reports into dashboards, to provide a wider look at related data sets.

Now you execute. You find prospects and you bring them to your site. You re-engage existing prospects and customers. You convert sales. The HubSpot Marketing Hub is where you build the content and campaigns to attract visitors, generate leads and nurture them.

The Marketing Hub has a suite of tools to build attractive and engaging websites and to attract visitors to the site. You can use these tools to create a seamless user experience that makes it easy for visitors to find and access your site, to engage them when they visit and to keep them coming back.

But it takes more than just a website to be successful. It has to be a good website, something that is well-designed and easy to use. A bad user experience will cost you...literally. Almost half of consumers (47%) expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. A site that takes 6 seconds to load will experience a 50% loss in conversions. And the damage is long term: 64% of shoppers who report having a bad experience on a website say they will shop somewhere else next time.

In short, a company blog helps to keep your Ecommerce Flywheel spinning and with applied force in the form of value-added content or a more frequent publishing schedule, can spin the flywheel even faster.

Our Recommendation: HubSpot makes it incredibly easy to incorporate your blog into any funnel running through the system. But in order for it to work, you need to make sure your content is on point. Here are some basic tips for doing that:

HubSpot makes it easy to create landing pages with the help of page templates and a page builder that requires no coding. Although many platforms offer this same functionality, HubSpot enables a high degree of customization to create more targeted and personalized landing pages.

Our Recommendation: Landing pages are meant to facilitate quick, but valuable, interactions between your company and page visitors. People who come to the page should be able to fill out a form and get what they want as quickly as possible and with as few clicks as possible.

To make certain this process works as it should across all devices, test thoroughly to ensure a smooth and seamless interaction, no matter what device is used. Doing so will deliver a friction-free experience and help keep the Ecommerce Flywheel spinning.

Video is a valuable tool in engaging audiences and it has particular value for ecommerce companies. Videos that show products in action, explain how they work or present customer testimonials have a powerful effect on buyers. Almost 70% of consumers say that a product demo video assists them in making a buying decision. And 80% of consumers say that product videos give them more confidence when making a purchase.

Of course, HubSpot provides in-depth analytics for video published through the platform. So you can see metrics to understand, for instance, how long a visitor views a video or what they do after viewing a video.

Leadflows are custom pop-up forms you create in HubSpot that activate when a customer hits a certain trigger. You can control every aspect of the form, from how it looks to what makes them spawn. These need absolutely no coding to create, making them invaluable tools to your business.

One of the simplest but most important features of HubSpot is the ability to create and customize forms to convert a new visitor into a contact. Each form can have a specific purpose (from getting someone to sign-up for a newsletter or guiding them through the checkout process) and HubSpot has dozens of drag and drop templates you can customize for your needs. When a visitor submits a form, a contact record is created so you can engage with them and deepen the relationship.

You can also select what happens after a form is filled out. Whether you want to be notified about a new sign-up so you can reach out to them personally, or you want to trigger an automatic email chain to the customer, you can set it up and automate it in HubSpot.

Our example company, Platter Turntables, has analyzed its Live Chat interactions and found that almost 50% of inquiries received are about pricing. In response, they developed a set of responses to answer pricing questions. They also created a price list to accompany their responses.

Unific offers a coupon code generator for creating custom offers for shoppers. You can build special offers based on a variety of criteria, for greater personalization and added incentive. And with metrics available in HubSpot, you can test different offers and see which ones performed the best.

Platter Turntables is introducing a line of preamps, an audio system accessory that pairs with turntables. The company would like to create special offers for customers based on their purchase history. They create one code for turntable customers who have also bought replacement needles: a free replacement needle with the purchase of a new preamp. For turntable customers who have not purchased replacement needles, they create two offers to test: one coupon offering 15% off the price of a preamp and one for a free set of cables to connect the preamp and turntable.

The ability to create custom offers for shoppers provides a higher level of personalization and an opportunity to engage more deeply with customers by offering something that is relevant to them and their buying history.

Our Recommendation: When customers deploy HubSpot and Unific, we create a set of lists that deliver those contacts that have the highest buying potential. Lists like Marketing Qualified Leads, Engaged Customers and At-Risk Best Customers use different criteria to identify customers at varying points in their relationship with you.

We also build a set of workflows that use these lists in automated campaigns to drive sales. Workflows like Abandoned Cart Recovery and MQL Conversion are triggered by specific actions and send email messages with custom offers.

When you publish through HubSpot, you get metrics for things like social media interactions and email opens so you can see a complete picture of how all of your content is performing. And this data is integrated with your CRM so you can see a history of interactions for your contacts.

The expectations for Customer Service are high...but the rewards for providing good service are potentially higher, too. Consumers will pay 17% more to do business with companies that have reputations for providing stellar customer service. And 70% of consumers say they have chosen to support companies that deliver great customer service.

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