Five New Year's resolutions to elevate your marketing automation strategies

2021 was a year of trial and error. Many merchants in Singapore were left trying to establish what works best for their brands, as they rode the booming ecommerce tidal wave. So how do you hit the ground running this year with your marketing? What are the key marketing trends to focus on?

Don’t worry, we have got you covered! Here are some key New Year’s resolutions you can adopt to help you strengthen your marketing automation strategies.

According to the Chinese zodiac year, 2022 will be the Year of the Tiger, the symbol of power. The tiger emulates determination and persistence, helping strengthen its leadership in the wild. Similarly, 2022 will be the year for you to try bold, courageous moves, become a market leader and ramp up your marketing to the next.  You’ve likely spent 2021 building strong customer communications and loyalty.  Great! You’ve taken the time and effort to set up your fundamentals; what’s next?

Resolution 1: use preference centers

• How often should I be communicating with my customers?
• Are my customers interested in the content I am sending to them?
• How can I run bespoke automations, like birthday campaigns?

Often merchants ask us what they can do better during their quarterly business reviews with their marketing teams. It is no surprise that as you grow, you will want to cater to diverse audiences with tailored content, at the best possible time, through the most effective channel to ensure you don’t end up in spam.

Dotdigital clients, De’Longhi and Sennheiser are perfect examples of leveraging preference centers to create relevant and personalized campaigns. You can start understanding your customers by asking what subscriptions and interests they have and cater communications accordingly. Furthermore, collecting simple information such as birthdays will add value to the campaigns and help you create customized birthday offers to make them feel valued.

Resolution 2: remember the importance of segment analytics

• Which segment should I be targeting?
• How many customers are my champions in the segments I am targeting?
• How much potential revenue can I generate with this targeted segment?

Did you know you can re-target your champion customers who have clicked on your emails, visited your site in the past 30 days, and added something in their shopping cart but didn’t check out?

With Dotdigital, you can drill down to the smallest detail – what days were they the most active in the week, the best time to send them content, and potentially forecast how much revenue you can generate from this segment.

Hear from our client Stone & Wood on leveling up their marketing funnels with Dotdigital.

Resolution 3: leverage your opportunities dashboard

• Who are the most engaged customers in my Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM) analytics dashboard?
• How will I protect revenue by not sending mass discount codes?
• How can I find opportunities to boost revenue for the upcoming sales period?

You can identify opportunities (customers with strong first purchase intent) with the Dotdigital opportunities dashboard; this is very powerful for a brand! Unlike sending mass discount codes to your subscribers, you can focus on sending discounts to lightly engaged customers. Why erode your revenue, when highly engaged customers might require a slight nudge to get them to make that purchase?

Melvin Sim from Sennheiser coupled this with segment analytics for enhanced analytics data. When asked, “Why are you targeting this segment of customers this month?” Melvin presented a qualitative and quantitative answer to his team.

Resolution 4: partner with the most suitable apps

• Which apps will help grow my business exponentially?
• What’s my ideal tech stack?

As we begin another year, it’s now time to plan for the next 12 months and take that next bold move. How can you make sure the apps you choose are able to work together to create a fully functioning system that has a positive direct impact on how your e-commerce business operates?

For an ecommerce merchant, the strength of your tech stack integration with your online store should be a deciding factor. Integrations such as a payment gateway accepting alternative payment methods, analytical tools, shipping and delivery modules, marketing automation and CRM, reviews tools, as well as social networks, can enhance customer experience, make your customer service more convenient, and increase your conversion rates.

Hear from Chief Marketing Officer, Ionut Danifeld at TRAPO Asia as he explains how the company leveled-up marketing capabilities with Shopify, OKENDO, Loyalty Lion and Dotdigital, all deployed perfectly by their agency Jumpstart Commerce.

Resolution 5: go cross-channel to support your expansion

• What channels should I use to communicate with my customers?
• Which channels are the most effective for individual countries?
• Should I adopt different channels to communicate with my customers?

Known for pushing boundaries, Converse wanted to take engagement a step further. The company turned live chat into an acquisition channel, to expand its footprint in new markets. Working closely with the Dotdigital team, they developed a strategy to use the Dotdigital live chat tool. The move helped the brand keep their existing customers happy with top-notch customer service and acquire new customers through information obtained in data capture forms within the chat.

The strategy was a huge success. Live chat has proven to be an essential growth tool for Converse, with 29% of the company’s marketing list now captured via live chat. More than a quarter of these contacts are now paying customers and represent 31% of total orders. What’s more, these customers show a greater propensity to buy, with an average purchase window of 13 days, compared to the established 19 days for customers who haven’t had the benefit of a five-star live chat service.

To quote the Converse team, “Who knew, a simple ‘Hello how can I help you?’ could go such a long way?”

Converse has continued its quest to increase awareness in new markets by leveraging Dotdigital’s cross-channel solutions. Combining Dotdigital’s segmentation features with decision nodes within the automation program, Converse has developed a plan to target only those customers who visited its website via Google Ads and Facebook Audience, allowing the team to engage relevant customers with truly personalized messages.

Be a tiger this year!

I hope you can utilize these 5 “New Year’s Resolutions” to ramp up your digital marketing strategies and help drive revenue for your business in 2022. Be a tiger this year – be brave, competitive, unpredictable, and confident and let’s smash some goals in the new year!

In case you have missed it, check out last year’s new year’s resolution blog for every digital marketer, for additional insights on how to better engage with customers and boost conversion rates.

If you’d like to find out more, feel free to contact me at aloysius.soh@dotdigital.com to have a quick chat or sales@dotdigital.com if you’re outside APAC.