Product Features
By -

With monster shopping holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Thanksgiving Day right around the corner, we’re in the throes of helping retail eCommerce companies develop better strategies to maximize their sales potential during the busy holiday season. Retail eCommerce continues to flourish, with holiday sales in the US reaching an epic $101.9 billion in 2014 – a 7% increase from the prior year.

Companies who implement real-time marketing solutions are primed to cut a bigger slice of that $101 billion pie than those who don’t. According to a study conducted by Evergage, “over one third (36%) of marketers track ROI of real-time marketing; one-quarter of that number see returns of more than 50%, and almost as many see a 75% ROI.”

Despite the tangible benefits that real-time marketing delivers, its perceived challenges prevent many eCommerce retailers from making the investment. Many cite the lack of time, resources, and knowledge as the main barriers to implementing real-time marketing technology. What they don’t realize is that companies who choose to work with a strategic services partner to implement and train them on the platform experience reduced enablement time and ROI within minutes of activation.

Take a look at some of the solutions we activate for our clients – and how easy it is to get big ROI this holiday season:

REAL-TIME COUNTDOWN TIMERS

7dayshop.com was king of Black Friday 2014 with a live countdown timer and real-time product recommendations.

Did you know that most countdown timers that you see online or in email loop for one minute and then reset? If your shoppers look long enough, they’ll catch on to the fact that your CTA is nothing but smoke and mirrors. During the mad holiday shopping dash, you’re gonna need a more powerful means of closing the sale – and nothing says “now or never” like a real-time countdown timer.

Whether you’re looking to create buzz around a flash sale, a limited-time offer, or a new product launch, real-time countdown timers give your shoppers that much needed sense of urgency to convert. With a robust engagement marketing system like Fresh Relevance, adding a real-time countdown timer to your website or email campaign is as simple as pasting a line of code.

REAL-TIME SOCIAL FEEDS

What if you could show your subscribers how popular your products are without lifting a finger? In anticipation of the year’s biggest shopping holidays, many consumers go online to research before they buy. In fact, 81% of shoppers research online before making a purchase, while 61% are said to rely on product reviews. By embedding real-time social feeds into your emails or website, you’re giving your shoppers a direct point of access to user generated content about your products. Promoting your brand’s real-time social buzz has also proven to drive impulse purchase behavior.

REAL-TIME IMAGE PERSONALIZATION

With real-time image personalization, Book Outlet can ensure that their product recommendations are not only relevant, but in stock.

Most brands know that personalized product recommendations work. But what happens if the products you’ve suggested sell out? Armed with a real-time system, brands are able to update product images that appear in marketing emails retroactively, resulting in recommendations that are not only in stock, but relevant to the recipient. It doesn’t matter if the marketing email is already sitting in the inbox, real-time image personalization allows brands to update product images within already-sent emails.

GEO-LOCATION TARGETING

The best real-time recovery systems leverage web browsing location data and email open data to make an informed prediction of where your customers are as they interact with your brand. Geo-location targeting is powerful; it arms you with the intel to deploy product suggestions based on regional store inventory, set-up language translations, or base your content on regional events, interests, and preferences.

Brands who adopt real-time marketing technology are in a league of their own. Talk to us about adopting more intelligent engagement solutions for your retail eCommerce business – we’re here to help.