Insights:Automate to keep online business flowing.

The COVID-19 crisis has required everybody to up their online sales and marketing game. Before the pandemic many businesses relied on in-store transactions or tradeshows to generate and close sales. With those options off the table for many, online has become the default destination to keep business moving forward.

By this time, most have optimized their websites, put additional resources and time into social media platforms and shifted more of their marketing budget into digital advertising. All good moves, but driving people to your website is just the first step. The real goal is, and always has been, conversion. Whether conversion is making a purchase or making contact to enter your sales cycle, getting people to take that final step is vital for business success.

One efficient method for doing this is with automated email flows. This simply means that predetermined actions by a site visitor, who is in your database, results in an email being automatically sent to them. The actions can be time spent on a product page, abandoning a shopping cart, interactions on social media platforms or other predetermined triggers.

Once the customer has triggered the activation step, the email that is automatically sent to them will be more effective if it contains an incentive to encourage conversion. Incentives can be discounts on specific products or services, added value such as free warranties or free shipping or even notices of limited quantities of the item they had looked at.

While setting up an automated email flow system takes an investment in time and money, when done correctly it is a proven way to increase website conversions even during major market disruptions.