Are you making the most of your product recommendations?

Product recommendations are a powerful thing, but they have to be done right. You can turn a one-off customer into a lifelong ally if you can recommend them the right thing at the right time.

The modern marketer has the power at their fingertips. Improvements in data and data collection have given us new ways to speak to people; to communicate with them effectively and convince them.

However, product recommendations aren’t the only tool in your armoury. A proper strategy for browse abandonment emails can help claw back the steady drip of customers who aren’t purchasing again. 

When you combine these two elements, it’ll help to create a powerful potion that supercharges your business and leads to new success.

You need good data first

First, though, we need to talk about data. Because without this magic, we can’t make intelligent product recommendations or send out those winning emails.

Data will help you to build an overview of your audience, which will allow you to understand them in a more effective way. 

But before all of that, you need access to the latest marketing automation software. APSIS One will allow you to utilise all of the Profile data you’ve collected to create personalised, and this next part is the best bit, and automated recommendations based on the behavioural data you’ve collected across your channels or platforms.

How good does that sound?

Get the right tools for the job

APSIS One can help you to gather customer and interaction data that reflects a potential lead’s interest in your brand. You can send all the product recommendation emails that you want, but without knowing what interests drive a customer, you’re not going to see results.

Once you’ve got that data, you’ll be able to align interests with products and give yourself more chances of success. For example, if you can see that Shopper A has been looking at heaps of PlayStation 4 games recently, it would make sense to avoid sending them that email about the latest Xbox, even if it’s one of your best sellers.

That’s the difference between having a really intelligent strategy and one that’s driven by the flavour of the month.

Fire off intelligent product recommendations

These recommendations are based on the interactions and behaviour patterns your Audience has with you. With this information at your fingertips, you’ll be ideally placed to send out the product recommendation email that bags another sale or reminds them of their unfinished business.

This is part of a marketing automation flow. These flows recognise customer behaviour and trigger a series of responses by your website that will (hopefully) end with a prospect making a purchase. 

Flows can be used to personalise communications, including the abandoned cart email, but they can also be used to send abandoned cart emails based on a person’s incomplete purchases with your brand. This is all done within the magical framework of marketing automation and these flows can be designed and implemented through the APSIS One dashboard.

Create killer marketing automation flows

You can set these up to be based on a trigger. Let’s take an abandoned cart as an example, and it goes something like this.

😠  A prospective has a product of yours in the cart.

😠  They get to check out and are ready to press ‘buy’.

😠  But oh no! Something happens and they click out of the tab, leaving you high and dry!

But with a marketing automation flow, they’ll automatically be sent a follow-up that tries to tempt them back to the purchase. This flow can remind the prospective of the product they left behind, and gently nudge them towards returning to your site and completing the transaction.

This can be done in more overt ways, such as offering a discount on the product, or more subtly. The choice is yours!

Initiate browse abandonment emails to save money

Did you know that the global cart abandonment rate is nearly 70% and that 55% of shoppers abandon carts due to unexpected costs? (source: marketing.dynamicyield.com). $18 billion a year is lost to this curse, so there’s a lot of wins to be had by businesses who really want to make the most of their product recommendations.

There’s a lot of money out there, just waiting to be earned back. This is just one part of how you can seize the day!

You can also set up browse abandonment flows with the click of a button. Behavioural data taken from your online store makes for success in eCommerce, if you can harness it properly. 

Let’s take a little example: you run an online retailer and your website offers products as well as guides and blog posts. You write that killer content to assist a browser’s choice of products, as well as giving aftercare tips. This combination of guides and products means you can set up an automation to send those guides to browsers who exited the website without making a purchase.

This is all done via cookies and browse abandonment flows, and if it’s done right it can be used to drive sales, increase brand engagement and provide a better service.

Personalise your recommendations

We’ve touched on personalisation a little bit, and it’s something you can only really do if you have access to the right digital marketing software. Thankfully, we’re here to help, and it can help save big. 

For example, 78% of brands say they don’t have enough quick data on their customers to launch effective personalisation campaigns. With APSIS One, that won’t be a problem.

80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase after they’ve been targeted with a personalised campaign, so we can see that there’s a real disconnect between what brands think (personalisation is hard) vs what consumers want (source: Hubspot.com).

Personalisation can be as simple as using someone’s name in an email, but it can extend to more sophisticated methods such as:

• Setting up location-specific content
• Thanking return customers for being loyal
• Recognising a new subscriber and reaching out to them

And of course, the golden egg (for this piece at least) is the personalised product recommendation. APSIS One will give you greater insight into your customers viewing habits and interaction behaviour, and armed with that information you’ll be perfectly placed to send them that killer product recommendation or get them to complete that purchase that’s been stewing in their basket!

Re-engage those old customers

You should also be recommending products that re-engage those old customers. Online customers often switch between brands depending on a variety of reasons, but a re-engagement campaign can help to get those old flames back in your life.

The idea behind this flow is to create loyal customers and active subscribers, and it’s super simple to do. All it entails is setting a trigger based on a person’s last purchase date and sending them an email a set period of time after their last purchase. 

Those who click on that link, which could involve a clever product recommendation, are sent through to the website. Those who don’t, get a follow-up email just to nudge them into action. Those who ignore both can be removed from a mailing list, which has the added benefit of cleaning your subscriber list, boosting sales and activating old customers.

Activate new ones

Getting a customer to opt-in to your newsletters is a massive achievement and one that shouldn’t be dismissed! These people have you in the front of their mind and will want to be welcomed like the Kings and Queens that they are - product recommendations and automation lets you do that.

Let's say you run a cool, trendy online shoe store and you get someone to subscribe to your newsletter. You can send an exclusive discount on a first purchase, plus a recommended product along with it, which is sure to get pulses raising at their end.

All you need to do is create a form with demographic field data, create a general welcome flow and then craft the follow up emails based on subscribers’ browsing history.

Hotspots, an APSIS One feature, allows users to map their product page so that visitor data can be tracked as they browse your website. This will help you to get a detailed breakdown of where each visitor goes on your website, which will allow you to make more detailed and accurate product recommendations.

This will allow you to provide a proper personal welcome, get on the good side of a new subscriber and save time in trying to convert them.

Are you making the most of your product recommendations?

So you need to ask yourself the question: are you making the most of your product recommendations? If you’re not using data effectively, or not collecting data as well as you could be, that will be having a knock-on effect.

Signing up for the right marketing automation software is absolutely crucial as it can lay the foundations for your success for years to come. That’s where APSIS One comes into play.

If you’ve read about anything you like the sound of, get in touch to arrange a free demo with one of APSIS’s friendly experts! Don’t delay - there’s money on the line.