This edition of Essential eCommerce Marketing News features updates on Instagram’s plan to become a shopping site. Plus, lessons on optimising for sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Instagram a Shopping Site?
In an eCommerce move that follows its big brother Facebook, Marketing Week reports Instagram moves to become a shopping site, rather than just a shop window.
The eCommerce test, only presently available to Apple smartphone owners in the U.S. includes twenty brands such as Macy’s and J. Crew. Instagram posts will include a ‘tap to view’ icon. When a user taps, a tag will appear presenting more information on the product.
The brands can showcase up to five products with pricing and once a tag is selected, more details are shown.
The aim is to give brands the opportunity to share important product information with consumers, without them having to leave the Instagram app. If they do want to buy, they can click a ‘shop now’ link that takes them directly to the product page on the retailer’s website.
This is clearly pitching to compete with Pinterest’s ‘Buyable Pins‘ and Twitter’s ‘Buy Now’ buttons. It will certainly be interesting to see how this performs against other social media channels.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday Lessons From a $40 Million Makeup Business
Over on the Shopify Blog, Felix Thea interviews Quan Nguyen, director at 100percentpure.com, a fruit-pigmented cosmetics and all-natural cruelty-free skincare brand, which started in 2006.
In the interview, Nguyen shares experience of running a big-budget marketing campaign and leveraging automation. Plus, some great technology to perform at scale.
Nguyen also reveals some great opportunities and strategies around Black Friday and Cyber Monday to promote and increase sales – eCommerce sales strategies which, in fairness, you could apply at any time of the year.
This great perspective on migrating to the Shopify platform also makes this an interesting interview to read or listen to.
5 Tips to Master Your Brand’s Customer Service on Twitter
Amongst the 5 Tips to master customer service on Twitter, this post recommends:
- Responding. Yes, it does sound obvious and yes, we’ve had innumerable conversation around whether a brand should or should not be on Twitter. But, the answer is always the same – people are talking about your brand (positively and negatively) on social media and that includes Twitter. No response is rarely a good response.
- Have two Twitter accounts – one for promotion and marketing (the fun stuff) and one for customer service. That makes some sense.
- Don’t be too concerned about automation. I might argue the point a little on this, having never been a fan of over-automation. Semi-automation is fine – but please, please don’t try to automate engagement!
- Use Direct Messages. This allows customers to use that channel, even when you’re not following them – we talked about how in our Twitter video show with Twitter Rockstar – Nicky Kriel.
E-Mail Sales Funnels: How to Automate Your Sales
E-Mail really, really isn’t dead despite many claims that it might be. And besides, if everyone abandons E-Mail marketing as a channel, that’s less noise to cut through with messages from those who stay the course.
This great post on Social Media Examiner explores and explains how E-Mail marketing funnels work, how to configure them and what to expect.
There are great E-Mail responder strategy examples which explain how to nurture an audience and to build trust in your brand and product.
Finally, there are some awesome tools to help you along the way, such as MailChimp.
Serve up the Perfect Message This Christmas
Google AdWords invites advertisers to serve up the perfect message this Christmas. Some recommendations for its Google AdWords ad platform:
- Make sure you’re using the mobile platform. 4 out of 5 Christmas shoppers will be using smartphones in between other things. You need to make sure that your site can be found in mobile search and that your site works fast on mobile devices.
- Try G-Mail Ads to feature your products alongside E-Mail messages.
- Make sure local customers can find you with AdWords Location Extensions on your ads.[clickToTweet tweet=”Instagram Becomes A Shopping Site!” quote=”Instagram Becomes A Shopping Site!”]
We’d add our own firm recommendation to keep a really close eye on Impression Share in your AdWords Campaigns. The daily budget you’re setting may not be enough as search volumes quickly rocket. This may leave you with poor conversion rates when your ads aren’t present through the Search Funnel. This video explains why this is so critical to your sales and profit margins during the Christmas period.Speak with a SpecialistOur eCommerce Marketing Specialists
