If your goal is to be a highly successful eCommerce brand, then improving customer experience (CX) should be a strategic priority to drive customer loyalty, growth, and revenue. Read on for our insights on why a mobile marketing strategy is key to overcoming eCommerce customer pain points and how a Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) can enable a frictionless CX.
Why is CX Critical to eCommerce Success?
86% of respondents to Gartner’s Customer Experience Management Survey identified CX as the most critical competitive differentiator. Customers want a seamless and transparent online shopping journey with personalised, real-time engagement on their preferred channels and excellent support throughout the fulfilment process. A colossal 96% will likely disregard your brand if your customer service is bad! So, the more informative, omnipresent, and helpful you are, the more successful your eCommerce business will be.
eCommerce Customer Pain Points
By the end of 2022, it’s estimated that eCommerce will account for 20.4% of all global retail sales. Whilst Covid-19 was partly responsible for this rapid increase from only 10% in 2017, post-pandemic, online shopping is continuing to expand
As the eCommerce industry booms, it casts a spotlight on the top eCommerce customer pain points like:
- Lack of awareness around new products, special offers, and sales
- Lack of personalisation like product recommendations based on past purchases
- No real-time communication
- Brands failing to engage on customers’ preferred channels
- Lack of transparency about additional costs
One of the most dynamic eCommerce trends that addresses these challenges is a powerful mobile marketing strategy, powered by a comprehensive CPaaS. Devised and executed properly, it can enable you to differentiate your business and outperform your competitors.
Improve eCommerce CX with Mobile Marketing
If you’re wondering if you really need to invest in a mobile marketing strategy and CPaaS technology, consider the following stats. There are 6.648 billion smartphone users in the world, which equates to 83.37% of the world’s population. Experts estimate that by 2025, 72% of all internet users will use only their mobile phones to connect to the web. In alignment with customers’ love affair with mobile, SMS now has a 19% click through rate (CTR), which is nearly 5 times more than the 4% email CTR.
Multichannel mobile campaigns utilising SMS Messages, Viber, WhatsApp Business Messages, Push Notifications, and RCS Messaging are ideal for sending time-sensitive messages such as flash sales, fulfilment reminders, and returns tracking information to an audience that is already highly engaged with these channels. Sociable and immediate, these personalised messages build trust and loyalty, leading to repeat purchases and a higher customer lifetime value.
To get started, examine your customer data, and identify the biggest customer pain point that negatively impacts your revenue. Set goals and KPIs and build out a creative mobile messaging campaign that addresses these issues and adds customer value.
Transactional & Broadcast Messages
Keep messages short, stating your offer in one text message with a single CTA for clarity and speed. Analyse your open and click through metrics data, iterate what works or discard what doesn’t. Personalise campaigns by creating sectioned lists and text messaging groups according to customer behaviour data. Ensure you have a mix of transactional messages triggered by a customer action and broadcast messages to the groups you’ve identified.
No Silos
Your mobile messaging campaigns should not sit in a silo, they should be integrated into your wider cross-channel marketing campaigns. For example, you can bolster a welcome email to a new account holder with a text message offering them a discount on their first purchase.
Get Creative
You can even create a hybrid multimedia mobile marketing and social influencer campaign with autographed photos of your influencer partner using your product. Getting creative helps you stand out with content your customers love.
So, this gives you an overview of how a mobile marketing strategy can improve your eCommerce CX and drive revenue, but how do you create these mobile marketing campaigns and continuously improve? This is where CPaaS comes in.
How CPaaS Achieves Mobile Marketing & CX Goals
What is CPaaS?
Enterprise CPaaS solutions are customisable, centralised communication platforms on a cloud-based framework, enabling your businesses to harmonise real-time communication strategies. CPaaS integrates with your key business systems and platforms, and enables automation, personalisation, channel orchestration and real-time capabilities. The result is a connected, frictionless, and enhanced CX.
Personalisation
CPaaS allows you to connect with your eCommerce customers and prospects at any point in your marketing and sales funnel so you can nurture customers to the point of purchase and beyond. Personalisation and geotargeting features mean you can adapt to your customers’ changing requirements. You can save them time by suggesting products they might need due to, for example, predicted weather conditions. You can also send regional shipping notifications or location-specific offers.
Multiple Channels
When you are choosing a CPaaS solution, ensure it offers a wide variety of channels like SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, Push and RCS so you can reach your customers where they prefer to communicate. Each channel has its own features and benefits to meet different campaign goals and customer preferences. Viber Business Messages, for example, has bidirectional communication capabilities for problem resolution and feedback, as well as images, files, and CTA button capabilities. WhatsApp is one of the most popular channels in the world, offering end-to-end encryption and rich content features. Push notifications enable you to use your own branded app to deliver messages.
Automation
CPaaS provides high levels of automation to take the guesswork out of your communications. For example, you might send a group of customers a message on Viber because your data shows that is usually their preferred platform. If that message isn’t opened, CPaaS will provide you with an automated failover to SMS so you can reach them on there instead.
Security
Online shoppers are becoming more security conscious, while regulatory compliance requirements increase in alignment with technological advances. CPaaS can provide additional security to your communications including two-factor authentication, phone number verification, SMS short codes for bulk messaging, and fraud alerts. Ensuring security builds customer trust and loyalty, which significantly impacts your open and click-through rates. In addition, some CPaaS channels, like Viber, have security measures like a verified sender feature.
Choosing a CPaaS Partner
When choosing a vendor for your Enterprise CPaaS solution ensure they offer simple set up and a fast launch, guaranteed data security, 24/7 customer support, integrated analytics and channel orchestration. Also, look for a partner that offers both a ready-to-use and more customisable solution so you can pick the option that works for you. Take a look at our client case studies to see how other businesses have found success with us.