How to automate an entire marketing strategy to save more time and achieve the best results. You will find yourself facing a massive amount of tasks, for which your time, or even your team's time, might often not be enough. In this case, you need to build strategies that rely directly on automation, to save time for yourself and your team, and invest this time in what is more important for your e-store.

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What is Automation in Marketing and E-Commerce?

Automating e-commerce and marketing processes in a marketing strategy is a term used to describe any tool or software designed to help e-commerce teams turn some or all repetitive manual tasks into automated, self-executing tasks.

When do you need Automation in E-Commerce?

The main reason behind automating e-commerce in a marketing strategy is the increasing number of operations over time. You might ask yourself, is e-commerce automation worth the cost and effort put into it?

To answer this question, I will outline below some common business scenarios in a marketing strategy where you might see yourself: Your operations team cannot keep up with the volume of sales because your systems are inefficient.

Employees express feeling overwhelmed and become frustrated over time.
Your sales team spends hours shipping a single order because they have to deal with multiple systems and platforms.
Transferring information from one system to another takes about one hour or more daily for each employee.
Your inventory summaries are inaccurate and full of errors, and you find that your store’s stock of goods runs out due to some of these deficiencies.
System updates on core platforms often result in lost information or errors in important data.
Your sales team spends more time handling customers to fix order or shipping errors than ever before.
Customers are dissatisfied with your store's goods and return or cancel their orders due to inefficient shipping, operations, or delayed delivery.

If you have at least three of these scenarios, it is an indicator that your e-store processes need automation within a marketing strategy.
Even if you don't have any of these problems now, it is certain that as your business starts to grow and face unwanted issues, you will be forced to resort to automating your marketing strategy as a definitive solution to these problems.

Now, you have the ability to know whether you need a marketing strategy automation or not. Let's move on to greater details about the automation tools and systems you can play with.

E-Commerce Automation Systems and Tools

When it comes to automation tools, you must be sure you are using the right tools to get an effective and satisfying result. I will now cover two important channels, namely email and social media platforms, and what tools are available for them.

Email Marketing Strategy Automation Tools and Systems:

Email marketing helps in 80% of customer retention and 81% of new customer acquisition for a group of retail and e-commerce professionals surveyed in 2016.
There is no doubt that email marketing is one of the best marketing platforms today, if not the best of all, to increase ROI in e-commerce.

Email Marketing Strategy Automation Tools:

MailChimp tool
GetResponse tool
ActiveCampaign tool
Drip tool

Attention: The most important features to look for in any email marketing platform are segmentation, personalization, and reporting. These three features allow you to automate your email marketing campaigns and scale them with minimal effort.

Social Media Marketing Strategy Automation Tools and Systems:

Social media channels and platforms are another major driver of sales for most Saudi online stores. According to the survey I mentioned earlier, social media marketing helps in 44% of customer retention and 51% of new customer acquisition.

Therefore, you should never underestimate the role of social media platforms or set them aside; instead, you must invest in them. If you want to save time and effort for yourself and your team, you need automation.

Some of the best tools for social media marketing automation:

Buffer tool
MeetEdgar tool
Agorapulse tool
HootSuite tool
Sprout Social tool

Attention: In the marketing strategy automation platform you choose, you should focus on the core features you need, such as post scheduling, monitoring, reporting, and management. If you are only interested in post scheduling and reporting, the Buffer tool is low-cost and easy to use. Meanwhile, the MeetEdgar tool offers a deep understanding of algorithms if you want to republish the best content on your platform.

And if you want a complete automation experience, along with the ability to monitor your competitors and respond to messages and comments, then you will need a more comprehensive platform like Sprout Social or Agorapulse.

Ways to Use Email Marketing Automation to Achieve Better Results

You have now learned about the most important tools through which you can automate the creation of an email marketing strategy, but you might be wondering where to start. What steps should be taken? Here are the most important ways to use email marketing automation that will bring you impressive results:

1- Sending Welcome Emails:

Did you know that welcome emails get an open rate of about 82%? Indeed, this number is real and highly encouraging.

When you send an email to users immediately after they subscribe to your newsletter, you reach a stage where customers are highly interested in the content. This makes the email open rate much higher.

At the same time, welcome emails have a higher open rate compared to all email marketing operations, reaching: 26.8% versus 3.4%, which is seven times higher. Therefore, I recommend sending welcome emails to anyone who joins your mailing list.

But what does this have to do with e-commerce marketing automation?
Through email marketing automation, you can ensure these emails are sent immediately as soon as customers subscribe to your newsletter. Create an email template that can be personalized when someone fills out the subscription form on your site, and you will get a suitable automation that will send your customer the welcome email automatically.

This is much easier than manually sending an email every time someone fills out your subscription form.
As you will see, marketing automation works to save time and make your life easier.

I have some tips on what to include in a welcome email:
Offering a registration reward.
Providing relevant content.
Giving newsletter subscribers an introduction, or expectation of what you will send and the frequency of sending these messages. One of the newsletters provided by DigitalMarketer offers information for entrepreneurs; in this welcome email, you find a simple definition of the target audience of this newsletter, as in this image:

2- Abandoned Cart Follow-up:

Another great thing you can do with marketing strategy automation is reaching out to customers who have left their shopping carts in your e-store or e-commerce website.

You can use cart abandonment as a trigger for an email. This email can remind customers of the products they left behind, or suggest products similar to their interests. Often, users abandon items in their cart because they did not find exactly what they were looking for.
By displaying and promoting products online that are similar to what they chose in the cart, you may get closer to what your customers actually want to buy, increasing your chances of making a successful sale.

An abandoned cart should always be part of your marketing strategy automation; it should be treated as a sales opportunity rather than an irreplaceable loss.

You can automate and send emails, for example, one hour after your customers leave their cart. You can even use this automated email to send discounts and promotions to these potential customers, providing an extra push to complete the sale.

In this image: where the famous store Huda Beauty sends a discount and reminders of items similar to what you put in your cart, or even the same items.

3- Improving Transactional Emails:

You can also achieve a lot through ideas to increase sales simply by changing transactional emails slightly, instead of just sending a receipt when someone makes a purchase through your store.

Automate an email template integrating with the platform you work on to be sent every time someone makes a purchase, but make this email represent a step in improving your relationship with your customers. You can make your product receipts fun and eye-catching by adding photos of the purchased product or adding an interesting background that matches the product.

Here is an example from Chewy, a store specializing in pet care supplies, where product receipts contain a cute animated background of a delivery truck driving on the road, as in the picture. These things are simple but they emotionally affect the customer:

The important role that automation plays here is that it is not easy to do this manually if you have a lot of products. However, if you use an automated template, you can set up a way to insert background images according to the product category displayed in the confirmation email.

Turning transactional emails from plain or boring messages into interesting ones improves your brand identity and gives users a better buying experience that stays in their minds over time.

4- Audience Segmentation:

What makes companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks stand out from the crowd?
They offer an outstanding buying experience, not just a commodity you buy. To make your business more than just a store providing goods, take steps to understand your audience and meet their needs.

In marketing automation campaigns, think about the type of customers you are dealing with and segment them as follows:
First-time customers?
Returning customers who have bought at least one product before?
Or maybe an unexpected classification like a wholesale buyer?

Now think about their needs: Will they have the same preferences? Will offers spark the same desire in their minds? Different experiences must be created for each segment of your customers, so the responsibility of assisting you here lies on automation.

In the long run, you will realize that the best way to stay in the competition is not just fighting price wars with other companies, but segmenting customer data and personalizing your content.
One-on-one communication is not only possible, but it becomes very clear if you use email marketing automation the right way.

To achieve this one-on-one communication, there are two methods you might want to use to segment your audience: tagging and scoring. You can classify users based on demographic information or behavior. Scoring is done by allocating points for activity and deducting them for lack of activity (many online stores do this, especially within loyalty programs).

Using scoring, you can identify:
Engaged users who follow the brand and its communication.
Customers who buy premium products.
Warm leads who are ready to make a purchase decision.
Customers whom the sales team should contact.
Leads who could use some guidance on your offers.
Loyal customers who have stopped responding to your offers.

Tip: To use scoring and track results effectively, you will first need to think about the system. Consider what information and behavior are important to you, and then assign values to each. Is opening a welcome email worth one point? How many points can be added when purchasing a product? All of this depends on your business and how you decide to do it.

5- Adopting Smart Selling Strategies Such as Upselling and Cross-Selling:

1- Upselling:

Booking uses a strategy called upselling. Here is how this strategy works. Let's imagine Booking.com has already sold one of the rooms to a customer, so the customer made the reservation and is almost fully ready to go on vacation, but what happened next?

There is a better room available at the hotel the customer booked, and now at a very special price lower than before. This makes it a great temptation for the customer. Imagine a higher quality room at a negligible price difference?

For your information: This is a smart and elegant technique, since the customer has already prepared themselves to go on a trip and chose a room within the hotel, it is highly likely that they will pay a little extra money to stay in a nicer room and enjoy a better level!

And the great thing is that you can easily apply this mechanism to many other products and services, like a PC with higher specifications and slightly higher cost, a smartphone with more storage space, and a reasonable increase in price.

Another example of upselling is announcing new items that feature higher characteristics than currently available items. This trick is done by the famous Sephora store, which dedicates a section for newly arrived items to keep you updated and excited to buy them, as in the picture:

2- Cross-Selling:

Cross-selling is another interesting technique in e-commerce. It is similar to upselling, but instead of offering a more expensive or higher-tier version of the product, you offer a complementary additional item. When you browse an clothing and shoes e-store and choose a specific piece of clothing, a complementary item appears, for example: shoes in the same color as the clothing item.

Cross-selling has become very popular on e-commerce sites. It is usually done by including complementary products on the product description page. IKEA follows this approach when you browse a product, for example, a home carpet, as in this picture:

At the bottom, you will find complementary options that go with the carpet, in case you want other items to match the original item, as in this picture.

Of course, cross-selling can be done afterward using automated emails containing all products based on past purchases your customers put in their shopping cart or have already purchased.

You can understand the difference between upselling and cross-selling through this image.

Ways to Use Social Media Marketing Automation to Achieve Better Results

It is well-known that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are great ways to generate sales and engage your audience, but these platforms are naturally time-consuming and can waste a lot of your time.
To avoid this wasted time and continue to get an increase in sales, automation can help as follows:

1- Scheduling Content on Platforms:

If you are using Buffer or any other scheduling tool, simply write engaging marketing content for your followers and audience on all platforms, depending on the type of content provided. Then monitor analytics to find the most engaging content. Also, determine the best posting times based on the interactions you see in the analytics section.

Pro tip: Prepare and schedule monthly content in one session to save yourself some effort and trouble every week, taking this task off your shoulders.

2- Creating Chatbots:

In addition to scheduling posts and managing your social media accounts, you can also create automated chatbots to market your store and answer frequently asked questions.
Such a step will save you a lot of time and effort in responding to followers' inquiries. It is very important to design chatbots correctly and appropriately.

3- Setting up Automated Reporting with your Colleagues and Team:

Automation will help you significantly in this regard. These reports will give you and your team a close look at many factors that contributed to the growth or decline in sales because of social media platforms, and what actions you and your team can take to address these issues.

For instance, your team is expected to discuss: Did social media platforms lead to an increase in sales? Did social media content lead to more engagement from customers or expand the audience base? Or drive more traffic to the website?

If you are looking for a tool to help with reporting, comprehensive reports like those in Sprout Social can give you satisfying answers, and are even perfect reports to share with your team as they are easy to read and understand.

Remember: Success using automation tools does not happen automatically; you must analyze and understand through reports, as I pointed out, so pay attention to the previous analysis step.

4- Adding a Human Touch:

You cannot rely solely on automation for scheduling and responding to your audience. Brands that adopt automation need to find ways to let their human side shine through. People need to feel they are dealing with a human entity.

Try to add humor to comments and messages between you and your customers, but in a way that fits the customer's culture so it doesn't turn into something annoying for them, causing them to turn away. For example: joke with them but do not mock them. These are simple but important ways to balance using automation with adding a human factor.

No one knows your audience better than you. When you use social media automation tools, don't let your communication with the audience sound like an automated copy devoid of emotions; because emotions are the essence of any commercial entity or prestigious brand.

Do you remember when I pointed out that what distinguishes companies like Apple and Coca-Cola is that they create an enjoyable buying experience? Emotions are part of this experience. The customer should not feel like they just entered a conversation with a robot on Facebook. Think about how automation can complement your brand instead of replacing it.

5- Define your Goals Before Using Automation Tools:

You must think about what you want to get from social media automation before investing in it. For example, consider some sample goals related to automation, such as:
Increasing your overall social engagement rate.
Scaling your content.
Speeding up customer service response time.
Delivering more personalized customer service.

Any of these goals is absolutely important for the continuation and prosperity of your business and choosing a unique business name. So make sure to talk to your colleagues or team about what you plan to use automation for before jumping in, and then monitor your progress to determine: Did you achieve these goals through the tools you chose or do you need to change them, or change the way you use them as a marketer?

If you are at the beginning of your business path, or at the start of your e-commerce journey, do not worry. For beginners, you should not fully use automation and leave everything believing that automation will solve all problems and won't need human intervention; rather, the course of all events must be monitored. You need to monitor your scheduled posts and chatbots to make sure everything is working properly.

Tip: Monitoring your progress means looking at metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to see if automation is making noticeable progress or not. For example, is it reducing customer response time? Have sales increased regularly? Dashboards and reporting in automation tools can provide those answers with great clarity.

Conclusion of the Above:

Including marketing automation campaigns in operations related to the e-store saves you tremendous effort and protects you from risks expected to happen as your e-store grows.
E-commerce marketers have a lot of tasks in their day, starting from preparing and running campaigns on social platforms, and doing A/B testing for landing pages where customers land, through the elements we discussed:

What is Automation in Marketing and E-Commerce.
When do you need Automation in E-Commerce?
E-Commerce Automation Systems and Tools.
Ways to Use Email Marketing Automation to Achieve Better Results.
Ways to Use Social Media Marketing Automation to Achieve Better Results.

You can get extra time through what automation tools do and find space for what is more important regarding your e-store tasks. All you have to do now if your e-store needs automation, is to start preparing a suitable strategy based on what I discussed with you in the article.