Customer lifetime value refers to the total amount of money spent by a consumer with your eCommerce store across the entire collection of their orders. It boils down to the potential value of revenue to be made from a specific customer. Several things affect customer lifetime value, namely one’s ability to retain customers, so it is vital that you consider strategies to increase customer lifetime value and prolong your revenue generation with each customer. In this article, we discuss the most powerful ways to increase customer lifetime value specifically in reference to automating key areas of your marketing operations. We discuss automating consumer financing, email marketing, and more.

Automating Consumer Financing

Automating consumer financing is one of the most powerful ways to improve customer lifetime value in the modern world of eCommerce. Consumer financing services, like BNPL, are seeing an increase in interest among the modern shopper, and adopting these can help businesses leverage the potential revenue generation amongst these buyers. Automating consumer financing involves partnering with the best consumer financing platforms on the market. ChargeAfter is one of these service providers that can facilitate the effective and efficient delivery of online financing to each and every one of your customers. Instead of having to source financial aid from third parties, they can receive financial support at the push of a button and do not have to go through credit checks. Therefore, they can shop quicker than ever before on your online store and are more likely to do so in the future – increasing their total customer lifetime value. 

Automating Email Marketing

Email marketing is an incredibly important marketing funnel that you should automate to save time and capitalize on the revenue potential of maximizing your email marketing strategy. With an extensive list of shoppers’ email addresses, you can quickly deliver personalized marketing material to them directly into their inboxes that they will be viewing throughout the workday. Automating these email processes can streamline their consumer experience as well as save your marketing team time, ensuring that you make smarter investments into your initiatives. Furthermore, email marketing enables businesses to reward their loyal customers and subsequently improve customer retention rates. The addition of consumer financing may also appeal to shoppers that arrive at your landing pages from email marketing campaigns, further increasing your customer lifetime values.

Automate Social Media Marketing

It is possible to automate various aspects of your social media marketing to improve customer lifetime values. For starters, you can preschedule all of your social media content publications at the beginning of the month, freeing up time to focus on customer service over the course of the month. Secondly, you can automate social media chatbots to facilitate seamless conversations with your consumers. The ability to contact your store at all hours of the day encourages shoppers to be more invested in your platform and can also facilitate relationships with customers shopping from different time zones. You can also run automated social media marketing campaigns through platforms like Buffer and Hootsuite. Having access to this automation can greatly increase customer lifetime values as you are able to send personalized messages to new and returning customers at the right times and with the right promotional context.

From consumer financing to email marketing and social media marketing, automation is one of the most efficient and effective strategies for increasing customer lifetime value as it saves you time to focus on customer service, enables personalized messaging, and facilitates beneficial long-term customer relationships through all-hours communication strategies.

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The completion of the $44M Series B funding round led by The Phoenix, with participation from banking leaders around the world, including Citi Ventures (Citigroup), Banco Bradesco, MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group), and existing investors, and following a recent strategic partnership with Visa, brings ChargeAfter’s total amount raised to a whopping $60 million. The massive venture capital funding initiative will pave new waves for the already in-demand fintech buy now pay later (BNPL) solutions ChargeAfter offers merchants and lenders across the globe.

How ChargeAfter Supports Consumers Worldwide

According to Juniper, massive consumer interest continues to funnel towards BNPL services as they offer one of the most effective and efficient consumer financing models in the eCommerce space. The report states that more than $995 billion will be spent via BNPL services by 2026. 

Shopping online is easier than ever thanks to BNPL waterfall consumer financing solutions like those ChargeAfter offers. This has drawn massive attention from modern global shoppers that align with innovative payment solutions providing more flexibility and affordability. ChargeAfter’s ability to provide shoppers with instant, approved, and hyper-personalized online financing options with 85% approval rates gives consumers more power to pursue their retain interests.

The ability to receive comprehensive, zero-interest loans at the push of a button makes BNPL solutions one of the most appealing aspects of the modern eCommerce environment. It gives a wider group of consumers, previously unable to receive consumer financing due to credit complications, access to seamless online shopping. It also taps into the needs of the burgeoning Millennial and Gen Z consumers that shy away from traditional financing and payment services.

What’s In It for Investors?

The extent of ChargeAfter’s recent initiative enables investors to harness the incredible buying power of the modern consumer. As these consumers turn to online platforms that facilitate consumer financing options at checkout, those in partnership can reap the rewards of providing superior online shopping.

Greater eCommerce growth through the facilitation of reliable online financing ensures investors can leverage the tremendous revenue potential that BNPL offers in the modern online shopping environment. ChargeAfter is bridging the gap between big business and previously disadvantaged global shoppers, facilitating mutual benefits for the investment portfolio and the consumers that shop with ChargeAfter-enabled online outlets.

The existing investment portfolio represents a collection of powerful banking leaders, reaffirming the success of early adaption to waterfall consumer financing initiatives. These global pioneers are paving the way with ChargeAfter to shake up the eCommerce game and benefit all involved.

The Evolution of eCommerce as We Know It

The massive revenue generated from this initiative will be poured back into the BNPL sector, enabling ChargeAfter to provide superior consumer financing capabilities for merchants, lenders, and consumers. ChargeAfter can facilitate a first-class level of buy now pay later financing for all parties involved, capitalizing on the revenue potential that the growing fintech solution provides in the near future.

The win-win reward for eCommerce companies, financial lenders, and modern shoppers opens a world of possibilities for online retail, enhancing consumers buying power while facilitating profitable growth among those that choose to partner with ChargeAfter to take advantage of the benefits of BNPL services. 

A New Era for ChargeAfter

ChargeAfter continues into the second quarter of 2022 having made massive strides and created new waves for the eCommerce industry. Choosing to partner with ChargeAfter, whether merchant or lender, is the first step to joining the collection of parties ushering in a new era for global eCommerce growth and consumer satisfaction. The time to take solidify buy now pay later services as the go-to payment solution for the modern shopper is now, and ChargeAfter is establishing the foundation.

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Online shopping interest continues to climb and stores need to adapt to reduce common risks of online retail. When looking at key performance indicators (KPIs), brands may find that shoppers continue to leave their stores after adding items to their carts without actually making a purchase. This is a concern as many brand owners do not know the reasons why their shoppers may be leaving before making a purchase. In this article, we shed light on the main reasons shoppers abandon their carts and offer a solution to ensure that you resolve these issues before they occur. 

What is Cart Abandonment

As mentioned, cart abandonment refers to the consumer act of adding items to their carts and leaving before actually making a purchase. Cart abandonment is incredibly challenging for the modern online store as mystery shrouds the decisions of consumers as to why they do so. But, we have insight into why based on industry sources as well as an answer to help you minimize the risks of cart abandonment. 

Why Consumers Abandon Their Carts

Below, we explore the main reasons consumers abandon their shopping carts before making a purchase.

1. Limited Payment Options

Consumers want variety and prefer to shop with businesses that can provide payment options tailored to their unique shopping behaviors. Every shopper is different, and brands can attract a wider audience by facilitating a seamless payment experience. Through partnering with Fintech companies like ChargeAfter, brands can also leverage additional payment options that involve comprehensive consumer financing coverage. Consumer financing is one of the most attractive payment options as it allows customers to receive zero-interest repayment plans without having to go through credit checks. The benefits for businesses are that more consumers can shop with their online stores, increasing their consumer base and leveraging greater sales in the process. 

2. High Costs

Consumers often choose to abandon their carts as they fear the high costs when reviewing their items. But, brands can eliminate these fears by integrating consumer financing features. Consumer financing connects consumers with lenders capable of covering the total expense without requiring any interest. This means that shoppers can not only pay for their carts on the fly but do not have to suffer from expensive monthly repayment packages. This is a key strategy for reducing abandonment rates.

3. Web Security Concerns

The modern shopper is skeptical and aware of shady marketing strategies that many brands deploy in the online retail industry. For these reasons, brands need to give consumers confidence in their purchases. Doing so can greatly reduce the risks of cart abandonment rates as building trust is critical to online eCommerce success. Ensuring that you have and clearly display web security coverage is important. From shopping guarantees to online ID protection, every security feature is noticed by the consumer. You can also build trust other ways, and the following resource provides suggestions on ways to build brand trust with your consumers beyond integrating stronger website security features. 

4. Account Creation

Many shoppers steer clear of websites where they have to create an account to shop. Instead, brands should offer guest shopping functionality and continue to make consumer financing available to shoppers that choose this option. Though the checkout process is longer, consumers sometimes prefer this route as it is a more private way to shop online. 

As mentioned, the integration of consumer financing can help brands reduce cart abandonment rates as shoppers are extremely attracted by the benefits that the feature offers them. Therefore, businesses should consider partnering with leading consumer financing platforms to minimize risk and improve sales, seeing long-term and profitable growth as a result. 

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The modern consumer spends plenty of time on their social media platforms, using Instagram, TikTok, an array of apps that offer advertising opportunities for online stores. From advertising on YouTube videos to running campaigns on Instagram feeds, there are many ways for businesses to attract a bigger audience through social commerce. In this article, we discuss social commerce, ways to improve your brand’s social commerce with BNPL (buy now pay later), and the benefits of doing so. 

What is Social Commerce?

Social commerce simply refers to the process of selling online via social media platforms. Today, social media platforms have made this easier than ever, blurring the lines between social media and shopping through the integration of shopping features designed for brands. Facebook, for example, can pull your website’s entire product catalog directly into a dedicated Facebook Shop. Instagram allows you to tag products in posts to encourage sales. These are two examples of ways that businesses can efficiently activate online shopping through social channels. 

Social commerce has gained tremendous traction, and statistics state that approximately “$475 billion in revenue” was generated back in 2020, and this should grow by “a rate of 28.4% annually, reaching $3.37 trillion by 2028”. For this reason, all businesses should develop stronger social commerce strategies to leverage these impressive numbers. Below, we discuss ways you can improve your social commerce.

Ways to Improve Social Commerce

You should implement the following efficient steps to improve your online store’s social commerce and boost conversion rates:

Improve Conversion Rates With BNPL

Before implementing any social commerce steps over and above those that you already do, we highly recommend integrating BNPL features into your online store. BNPL, or consumer financing, is a powerful integration that can improve conversion rates by offering consumers several benefits. Partners like ChargeAfter provide affordable, efficient, and effective BNPL services with a proven track record. You can learn more about the many consumer and brand benefits of BNPL beyond improving conversion rates of your social commerce strategies here. 

Set Up TikTok Shopping With Shopify

TikTok remains one of the most prominent social media platforms, especially among younger audiences. For this reason, we highly recommend establishing a brand presence on TikTok and making use of TikTok shopping facilities through Shopify integration. Using the TikTok Shopify app, products are pulled directly from your website. This is a seamless process that requires little web development know-how and can be done by any brand that utilizes both platforms. Doing so will help you enter a unique social media space where you can improve conversion rates by attracting new consumers. 

Take Advantage of Live Streaming

Taking advantage of social commerce requires brands to stay on-trend and utilize the new features of the platforms that their audiences shop through. Live streaming is an example of a social media feature that brands can leverage to improve conversion rates. Live streaming marketing campaigns let brands communicate more closely with their audience, encouraging a more consumer-centric marketing space that shy away from traditional marketing strategies. This can win brand trust and drive sales.

Engage Your Customers With Messages

A unique method of social commerce is attracting consumer buy-in through instant messaging. Provided that you adhere to social media advertising policies and regulations on your chosen platforms, you can improve conversion rates by talking directly with your target audience. There are many benefits of instant messaging advertising campaigns. This is predominantly because personalized marketing strategies are more attractive to the modern consumer. 

Brands should be using social commerce to their advantage and can improve sales by integrating BNPL services, utilizing TikTok Shopify features to attract younger audiences, using live streaming for marketing campaigns, and engaging customers with instant messaging.

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Online stores should consider new marketing tools this year as digital marketing evolves to suit the modern shopper. Considering the impressive rise of online retail and the ever-changing demands of these consumers, staying up to date with the latest trends and marketing tools can help businesses stay ahead of the competition. In this article, we discuss consumer financing and more marketing tools that you need to integrate into your online store to drive sales, increase customer retention, and more.

Improve Sales With Consumer Financing

The first strategy to business success is introducing consumer financing functionalities at checkout. Leading Fintech companies like ChargeAfter are paving the way for the evolution of online shopping through the integration of powerful financing platforms. These platforms enable fast and affordable shopping, appealing to consumers that wish to avoid the traps of traditional financing from financial service providers and third-party lenders. With consumer financing, shoppers do not need to undergo credit checks and receive zero-interest repayment plans. As a result, businesses with consumer financing see an increase in interest from these consumers, especially younger shoppers with improved buying power. 

Retain Customers With Email Marketing

Email marketing is a fundamental marketing tool that can help businesses retain customers. Brands can create massive databases of customer emails by encouraging sign-ups or requesting them during the sales process, and then utilize these addresses to feed marketing material directly to the inbox of existing customers or interested consumers. Brand’s can send discounts, promote new offerings, provide free resources, and more through email marketing to peak the interest of customers and entice them to buy again. This resource offers handy recommendations to help you develop a comprehensive and lucrative email marketing campaign. 

Invest in Consumers With Social Commerce

If you are not selling your products on social media then you are missing a powerful means of attracting shoppers. Social media platforms have grown to offer incredible advertising functionalities, enabling brands to integrate their online shops onto social media platforms efficiently. Doing so means that you are constantly front of mind with your consumers as they are notified with product announcements and other brand content directly in their social media feeds. Furthermore, they can quickly shop through the platform without having to leave. We highly recommend integrating a comprehensive social commerce strategy that incorporates social media selling to attract shoppers. 

Captivate Buyers With Content Marketing

Consumers are smarter than ever and align with brands that offer tangible value over and above selling a product or offering a service. Buyers want brands to engage with them, and content marketing remains one of the most critical tools to do so. From blogs to podcasts, videos, social media posts, white papers, and more, brands can captivate the attention of their audiences through content marketing. Furthermore, brands can optimize that content for search results, improving the chances of their content being noticed by new shoppers using search engines. SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand, and you can use this resource to develop a strong SEO strategy.

Influence Shoppers With Influencer Marketing

What may have been considered a fad is now an essential marketing tool for businesses to attract shoppers. Influencer marketing has the power to engage customers and win brand trust through recommendations from the most influential people on social media. Brands can partner with celebrities, social media gurus, and micro-influences to tap into their social audiences. This is a powerful marketing tool, and you can use this resource to inspire your influencer marketing strategy for the year ahead.

Every store should integrate consumer financing, invest in email marketing, develop social commerce strategies, create content, and utilize influencer marketing to improve sales, retain customers, influence shoppers, and more.

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Seamless shopping experiences, comprehensive brand connections, and consistent marketing across channels all constitute reasons why omnichannel marketing is essential in the modern eCommerce age. Online shoppers are more demanding than ever, expecting brands to represent clear identities on all sorts of channels, which is where omnichannel marketing comes in to resolve consumer consumers. In this article, we explore omnichannel marketing in more detail and suggest how fintech companies are improving the modern shoppers’ omnichannel experience. 

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing refers to a comprehensive marketing strategy whereby shoppers can expect a seamless experience across a diverse range of channels. The key attribute of omnichannel marketing is that it is consistent and authentic, appealing to consumers that are more skeptical of online brands have experienced a combination of successful eCommerce platforms and untrustworthy online companies. Introducing omnichannel marketing can, therefore, promote trust by modeling the success of the best eCommerce brands on the market. 

Omnichannel marketing involves considering all aspects of the consumer journey and optimizing every touchpoint to align with key marketing goals. The ability to provide cross-channel marketing that promotes consistent messaging will attract return customers and shoppers who have not yet heard of your store. Furthermore, omnichannel marketing is a means of reinventing the shopping experience to meet the modern demands of shoppers.

The Role of Fintech Companies in Omnichannel Marketing

Fintech companies continue to see interest from the best eCommerce platforms for their ability to support the most critical consumer touchpoint in an omnichannel marketing strategy, the checkout stage. These companies, particularly ChargeAfter, offer one of the most powerful payment options for consumers that beats traditional financing solutions.

These solutions, referred to as buy now pay later (BNPL) services, are integrations at checkout that allow shoppers to receive online financing at the push of a button. These shoppers, using BNPL, no longer need to consult their financial service providers or third-party lenders to purchase products at the later checkout stage of the omnichannel marketing process. Furthermore, they do not have to pass credit checks and repayments are made with zero interest. 

Beyond supporting the consumer and the omnichannel marketing strategy, fintech companies that offer BNPL services benefit businesses by improving the online shopping experience. In fact, BNPL services contribute to an increase in conversion rates of approximately 20% to 30%, according to authoritative sources. 

These statistics suggest it is essential for businesses to adopt BNPL at checkout to support their omnichannel marketing strategy and promote profitable business growth.

Additional Support Ensures Success

Fintech companies can go above and beyond to support the businesses that they partner with, and the leading Fintech companies like ChargeAfter offer consistent checkout support to constantly improve the final stage of one’s omnichannel sales funnel. The delivery of checkout data and regular analysis of key metrics enables ChargeAfter to provide marketing teams with insights and actionable steps to improve the shopping experience. Recommendations like cross-selling and up-selling scratch the surface of the kinds of strategies that these companies can provide based on key metrics each month. Furthermore, round-the-clock support means that businesses can consult for advice at any point regarding their checkout stage of the omnichannel marketing strategy.

Omnichannel marketing is essential in the modern age of online shopping as consumers become more skeptical of online retailers. Introducing an omnichannel marketing strategy that includes BNPL integration can help businesses grow as this particular service supports the most important stage in the funnel, the checkout stage. With consistent support and regular analytical updates, businesses can leverage the best BNPL services on the market to improve their omnichannel marketing strategies.

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With online shopping becoming a fully-integrated and preferred consumer experience, the need for businesses to adopt innovative digital marketing strategies is paramount. The competition is rife, and developing new solutions to solve online shopping problems will help eCommerce stores stand out in the coming years. One particularly powerful new-wave technology is virtual shopping, a process whereby consumers can connect more deeply with their favorite brands. In this article, we explore the future of virtual shopping and how BNPL platforms make modern shopping experiences more powerful than ever.

How Does Virtual Shopping Work?

The term virtual shopping may conjure images of consumers wearing headsets and interacting with products, which is possible in some cases, but this is not the only method of virtual shopping accessible to eCommerce platforms. As a vast majority of online businesses do not have the budget to integrate virtual reality (VR) experiences into their digital marketing strategies, several tools and platforms enable more easy-to-use virtual shopping functionalities that we discuss below.

Virtual shopping can include all sorts of innovative, immersive, and personalized experiences that invite shoppers to connect with eCommerce companies in new ways. Virtual shopping can involve live chat features through platforms like Zoom or Google Meet, specifically around products or services that consumers may need support with setup or installation. It can also involve unique showrooms where consumers can browse products in a way that is more intuitive than traditional product catalogs. Some companies utilize live social media feeds to Twitch as an avenue to connect with their consumers. These are a few examples of ways that you can introduce virtual shopping into your eCommerce experience. 

In a nutshell, virtual shopping revolves around bringing consumers closer to brands in a way that integrates modern marketing platforms. The above strategies represent a few of the most common ways that eCommerce platforms are taking advantage of virtual shopping.

Virtual Shopping by the Numbers

One needs to look no further than the latest statistics to recognize that virtual shopping is one of the most powerful online strategies for eCommerce. According to sources, “About a quarter of consumers have shopped online in a 3D virtual store” with a vast majority of those shoppers falling within the Millenial and Gen Z consumer segments. The source goes on to suggest that over 50% of these shoppers would be willing to spend more for products sold via modern virtual shopping strategies. These numbers indicate the need to introduce virtual shopping into one’s digital marketing strategy, but how can you ensure you land sales after doing so?

How BNPL Supports Virtual Shopping

The integration of BNPL services can greatly improve your chances of securing sales through virtual shopping experiences. Leading BNPL partners offer comprehensive checkout integrations that provide consumers with the easiest way to receive online financing, a process that does not require them to undergo credit checks, and offer repayment plans with zero interest. These are a few of the consumer-facing benefits of BNPL platforms. The virtual shopping experience becomes more powerful when there is tangible value to the shopping experience beyond the opportunity to connect with brands. This is because the modern shopper is looking for exceptional deals as much as they are searching for better brands to shop with. The combination of these two features can yield great results for the modern eCommerce business.

The future of eCommerce is virtual, with virtual shopping becoming a must for the modern online platform. Brands can attract younger audiences and leverage sales through the introduction of these experiences in their sales funnels combined with the integration of consumer financing via BNPL services. This can help eCommerce businesses remain competitive in the evolving modern marketplace.

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Sales efficiency is essential to eCommerce success, and a faster sales funnel leads to greater average order volumes. As online retail reaches its height, businesses should be taking steps to ensure that sales are as efficient as ever. One such strategy is implementing buy now pay later (BNPL) services at the checkout. These consumer-facing solutions provide shoppers with seamless payment functionalities to ease the checkout process, promote sales efficiency, and leverage buy-in. In this article, we discuss how BNPL creates this efficiency further to help you take advantage of growing eCommerce trends.

The Function of BNPL

BNPL’s primary function is to provide consumers with easier ways to shop. The integration lives on a website’s checkout page, is clearly visible to the shopper, and offers a financing solution that shies away from more traditional methods. Instead of having to seek the services of a financial institution, chat with lenders within their network, or utilize third-party services, shoppers can receive on-demand financing and loans right there on the eCommerce platform. This saves them time, requires no credit checks that could stall financing, and provides repayment options with zero interest on installments. These are a few of the benefits of a sales strategy that integrates waterfall consumer financing, or BNPL, for the modern shopper.

Over and above supporting the consumer, BNPL services are powerful tools for business growth. First and foremost, BNPL creates sales efficiency by streamlining the sales funnel and shopping process at the checkout. Shoppers can quickly purchase their carts, ensuring a faster time to sale which correlates with an increase in average order volumes. Furthermore, BNPL enables higher average order values as shoppers are more likely to use the feature to purchase large ticket items, like cellular devices and other electronics or expensive products. The best BNPL partners offer businesses these benefits and more through consistent analysis of key data and ongoing support. 

What Greater Efficiency Means for eCommerce

Efficiency is the name of the eCommerce game as shoppers seek seamless experiences that are quick and easy. Growing expectations among modern shoppers call for eCommerce businesses to install newer innovations that support their user journeys. Greater efficiency means facilitating these shopping needs, answering the pain points that most online shoppers now face.

Greater efficiency also means attracting new consumers to one’s website. Millennial and Gen Z shoppers are particularly powerful consumer groups that eCommerce companies can leverage sales from using tools like BNPL consumer financing. This is because these younger shopping segments are not strangers to fintech services and are more likely to purchase from platforms that integrate the latest technologies in a beneficial way. Greater efficiency means greater opportunities to appeal to these diverse consumer segments.

Furthermore, greater efficiency means more profitable margins as businesses can reduce time spent on remedial tasks and reallocated resources accordingly. When partnering with BNPL service providers, like ChargeAfter, eCommerce brands gain access to a support system that resolves payment issues on behalf of the company. This dedicated checkout personnel also provides consistent progress updates and data to inform further marketing strategies at checkout. The supportive nature of this service ensures that every aspect of business becomes efficient beyond the sales funnel itself. 

In Summary

The best eCommerce businesses promote efficiency at checkout through the integration of new fintech solutions such as BNPL. This service gives brands greater control over their sales funnel, encourages new consumer segments to shop, and streamlines the user experience for an increase in sales and other key marketing metrics. eCommerce platforms can partner with the best BNPL service providers to further their growth and raise their profit margins in the coming months. 

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