Tag: Customer Lifetime Value

Top 4 Consumer Trends of 2022: How to Attract New Customers With Waterfall Consumer Financing

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eCommerce brands must know their consumers backward and forwards as this helps stores deliver the right messages to the right consumers at the right time. Furthermore, companies must be aware of changing consumer trends. With an in-depth understanding of modern consumers beyond designated segments, eCommerce brands can integrate strategies that entice shoppers in 2022. In this article, we explore the top 4 consumer trends of 2022. You can use this information to guide the rollout of new marketing tactics.

1. Finance Fanatics – Integrate Waterfall Consumer Financing

The modern consumer is becoming increasingly interested in finance, something that was previously consigned to finance administrators like accountants and investment brokers. In the age of digital currencies like Bitcoin and Etherium and the accessibility of investment portfolios, consumers are beginning to take a much more active approach to their finances. In response, eCommerce brands should provide their shoppers with the best financing options at checkout. Waterfall consumer financing is an example of a powerful checkout financing integration that gives consumers access to repayment options unavailable through traditional financing partners such as their financial service providers. ChargeAfter is a leading waterfall consumer financing partner that can deploy a seamless checkout plugin to provide your shoppers with access to trustworthy lenders. This benefits finance fanatics that wish to secure the best money management options when browsing eCommerce platforms, resulting in a likely increase in sales for your business. 

2. Sustainability Supporters – Promote Greener Business

Climate change continues to plague the planet, and shoppers demand businesses go greener in response. From a trend to an ultimatum, selecting sustainable strategies to combat climate change can greatly influence the buying decision. eCommerce brands must integrate environmentally-friendly tactics, whether it be biodegradable packaging or cleaner manufacturing processes, and then market these green features. Bear in mind that to avoid green-washing, businesses can subtly showcase their commitment to sustainability by actioning greener operations without the need for financial compensation. Take corporate social responsibility initiatives, for example. These types of initiatives aim to provide community-centric benefits over and above business operations, yielding little in the way of revenue generation but greatly increasing brand repertoire among sustainability supporters. 

3. First-Time Testers – Offer Trials and Testing Opportunities

Customers that fall within this trend are particularly interested in businesses that can showcase value before asking for a commitment to purchase. Rentals allow these consumers to test-drive products and or services, for example. Free trials are popular strategies to attract these consumers for businesses that sell software and return policies are popular among electronics stores. In a nutshell, providing first-time testers with ways of minimizing buying risk will greatly appeal to an audience that takes advantage of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. 

4. Purpose-Driven Personas – Add Narrative Value

The purpose-driven persona is guided through the buying process by powerful branded stories and content that offers narrative value. These shoppers are less interested in the products or services themselves and more enticed by how a brand can spotlight its purpose. For example, a brand that sells fast-moving consumer goods should integrate marketing activities that speak to the company’s commitment to their cause or displays their vision. From blogs to videos and podcasts to guest appearances on web shows, brand representatives can offer these consumers insight into the brand’s purpose and sell the personality of the brand before the products themselves. 

eCommerce brands can attract consumers within these 2022 consumer trends by integrating waterfall consumer financing, developing more environmentally-sustainable strategies, offering better testing opportunities with products and services, as well as clearly defining and displaying their purpose beyond making a profit. Doing so will broaden your consumer base and increase your sales as you attract new shoppers. 

 

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What Separates the Best eCommerce Stores From Their Competition: Buy Now Pay Later and More

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Whether you specialise in electronics or furniture, your eCommerce store will face rife competition from the vast range of businesses selling their products online. Compound this with the fact that consumers are more careful with their decisions, and you can develop a clearer idea of how difficult it is to win customers shopping with the competition. In this article, we discuss how buy now pay later and several other digital marketing strategies separate the best eCommerce platforms from their competition. You can integrate these strategies into your own business for greater success and sustainable growth.

Additional Payment Solutions Like Buy Now Pay Later

Modern shoppers require modern payment methods tailored to their unique shopping behaviours. When it comes to payment solutions, the best eCommerce stores within each industry utilise buy now pay later services at checkout. These facilities let shoppers secure online financing quickly during the checkout process. The best buy now pay later solutions on the market, such as ChargeAfter, ensure that their customers do not have to submit credit checks to apply for loans, do not receive any interest on their repayment plans, and are given options that suit their specific needs. No matter how big or small their shopping cart is, they can easily purchase with buy now pay later and are more likely to do so using the feature. 

An Exceptional UX and UI

The best eCommerce stores provide seamless shopping experiences for their consumers. User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are critical components of successful online store design. As many businesses turn to the digital space rather than traditional brick-and-mortar retail, it is essential that online stores mimic the joyful shopping experience that customers have when browsing their favourite physical stores. When it comes down to web design, UX refers to how easily the consumer can navigate through your store and how efficient their journey is to checkout. You can use this helpful resource for tips on how to optimise your website’s user experience. A website’s UI refers to its look and feel. One should not overlook the power of design. If you are selling luxury alcoholic products, for example, then your website should reflect luxury down to the colour, font, and image choices. The best eCommerce stores tap into the specific likes and dislikes of their chosen target audiences to tailor a UX and UI that aligns with their unique shopping behaviours. 

eCommerce SEM and SEO Tactics

Most eCommerce stores are utilizing search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) in one way or another. But, many fail to comprehend the total value that these marketing activities can have on one’s bottom line. When utilising SEM, the best eCommerce platforms develop comprehensive campaigns using social media advertising, pay per click advertising, Google search advertising, and more. They craft striking visual ads with clear calls to action to drive traffic to their stores and generate more sales. Over and above paying to be in front of their consumers, the best eCommerce sites deploy SEO to drive organic traffic. Organic traffic is one of the most prominent sources of sustainable consumer traffic, far more powerful than paid advertising. Therefore, developing a strong SEO strategy is critical to eCommerce success. 

The best online stores utilise a variety of tactics that others are not or are not integrating to their full extent. From introducing buy now pay later services to improving your site’s UX and UI as well as developing powerful SEM and SEO tactics, your business can leverage these activities to see profitable growth in 2022. 

 

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The Ultimate Guide to Online Selling From Market Research to Consumer Financing

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Whether you have an eCommerce business, are thinking about starting one, or are in the process of integrating one, online selling requires strategizing and developing comprehensive marketing plans. In this ultimate guide to online selling, we discuss how you can prepare your online store for a successful year. We showcase the steps to take to ensure that your eCommerce platform is optimized, attracts your target audience, and drive sales, from market research to consumer financing. 

Conduct Market Research

Market research allows you to closely understand how your eCommerce platform fits into the existing marketplace for your specific products. Market research involves analyzing the current competition, auditing the need and growth potential for a store like yours, assessing the most prominent marketing tools similar businesses use, and clarifying an action plan to drive all of your marketing efforts. This helpful resource provides a step-by-step guide on how to conduct market research. 

Identify Your Target Audience

The next step to running a successful online business is identifying and defining your target audience. This refers to the people that you intend to sell your products to. It is not enough to have a loose idea of these people in your head. You should work with a marketing team to pinpoint the exact person who will benefit most from your products and outline everything there is to know about them in buyer personas. These buyer personas should explain the ideal customers demographics, psychographics, discuss their likes and dislikes, their preferred social media platforms, what drives them to make a sale, what’s important to them, their profession, their household roles, and the list goes on. The reason eCommerce companies develop buyer personas is so that they can send the right marketing material and content to the right person at the right time. This ensures that marketing budgets are optimized and that there is a positive return on investment. 

Build Your Brand Presence

A brand presence involves creating a solid brand narrative, expressing your brand identity visually, and delivering content that aligns with your brand story and visual aesthetic. Holistic brand presence development rests on an appealing corporate identity and digital playbook that will guide the styling of your website, social media pages, and all consumer touchpoints as well as focus your content publication efforts. To build brand awareness, you can utilize social media advertising and other paid media channels to showcase your growing brand presence to new consumers within your target audience.

Optimize Your Storefront for Sales

With buyer personas, a solid market research and action plan, and a strong brand presence, you can drive sales on your website. That is to assume that your storefront is optimized for sales. Optimizing your website is not only beneficial for your google search ranking but a seamless user journey is fundamental to eCommerce success. Shoppers want a website that is easy to navigate and offers additional integrations to supplement their shopping experience. For example, consumer financing from ChargeAfter is a powerful platform that provides consumers with zero-interest financing options at the checkout. Individuals that have access to consumer financing are more likely to convert to paying customers as this form of financing is more cost-effective, quicker, and less stressful than traditional financing options with third-party providers or financial service providers. Consumer financing integration is one of many storefront optimization techniques to support your online selling. 

Conduct market research, identify your target audience, build your brand presence, and optimize your storefront to sell online faster than ever and grow a thriving eCommerce business within your competitive industry.

How to Take Advantage of Email Marketing and Secure Sales With Consumer Financing

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Email is far from being a dated communication strategy for businesses. In fact, email marketing is one of the most powerful tools in an eCommerce store’s arsenal of marketing tools. In this article, we explore email marketing in more detail and discuss how you can use it alongside consumer financing to secure more sales. 

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing refers to the process whereby businesses encourage sales through emailers sent to an existing email database. An email database is made up of all customers, potential consumers, and leads that have supplied an online store with their email via several lead magnets used during the marketing process. These lead magnets often include pop-ups asking for customers to sign up to newsletters to receive discounts, free resources that consumers can access after providing their email addresses, and post-purchase emails asking customers to provide their addresses for future notifications and specials. Tapping into one’s existing email database through email marketing is critical to eCommerce success as businesses can attract individuals who are less motivated by social media advertising and other promotional consumer touchpoints. 

How Consumer Financing Supports Email Marketing

To be a successful eCommerce store, one should integrate email marketing into the brand’s holistic marketing strategy. That said, email marketing will not work alone. Email marketing is bound to bring customers to the website, but there needs to be a reason to buy beyond an appealing email, good prices, and quality customer support. eCommerce platforms can go above and beyond to support their shoppers using consumer financing from ChargeAfter. Consumer financing is a means of providing your customers with immediate access to zero-interest loans via a network of trustworthy lenders. ChargeAfter is a leading consumer financing partner that can deliver this solution with great return on investment potential. The addition of consumer financing from ChargeAfter on your website will secure more sales as a consumer’s shopping experience is made easier than ever before. 

3 Steps to Ensure Sales With Email Marketing

Considering the combination of email marketing and consumer financing at checkout should bring success, let’s take a closer look at 3 steps to ensure that these efforts lead to valuable customer conversions. 

1. Develop a Comprehensive Plan

Most email marketing failures can be chalked up to a lack of planning. In today’s day and age of online shopping, eCommerce platforms must formulate clear and concise plans for a profitable return on investment. An email marketing plan should include a clear audience definition to ensure you are sending the right information to the right people in a way that will grab their attention. The email marketing plan should also establish a frequency output and goals to assess success. The frequency will depend on your existing analytics and goals will help you analyze future analytics for email marketing optimization.

2. Design Better Looking Emails

Email marketing has become visual, and the best eCommerce store’s go above and beyond to curate beautiful-looking emailers for their customers. Gone are the days where a paragraph or two of written content will do the trick. Today, emails need to express a narrative. They need your logo, colorful pictures, bold headlines, clickable buttons, and a variety of design elements that attract consumer interest. To begin designing better emails, consider using Mailchimp.

3. Highlight Added Value

From discounts to consumer financing, customers are more likely to purchase from eCommerce stores that offer added value. You should make your added value offerings clear in your emails to grab the attention of consumers. You could have a big discount value highlighted in big and bold colors at the top of your email. Maybe reconsider the positioning of your subject line, using this key call to action as a selling point to showcase your added value offerings. Either way, you should make it clear that you provide value beyond the competition. 

Email marketing is a powerful strategy to diversify your sales channels and encourage more conversions, and you can utilize consumer financing to take advantage of the revenue generation potential of a solid email marketing strategy.

How Online Financing From ChargeAfter Supports eCommerce Marketing Analytics

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Analytics are essential to making strategic eCommerce decisions, and business owners should work closely with marketing teams to make profitable decisions based on data. In this article, we discuss marketing analytics, the types of marketing analytics, and how online financing can support successful decisions based on marketing analytics.

What Are Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics refers to data collected on critical consumer touchpoints within a sales funnel. These analytics paint a clear picture of the buyer’s journey and give eCommerce businesses insights that prove critical to making profitable marketing decisions. Marketing analytics should be collected and reported on monthly to ensure that all eCommerce marketing initiatives are backed by strategic insight. 

Types of Marketing Analytics

There are several types of marketing analytics that eCommerce stores can assess to make strategic marketing decisions. While there are often too many to track simultaneously, marketing teams can prioritize relevant marketing metrics to track analytics that will help grow the particular eCommerce store. For example, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) businesses should keep a close watch on abandoned cart rates as these can offer valuable insight on the reasons why shoppers turn away from their stores right before making a purchase. Below are a few key marketing metrics that will yield valuable marketing analytics for online store optimization:

  • Descriptive analytics
  • Predictive analytics
  • Prescriptive analytics

You can learn more about these types of analytics here.

How Online Financing Supports Marketing Analytics

With these marketing metrics in mind, let’s take a look at how online financing can support decisions made based on marketing analytics. 

1. Improved Customer Lifetime Value

eCommerce marketing teams can assess customer lifetime values to determine how profitable their customers are for the business. Customer lifetime value refers to the total spend an individual customer will make with an online store across all of their purchases. Improving customer lifetime values is a sign of positive customer retention, a profitable marketing strategy that requires attention. Online financing from ChargeAfter can help increase customer lifetime values as it provides many important consumer benefits. Customers are enticed by online financing as it provides an easy way to shop online, encouraging them to return to an online store to purchase again. It does this by giving them access to on-demand financing at the push of a button without credit checks and zero-interest repayment plans. 

2. Longer Time Spent on Site

eCommerce platforms should consider the time that customers spend on their sites. The longer a potential customer spends on a site, the more likely they will make a purchase. The time spent on site can provide insight into the user experience, the relevancy of branded content, the attractiveness of discounts and products, and more. To increase customer time spent on-site during checkout, integrate online financing from ChargeAfter. This integration gives customers access to instant financing options without having to leave your store to consult their bank or third-party lender. This can lead to greater sales during a business month. 

3. Higher Conversion Rates

Conversions are critical to the success of eCommerce stores. Marketing teams must look into the current conversion rates and determine avenues to grow these throughout the year. One such method is integrating online financing from ChargeAfter. The platform encourages consumers to shop as it provides greater financial aid than alternative platforms. Furthermore, the integration is easy-to-use. eCommerce platforms that integrate online financing will also yield more impactful marketing analytics as ChargeAfter’s round-the-clock customer service and data insights are a complimentary add-on to partnership packages. 

Marketing analytics are essential to making better business decisions in 2022. Online store owners should consider key marketing metrics and the insights gathered from analytics to drive success moving forward. With the inclusion of online financing from ChargeAfter, eCommerce stores will see improved customer lifetime values, longer times spent on site, and higher conversion rates. 

New Year, New Tips to Grow Your eCommerce Business in 2022 With Consumer Financing and More!

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Another year has come and gone, and 2022 will bring with it new growth opportunities for eCommerce business owners. Marketing trends, web integrations, and consumer-centric considerations will drive success for online stores that return to business this year. In this article, we share several tips on how to grow your business in 2022. We cover consumer financing, SEO strategies, and more ways to offer richer shopping experiences. Implement one or more of these tips to see profitable growth in the first quarter of the new year and beyond. 

1. Integrate Leading Consumer Financing

It is vitally important that, as an online store, you offer consumer financing or consumer lending options. Consumer financing is quickly becoming a mainstay checkout feature of the best eCommerce businesses. But, it is not enough to partner with any old consumer financing company. In 2022, you should consider partnering with the leading consumer financing companies on the market. ChargeAfter offers a first-class consumer financing service to eCommerce businesses big and small that wish to leverage the benefits of online financing. The service differs from traditional bank lending as consumers can instantly tap into the company’s extensive network of lenders without credit checks. Furthermore, ChargeAfter lenders offer repayment plans with no additional interest charges. These benefits, coupled with comprehensive technical support and data-driven recommendations, ensure ChargeAfter offers a stand-out service for eCommerce partners. The integration of consumer financing with ChargeAfter will promote sales at checkout. 

2. Develop Stronger SEO Strategies

All online stores need an SEO strategy. Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that your website is visible to shoppers browsing Google and other search engines. With a solid SEO strategy, eCommerce businesses can appear on the first page of the search results for specific keywords commonly entered by consumers looking for certain products or services. You may have an SEO strategy in place, but it’s time to develop a stronger one as the new year brings new opportunities to leverage powerful Google features. You should register your business with Google My Business even if your store is completely online. This will help shoppers closer to your operational location find you quicker through location-based SEO. You should also sign up with Google Merchant Center and link your catalog with Google Shopping. This ensures that your shop is visible on Google when shoppers are browsing for specific products, also giving them the ability to purchase directly from Google. This can speed up your sales funnel, leading to profitable growth.

3. Optimize for Omnichannel Marketing

Having a website and a Facebook page is the bare minimum for running a successful eCommerce business. In 2022, you must develop an omnichannel marketing strategy. Omnichannel marketing involves creating consistent brand messaging across a variety of platforms to leverage sales and brand loyalty at every consumer touchpoint. You should utilize email marketing, consumer financing at checkout, branded drop shipping, social media advertising, Google advertising, and more. The more places that your brand is visible, the better. 

4. Put Your Customers at the Center of Business

Don’t just say that you put your customers first, actually deliver on this promise. As an eCommerce platform, you should pride yourself in positive customer reviews and showcase this social proof on your website and social media platforms. You should deploy customer review collection strategies to acquire as much customer insight as possible, and then make decisions to mitigate the frequency of negative reviews. Rather than hiding or deleting negative reviews, respond to them timely with sincerity and put a customer service representative on the case to resolve the issue. This is one example of how you can show customers that they represent the core of your business operations. There are many more ways to put customers at the center of your business. 

Grow your eCommerce business in 2022 with consumer financing, stronger SEO strategies, omnichannel marketing, and a consumer-centric operational model. These are the key tips to implement in the new year for a profitable first quarter.

5 Ways to Promote Your Products Including Online Financing and More

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Online retail competition is rife and business owners need to consider new avenues to promote their products and integrate best practices to set their digital stores apart. The need to develop better eCommerce platforms goes hand in hand with the increase in online shopping following the pandemic, and continued interest in efficient digital retail as a result. Implementing strategies to promote your products is a sure-fire way of grabbing consumer attention, acquiring new customers, and converting interested shoppers. Following this article’s 5 ways to promote your products including online financing and more, you can improve your sales, stand out from the competition, and grow your business in the digital shopping age. 

1. Promoting With Online Financing

Online financing is a powerful promotion tactic that benefits consumers shopping with online stores. ChargeAfter is a provider of trustworthy online financing that connects shoppers with lenders capable of providing financing with no additional interest or credit applications required. eCommerce platforms can partner with ChargeAfter to integrate the beneficial consumer financing plug-in at their online shop checkout page, giving their buyers access to instant financing solutions. This integration promotes products as it provides incentives to consumers who use the feature. By highlighting the consumer-centric benefits of online financing, businesses can promote product sales at checkout without having to invest too heavily beyond the online financing integration. 

2. Take Advantage of GMB and GMC

To stand out and sell products, online stores need to optimize their platforms for Google. Beyond implementing SEO best practices, companies should establish a Google My Business (GMB) page to improve their searchability. One should then consider setting up a profile with Google Merchant Center (GMC) to link Google Shopping with their online store. This helps consumers browsing Google find your products quicker, arrive at your website more efficiently, and even shop your products directly from Google should you enable this function. 

3. Advertise a Social Media Competition

Social media competitions are a great way to get your products in front of your online audience. They are cost-effective as they rely on users sharing competition adverts with their friends and family that may fall within your target market. It is, however, advisable that you put ad spend behind your social media competition to increase your reach and impressions. This strategy will ensure that you attract many buyers and friends of those that advocate for your brand and products. 

4. Utilize Email Marketing

Email marketing is a cost-effective and powerful strategy to implement as shoppers on your email database are often loyal buyers with a vested interest in your products. To bring their awareness to new deals and items, email marketing is your best bet as you can reach out to a massive list of people that are already aware of your brand. Furthermore, email magnets can encourage others to join your database and you can steadily grow your email marketing list while punting your products. 

5. Showcase Success

Now more than ever, shoppers want to buy from stores that have positive reviews and customer testimonials. It is imperative that you highlight positive reviews and bring them to the consumers’ attention. You can also generate success story blogs that improve SEO and link to products to further promote items you wish to sell. A good review strategy will ensure that you sell to more of the right buyers quicker as customers make decisions based on other consumers’ experiences with your products and services.

A combination of online financing, Google features, social media advertising, email marketing, and review strategies will help your eCommerce platform put your products in front of your online audience and drive greater sales for profitable digital growth.

How to Increase Customer Lifetime Value With Consumer Financing from ChargeAfter

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Customer acquisition is a cornerstone of eCommerce success, however, it is not the only pivotal pillar to profitable online business growth. Customer retention remains a crucial part of eCommerce growth and online store owners must consider ways to promote customer retention. In this article, we detail customer retention based on the importance of determining and improving customer lifetime values. We also provide a way to improve customer lifetime values through the integration of consumer financing from ChargeAfter. 

The Importance of Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value refers to a critical metric and the techniques that drive customer retention. In a nutshell, customer lifetime value is the total value of sales that an individual customer brings to an online store from their first purchase to their last purchase.

Improving customer lifetime values is critical as businesses do not need to invest heavily in return customers. Customer retention strategies are far more affordable than customer acquisition strategies. In the long run, businesses can ensure profitable growth by encouraging return customers to shop as opposed to launching extensive campaigns with costly budgets that may not yield the results intended. 

The importance of improving customer lifetime value lies in the following three benefits:

  • It drives repeat purchases for greater long term profit and sustainability
  • It boosts loyalty among existing customers who can influence other shoppers
  • It reduces the investment costs required to drive sales

Using the following technique, you can better prepare your eCommerce platform to improve customer lifetime values:

The RFM Technique

RFM refers to recency, frequency, and monetary value. The technique involves segmenting your customers based on the value that they can potentially bring to your business. In order to do so, one must take into account these three factors:

  • Recency: how recently a customer made a purchase on your website. The more recent since their last purchase, the more likely they will buy again.
  • Frequency: how often a customer purchases from your store within a specific timeframe. Customers that purchase frequently are valuable as they express a loyal interest in your brand.
  • Monetary value: the monetary extend of a customer’s last purchase on your website. The more expensive a customers purchase, the more likely they are to buy again.

Looking at these three factors, business owners and their marketing teams can categorize specific shoppers into tiers of value that help guide how affordable targeting those customers will be for greater return on investment. Customers that perform well in all three categories are your most valuable customers, and you should focus on them.

The Customer Lifetime Value Formula

To calculate customer lifetime value and assess the analytical significance of each customer, consider the following three formulas in sequential order:

  1. Average Order Value = Total Sales / Order Count
  2. Purchase Frequency = Total Orders / Total Customers
  3. Customer Value = Average Order Value x Purchase Frequency

Following these three steps with each customer, you will have a monetary indication of their customer lifetime value. This will allow you to craft marketing strategies that attract your most profitable consumers. 

How Consumer Financing Increases Customer Lifetime Value

The next step is to implement said marketing strategies to leverage your loyal consumers. While there are many techniques to do so, one of the most cost-effective tools to improve customer lifetime value is consumer financing from ChargeAfter. This tool is a checkout integration that gives your customers access to on-demand and personalized financing plans at the push of a button when checking out. With this integration, customers can purchase from your store quickly and affordably. They will not have to seek the financial assistance of third-party providers that come with extensive repayment plans. Instead, they can easily shop with your store – encouraging existing customers to raise their average order values and increase their purchase frequency. The result will be a greater customer lifetime value for each consumer.