Posts by: Jack Saville

9 Best Cart Abandonment Software to Boost Conversion Rates

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If you’re an ecommerce marketer, you’ll know just how frustrating cart abandonment can be.

You might have tried installing a cart abandonment plugin, or sending discount coupon emails to convert more interest into sales.

But the process of recovering lost revenue to cart abandonment requires more than just installing a piece of software or tweaking an email drip campaign. It requires a strategic solution that leverages customer data and improves the customer experience from website entry through to exit. 

There are many questions that need to be addressed. How many abandoned cart emails do you send out? What are you doing to optimize your website before cart abandonment occurs.

But while asking yourselves these questions, remember cart abandonment is not an isolated problem – and using a holistic conversion rate optimization platform like Yieldify is the best way to tackle it effectively. 

In this article, I will review 9 of the best cart abandonment software to help you boost your conversion rates and retain your customers.

I’ve drawn on the expert insight of my Yieldify colleague, Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant, to explain what steps you can take to reduce cart abandonment. 

Let’s jump right in. 

  1. Yieldify
  2. OptinMonster
  3. CartStack
  4. Rejoiner
  5. Sleeknote
  6. Nosto
  7. Bunting
  8. Klaviyo
  9. Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce

1. Yieldify

Yieldify is a website personalization platform built to help marketers multiply the ROI they get from their on-site traffic – helping you to increase email & SMS leads, conversion rates, and average order values. 

By leveraging Yieldify’s deeply segmented and highly targeted on-page messaging, you can personalize your customers’ on-site experience at every stage of their journey – from entry to sale and repeat business. 

Here’s how Yieldify helps you address the problems you’ll have faced with cart abandonment: 

  • It helps you understand customer journeys: With purchase cycle analysis and Sunburst charts, Yieldify helps you understand where, when and why different customer segments are abandoning their shopping carts 
  • It builds your consumers’ trust in your brand: By leveraging Yieldify’s experiences, including social proof, customer testimonials, and brand reassurance messaging, you can build long-lasting brand loyalty among your customers
  • It converts more interest into sales: Through end-to-end, highly targeted personalization, Yieldify helps you maximize the value of your website traffic by improving conversion rates

Here’s an in-depth look at the cart abandonment features Yieldify customers love: 

Uncover 5x More Customer Journey Insights with Advanced Audience Analytics

Most ecommerce marketers don’t have enough data to understand why their customers fail to check out. They know they need to make changes to convert more of their website traffic, but they have no idea where to start. And that’s typically because they only have a superficial understanding of their customers’ behavior. 

Popular analytics platforms like Google Analytics offer helpful insights to ecommerce marketers, but they fall short of providing a complete picture of customer journeys. If you’re looking to increase conversions and optimize your website, you need more than just a starting point – you need specific information on how your customers navigate through your site.  

At Yieldify, you can access this level of data using Sunburst charts. Offering 5X more customer journey insights than Google Analytics, Sunburst charts offer a highly visual, interactive, and 360-degree view of your customer journeys. 

The goal? To uncover funnel friction, signpost your visitors onto the best conversion path and improve performance – whether that’s more sign-ups, logins, or sales.

And don’t worry about Apple and Google’s decision to block third-party cookies. With Yieldify’s Stable ID solution, you’ll have access to 365 days worth of customer data, ensuring you continue to provide hyper-relevant experiences throughout the customer journey. 

Make your Customer Acquisition Channels Work Harder with On-Site Brand-Building 

Marketers have been pouring money into pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for years.

It’s been a key traffic driver for almost every successful ecommerce brand, but it’s not a very sustainable way to grow your business. That’s because rising demand for advertising space has made it more challenging to generate a decent return on your investment. 

Every ecommerce marketer is acutely aware of this problem. So how can you fix it? In my experience, you have to switch from short-term to long-term thinking – and your brand identity is right at the heart of it. You need to give customers a reason why they should buy from you, not one of thousands of competing retailers in your space. 

Ask yourself: What’s your story? What do you stand for? What makes you different? If you can’t answer these questions, you’ll need more than cart abandonment software to accelerate online sales. But if you’re confident about your brand, the next step is to make your customers and website visitors know what you’re all about.

At Yieldify, we’ve helped connect thousands of customers to ecommerce brands with a wide range of on-site campaigns, including: 

  • USP messaging
  • Customer testimonials
  • Review platform ratings
  • Trust badges
  • Payment & delivery options  

These experiences provide valuable information at sensitive moments in the purchase funnel. In the long run, these experiences willboost brand affinity and help you curb cart abandonment.

Go Beyond Cart Abandonment Strategies with Deeply Segmented and Highly Targeted Personalization

If you’re in the market for cart abandonment software, then you’ll already have a basic (at the very least) grasp of website personalization. But cart abandonment tactics represent just one slice of the pie, which is why many marketers use an all-in-one solution like Yieldify to meet all of their personalization needs. 

With Yieldify, you can bring full-funnel personalization to your ecommerce website with seamless, on-brand experiences that adapt to customer journeys. Through our platform, you can segment your customers into subgroups and target them with messaging that’s most relevant to their on-site behavior. 

For example, you can show different on-site experiences to your customers based on: 

  • New vs returning 
  • Purchase history
  • Time on site 
  • Acquisition source
  • Browsing history
Lead capture for new visitorsLead capture for returning visitors

All of Yieldify’s no-code audience segments are readily available on our platform.

Beyond segmentation, our deep range of triggering rules – including scroll depth, inactivity and exit intent – help you reach your customers at the optimal moment in their journey. 

Together, our deep segmentation and triggering capabilities help you build more personalized experiences for your customers. And thanks to our A/B testing capabilities, you’ll always know if you’re reaching your goals – whether you’re looking to increase leads, conversion rates or average order values. 

G2 Rating: 4.7/5 stars

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your website’s CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.

2. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a lead generation platform used by more than 1m websites worldwide. Their automated triggers and multistep lead capture forms help capture leads and recover abandoned carts. Coupled with its targeting features, you can create personalized campaigns to entice customers back into the purchasing process.

However, OptinMonster’s limited design options can be problematic for marketers with more sophisticated requirements. 

G2 Rating: 4.1/5 stars

3. CartStack

CartStack offers a range of features, including exit intent popups, email campaigns, and SMS campaigns, to recover lost sales. They target users who abandoned their carts with tailored, automated email sequences. Some CartStack users have struggled with its challenging interface and limited library of email templates.

G2 Rating: 4.6/5 stars

4. Rejoiner

Rejoiner focuses on personalized email campaigns, with dynamic cart recovery emails to encourage customers to complete their purchases. Rejoiner comes with its own set of pros and cons. It boasts good deliverability rates and provides real-time analytics for effective campaign monitoring. However, creating advanced segments can be challenging, and the pricing may be relatively high for smaller businesses.

G2 Rating: 4.5/5 stars

5. Sleeknote

Sleeknote provides popups, lead magnets, and email campaigns to capture leads and reduce cart abandonment. Sleeknote offers high customization, allowing you to create unique website pop-ups to capture abandoning visitors’ emails. On the other hand, some Sleeknote users have been frustrated by its  limited reporting capabilities and lack of advanced targeting features.

G2 Rating: 4.8/5 stars

6. Nosto

Nosto is an AI-powered personalization platform that uses advanced machine learning algorithms to track, analyze, and understand customer behavior. With this knowledge, Nosto enables you to craft personalized abandoned cart reminders and optimize the on-site shopping experience for returning visitors. Customers have praised Nosto for its analytics and reporting capabilities as well as its customer support, but non-technical users may struggle to utilize its full range of personalization features without HTML coding experience.

G2 Rating: 4.6/5 stars

7. Bunting

Bunting is a website personalization tool with various features including cart abandonment emails, personalized recommendations, and on-site pop-ups. It is designed to help you create targeted marketing campaigns that cater specifically to your audience’s preferences.

While customers have praised Bunting for its prompt customer support service, others have complained about its dated interface.

G2 Rating: Bunting does not have any G2 ratings.

8. Klaviyo

One of the most popular choices for businesses of all sizes, Klaviyo is a powerful email and SMS marketing platform. With Klaviyo, you can create email sequences to target abandoned carts, segment your audience, and integrate the software with your ecommerce platform for a seamless experience.

While some users love Klaviyo’s extensive automation options and wide range of integrations, the process of setting up complex automation workflows requires users to tackle a steep learning curve.

G2 Rating: 4.6/5 stars

9. Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce

This WordPress plugin is designed to help ecommerce stores recover abandoned carts by sending email reminders and offering discounts.

Abandoned Cart Pro has its own set of pros and cons. On the positive side, it offers a simple setup process and customization options that can be tailored to your specific store requirements. Additionally, it sends well-timed automated emails to aid in cart recovery and provides a variety of email templates to choose from. 

However, it is limited to WordPress-based ecommerce websites, and some users have been unhappy about slow response times from the customer support team. 

G2 Rating: 4.2/5 stars

Which Ecommerce Cart Abandonment Software Should I Choose?

There are many options available when it comes to cart abandonment software. But how do you know which cart abandonment software is right for you? 

It’s important to pick a platform that aligns with your specific needs. If you have a WordPress-based online store and are looking for a simple plugin to automate recovery emails, Abandoned Cart Pro is a good fit. However, if you’re looking for an advanced CRO solution that helps you build personalized user experiences, you’re likely to be better off with a sophisticated, all-in-one solution like Yieldify.

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your website’s CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.

How do you solve cart abandonment?

Most ecommerce marketers use email drips to recover lost revenue from cart abandonment. But the best cart abandonment strategies incorporate many on-site tactics – including brand-building and conversion rate optimization – to encourage more shoppers to buy in session.

What is the average cart abandonment rate?

While estimates of the average cart abandonment rate do vary, the figure sits at 69.99% according to the Baymard Institute. This number was calculated based on 48 different studies concerning cart abandonment within the ecommerce industry.  

9 Best Google Optimize Alternatives After the Sunset

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Google’s decision to sunset Google Optimize might feel like a problem.

But take a step back and you’ll see the end of Google Optimize is actually a huge opportunity. 

It’s a chance to re-evaluate your long-term website testing goals, switch to a tool that’s more sophisticated, and multiply the ROI you’re getting from your on-site traffic. 

Whether you’re a developer or a marketer using Google Optimize, you’ll likely have faced at least one of these problems:

  • No on-page testing: Google Optimize only offers in-page testing. This means you can test different versions of the same webpage, but you can’t add new content to see how it impacts your metrics. 
  • Restricted testing capacity: You can only run five tests at the same time with Google Optimize, and for a maximum of 35 days. That’s simply not enough to gather audience insights that help you accelerate revenue growth. Most mid-market and enterprise brands need to run tests for 2-3 months to confidently find a winning variant.
  • No service team to launch & optimize tests: Google Optimize is a self-service tool designed for beginners to A/B testing. Without a service team to help you launch and optimize your tests, it’s impossible to scale your testing strategy.
  • Limited audience segmentation capabilities: Because Google Optimize has restrictions on how many characters you can add to custom code, it’s impossible to deeply segment your customers when launching A/B tests.

In this post, I’ll compare nine of the best alternatives to Google Optimize. I’ll start with our platform, Yieldify, which provides on-page testing solutions to drive measurable results quickly.

We don’t currently offer an in-page testing feature, but we’ve worked with thousands of marketers that use Yieldify instead of an in-page testing tool like Google Optimize. 

That’s because on-page testing is a more effective solution for personalizing your customer experiences and increasing conversion rates. Typically only 10% of A/B tests reach statistical significance with an in-page testing tool. With an on-page testing tool, that number is much higher. With a platform like Yieldify, at least 50% of the tests we run reach a positive and statistically significant result. 

So, if you’ve only ever used an in-page testing tool, now is the perfect time to switch to an on-page testing platform like Yieldify. As well as Yieldify, I’ll also walk you through eight more testing solutions for your ecommerce website.

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. An advisor from our sales team will be delighted to share more. 

  1. Yieldify
  2. AB Tasty
  3. VWO Testing
  4. Optimizely
  5. Omniconvert
  6. Unbounce
  7. Monetate
  8. Convert
  9. Adobe Target 

1. Yieldify

Yieldify is a no-code alternative to Google Optimize built to help marketers multiply the ROI they get from their on-site traffic – helping you to increase email & SMS leads, conversion rates and average order values. 

By leveraging Yieldify’s deeply segmented and highly targeted on-page messaging, you can personalize your customers’ on-site experience at every stage of their journey – from entry to sale and repeat business. 

Here’s how Yieldify addresses the problems you’ve probably encountered with Google Optimize: 

  • Yieldify launches and optimizes on-page tests. We can add new elements to your website and measure how they impact performance. Your CRO consultant will ideate, launch and optimize your on-page tests to increase email leads, conversions and AOVs.
  • Yieldify has limitless testing capacity. Our enterprise customers run 100-200 tests per year on average – but we’ll launch as many tests as you need to hit your goals. We also run every test until it reaches statistical significance. That way you’ll only push experiences to 100% of your website visitors when you know it’s performing better than the baseline.
  • Yieldify can plan and execute your entire testing strategy for you. That means you’ll get round-the-clock service from your dedicated CRO consultant, data analysts, graphic designers and technical engineers.
  • Yieldify’s deep range of customizable audience segments are ready to use straight out of the box. Segment your customers as narrowly or broadly as you like with Yieldify’s highly targeted audience segmentation capabilities – no code required.

Here’s an in-depth look at the features Yieldify customers love: 

Drive More Conversions and Unlock Deep Audience Insights with Yieldify’s Advanced On-Page Testing Methodology

Google Optimize’s in-page testing methodology is great for understanding how subtle tweaks can impact your website’s performance.  

But what if you could transform customer journeys by running on-page tests that bring new experiences on your website, instead of just changing what already exists? 

Through our incremental, A/B and A/B/n testing technology, that’s exactly what we offer. By testing and optimizing new website elements, such as social proof, embedded USP banners and custom-made overlays, our on-page testing methodology has helped ecommerce brands drive 79:1 ROI with Yieldify’s platform. 

And because 50% of our tests reach statistical significance, we glean data-driven insights for our customers 400% quicker than they do with standard testing tools.

Here’s how we run on-page tests:

1. Incremental testing

If you don’t test your website optimizations against a baseline, you won’t know if you’re actually improving performance. That’s why we always run optimizations as incremental tests before running an A/B test. No smoke, no mirrors – just clear, actionable results.

In an incremental test, we change a single website element for 50% of your audience (the test group), and we don’t change anything for the other 50% (the control group). With a test and control methodology, we can show you the actual performance uplift delivered by an optimization. It also guarantees that we isolate our impact on conversion rate and revenue from other factors such as seasonality.

2. A/B & A/B/n testing

When we know a website experience performs better than your baseline, we’ll then optimize its performance through A/B testing. We divide your traffic into two groups of 50% and show them different experiences to uncover which variant drives the best outcome. 

For example, we could test two different versions of a social proof experience – altering the design, placement, CTA, triggering, or targeting rules – to determine which drives the biggest conversion rate uplift. 

If you’re driving more than 100k monthly website visits, you can test up to 5 different variants with Yieldify’s A/B/n testing technology. The inclusion of additional variants helps us uncover actionable audience insights quicker than a standard A/B test. 

3. Performance Predictors

Yieldify’s Performance Predictors can tell within days if a test will improve or hinder your website performance. That way you don’t have to waste weeks or months to work out the impact of a website change.

When our AI-powered algorithm predicts negative performance, our account strategists end the test, review the data and amend the experiment – whether that’s changing the copy, creative or audience segment. That way we help our customers turn a losing test into a winning one, ensuring they can resolve friction points faster and don’t waste time on the wrong approach.

Build a Deep Understanding of your Customers’ On-Site Behavior with Sunburst Analytics 

Most of our customers are in the dark when they sign with us. They don’t have enough data to build a solid website optimization strategy, and have tried to improve conversions based on gut feeling (in my experience, normally with very limited success) but don’t know where to get started with a data-led approach.

The problem is that popular website analytics platforms like Google Analytics don’t provide a complete picture of your customer journeys. They provide a good starting point for foundational insights, but lack the detail you need to increase conversion rates.

For example, Google Analytics can only report your customer journeys in one direction (aka mono-directionally). That means you can see what happens when users go down the funnel – for example, from homepage to checkout. But you can’t tell if they go back up the funnel – for example, from product pages to category pages and back again. 

In theory, you could manually map each journey type with Google’s Users Flow reports. But that’s a painstaking process most marketers simply don’t have time for. Besides, we rarely come across customers who actually find them useful. The result? A substantial blind spot in your understanding of your customers’ journeys.

To help you truly understand your visitors’ behavior, at Yieldify we use sophisticated data analytics and insights tools – including Sunburst charts – to uncover 5x more customer journey insights than Google Analytics. 

Yieldify Sunburst charts provide an interactive, 360-degree view of your customer journeys, so you can see exactly how your visitors advance through the funnel – regardless of what direction they take.

We break down journey types to find conversion opportunities, including by:

  • Traffic acquisition source
  • New and returning customers
  • Converting and non-converting journeys
  • And many more

The goal? To uncover funnel friction, signpost your visitors onto the best conversion path and improve performance – whether that’s more sign-ups, logins or sales.

Fully Managed Customer Journey Optimization – Including CRO Expertise, Data Analysis, Graphic Design & Technical Engineers 

Most marketers we work with simply don’t have the right tools to reliably improve their website performance. They’ve got clear goals for their website and a raft of data to work with, but no direction on how to devise and execute their own optimization strategy. 

If you’re in that position, then Yieldify is the perfect solution for you. Our full-service team – including CRO specialists, data analysts, graphic designers and technical engineers – handles your entire customer journey optimization strategy for you.

Simply tell us your website goals and we’ll do all the heavy lifting. That way you can: 

  • Analyze customer journeys 
  • Uncover deep audience insights 
  • Define your CRO strategy 
  • Personalize your customers journeys 
  • Run A/B and A/B/n tests 
  • See in-depth reports on your performance

Once you get started with Yieldify, your dedicated account strategist will analyze your website data to understand where your customers are bouncing and why. They’ll inspect your UX, review your Google Analytics and evaluate your website’s current performance against Yieldify’s 30 billion benchmarking data points. Armed with that insight, they’ll get your first data-driven tests live within 14 days and demonstrate performance uplift within weeks.

Your input? Simply install a single line of Yieldify code onto your site via a tag manager. After that, you can be as involved as much or as little as you like. You’ll only need 30 minutes a week to approve strategic recommendations, sign off creative or review revenue results.

Go Beyond In-Page Testing with Deeply Segmented and Highly Targeted Personalization

If you’re considering Google Optimize alternatives, it’s likely you’ve used an in-page testing tool before. But in-page testing represents just one small aspect of website optimization, which is why many marketers use Yieldify instead of an in-page testing tool. 

At Yieldify, we bring full-funnel personalization to ecommerce brands by launching website experiences that adapt to customer journeys. We do this by segmenting your customers into subgroups, before targeting them with in-page messaging that’s most relevant to their on-site behaviors. 

For example, we can show different on-site experiences to your customers based on: 

  • New vs returning users 
  • Purchase history
  • Time on site 
  • Acquisition source
  • Product browsing history

Unlike Google Optimize, all of Yieldify’s audience segments are readily available on our platform and don’t require any HTML coding experience to build. Not only that, our account managers will define the best segmentation strategy for you after analyzing your website data. 

Beyond segmentation, our deep range of triggering rules ensure that your experiences appear at the right time. Some personalization tools overwhelm customers with intrusive, ill-timed messaging. Rather than accelerate conversions, this damages the UX and pushes customers away from your brand. 

But at Yieldify, we set all of our experiences to appear at the optimal moment in your customers’ journey using a range of triggering rules – including on inactivity, scroll depth, and in response to exit intent behaviors. 

Together, our deep segmentation and triggering capabilities help you build more personalized experiences for your customers. And thanks to our testing techniques, you’ll always know if your audience segments and triggering rules are driving your key metrics – whether you’re looking to increase leads, conversion rates or average order values. 

Yieldify vs Google Optimize

Google Optimize was a great tool for understanding the basics of A/B testing. But now you’re more experienced, you’ll need an advanced platform to achieve your conversion rate uplift and personalization goals. That’s why Yieldify is a natural next step for Google Optimize users. 

Yieldify is not a like-for-like replacement for Google Optimize because we use on-page rather than in-page testing. But if you’re looking to multiply the ROI you get from on-site traffic, drive more email & SMS sign-ups, lift conversions rates and increase average order values, Yieldify has all the capabilities you need.

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. An advisor from our sales team will be delighted to share more.

2. AB Tasty

AB Tasty is a self-service, in-page personalization platform designed to test, optimize, and deploy web page modifications. Lots of AB Tasty’s customers started using a free platform like Google Optimize before switching to a paid tool. 

Like Google Optimize, AB Tasty lets customers run in-page tests to create more personalized customer experiences, but their on-site personalization functionality is limited because they aren’t able to provide information on customer demographics.  

Due to the limitations of AB Tasty’s WYSIWYG editor, you’ll need knowledge of Javascript or CSS to get maximum value from the platform. That’s why it’s not suitable for marketing teams with limited developer resources. 

3. VWO Testing

VWO is a web testing and conversion rate optimization platform designed for ease of experimentation. It’s a direct competitor to AB Tasty because they also try to attract Google Optimize customers.

VWO offers a range of testing options including A/B testing, split URL testing, multivariate testing mobile app experimentation and server-side testing.

While VWO pitch themselves as a solution for both technical and non-technical users, we’ve heard from customers that the platform is difficult to use without coding experience. The learning curve is steep but VWO does provide training and ongoing support to bring new users up to speed.

4. Optimizely

Optimizely is a self-service, all-in-one personalization platform designed primarily for in-page testing. One of its main advantages over Google Optimize is that it’s much more scalable and has a visual editor for users without extensive coding knowledge. 

However, Optimizely’s visual editor will only take you so far and developers with JavaScript knowledge are needed to run more complex experiments. And because most experiences need hard-coding into your website, Optimizely users can typically only run 8-10 experiences annually.

The need for coding experience means Optimizely is best suited to technical product managers and development teams rather than ecommerce marketers. 

5. Omniconvert

Omniconvert is a CRO tool for ecommerce that helps brands run A/B tests to improve UX, assess product features and lift conversion rates. It offers features like segmentation parameters and real-time customer data as well as Frequentist and Bayesian statistical models. 

Omniconvert offers similar features to Google Optimize and, like many A/B testing tools, also requires coding experience to make the most out of the platform – a problem that’s compounded by its basic knowledge base.  

Some Omniconvert customers have found the user interface dated and complex. For example, there is no birds’ eye view available to see all of your experiments in one single page. This makes it difficult to keep track of your testing strategy, especially if you’re looking to scale up quickly.

6. Unbounce

Unbounce is a landing page builder designed to help businesses drive more leads, sales and sign-ups. With access to a library of templates, Unbounce’s core features include a drag-and-drop editor, AI-generated copy and A/B testing. 

Unlike Google Optimize, you can’t test your current website elements through Unbounce. It’s built specifically to optimize conversion rates on your landing pages so you can drive maximum value from your PPC and social ads as well as email marketing.

Unbounce is a smart tool for landing page optimization, but many users have struggled to create landing pages that are optimized for both desktop and mobile. It’s also worth bearing in mind that Unbounce’s service team is based in the US and only responds to requests during North American working hours.

7. Monetate

Monetate pitches itself as an all-in-one personalization platform that helps ecommerce brands create more compelling experiences for their customers. Alongside its A/B testing functionality, Monetate goes beyond Google Optimize with additional features like social proof and personalized search. 

While Monetate has some interesting features, many users have been thoroughly disappointed by long waiting times, poor communication and high turnover rates within the organization. Some Monetate users have needed to wait several days before getting support from developers. 

Monetate isn’t marketer-friendly and is difficult to drive quick-wins through – even for experienced developers. 

8. Convert

Convert is a website optimization tool that supports brands with client-side and server-side testing tools. The ability to test on both client and server side gives Convert an advantage over Google Optimize, but the learning curve is steep if you want to run tests through its Code Editor. 

Convert’s Visual Editor provides a low barrier to entry for anyone who’s unfamiliar with A/B testing, though some users have found this to be glitchy – particularly when trying to preview their tests. There are also concerns about the quality of Convert’s reporting dashboard.

9. Adobe Target

Adobe Target is a user experience testing tool that helps marketers conduct A/B and multivariate tests. The platform is designed to improve the customer experience and provide relevant content through data-driven insights. 

Like most testing tools, Adobe Target is a complicated platform to le3arn. It’s possible to upskill yourself with Adobe Target’s documentation, but users claim it’s difficult to improve your understanding because the support documents aren’t well written.

Other users say the Adobe Target platform is buggy and tests can cause website page flickering.

Choosing a Google Optimize alternative

Google Optimize was an accessible short-term solution for your basic testing needs, but it was very limited for anyone looking to drive measurable results.

Now, the sunsetting in September 2023 offers a perfect opportunity to increase your testing capacity, gather more audience insights and accelerate revenue growth. 

With a fully managed platform like Yieldify, you can achieve those goals by outsourcing every step of the testing process to a team of ecommerce industry experts.

Why is Google Optimize shutting down?

Google Optimize and Optimize 360 are shutting down on September 30 2023. The reason behind Google’s decision is not totally clear, but they’re planning to invest in third-party integrations for Google Analytics 4 instead of developing their own platform.

What is replacing Google Optimize? 

There is no evidence to suggest that Google are launching a replacement for Google Optimize. Instead, they are collaborating with other A/B testing providers as part of the transition to Google Analytics 4. 

What are the cons of Google Optimize? 

Google Optimize is a popular platform that’s used by many ecommerce marketers and website developers. People are drawn to Google Optimize because it’s free-to-use, but it’s only useful for A/B testing beginners because of the following limitations: 

– You can only run 5 tests per year
– You can only set 3 goals per test
– You can only run tests for 35 days
– There are character limits in custom code

9 Best Nosto Alternatives: Level Up Your Website Personalization

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Initially built as a Shopify plugin in 2011, Nosto has since grown into an independent and popular merchandising platform for ecommerce marketers. 

The majority of Nosto’s customers sign up to integrate data-driven product recommendations into their site, but Nosto has a handful of limitations that blindside ecommerce marketers who place too much importance on product recommendations:

  • Nosto’s A/B testing technology is limited: Nosto don’t test for incrementality – i.e. to measure whether making a website change drives a positive result vs leaving your website exactly the same. This means you can’t be sure Nosto’s experiences are driving better website performance. 
  • HTML coding is required to build any advanced experiences: Nosto’s learning curve is steep. You can create a limited number of basic, no-code experiences when you’re starting out, but you need HTML coding experience to build more advanced personalized experiences – e.g. geo-targeted countdown timers, progress bars and gamified lead capture forms. 
  • Nosto’s library of templates aren’t customizable: Nosto are investing heavily in product recommendation features and aren’t building new technology for in-page messaging, overlays and CTAs. This is reflected in their simple, generic-looking templates and designs.
  • Nosto is most compatible with Shopify: Nosto purpose-built their platform for Shopify stores, which means you need to go through a comprehensive mapping process if you want to run Nosto on non-Shopify platforms. If you don’t use Shopify, or you’re frustrated by Shopify’s checkout limitations and looking to upgrade to another ecommerce platform (e.g. WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento), Nosto won’t be the right solution for you.  

In this post, we’ll compare 9 of the best alternatives to Nosto. We’ll start with our personalization platform, Yieldify, and walk you through eight more personalization solutions for your ecommerce website.

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. An advisor from our sales team will be delighted to share more.

  1. Yieldify 
  2. Justuno 
  3. Dynamic Yield
  4. Insider 
  5. ConvertFlow
  6. Personyze 
  7. Emarsys
  8. AB Tasty 
  9. Optimizely

1. Yieldify

Yieldify is a fully managed, no-code alternative to Nosto built to help marketers increase email & SMS leads, conversion rates and average order values. 

By leveraging Yieldify’s deeply segmented and highly targeted on-page messaging, you can personalize your customers’ on-site experience at every stage of their journey – from entry to sale and repeat business. 

With a market-leading team of dedicated account strategists, graphic designers and technical engineers, Yieldify can plan and execute your entire personalization strategy for you.

Here’s how Yieldify addresses the problems you’d encounter with Nosto:

  • Yieldify’s account strategists test every website change against a control group, ensuring you always know if website changes have driven increased CVR, ROAS  and revenue. 
  • You can use the whole suite of Yieldify products without involving your engineering team. After a one-touch setup (adding a JavaScript snippet to your site using a tag manager), you immediately have every Yieldify feature at your fingertips.
  • Yieldify content is 100% customizable. Everything you create with Yieldify can be customized to align with your brand – ensuring your personalized content appears native to your site.
  • Yieldify can integrate with any website platform – including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento, as well as your own custom CMS.

Here’s an in-depth look at the features Yieldify customers love: 

Uncover 5x More Customer Journey Insights with Advanced Audience Analytics

Most of our customers are in the dark when they sign with us. They want to build a solid website optimization strategy, have tried to improve conversions based on guesswork (in my experience, normally with very limited success), and don’t know where to get started with a data-led approach. 

The problem is that popular website analytics platforms like Google Analytics don’t provide a complete picture of your customer journeys. They provide a good starting point for foundational insights, but lack the detail you need to increase conversions.

For example, Google Analytics can only report your customer journeys in one direction (aka mono-directionally). That means you can see what happens when users go down the funnel – for example, from homepage to checkout. But you can’t tell if they go back up the funnel – for example, from product pages to category pages and back again. 

In theory, you could manually map each journey type with Google’s Users Flow reports. But that’s a painstaking process most marketers simply don’t have time for. Besides, we rarely come across customers who actually find them useful. The result? A substantial blind spot in your understanding of your customers’ journeys.

To help you truly understand your visitors’ behavior, at Yieldify we use data analytics and insights tools – including Sunburst charts – to uncover 5x more customer journey insights than Google Analytics. 

Yieldify Sunburst charts provide an interactive, 360-degree view of your customer journeys, so you can see exactly how your visitors advance through the funnel – regardless of what direction they take.

We break down journey types to find conversion opportunities, including by:

  • Traffic source
  • First-time and returning website visitors
  • New and returning customers
  • Converting and non-converting journeys
  • And many more

The goal? To uncover funnel friction, signpost your visitors onto the best conversion path and improve performance – whether that’s more sign-ups, logins or sales.

Increase Ecommerce Conversion Rates with Sophisticated On-Site Testing Technology

Almost every ecommerce marketer we work with is looking to increase their website conversion rates.  

The reality is that the cost of customer acquisition has been steadily rising for five years – and that’s undermining the money and time you’ve invested in paid advertising and SEO. 

Given the state of play, it’s never been more important to get maximum value from your website visitors. The best way to do that is through running on-site tests, but on average just 10% of website tests reach statistical confidence – i.e. gather enough data to be certain the test is driving a positive result. 

At Yieldify, 50% of our experiments reach statistical confidence thanks to our advanced testing methods:

1. Incremental testing

If you don’t test your website optimizations against a baseline (like Nosto), you won’t know if you’re actually improving performance. That’s why we always run optimizations as incremental tests before running an A/B test. No smoke, no mirrors – just clear, actionable results.

In an incremental test, we change a single website element for 50% of your audience (the test group), and we don’t change anything for the other 50% (the control group). With a test and control methodology, we can show you the actual performance uplift delivered by an optimization. It also guarantees that we isolate our impact on conversion rate and revenue from other factors such as seasonality.

2. A/B & A/B/n testing

When we know a website experience performs better than your baseline, we’ll then optimize its performance through A/B testing. We divide your traffic into two groups of 50% and show them different experiences to uncover which variant drives the best outcome. 

For example, we could test two different versions of a social proof experience – altering the design, placement, CTA, triggering, or targeting rules – to determine which drives the biggest conversion rate uplift. 

If you’re driving more than 100k monthly website visits, you can test up to 5 different variants with Yieldify’s A/B/n testing technology. The inclusion of additional variants helps us uncover actionable audience insights quicker than a standard A/B test. 

3. Performance Predictors

Yieldify’s Performance Predictors can tell within days if a test will improve or hinder your website performance. That way you don’t have to waste weeks or months to work out the impact of a website change.

When our AI-powered algorithm predicts negative performance, our account strategists end the test, review the data and amend the experiment – whether that’s changing the copy, creative or audience segment. That way we help our customers turn a losing test into a winning one, ensuring they can resolve friction points faster and don’t waste time on the wrong approach.

Fully Managed Customer Journey Optimization – Including CRO Expertise, Data Analysis, Graphic Design & Technical Engineers 

Most ecommerce marketers we work with simply don’t have the expertise to streamline customer journeys. They’ve got clear goals for their website and a raft of data to work with, but no direction on how to devise and execute their own optimization strategy.  

If you’re in that position, then Yieldify is the perfect solution for you. Our full-service team – including CRO specialists, data analysts, graphic designers and engineers – handles your entire customer journey optimization strategy for you. 

Simply tell us your website goals and we’ll do all the heavy lifting. That way you can: 

  • Analyze customer journeys 
  • Uncover deep audience insights 
  • Define your CRO strategy 
  • Personalize your customer journeys 
  • Run A/B and A/B/n tests 
  • See in-depth reports on your performance

Once you get started with Yieldify, your dedicated account strategist will analyze your website data to understand where your customers are bouncing and why. They’ll inspect your UX, review your Google Analytics and evaluate your website’s current performance against Yieldify’s 30 billion benchmarking data points. Armed with that insight, they’ll get your first data-driven tests live within 14 days.

Your input? Simply install a single line of Yieldify code onto your site via a tag manager. After that, you can be as involved as much or as little as you like. We typically only need 2-4 hours of your time each month for discussing strategic recommendations, signing off creative or reviewing revenue results.

Go Beyond Product Recommendations with Deeply Segmented and Highly Targeted Personalization

If you’re considering Nosto, it’s safe to assume you’ve got product recommendations on your radar. But product recommendations represent just one small aspect of personalization, which is why many marketers use Yieldify in conjunction with a product recommendations tool. 

At Yieldify, we bring full-funnel personalization to ecommerce brands by launching website experiences that adapt to customer journeys. We do this by segmenting your customers into subgroups, before targeting them with in-page messaging that’s most relevant to their on-site behaviors. 

For example, we can show different on-site experiences to your customers based on: 

  • New vs returning users 
  • Purchase history
  • Time on site 
  • Acquisition source
  • Browsing history

Unlike Nosto, all of Yieldify’s audience segments are readily available on our platform and don’t require HTML coding experience to build. Plus our account managers will define the best segmentation strategy for you after analyzing your website data. 

Beyond segmentation, our deep range of triggering rules ensure that your experiences appear at the right time. Some personalization tools overwhelm customers with intrusive, ill-timed messaging. Rather than accelerate conversions, this damages the user experience and pushes customers away from your brand. 

But at Yieldify, we set all of our experiences to appear at the optimal moment in your customers’ journey using a range of triggering rules – including on inactivity, scroll depth, in response to exit intent behaviors, and on site return. 

Together, our deep segmentation and triggering capabilities help you build more personalized experiences for your customers. And thanks to our testing techniques, you’ll always know if your audience segments and triggering rules are driving your key metrics – whether you’re looking to increase leads, conversion rates or average order values. 

Yieldify reviews:

Overall G2 rating = 4.7/5 

Ease of use = 9.2

Quality of support = 9.7 

Ease of setup = 9.2

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. An advisor from our sales team will be delighted to share more.

2. Justuno

Justuno is a self-service CRO platform, offering a suite of features to help customers launch a series of pop-ups on their website. 

Like Nosto, many ecommerce marketers use Justuno for their data-driven product recommendations. Within the Nosto platform you can target specific goals with your product recommendations – i.e. upsell or cross-sell – and filter products by price range, categories, stock levels and more.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind these features are difficult to execute because of Justuno’s clunky design editor and manual, tedious integrations. 

Their customers have also expressed concerns about Justuno’s performance reporting, which overestimates the impact of their website pop-ups. That’s why scaling and enterprise businesses with more advanced personalization needs are unlikely to meet their revenue goals with Justuno.

Justuno Reviews: 

Overall G2 rating = 4.3 / 5  

Ease of use = 7.9

Quality of support = 8.8

Ease of setup = 8.2

3. Dynamic Yield

Dynamic Yield is an all-in-one personalization platform designed for self service. It helps ecommerce brands build multichannel strategies to target different personalization segments and has a data-driven product recommendation engine. 

However, Dynamic Yield comes at a significant cost and internal expertise is needed to manage the platform effectively. They provide documentation on how to use their platform, but HTML coding experience is required to build more advanced features like custom targeting rules.

A limited number of out-of-the-box templates are available for less technical users, but it’s not a suitable platform for beginners to personalization who don’t have an extensive technical team to lean on. For example, technical expertise is needed to launch and test core personalization campaigns like countdown timers.

Dynamic Yield reviews: 

Overall G2 rating = 4.4 / 5

Ease of use = 8.1

Quality of support = 8.8

Ease of setup = 7.3

4. Insider

Insider is a marketing platform for delivering individualized, cross-channel customer experiences. As a self-service tool aimed primarily at small to mid-market businesses, Insider’s features prioritize templatization and automation over customization and flexibility. 

Like Nosto, Insider uses predictive analysis to provide data-driven product recommendations, and it’s also investing heavily in SMS marketing software. Insider offers some interesting features for ecommerce brands, but customers with limited personalization experience will need plenty of support to use the platform effectively. 

While Insider provides some technical support, their customers have been frustrated by slow response times. Other users have said their requests can get lost in translation when they’re communicating with the technical team.

Insider reviews:

Overall G2 rating = 4.7 / 5 

Ease of use = 9.3 

Quality of support = 9.6 

Ease of setup = 9.1 

5. ConvertFlow

ConvertFlow is an all-in-one, self-service funnel builder for ecommerce brands – providing pop-ups, quizzes, landing pages, product recommendations and surveys.

It has a broad range of features to help customers lift email and SMS leads, AOVs and customer lifetime value, but its counterintuitive user interface makes it difficult to drive measurable results. ConvertFlow’s customers have struggled to navigate the slow, deeply layered platform, and have complained there is a lack of available support to learn how to maximize its potential. 

These problems mean it takes time and patience to achieve your revenue goals with ConvertFlow. 

ConvertFlow reviews:

Overall G2 rating = 4.4 / 5 

Ease of use = 8

Quality of support = 8.3

Ease of setup = 9.1 

6. Personyze

Personyze is a personalization suite for omnichannel personalization and marketing automation. It offers customers a range of personalization opportunities, from product recommendations and A/B testing to social proof and on-site pop-ups, to improve the on-site experience. 

Personyze is neither a purely self-service or a fully managed platform, offering heavy support during the onboarding process to upskill customers so they can eventually use the platform independently. 

But with limited training resources and no how-to videos available for users after they’ve been onboarded, Personyze is another self-service platform that requires time and effort to learn. Some Personyze users have also been disappointed by the lack of filtering options available in the reporting dashboard. 

Personyze reviews:

Overall G2 rating = 4.8/5 (3 reviews)

7. Emarsys

Emarsys is a self-service customer engagement platform that helps brands deliver personalized experiences and accelerate business outcomes. In addition to product recommendations, Emarsys lets customers create both single-channel campaigns and cross-channel journeys at scale.

Like most of Nosto’s direct competitors, many of Emarsys’ features, such as advanced segmentation and A/B testing, are difficult to leverage for users who are new to marketing automation. Emarsys do offer technical support to respond to ad-hoc requests, but users often have to wait for days to get a response from their team. 

And if you’re looking to build product recommendations into your email marketing, you’ll need to purchase add-ons like Open Data and Relational Data. 

Emarsys reviews:

Overall G2 rating = 4.3 / 5

Ease of use = 8.3

Quality of support = 8.5 

Ease of setup = 7.3

8. AB Tasty

AB Tasty is a self-service, in-page personalization platform designed to test, optimize, and deploy web page modifications. Lots of AB Tasty’s customers started using a free A/B testing platform before switching to a paid tool. 

AB Tasty lets customers run in-page tests to create more personalized customer experiences, but their on-site personalization functionality is limited because they aren’t able to provide information on customer demographics.  

Due to the limitations of AB Tasty’s WYSIWYG editor, you’ll need knowledge of Javascript or CSS to get maximum value from the platform. That’s why it’s not suitable for marketing teams with limited developer resources. 

AB Tasty reviews:

Overall G2 rating = 4.4 / 5

Ease of use = 8.6 

Quality of support = 9.3 

Ease of setup = 8.5

9. Optimizely

Optimizely is a self-service, all-in-one personalization platform designed primarily to allow clients to run in-page tests and experiences. One of its main advantages is that it’s designed for scale and has a visual editor for users without extensive coding knowledge. 

However, Optimizely’s visual editor will only take you so far and developers with JavaScript knowledge are needed to run more complex experiments. And because most experiences need hard-coding into your website, Optimizely users can typically only run 8-10 experiences annually.

The need for coding experience means Optimizely is best suited to technical product managers and development teams rather than ecommerce marketers. 

Optimizely reviews:

Overall G2 rating = 4.2/5 

Ease of use = 8.2

Quality of support = 8 

Ease of setup = 8.3

Selecting a Nosto alternative

While Nosto is a good product recommendation tool, its limited testing and on-page messaging capabilities, combined with the need for coding experience, will halt the progress of ecommerce marketers with more advanced personalization needs – especially if you’re not using Shopify. 

As I outlined in this piece, Yieldify’s personalization platform is an excellent alternative for ecommerce marketers who want to reap the benefits of personalization and website testing without the heavy lifting. 

If you’d like a preview of how you can improve your sales and growth with Yieldify’s fully managed, personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

How to Increase Online Sales: 17 Most Effective Strategies to Try in 2023

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Ecommerce marketers typically face three key problems when they try to increase online sales: 

  1. They don’t fully understand their customers’ on-site behavior 
  2. Their website conversion rate is too low  
  3. They don’t have enough returning customers

To tackle these problems, you’ve probably tried increasing increasing your paid ads spend, optimizing your SEO content, launching a creative social media campaign, or investing in new software. But these solutions can only take your online store so far.

What you need is a proverbial north star – a broad objective that defines your entire marketing strategy. In this case, your objective should be to upgrade your customer experience. 

80% of marketers think they’re already delivering a superior experience, but just 8% of customers agree. This disparity shows that, as marketers, we need to deliver better experiences for our customers if we want to drive more sales.

You need to do three key things to improve customer satisfaction and boost online sales:

  1. Gather and analyze more customer data
  2. Simplify the path to purchase 
  3. Make customers loyal to your brand

Across these three themes, I’ll outline 17 core strategies.

You’ll see I’ve also included insights from some of my Yieldify colleagues, Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant; Mike McNally, Director of Services (NA); and Jacob Buckland, VP of Sales and Services (EMEA).

Let’s dive in. 

  1. Analyze Sunburst charts 
  2. Use heatmaps
  3. Conduct customer surveys
  4. Run customer questionnaires
  5. Segment your customers 
  6. Run A/B tests
  7. Streamline navigation
  8. Reduce cart abandonment 
  9. Tackle browse abandonment 
  10. Leverage social proof 
  11. Spotlight recently viewed products 
  12. Provide product recommendations
  13. Highlight customer testimonials 
  14. Display on-site video content 
  15. Be smarter with your email marketing
  16. Signpost your brand USPs
  17. Start a referral program

Note: If you’d like a preview of how you can drive more sales and growth with Yieldify’s fully managed, personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

Gather and analyze more customer data

1. Analyze Sunburst charts 

Clients who use Google Analytics often tell us they’re struggling to increase online sales. While GA is great for understanding topline numbers, it doesn’t show you which pages your customers visited and in which order. 

Of course, you could manually map user behavior flows to get a fuller picture of your customers’ journeys, but that’s a painstaking process most marketers simply don’t have time for. 

To give our clients a complete understanding of what’s happening on their site, at Yieldify we provide an automated, deeply visual and 360-degree view of customer journeys with Sunburst charts.

That way we help clients identify where, when and why their customers are bouncing, and then make optimizations at every stage in the customer journey to increase sales.

“I view Yieldify as a data analytics company as much as a lead generation and personalization platform. It sets them apart.”

Ben Bolognini, Head of Marketing and Ecommerce, BYLT Basics

2. Use heatmaps 

Heatmaps are an excellent supplementary tool to Sunburst charts. 

Like Sunburst, heatmaps represent data in a highly visual way, which makes them ideal for marketers who aren’t comfortable analyzing large sets of data. 

The purpose of heat maps is to give you a color-coded view of how your customers navigate your website – providing insight into what customers click on, what they ignore, and how deep they scroll.  

Armed with that insight, you’ll be in a stronger position to make UX changes – such as changing the placement of a CTA on your product pages or pricing page – that improve click-through rates and increase online sales.

Read about Hotjar, Crazy Egg and other UX tools in our post covering 15 of the best website optimization tools.

3. Conduct customer surveys

Firstly it’s important to make the distinction between surveys and questionnaires (which I’ll discuss next): 

  • Surveys: Help you gather large sets of data to evaluate customer experiences on a macro level
  • Questionnaires: Help you gather specific information about individual customers so you can better understand their needs and personalize their experience

One of the fastest ways to shine a light on what your customers really think about your brand is by conducting customer surveys.

Surveys provide anecdotal feedback to help you uncover your customers’ pain points, desires and unmet needs. In an era where so many decisions are made based on numbers alone, it’s important to get a human perspective to support – or disprove – what your data says. 

Before you craft your first survey, remember that your customers’ attention spans are short. As you can see in the graph below, the data shows that the more questions you ask, the higher the drop-off rate.

Source: Feedier

Don’t expect your customers to write a short novel about your ecommerce business. Instead, ask them 3-5 focused questions and keep the survey to one page.

Take this example from Nautica, who used Yieldify to gather customer and competitor insights while increasing email leads by 93%.

4. Run customer questionnaires

Many of the brands we work with are lacking the rich, first-party data they need to personalize their customers’ on-site experience. 

After all, there is only so much you can learn from numbers alone. To bridge this information gap, we help our clients launch on-site questionnaires that help them develop a deeper understanding of their customers’ needs. 

For example, when Pureology partnered with Yieldify, their goal was to provide personalized product recommendations to more customers. 

With our technology, they used journey shaping experiences to guide traffic to their online hair quiz as part of a strategy that increased participation by 34%.

And they also asked these customers to receive their recommendations via email, which drove a 4X increase in lead generation.

5. Segment your customers 

Market segmentation is the process of dividing your customers into subgroups based on shared characteristics. The aim of segmentation is to tailor online marketing efforts to your target audience, i.e. the customers most likely to buy your product or service. 

For Jacob Buckland, our VP of Sales and Services, market segmentation techniques help you understand five key things: 

  • Who your customers are
  • What products and services your customers want  
  • How much they’re willing to pay for it 
  • The likelihood of repeat purchase
  • How to set your pricing strategy 

We’ve seen the importance of segmentation first-hand through many of our client collaborations, and Laithwaites are a prime example. 

They came to Yieldify with highly detailed buyer personas, complete with age and salary ranges, lifestyle habits and purchasing preferences, and drove 79:1 ROI using our platform. 

The problem is that most ecommerce brands don’t have the internal expertise or technology to create buyer personas and segment effectively. 

But with Yieldify’s personalization technology, you can reach pre-built or custom segments to target specific types of visitors – including different experiences for new vs returning shoppers, mobile vs desktop and Facebook vs Instagram.  

6. Run A/B tests

A/B testing is the process of measuring two different variants of something – e.g. a web page or email subject line – to find out which one drives the most positive outcome.

“You can’t solve all your issues with A/B testing, but it’s one of the key ingredients in the recipe that will make your website successful.”

Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant

A/B testing isn’t a shortcut to overnight success, but it’s a must if you’re looking to increase online sales. 

Using our A/B testing technology, we’ve seen clients across every industry lift their conversion rates by up to 144%. And the beauty of A/B testing is that subtle changes can drive these game-changing results.

So, if you’re serious about increasing online sales but belong to the 23% of companies that aren’t using A/B testing, it’s time to invest in an A/B testing tool.

If you’re driving more than 100,000 monthly visitors, you can also test up to 5 different variants with Yieldify’s A/B/n testing technology.

Simplify the path to purchase

Most ecommerce marketers come to us with sleek websites that are great to look at. They’ve invested a huge amount of time and money into their website, but it’s not helped them increase online sales. 

It goes to show that a beautifully designed website is useless if your customers can’t find the products they want. Imagine you walked into a brick-and-mortar store with thousands of items, yet nobody was on hand to point you in the right direction. Frustrated, you’d probably leave without a second thought – and your customers will treat your ecommerce site in much the same way.

To keep your customers engaged, you need to create a seamless experience that guides them to the right products. 

Here are three must-haves to improve navigation on your ecommerce store:

  • Build a UX-optimized navbar 
  • Accurately categorize your products 
  • Embed journey shaping experiences

For example, Clarins used Yieldify’s technology to help guide customers to their online skin consultation as part of a strategy that helped them increase conversions by up to 20%.

8. Reduce cart abandonment 

Ecommerce brands lose $18 billion every year from cart abandonment.

And the problem is particularly pronounced on mobile, where 86% of shoppers abandon their carts. 

Why is cart abandonment such a key challenge for ecommerce marketers? 

Diminishing attention spans and window shopping both play their part. But factors within your control could also be holding you back at a crucial stage in the ecommerce sales funnel.

These are three key reasons why customers abandon their carts: 

  • They were forced to create an account at checkout
  • They had to pay for shipping 
  • There was no discount for first-time buyers 

So, if you’re struggling with cart abandonment right now, incentives like offering free shipping and new customer discounts will help you increase online sales..

At Yieldify, we help ecommerce marketers reduce cart abandonment by: 

  • Triggering basket reminders in response to exit intent
  • Providing on-site discount reminders
  • Spotlighting buy now, pay later options
  • Sending cart abandonment emails 

Check out this cart abandonment email from Lacoste. 

They used Yieldify to send multi-stage cart abandonment emails as part of a wider strategy that drove 21:1 ROI.

9. Tackle browse abandonment 

The reality is that 95% of website visitors don’t buy anything. 

Most online shoppers are simply looking around, comparing prices, and getting a feel for what they want. 

They’re assessing many different options, and that goes some way to explaining why 70% of first-time visitors never return after abandoning your website.

This makes it both difficult and time-consuming to build a strong base of loyal, returning customers. But there are steps you can take to accelerate the process.

To get maximum value from your website traffic and increase online sales, ask your visitors to subscribe to your email list just before they leave. That way you can keep in contact and nurture your potential customers into paying customers. 

Check out this example from CJ Wildlife. In partnership with Yieldify, they triggered their sign-up form for visitors displaying exit intent and increased email leads by 58%. 

10. Leverage social proof 

“Social proof makes shoppers feel compelled to buy the item they’re interested in and gives them the reassurance they need to check out.”

Mike McNally, Director of Services (NA)

Social proof is a psychologically powerful tool with three core benefits for ecommerce marketers:

  • It validates your customers’ choices 
  • It alleviates your customers’ doubts 
  • It drives a sense of urgency 

Because of our deep-rooted desire to belong to the tribe, we instinctively look to our friends, peers, mentors and idols for reassurance when we make a decision. That’s why social proof is a core strategy Yieldify clients use to increase online sales.

So how can you leverage social proof to drive sales? 

At Yieldify, we help ecommerce marketers ramp up their conversion rates by:

  • Highlighting which products are low in stock 
  • Highlighting customer testimonials from existing customers
  • Highlighting how many people have viewed your products 

For example, New Balance spotlighted how many customers had viewed in-demand products over a 24-hour period, leading to a 10% increase in conversion rates. 

If you’re looking to increase conversions with social proof, check out our post covering 14 of the best social proof software on the market.

11. Spotlight recently viewed products 

Most of your customers weave in and out of tabs – comparing brands and products – in the search for the perfect item.

During that process, it’s inevitable they’ll forget where they found everything on their mental shopping list. 

To jog your customers’ memories when they return to your site, add a personal touch by showing them their recently viewed products. 

See how Sockwell used Yieldify to spotlight recently viewed items and lift conversions by 12%.

12. Provide product recommendations

When you walk into a good brick-and-mortar store, a retail associate will be on hand to offer their advice. Typically they’ll ask you questions about your reason for visiting the store and recommend products based on your specific needs. 

In ecommerce, product recommendation technology aims to replicate that in-store experience by anticipating customer’s needs – and it’s a big hit with customers. 

  • 49% of customers bought a product they didn’t intend to buy after receiving a recommendation 
  • 54% of retailers says product recommendation are the key driver of average order values
  • 31% of ecommerce revenue is driven by product recommendations

At Yieldify, we help our clients build product recommendation experiences to show potential customers their trending products, best sellers and new releases. 

Make customers loyal to your brand

13. Highlight customer testimonials 

Your customers get marketed to wherever they go. As a result, they’re becoming desensitized to marketing messages, and the vast majority trust non-paid, word-of-mouth advice over paid ads (as I discussed earlier). 

But what may come as a surprise is that word-of-mouth advice doesn’t have to come from someone your customers know. According to Oberlo, almost 1 in 2 shoppers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. 

The problem for ecommerce marketers is that your customers typically need to leave your site to find reviews. 

This threatens your conversion rate, but with Yieldify you can spotlight rave reviews from external platforms within your site.

Take this example from Spongelle, who drove a 14% increase in conversions by strategically leveraging customer reviews across their website.

14. Display on-site video content 

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. So no wonder most people opt for a Netflix binge over a Russian literary classic. 

Simply put, we’re wired to process visual information – which explains why 91% of customers want to see more online video content from brands.

You don’t need a thriving YouTube channel with thousands of subscribers to quench your customers’ thirst for video content. All you need is to share a handful of videos (even one will do) on your website showcasing your brand’s core values to increase online sales.

With Yieldify, you can embed video snippets from YouTube and every major social media platform into your site. Check out this example from Marwell Zoo, who displayed a brand video to customers showing exit intent at checkout.

15. Be smart with your email marketing

With an ROI of 45:1, the value of email marketing is undeniable. 

There’s a good reason why it’s stood the test of time, surviving wave after wave of technological innovation.

While it’s undoubtedly a great channel for driving sales and nurturing customers who aren’t yet ready to buy, it’s also an excellent word-of-mouth marketing tactic. 

Unlike your social media accounts, where you’re at the mercy of Instagram, TikTok and Facebook algorithms, you’re in complete control of your email marketing channel.

You have a direct line of communication to your customers, so use it wisely. Don’t alienate your subscribers by going gung ho for sales.

Instead, drive your open rates up by: 

  • Educating your customers – pitch yourself as an industry expert
  • Personalizing your content
  • Inspiring, entertaining and motivating
  • Segmenting your email lists
  • Writing short, compelling subject lines

16. Signpost your brand USPs

As customers increasingly choose brands based on their mission and core values, it’s no longer enough to simply offer a great product or service to the market. 

That’s why most ecommerce marketers we work with are focused on brand-building.

If they want to increase online sales in the current market, you need to create a clear value proposition and tell your customers more about who they’re buying from. 

To achieve this, we help our clients spotlight their USPS across their site with embedded in-page messaging. 

Check out how Fireclay Tile, a B Corp tile company founded in California, used Yieldify to build awareness of their core USPs with embedded banners, increasing conversions by 9%.

17. Start a referral program

Referral programs are a cost-effective, word-of-mouth marketing tactic that can help you build an army of fiercely loyal customers and increase online sales.. 

The reason referral programs are so effective is, as I’ve mentioned, people deeply trust the opinions of their friends, family and peers. Indeed, potential customers are 4 times more likely to buy if they’re referred by a friend.

In effect, referral programs are another way to leverage the power of social proof to acquire new customers. At the same time, the process of rewarding your existing customers will encourage them to keep buying from you and make them more loyal to your brand.

Before you get started, consider using a referral marketing tool like CrewFire or Referral Factory.

Whether you decide to use a tool or run your referral marketing in-house, make sure you:

  • Outline your goals: do you want new customers, to increase CLV, or both?
  • Pick an incentive: will you offer points, discounts or hard cash?
  • Choose the channel/s you’re going to promote it through 
  • Thank your customers for referring their friends and family
  • Measure your success: are you hitting the goals you outlined at launch? 

Conclusion

I hope this blog has given you a holistic view of how you can improve your customer experience and increase online sales. It’s a difficult time for ecommerce marketers, but all 17 strategies can help you navigate this highly challenging market.

If you’d like a preview of how you can improve your sales and growth with Yieldify’s fully managed, personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

10 Proven Ecommerce Strategies to Maximize Sales and Growth + Examples

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If you’re feeling the pressure right now, you’re not the only one. 

It’s a tough time to be an ecommerce manager, especially if you’re lacking in-house expertise and the sweet, precious time you need to get results. The economy is unpredictable and budgets are tight, but growth expectations remain high.

Under these circumstances, it’s only natural you’re looking for ways to increase your revenue.

I can’t solve all your problems, but I can walk you through 10 proven strategies that’ll help you grow your ecommerce business:

  1. Segment your customers
  2. Invest in PPC advertising 
  3. Reach customers through SEO
  4. Grow your social media presence
  5. Build an email marketing strategy
  6. Build an SMS marketing strategy
  7. Streamline on-site navigation
  8. Leverage social proof & testimonials 
  9. Save abandoned carts
  10. A/B test everything

You’ll see I’ve also included insights  from some of my Yieldify colleagues, Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant; Mike McNally, Director of Services (NA); and Jacob Buckland, VP of Sales and Services (EMEA).

Margot, Mike and Jacob are all richly experienced in the world of ecommerce, so you’re in safe hands. 

Let’s dive into the ecommerce strategies.

Note: If you’d like a preview of how you can improve your sales and growth with Yieldify’s fully managed, personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

Considerations to make before switching to a new strategy

Margot, Digital Campaigns Consultant, has met hundreds of ecommerce marketers and brand managers looking to grow revenue. Each comes with a unique set of industry-specific challenges holding them back.

Regardless of the size of their ecommerce business, Margot tells customers they need to ask themselves six important questions:

  • Have you assessed your internal capacity? 
  • Have you clearly defined who your customers are? 
  • What is your priority – customer acquisition or retention?
  • Have you built a fast, seamless and UX-optimized website?
  • Is your website optimized for mobile?  
  • Do you need a software solution or a new hire?

You’ll only be ready to define and run with your new strategy once you’ve answered all six. 

10 Effective ecommerce strategies that drive sales

1. Segment your customers

Market segmentation is the process of dividing your customers into subgroups based on shared characteristics. The aim of segmentation is to tailor marketing efforts to your target market, i.e. the customers most likely to buy your product or service. 

“The process of segmenting your audience makes you more competitive in the market. Through market segmentation, you can better understand your customer’s needs and spending habits, increase the likelihood of repeat purchase and optimize your pricing to always hit the sweet spot.”

Jacob Buckland, VP of Sales and Services (EMEA)

Jacob gets to the crux of why segmentation is such an important ecommerce marketing strategy: it helps you better understand who your customers are, what they want and how much they’re willing to pay for it. 

Armed with that knowledge, you’ll be able to create more targeted marketing campaigns and drive more sales. That’s why 77% of marketing ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns. 

Use these four market segmentation techniques to split your customers into highly targeted subgroups: 

1. Demographic (the who)

Information such as your customer’s age, gender or salary.

2. Psychographic (the why)

Information such as your customer’s personality, social status and values.

3. Geographic (the where)

Information on where your customers live, their language and cultural background.

4. Behavioral (the how)

Information on how your customers engage with your ecommerce brand including spending habits, browsing habits and brand loyalty.

2. Invest in PPC (pay-per-click) advertising  

PPC is a digital marketing channel where you pay for your website’s advert to appear on a search engine or social media channel. You bid against other companies to rank for a chosen keyword or phrase, then pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad. 

“If you’re new to the market, the first step to raising brand awareness is to acquire as much traffic as possible, and investing in PPC ads will drive more people to your site.”

Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant

PPC is nothing less than a must-use channel if you’re looking to grow brand awareness, customer loyalty and sales.

Not only do ecommerce businesses drive 46% of their total revenue from PPC campaigns, it’s cost-effective too with 200% ROI.

So why is PPC such an effective channel for ecommerce marketers? 

  • It helps you find customers you haven’t reached organically
  • It drives results quickly – you don’t have to wait to build domain authority (unlike SEO)
  • It lets you compete side by side with your direct competitors 

PPC takes time to master like any digital marketing channel, but these steps will form the foundation of a solid PPC strategy:

  • Set a PPC budget 
  • Pick the keywords you want to rank for
  • Pick the negative keywords you don’t want to rank for
  • Optimize your product pages and landing pages for conversions
  • Launch your campaigns 

3. Reach customers through SEO (search engine optimization)

“Start working on SEO now if you haven’t already, because you’ll typically see your site ranking for product keywords in around 12 months. On a cost-to-revenue basis, SEO is one of the cheapest channels – once the ship is moving, the ROI curve can be parabolic.”

Mike McNally, Director of Services (NA)

As Mike rightly points out,  you need to be patiently proactive to drive growth through SEO.

Competition is rife and it takes time to build your domain authority, but SEO is a great way to acquire new customers because 81% of online shoppers start their search on Google.

The result of Google’s popularity? Ecommerce marketers drive 27% of their overall revenue from organic traffic – which makes it the second-highest source of revenue after paid search. 

To climb Google’s rankings and drive more target customers to your site, you need to:

  • Select the keywords you want to rank for  
  • Produce website content for your chosen keywords
  • Build backlinks to improve your domain authority 
  • Optimize your product descriptions 
  • Use high-resolution images
  • Increase page loading speed
  • Optimize your website for mobile 
Find out more about SEO tools in our blog post covering 15 of the best website optimization tools on the market right now. 

4. Grow your social media presence

If you want to meet both current and potential customers where they are, then look no further than social media. 

There are 4.6 billion social media users worldwide, and the average person spends 2.5 hours scrolling through social media every single day.

While platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram weren’t invented to help ecommerce businesses reach new audiences or increase sales, the statistics show that’s been a byproduct of the digital revolution:

  • 27% of customers go to social media to discover new products
  • 77% of customers prefer shopping with brands they follow on social media
  • 36% of US customers made a social commerce purchase in 2021

Social media can also help you: 

  • Build hype for your products 
  • Communicate directly with your customers
  • Assess customer appetite for your products 
  • Understand how your customers describe your brand
  • Drive more email and SMS subscribers

And before you get started, remember these golden rules for social media marketing:

  • Define your goals 
  • Post regularly 
  • Use a consistent tone of voice
  • React to key events
  • Publish video marketing content
  • Show your personality 
  • Stick by your brand values
  • Aim to connect with your community – not sell to them
Torn between TikTok and Instagram? Considering launching a YouTube channel? Read our blog on the best social media platforms for ecommerce to find out which is best for you.

5. Build an email marketing strategy

With an ROI of 45:1, email marketing is a staple of any successful marketing strategy. 

It’s an excellent channel for attracting and nurturing customers, which is why 89% of marketers use email as their top lead generation and customer acquisition channel.

What’s at the core of a successful email marketing strategy? Building and expanding a database of high-quality leads. 

At Yieldify, we use a layered lead generation strategy to acquire leads throughout the entire customer journey. It’s seamless, highly targeted, personalized, and drives results. 

For example, The Sill increased email leads by 65% with our layered lead generation. They embedded user-friendly opt-in forms throughout their ecommerce website – including homepage, category pages, product pages and checkout – to incentivize sign-ups. 

The Sill also improved lead-to-customer conversions by 126%, showing Yieldify’s layered approach drives more leads and higher quality leads. 

The Sill's email capture strategy
If you need help driving email leads into your database, check out our post on the best B2C lead generation tools 

6. Build an SMS marketing strategy

SMS marketing is up-and-coming. 

It’s only used by 47% of marketers right now, but the stats prove it’s becoming an important channel for marketers to communicate with their customers: 

  • SMS marketing is expected to grow 20.3% every year until 2025
  • SMS marketing has an ROI of 71:1
  • SMS campaigns have a 29% conversion rate

The outlook is good from a marketer’s perspective, but crucially SMS is also very popular with consumers:

  • 91% of consumers are interested in signing up for SMS
  • 70% of consumers opted in to receive texts in 2022
  • 75% of consumers prefer offers via SMS

The main advantage of SMS – for marketers and consumers – is that everyone carries a smartphone, so you can reach your customers in a matter of seconds, regardless of whether they’re connected to the internet. 

Naturally, you’ll need to generate leads before you start texting your customers. 

With Yieldify, you can drive SMS sign-ups by displaying website opt-in forms and feeding your subscribers’ details back into your SMS platform.

Once you’ve built a strong base of SMS leads, make sure you: 

  • Segment your subscribers
  • Personalize content 
  • Communicate with your customers regularly
  • Incentivize purchases 
  • A/B test your messaging
StickerYou's SMS strategy
Read our post on SMS lead generation for more information about SMS marketing and SMS tools.

First impressions count in ecommerce. 

48% of customers say a website’s design is the number one factor in determining a brand’s credibility. Design a site that’s pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate and watch your customer base grow. Design a clunky, unintuitive site and watch your conversion rates drop.

To keep your customers engaged, you need to create a seamless shopping experience from website entry through to exit. 

You can do this by:

  • Building a UX-optimized navbar
  • Making your website device-responsive 
  • Accurately categorizing your products 
  • Maintaining consistent design throughout your website 
  • Making it easier for your customers to find products

For example, Clarins used our platform to streamline the path to purchase. 

They guided customers to an online skin consultation that recommended products based on their specific skincare needs. The result? An 11% increase in conversions. 

Clarins' skin consultation

8. Leverage social proof & testimonials 

“Social proof makes shoppers feel compelled to buy the item they’re interested in. The presence of social proof on product pages in particular gives shoppers the reassurance they need to complete their purchase.”

Mike McNally, Director of Services (NA)

Mike speaks to one of the main benefits of social proof: it reassures customers about their choices.

That reassurance stems from our innate desire to belong to the tribe. We instinctively look to what others are doing to validate our decisions, which is why 92% of customers trust non-paid advice over paid ads.

In effect, your existing customers are your most prolific marketers – so use the power of social proof to your advantage. 

Show shoppers that your products are in high demand and loved by your current ecommerce customers. Then watch your conversion rates rise. 

For example, with Yieldify you can increase conversions with social proof by:

  • Spotlighting customer testimonials 
  • Driving urgency with stock scarcity messaging
  • Highlighting product popularity
  • Leveraging case studies and success stories
  • Embedding trust badges 

New Balance used the power of social proof to make their products more desirable to online shoppers, driving a 10% increase in conversion rates. 

New Balance social proof experience
Need help running social proof on your ecommerce site? Check out our post covering 14 of the best social proof software solutions on the market. 

9. Save abandoned carts 

Across all industries, 7 in 10 customers abandon their cart before checking out – costing ecommerce stores $18 billion every single year. 

Shopping cart abandonment is a complex problem for ecommerce marketers, but there are many reasons why customers fail to checkout: 

  • They were just window shopping
  • They weren’t ready to buy
  • They were forced to create an account
  • They didn’t want to pay for shipping
  • They wanted to compare prices
  • They didn’t have a discount code to redeem

At Yieldify, we reduce cart abandonment for our customers using a wide range of ecommerce strategies, including: 

  • Sending basket reminders
  • Spotlighting buy now, pay later options
  • Sending discount reminders
  • Using delivery incentives
  • Dynamically scraping images from cart

Check out this example from BYLT Basics below. 

The California fashion brand used our personalization technology to send cart reminders to returning customers, increasing conversions by 7%.

BYLT Basics' cart reminder message

10. A/B test everything 

A/B testing is the process of measuring two different variants of something – e.g. a web page or email subject line – to find out which one drives the most positive outcome.

“You cannot solve all your issues with A/B testing, but it’s one of the key ingredients in the recipe that will make your website successful. If you focus on optimizing your site through A/B testing, and bring in high-quality traffic, you’ll have the perfect combination to take your brand where you want it to go.”

Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant

A/B testing may not be a silver bullet to ecommerce success, but Margot has seen its value first-hand working alongside Yieldify customers. 

Using Yieldify’s A/B testing technology, thousands of ecommerce brands – ranging from SMB to enterprise – across all major industries have lifted conversion rates by up to 144%.

Despite its game-changing value, 23% of companies still aren’t using A/B testing to compare how website changes impact conversion rates. Worse still, 41% of email marketers aren’t using A/B testing to measure the performance of their email content. 

If you’re in either of these boats, it’s time you put A/B testing at the heart of your ecommerce strategy.

And if you have more than 100,000 monthly site visitors, with Yieldify you can use A/B/n testing to test up to 5 different variants at the same time. 

Yieldify's A/B/n testing in action

How to create a winning strategy for your online store 

  1. Prioritize what’s important

Start by tying your ecommerce marketing strategies to your broader ecommerce business goals. For example, are you looking for quick-wins you can get from PPC advertising, or do you want to build a community of loyal brand ambassadors on social media?

  1. Assess your internal expertise

Understand if you’ve got the internal expertise to achieve your goals. If you don’t have developers to run an effective conversion rate optimization strategy, then you should consider using a fully managed personalization platform like Yieldify.

  1. Identify a solution

The solution will typically be one of three things: upskill your team, hire more personnel or invest in new software. If you’ve done steps one and two properly, then you’ll already have your answer.

  1. Ask for budget 

This is the tricky part. You’ll need a compelling case to get more resources for your team, so make sure you can prove your new strategy will drive a healthy ROI.

  1. Test, iterate, repeat 

Don’t give up if your new strategy isn’t immediately successful. Test new approaches, measure your results and adjust.

Conclusion

I hope this blog has given you some fresh ideas on how you can navigate this challenging economic climate. I’m sure you’re up against it right now but, when executed well, these 10 ecommerce strategies will help you grow your revenue and lay the foundation for a successful future. 

If you’d like a preview of how you can improve sales and growth with Yieldify’s fully managed, personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

FAQs

What are ecommerce strategies?

Ecommerce strategies are the combination of techniques ecommerce brands use to increase their brand awareness, attract new email and SMS subscribers, and maximize online sales. They typically fall into one of these categories: 

– SEO (search engine optimization)
– PPC (pay per click) advertising
– Social media marketing
– Email marketing
– SMS marketing
– CRO (conversion rate optimization)

How can I improve the customer experience on my ecommerce website?

The best way to improve the customer experience is by improving the path to purchase. To achieve this, design your website in accordance with UX principles, categorize your products properly and streamline navigation with the help of CRO tools.

How can I increase website traffic and sales for my ecommerce store?

SEO and PPC are two of the most important channels for driving traffic to your ecommerce store. Once you’ve got customers on your website, CRO techniques and tools – such as social proof and cart abandonment messaging – will help you lift conversions and sales. 

What are the five 5 success factors of ecommerce businesses?

The success factors of your business will depend on your industry, but broadly speaking all thriving ecommerce sites will have: 

– Strong branding
– High SEO traffic 
– Seamless website navigation
– Personalized customer experiences
– 3%+ conversion rate

How to Grow an Online Business: 12 Money-Making Strategies

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A staggering 90% of ecommerce startups fold within 120 days.

Whether you’ve just breached the 120-day mark or been running a business for several years, congratulations on your work so far.

You’ve all cleared at least one significant hurdle, so let’s accelerate this upward trajectory you’re on.

If you’re about to launch and don’t want to be part of the 90% that fail, it’s time to read carefully.

Whichever camp you’re in, the 12 strategies in this blog will help make your online business a success.

My 12 strategies fall into three categories: 

  • How to create a winning brand
  • How to convert more visitors into customers
  • How to nail your email & SMS strategy

I’ll also lean on the insight of my Yieldify colleagues, Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant, and Mike McNally, Director of Client Services (NA).

Call me biased but Margot and Mike are experts in growing online businesses.

If you’re looking specifically for solutions and tools to grow your online business, check out our post covering 15 of the best website optimization tools.

Otherwise, let’s crack on with the 12 strategies. 

Reasons your online business isn’t making money

If you’re struggling to make money in this tough economic climate, you’re not alone. 

Every business goes through peaks and troughs, and factors beyond your control do play their part.

But you can’t always blame low revenue on market conditions.

Here are five reasons why you might be struggling to make money:

You don’t have product market-fit

35% of businesses fold because they don’t have market-fit for their product or service. Gather user feedback, analyze data and speak to your customers and target market regularly to address their pain points.

Your pricing is wrong

29% of ecommerce businesses that go bust shortly after launch say their failure was pricing-related. Price your products too high and demand will plummet. Set the bar too low and you’ll cut deep into your margins. 

Your website is poorly designed

Your customers make snap decisions when browsing online. 42% of customers decide whether to stay on a website within 10 seconds of landing, and 60% will leave due to poor UX. Build a website that’s easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye and quick to load. 

Your brand isn’t visible enough

Are you prioritizing your SEO, social media and PPC channels to increase growth? 48% of customers start looking for products on search engines, and 59% of customers prefer to buy from brands they already know. Invest in digital marketing to grow brand awareness and reach potential customers.

Your competitors are dominating the market

There are an estimated 12-24 million ecommerce businesses worldwide, but the reality for SMBs is that 63% of shoppers start their search on Amazon. Use your brand story and product USPs to stand out in the sprawling ecommerce industry.

12 Effective ecommerce strategies that drive sales

How to create a winning brand (1-4): Your brand is so much more than a name, logo and slogan – it defines who you are, shapes your customer base and makes you unique. Follow these strategies to build a prestigious brand identity that commands customer loyalty. 

How to convert more visitors into customers (5-10): Getting visitors to your website is only half the battle – now you’ve got to convince them to buy something. Use these strategies to reduce website bounce rates, increase customer engagement and accelerate sales.

How to nail your email & SMS strategy (11-12): Unlike SEO, social media and PPC, your email and SMS channels are completely under your control. Use these strategies to humanize your brand, increase loyalty and grow revenue through expertly curated email & SMS campaigns.

  1. Invest in SEO  
  2. Refine your PPC & campaigns
  3. Build your social media platforms
  4. Leverage social proof
  5. Segment your market
  6. Analyze more data
  7. Personalize customer experiences
  8. Run A/B tests 
  9. Use Chatbots 
  10. Create landing pages
  11. Generate email leads & remarket
  12. Generate SMS leads & remarket

How to create a winning brand 

1. Invest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

As I explained before, I sought the insight of my colleagues Mike and Margot before writing this blog.

Mike has worked closely with ecommerce brands for several years and knows the long-term value of SEO.

“Remember that SEO is a long-play ecommerce marketing channel. That means start now if you haven’t already, because you’ll typically see your site ranking for product keywords in around 12 months. If you’re already ranking for revenue keywords, ask yourself if you can increase your investment. On a cost-to-revenue basis, SEO is one of the cheapest channels – once the ship is moving, that ROI curve can be parabolic.”

After all, what do you do when you buy something online? Like 81% of shoppers, you probably start by heading to Google and typing in the name of the thing you’re looking for. 

The vast majority of online shopping journeys start on Google, which explains why organic search is responsible for 33% of overall revenue and traffic – making it the joint-highest traffic-driving channel for online businesses alongside paid search. 

To climb the search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive organic traffic to your website, you should: 

  • Look at Google Analytics to identify your high-performing pages and understand why they’re driving traffic
  • Identify the product-focused keywords that best describe what you sell
  • Compare suggested searches in Google, Ebay, Amazon, Etsy and other major marketplaces 
  • Look at social media to see what language your customers use to describe your products 
  • Monitor your competitors’ SEO performance and refine your strategy based on what works for them 

Once you’ve laid the groundwork following the above steps, it’s time to reach your target audience by:

  • Choosing high-ranking keywords you want to rank for – get started with free marketing tools like Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator
  • Producing content to satisfy your audience – not Google crawlers
  • Writing SEO-friendly product descriptions 
  • Uploading high-quality images
  • Improving page loading speed
  • Optimizing your website for mobile 

2. Refine your PPC campaigns

Margot has seen the impact of PPC (pay-per-click) ads first-hand. 

“Getting more eyes on your site is key to growing an online brand. If you’re new to the market, the first step to raising brand awareness is to acquire as much traffic as possible, and investing in PPC ads will drive more people to your site.”

For Margot, PPC is a must-have brand-building technique, and the statistics tell the same story. Not only does PPC lift top-of-mind awareness by 80%, it also has an ROI of 200%.

The benefit of PPC is that, as the name suggests, you only pay for the clicks on your ads, not the views. So even if you’re not driving loads of revenue, it’s still a great channel for building brand awareness.

Lay the foundations of a well oiled PPC machine by:

  • Identifying keywords that match what your target customers are searching for
  • Building customized landing pages that are relevant to each ad
  • Selecting a bidding strategy – it’s best to start with manual bids if you’re new to PPC
  • Getting an A/B testing tool to optimize the copy and CTAs of your ads
  • Setting a budget that guarantees you ROI

3. Build your social media platforms

The average person spends 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media every single day. 

All over the world customers are hooked to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now TikTok, which is why stores with a social media presence drive 32% more sales than those without. Social media isn’t a nice-to-have for online D2C businesses – it’s a brand-building necessity.

Check out our post on the best social media platforms for ecommerce if you can’t decide which platform to focus on. But if you’re short on time, here are some stats to get you started: 

  • Pinterest drives 33% more referral traffic for shopping websites than Facebook
  • 44% of people use Instagram to shop weekly
  • 78% of Americans say they’ve discovered products on FB

Social media lets you connect with customers in a way that gets people talking about your brand. 

Check out this genius campaign from Specsavers, who scooped the “most effective use of social media” accolade at The Drum Awards in 2021. Specsavers captured the English mood with their “it’s coming home” billboard and reached 9.5m people from a £11,000 ($13,500) budget.

Specsavers' "it's coming home" campaign

4. Leverage social proof 

Your current customers are your most trusted and valuable marketers. 

And no, we’re not wheeling out another customer-is-always-right platitude: research proves that 92% of customers trust non-paid recommendations over paid adverts.

Social proof is a psychologically powerful tool that does five key things: 

  • Shows you’re a trusted brand
  • Makes your brand more desirable
  • Validates your customers’ choices
  • Removes your customers’ doubts
  • Gives your customers a sense of urgency

At Yieldify, we’ve helped our clients increase conversion rates by up to 31% using a range of social proof experiences, including: 

  • Spotlighting customer testimonials 
  • Highlighting product popularity
  • Driving urgency through stock scarcity messaging
  • Leveraging case studies and success stories
  • Embedding trust badges
Social proof campaign from New Balance

If you’re looking for a tool to leverage social proof, read our post covering 14 of the best Social Proof Software on the market.

How to convert more visitors into customers

5. Segment your market

Margot says that brands with clearly defined market segments are the most successful. 

So no wonder businesses that tailor strategies to customer segments generate yearly profit growth of 15% vs 5% of businesses that don’t. 

Use market segmentation techniques to split your customers into subgroups based on shared characteristics. Then tailor your marketing efforts to customers who are most likely to buy your product or service. 

To drive more effective segmentation, you should:

  • Gather customer feedback through on-site polls 
  • Read your customer reviews for patterns and phrases
  • Analyze customer data in your ecommerce CRM

6. Analyze more data 

Many companies come to Yieldify with a simple but significant question: is our traffic or website responsible for our sub-par conversion rate?

That’s hard to answer with limited expertise, and the problem is that 99.5% of data is never used or analyzed. You need to go beyond tools like Google Analytics to truly understand what’s happening on your website – and, crucially, why it’s happening.

At Yieldify, we use Sunburst analysis to help clients improve their conversion rates.

For Margot, Sunburst acts as the elusive link between the what and the why:

“The rich data we analyze in Sunburst helps us evaluate the quality of our customers’ traffic. We’ll know straight away if the traffic is poor, and we can present this in a highly visual, easily digestible and quickly actionable way. Armed with this information, we’ll then implement website experiences that decrease bounce rates and optimize customer journeys.”

Sunburst empowers you to make better, data-driven decisions by helping you:

  • Uncover your customers’ pain points
  • Understand your customers’ journeys
  • Personalize your customers’ experiences 
  • Improve your customer service 
  • Forecast demand for your product or service 
Example of Sunburst analysis

7. Personalize customer experiences

Once you’ve segmented your market and dived into the data, you’re ready to personalize your customers’ journeys.

The stats prove just how crucial personalization is for driving sales:

  • 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience
  • 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience 
  • 71% of customers are frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal.

We know what customers want from online shopping, but the why is less clear. 

Enter our in-house expert Margot, who explains customers want personalization for three key reasons: 

It saves them time: Personalization helps customers quickly find and purchase the products and services they want

They see more relevant content: Personalization puts customers in contact with content and products that match the unique needs of their market segment

It enhances the customer experience: Personalization replicates the in-store experience and makes customers feel more valued and cared for by brands

Take this example from Petal & Pup, who personalized their website opt-in forms for Facebook customers as part of a strategy that increased email leads by 116%.

Petal & Pup's sign-up form

Looking for personalization software to optimize customer journeys? Read our post covering 10 of the best personalization tools on the market right now.

8. Run A/B tests

“You can’t solve all your issues with A/B testing, but it’s definitely a key ingredient that makes your recipe successful.”

Margot Rebeyrol, Digital Campaigns Consultant

Remember I wrote earlier about battling factors beyond your control? Well, the cost of customer acquisition has risen by 60% in the last five years.

Given the state of play, it’s wise to focus on retention and find ways to make every website visit count. 

One of the best ways to do that is through A/B testing.

77% of companies run A/B tests to compare how website changes (often very subtle changes) impact their conversion and lead generation rates. 

For example, you could test these different aspects of your website opt-in forms:

  • Messaging
  • Design 
  • CTA
  • Placement 
  • Size 

If you have more than 100,000 monthly website visitors, you can unlock deeper audience insights with our A/B/n feature – which lets you test up to five different variants at the same time.

Yieldify's A/B/n test

With Yieldify, our clients have lifted conversion rates by up to 144% and email leads by up to 580% using A/B and A/B/n testing. 

9. Use chatbots

Very few online businesses have the budget or time to build a well-trained team of customer service agents – but that’s no reason to neglect your customers. 

For a fraction of the price, you can respond to every customer worldwide using chatbots. 

A human touch is still highly valuable in customer service, but 69% of consumers prefer to use chatbots because they can answer questions instantly. 

Chatbots are ideal for fast-growth businesses because they:

  • Reduce costs: One chatbot is significantly cheaper than hiring a single customer service agent 
  • Save time: Chatbots can have thousands of conversations in different languages at the same time
  • Collect customer data: Chatbots help you better understand your customers’ pain points 

10. Create landing pages

Customers who land on a product page are 72% more likely to bounce than those who arrive on a landing page.

The key distinction between a landing page and a product page is that a landing page has a specific purpose – i.e. drive a sale or lead – and a single CTA, which is directly tied to the search terms.

You should think of your landing pages as digital storefronts. Brick-and-mortar retailers carefully curate their shop front, so you should apply the same meticulous attention to detail with your landing pages.

To create a high-converting landing page, make sure you: 

  • Improve speed: Every additional second of load time reduces a websites conversion rate by 4.42%
  • Include a customer testimonial: 36% of top landing pages feature customer testimonials
  • Personalize: Personalized CTAs drive a 202% uplift in conversions

How to nail your email and SMS strategy

11. Generate more email leads & remarket

New technologies come and go, but the humble email remains a bastion of our ever-evolving digital world.

Not only is email surviving, it is thriving too: 89% of marketers use email as their top lead generation and customer acquisition channel.

Email marketing endures because it generates 45:1 ROI on average. You’ll struggle to drive that ROI with any other channel (except SMS, which I’ll discuss shortly).

You need to build out your email list building strategies before you can drive this level of ROI, so display website sign-up forms to get more customers to subscribe.

Then follow these best practices to increase your email open and click-through rates. 

  • Segment your subscribers
  • Keep your email length between 50-125 words
  • Write open-me-now subject lines 
  • Design compelling CTAs with UX principles front-of-mind
  • Personalize, always 
  • Send cart abandonment emails
  • Use A/B testing to optimize open and click-through rates

If you’re looking specifically for a solution to help you drive more email subscribers into your database, check out our post on the 12 best B2C lead generation tools. 

12. Generate more SMS leads & remarket

Email marketing’s younger sibling, SMS marketing, is fast becoming the new kid on the block.

Why? Because it’s a certified revenue generator with 71:1 ROI. Despite its money-making potential, only 47% of marketers use SMS to reach their customers.

So if you’re in the 53% of marketers without an SMS strategy, it’s time to add it to your repertoire. 

SMS lead generation form

The great advantage of SMS marketing is you can reach your subscribers in seconds – regardless of whether they’re connected to the internet. 

On the flip side, SMS is up-and-coming and your customers have concerns about privacy. Many won’t quite know what they’re signing up for, which makes it hard to generate leads.

To generate more SMS leads, you can: 

  • Run website sign-up forms
  • Ask your email subscribers to opt in
  • Create a referral program
  • Incentivize your social media followers 

Then follow these best practices to drive the highest impact: 

  • Segment your subscribers
  • Create drip campaigns
  • Personalize, always 
  • Run promotions 
  • Use visual content 
  • A/B test your messages

If you want more information about growing and nurturing your SMS database, check out our blog on SMS lead generation.

Summary

In the hyper-competitive ecommerce landscape, growing an online business is hard. The road to success is paved with big challenges, but these 12 strategies will help you navigate them and create a winning brand that your customers love. 

If you’d like a preview of how you can grow your online business with Yieldify’s fully managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

FAQs

What is the best way to grow your business online?

The best way to grow your online business is through a combination of brand-building and conversion rate optimization techniques. It’s vital that your brand tells a compelling and unique story to command genuine customer loyalty. You’ll also need to use A/B testing and other CRO tools to make every website visit count.

How can I improve my small online business?

You can improve your small online business by building a coherent digital marketing strategy that incorporates SEO, PPC and social media. Not only will these strategies build brand awareness, they’ll drive more sales and revenue for your business. 

How do you grow an online store?

Growing an online store is an undertaking that requires a solid product-market fit, a thriving digital marketing strategy and a website that’s designed with customer journeys in mind. If you’re looking to accelerate growth, website optimization tools can help you improve your conversion rates, UX, page speed and SEO performance. 

How can I get more customers for my online business?

You can generate more customers for your online business through a combination of SEO, PPC and social media advertising. Once you’ve got new visitors on your website, ask them to subscribe to your email marketing with eye-catching sign-up forms. If you need help generating more email & SMS leads, check out our post on the best B2C lead generation tools.

Valentine’s Day Email Marketing Campaign Ideas (+ 50 Attractive Subject Lines)

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In 2022, top-performing email marketers generated more than $800k from Valentine’s Day campaigns. 

These marketers didn’t stand out in crowded inboxes by spamming their customers with generic messaging or relying solely on irresistible discounts.

They sent highly targeted, personalized and immaculately timed emails to their customers, all rubber-stamped with mouth-watering subject lines – the type of email you wouldn’t dare leave to fester in your inbox. 

But what do the nuts and bolts of these emails look like? And how can you maximize revenue from email marketing this Valentine’s Day to earn the respect of your colleagues and that promotion you’ve been chasing? 

In this blog I’ll guide you through four key areas so you can join the elite bracket of email marketers:

If you’d like information on platforms and tools that’ll help you generate more email leads this Valentine’s Day, check out our post on the best B2C lead generation tools. 

But if you’re looking specifically to refine your marketing emails, you’re in exactly the right place. 

How can you benefit from email marketing on Valentine’s Day?

In short, you can increase sales and accelerate your email marketing ROI on Valentine’s Day thanks to two key factors: 

  • Your customers are spending more than ever
  • The majority of shoppers buy V-Day gifts online

While the number of Americans celebrating Valentine’s Day has decreased by 10% since 2009, those honoring the occasion spent generously in 2022 as average order values reached $67 – an increase of $10 in just two years.

Crucially for email marketers, 41% of customers purchased their Valentine’s Day gifts online, which made it the most popular place to shop ahead of department stores, discount stores and local businesses. 

It’s no wonder top-performing email marketers raked in more than $800k in Valentine’s Day revenue last year.

9 Valentine’s Day email marketing campaigns to stand out

Check out these 9 sales-driving emails from ecommerce brands just like yours to get extra inspiration for your Valentine’s Day campaigns.  

1. Segment by gender

Market segmentation techniques let you divide your email list into smaller groups based on shared characteristics, enabling you to send more relevant and personalized content to your subscribers.

Segmented and targeted email campaigns account for 58% of all email ROI, which is why global brands like House of Fraser segment their Valentine’s Day email campaigns. 

Check the email from House of Fraser below, which is a great example of segmentation in action. House of Fraser segmented their email list by gender to help customers find the perfect gift for their romantic partner.

House of Fraser's gender segmented email

2. Personalize your content, always

It’s no secret that personalization is fundamental to any successful marketing strategy.

Your customers want to be seen as individuals, which is why email marketers increase revenue by 20% with personalized campaigns. 

Still not convinced? 

  • 74% of marketers say personalization increases customer engagement
  • 72% of customers only respond to messages aimed directly at them
  • Including a personalized video in an email improves CTR by up to 200%

Personalization is non-negotiable if you want your customers to open your emails and click through to your site. 

Below is an example of how Ritual Co, a global food ordering app, sent a data-driven, hyper-personalized email that was completely unique to the recipient.

In the spirit of the day, Ritual reminisced on key milestones they’d reached with their customer, including when the relationship began and the number of meals they’d shared together. 

Ritual's personalized Valentine's Day email

3. Display cut-off dates for delivery 

While 46% of shoppers look for gifts in early February, some of your customers simply love the white-knuckle thrill of leaving everything until the eleventh hour.

Keep these customers in the know by including cut-off dates for delivery in subject lines, copy and images where possible. It might also give your more punctual customers the sense of urgency they need to finally purchase the gift that’s been sitting in their basket. 

For example, luxury American fashion brand Coach included a cut off date just above the footer in this email below. 

Coach's Valentine's Day delivery cutoff email

4. Send your loved one a hint

You’re having your weekly (admit it, we know it’s daily) online browse of your favorite brand when something catches your eye. It’s something you’d love for Valentine’s Day, but what are the chances your partner will buy you that exact product?

Using Yieldify’s technology, beauty brand Elemis created a solution which benefits the gift buyer and receiver. They gave shoppers an option to send an email hint to their partner with a personalized message, making it clear exactly what they’d like for Valentine’s Day. 

It’s a strategy where everyone wins: 

  • Your customer gets the gift they want 
  • Their partner spends less time browsing for the perfect gift
  • You secure a sale and get a new email subscriber 

Check out Elemis’ solution below. 

Elemis' Valentine's Day hint email

5. Generate leads with website opt-in forms 

Traffic to ecommerce sites increased 33% year-on-year in the build up to Valentine’s Day 2022. 

For email marketers, this influx in potential customers gives you an opportunity to drive more subscribers into your database to remarket for Valentine’s Day and beyond. 

If you’re looking for a lead generation tool to create customizable, on-brand opt-in forms that adapt to customer journeys, Yieldify’s layered lead generation technology can help you increase your email leads by up to 580%.

6. Let customers know about gift cards

More than 1 in 5 Valentine’s Day shoppers purchased gift cards in 2022.

Gift cards are popular because they’re a convenient, low-risk option for shoppers, but many of your subscribers won’t know that you sell gift cards – so make them aware through your email marketing campaigns. 

Check out this example from American lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret, who used vibrant V-Day imagery to promote their digital gift card and told their customers where they can redeem them.

Victoria's Secret's gift card email

7. Appeal to non-romantic relationships 

It’s no secret that consumers want to buy gifts for pets, friends and family members as well as their romantic partners:

  • Americans spent an estimated $751.3 million on gifts for their pets in 2022
  • 27.6 million American families bought gifts for their dogs in 2020 
  • Shoppers spent $2.1 billion on gifts for their friends in 2020, increasing from $737 million in 2010

Love should still be the central theme of your Valentine’s Day newsletters, but you could miss out on sales by focusing too heavily on your romance-fueled customers.  

For example, see how Mouth, an artisan jerky company, targeted email subscribers looking to buy gifts for their friends – albeit with a heartbreak-themed twist.

Mouth's Valentine's Day email

8. Get creative

Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to let your creativity shine through.

Grab your customers’ attention with cupid-inspired puns, reworked poems and striking imagery that captures the mood of the occasion.

For example, LA-based shoes company TOMS arranged items into love heart symbols in this email campaign. 

Toms' love heart-themed email campaign

9. Give last-minute shoppers a get-out-of-jail-free card

There’s always one who ends up scrambling around for a last-minute gift, no matter what the occasion is.  

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, let your customers know they can still grab items in-store after the delivery deadline has passed. 

Check out this email from Kiss my Keto, which includes a classy sign-off from their founder to give it a personalized touch. 

Kiss my Keto's last minute gift email

50 Valentine’s Day email subject lines to spread the love

According to OptinMonster, 47% of email recipients decide to open emails based on the subject line alone.

You need to convince your subscribers to open your email within just 50 characters, so use them wisely – very wisely. 

Here are 50 killer subject lines from Sender to help you increase open rates this Valentine’s Day.

Discount-focused subject lines:

  • 20% OFF—Savings Sweeter than Chocolate
  • Hey, Valentine. Take 40% off today.
  • Roses are Red. Violets are Blue. All Items 40% OFF. Just for You!
  • Better Than Roses: 30% off!
  • Exclusive 30% OFF, only for you {First_Name}
  • 45% OFF Coupon Expires in 12 hrs, {First_Name}.
  • Happy Valentine Week! Shop away @45% OFF Sitewide. 
  • We Don’t Discriminate Love. 40% OFF Sitewide!
  • Not Your Usual Sale—50% OFF!
  • Sweeter Than Hershey’s Kisses—40% OFF Sitewide

Romantic subject lines: 

  • He” will L-O-V-E this Sale!
  • “She” will L-O-V-E you for this Sale!
  • Never Too Late to Win Valentine’s Day.
  • 💕 For your Soulmate Only
  • Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas That’ll Melt Hearts 🏹
  • Secret admirer spotted. Go ahead express it now.
  • A Perfect Gift that says I Love You, better than You 💕
  • Special Gifts for Your Wife that say I Love You, so You don’t have to!
  • In Celebration of True Love
  • No boyfriend. No girlfriend. How about a furry Valentine?

Last-minute gift subject lines:

  • You Forgot! But Cupid remembered…
  • Last Minute Gift for Your Valentine?
  • Express Shipping—Last Change to Get That Gift Delivered on Time!
  • Where can you get Last Minute Valentine’s gifts now?
  • LAST Chance. Remember—Hell Hath No Fury Like a…
  • Hurry! You’ve Still Got Time to Impress Your Valentine
  • Cupid’s Leaving us in 24 hours.
  • LAST Chance to Onboard the Cupid Train
  • Last-Minute Valentine’s Gift?
  • It’s Cupid’s last round – shop now!

Sale subject lines:

  • Love is on sale — Shop now for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift!
  • Make this Valentine’s Day special without breaking the bank!
  • Save some love (and money) on Valentine’s Day gifts with our sale!
  • Get your Love On 💌 with Our Valentine’s Day Sale!
  • ⏲️ It’s not too late to shop for Valentine’s, <first_name>!
  • 💸 Save on gifts for your loved one this Valentine’s Day!
  • Don’t wait until the last minute – shop our Valentine’s Day sale now!
  • Love is in the air 💨 and discounts are on — Shop now for Valentine’s!
  • Surprise your love, <First_Name>! Grab something from our Valentine’s Day sale
  • Find the way to your sweetheart’s heart — Sale Live now!

Personalized subject lines:

  • {First_Name}, Personalize Your Surprise Valentine’s Day Gift Today!
  • Looking for a Valentine’s Day gift for him, {First_Name}?
  • {First_Name}, Valentine’s Treat for You and Yours
  • {First_Name}, Buy what you want. We are not judging!
  • A Little Self-Love this Valentine’s Day, {First_Name}? 
  • {First_Name}, What to give your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day?
  • So you decided yet on the gift, {First_Name}?
  • 6 hrs left {First_Name}. What are you waiting for?
  • {First_Name}, Treat Your Sweetheart 
  • Exclusive 30% OFF, only for you {First_Name}

7 Valentine’s Day email marketing best practices

1. Time your delivery

Timing is everything – both in love and Valentine’s Day email marketing. 

Leave it too late and you’ll miss out on valuable sales. Start too early and you’ll alienate your customers. 

In 2021, 20% of February’s sales were made in the first three days of the month, while 84% of email orders were placed by February 13th. 

To maximize ROI from email marketing, send your first Valentine’s Day campaign towards the end of January, and drip another 4-5 emails – including a Valentine’s Day gift guide – through to your customers as the big day approaches. 

2. Personalize your content 

As I mentioned earlier, personalization is integral to email marketing. 

Let me remind you of the stats:

  • Email marketers increase revenue by 20% with personalized campaigns
  • 74% of marketers say personalization increases customer engagement
  • 72% of customers only respond to messages aimed directly at them
  • Including a personalized video in an email improves CTR by up to 200%

The numbers speak for themselves, so make your customers feel valued by always addressing them by name with hyper-targeted emails.

3. Send cart abandonment reminders

Cart abandonment emails are one of the most effective ways to engage your customers. 

In collaboration with Yieldify, Nautica, the global lifestyle fashion brand, sent cart abandonment emails to their customers, achieving an open rate of 44% – which is 23% higher than the average email open rate.

Not only are your customers more likely to read cart abandonment emails, they’re also 233% more likely to convert. 

4. Craft open-me-now subject lines

Email subject lines are an art form that make or break your open rates. 

Here are three golden rules to follow: 

  • Stay concise: write subject lines between 28-50 characters
  • Personalize, personalize, personalize: Subject lines addressing customers by name increase open rates by 26%
  • Be emoji-friendly: Including an emoji in your subject line will increase open rates by up to 45%

5. Optimize for mobile 

In 2022, 66% of all Valentine’s Day purchases were made through mobile, a rise of 8% in just two years. 

Your on-the-go customers are increasingly choosing to shop on their mobiles, so work with your internal teams to ensure all your email campaigns are optimized for mobile. 

6. Attract new email subscribers

As I mentioned earlier, traffic to ecommerce retailers increased by 33% year-on-year ahead of Valentine’s Day 2022. 

A raft of new customers will visit your site in the build up to V-Day, so run highly targeted, on-brand opt-in forms to win new subscribers. 

Make sure you send a welcome email when someone signs up, as your new subscribers are 75% more likely to open a welcome email than any other marketing email. 

If you need support with website opt-in forms, check out our post on B2C lead generation tools. Alternatively, read how Yieldify has helped clients lift up to 580% more leads with our market-leading layered lead generation strategy. 

7. A/B test your content

93% of US-based companies A/B test their email marketing campaigns – and with good reason.

A/B testing lets you measure the impact of small changes to your email content, helping you maximize open rates, click through rates and conversions. 

Here’s what you should be testing: 

  • Subject lines
  • Copy length and tone
  • Imagery 
  • Personalization 
  • CTAs

The insights you glean from A/B testing your Valentine’s Day emails will also help you develop stronger strategies for future shopping holidays like Black Friday and Christmas.

Conclusion

I hope this blog equips you with the tools you need to craft a love-fueled, winning email marketing strategy. If you personalize your content, time your messages well and write compelling subject lines, then you’re bound to woo your email subscribers and have a happy Valentine’s Day. 

If you’d like a preview of how you can improve your on-site email lead generation with Yieldify’s fully managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.

FAQs

How can I use segmentation to make my Valentine’s Day email campaign more effective?

Email marketers use segmentation techniques to send more personalized email campaigns to their subscribers. With a segmented subscriber list, you’ll be able to send hyper-relevant emails that drive higher open and conversion rates, satisfying the 72% of customers who only respond to messages aimed directly at them.

How can I use A/B testing to optimize my Valentine’s Day email campaign?

With A/B testing you can measure how subtle changes to any aspect of your email campaign – including subject lines, imagery and CTAs – impact your open and conversion rates. Use A/B testing and other website optimization tools to ensure you’re driving maximum value from your Valentine’s Day email marketing campaigns.

How can I use personalization in my Valentine’s Day email campaign to make it more effective?

Personalization is crucial to driving sales through email campaigns in the build up to Valentine’s Day. Marketers have increased revenue by 20% with personalized emails, and something as simple as addressing your customer by name can lift email open rates by 26%. If you need a solution to help you personalize your customers’ end-to-end journeys, check out our post outlining 10 of the best personalization tools on the market. 

How can I use Valentine’s Day email marketing to increase sales?

Timing is key when you’re sending email marketing in the build up to Valentine’s Day. Many of the techniques email marketers use to drive sales throughout the year are applicable around V-Day, but don’t leave it too late to email your customers. The majority of shoppers look to buy their gifts in advance of February 14, so send your first Valentine’s promotion email towards the end of January.

Guide to Generating SMS Leads That Convert

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Take a look around you – everyone is glued to their smartphones.

The average American checks their phone 63 times a day and, according to Forbes, 90% of texts get read within just three minutes of delivery. 

Our dependency on smartphones makes SMS one of the quickest and most efficient ways to reach your customers – yet only 47% of marketers have embraced SMS marketing, while 82% use email marketing. 

But this gap between email and SMS marketing is narrowing, with industry experts predicting the SMS industry in the US will grow 20.3% every year until 2025.

To prepare you for one of the next big things in marketing, in this blog I’ll guide you through: 

  • The fundamentals of SMS lead generation 
  • How to capture more SMS leads 
  • A six-step mobile marketing strategy to convert your leads into customers
  • Five leading SMS marketing tools  

If you’d like deeper insight into solutions that can help you increase email and SMS subscribers, check out our post covering 12 of the best lead generation tools. Otherwise, let’s start with SMS lead gen.  

What is SMS lead generation?

SMS (short message service) lead generation is the process of acquiring phone numbers from current and prospective customers so that you can remarket to them. 

The objective of SMS lead generation is to create a direct line of communication with your customers and send them marketing material – such as promotions, new product launches and cart reminders – that encourages them to buy one of your brand’s products.

When you’re generating SMS leads, try to gather extra information along with your customer’s phone number, including: 

  • Name 
  • Gender 
  • Birthday
  • Zip code

This information will help you personalize the SMS marketing content you send to your customers (more on this later).

Advantages of using SMS lead generation 

1. SMS drives high conversion rates & ROI 

SMS marketers generate a staggering 71:1 ROI on average. 

Much of this ROI can be explained by the average conversion rate for text messaging (29%), which is significantly higher than email marketing conversion rates (2-5%).

The excellent SMS conversion rate points to a deeply significant factor: it shows your SMS subscribers are deeply invested in your brand and arguably your most valuable customers.

And the beauty of SMS is you can reach these loyal brand ambassadors with a text message in a matter of seconds – regardless of whether they have internet access or not.

2. Your customers want to receive text messages from brands

SMS marketing is a two-way street – it benefits brands and consumers. 

Your customers want quicker and more reliable access to the brands they love:

  • 91% of consumers are interested in signing up for texts
  • 70% of consumers opted in to receive texts in 2022
  • 75% of consumers prefer offers via SMS

The demand is there – so go and respond to it. 

3. SMS drives more customer engagement than email

Email marketing may be more widely used than SMS, but that doesn’t mean it’s more effective. 

In fact, SMS marketing outperforms email across many key performance metrics: 

  • Higher delivery rates – 98% vs 80%
  • Higher open rates – 85% vs 20%
  • Higher response rates – 45% vs 6%

If you’re serious about driving more sales, it’s about time you used email and SMS marketing to engage your customers. 

7 tips & tactics for generating SMS leads

1. Target your current email subscribers

Email is statistically the best channel to drive SMS sign-ups, with opt-in rates between 1.6%-10.5%.

Your email subscribers are already getting your marketing content, so it makes sense to use your email channel to let subscribers know they can also opt in for SMS updates – they’re more likely to sign up for SMS than your social media followers or website visitors.

2. Display website opt-in forms

You’re already running opt-in forms to generate email leads, but you’re missing a trick if you’re not also displaying an option to subscribe to SMS.

As I mentioned earlier, the majority of your customers want to receive text message marketing – so help them sign up by displaying opt-in forms throughout their website journey.

Using Yieldify’s personalization platform, ecommerce marketers create fully customizable, on-brand and highly targeted opt-in forms to increase SMS subscribers. Check out the example from StickerYou below, and read more about how they leveraged Yieldify’s technology to tackle the rising cost of customer acquisition. 

StickerYou's SMS sign-up form

3. Give your customers an incentive to subscribe

Your customers are used to getting something in return for their email address, so they’re unlikely to subscribe unless you adopt the same tactic for your SMS lead generation strategy. 

Offer these common incentives to get more leads: 

  • Discount codes 
  • Free gifts 
  • Downloadable content
  • Back-in-stock reminders

4. A/B test your website opt-in forms

The current SMS lead generation rate for a website is just 0.7%-1.4%.

To rise above the industry average, run A/B tests to see how the design, placement, messaging and triggering of your website opt-in forms impacts sign-up rates. 

If you have more than 100,000 monthly website visitors, you can use Yieldify’s A/B/n testing technology to test up to 5 forms at the same time.

5. Launch a customer referral program

Your current customers are one of your most powerful marketing tools. 

92% of people trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family more than any other form of marketing, and referred leads convert 5X faster than those acquired from other channels.

Set up a referral program and encourage your SMS subscribers to recommend your brand. Then watch your SMS list grow. 

6. Scale your email & SMS subscribers at the same time

Email leads are typically less engaged than SMS leads, but ecommerce marketers still drive a healthy 45:1 ROI from email marketing.

Both email and SMS leads are highly valuable, so ask your customers to submit their phone number and email address in your website opt-in forms at the same time – or get them to subscribe to SMS in a separate form after they’ve submitted their email.

Rockport's email & SMS sign-up form

7. Run social media campaigns to incentivize sign-ups

Your social media followers are some of your biggest brand ambassadors, so they are likely to be interested in subscribing to your SMS list. 

To generate leads through your social media platforms, you could:

  • Add opt-in links to your Instagram story
  • Embed an opt-in link to your Facebook page header
  • Place an opt-in link in your Twitter bio
  • Use Tik-Tok influencers to promote SMS
  • Run a text-to-win contest on Snapchat

6 steps to a great SMS campaign 

1. Segment your audience 

Market segmentation techniques are integral to any successful SMS marketing campaign.

Segmented messages get 83% more engagement than those that don’t, so divide your customers into groups based on demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral characteristics. 

For example, you could segment your SMS subscriber list by: 

  • Age
  • Engagement level
  • Purchase history
  • Browsing history
  • Cart abandonment 
  • Location 

The goal of segmentation is to provide the most relevant, personalized content for your current and potential customers, and make it easier for you to scale and automate your SMS campaigns. 

2. Create SMS drip campaigns 

SMS drip campaigns are sequences of automated texts you send to subscribers to keep your brand top-of-mind and drive more sales. 

For example, your SMS drip campaign might look like this: 

  • Send new leads a welcome text with a unique discount code 
  • Follow up with a reminder to use the discount code 
  • Thank your customer for completing their first order 
  • Share promotional content about your brand story 
  • Offer another discount code in exchange for a friend referral  

Remember, it’s important to strike a good balance with your SMS drips. 

Your customers receive countless mobile notifications every day, and they won’t hesitate to unsubscribe if your messages are spammy or overly generic – which leads nicely onto personalization.

3. Personalize your messages 

Personalization is essential for creating SMS messages your customers want to read – and the stats are there to prove it: 

  • 72% of customers interact only with personalized messages 
  • Texts with personalized content get 259% higher engagement
  • 60% of shoppers are likely to become repeat customers after a personalized experience

You can personalize your SMS messages in a variety of ways, including: 

  • Sending welcome messages to new subscribers
  • Addressing your customers by name
  • Sending exclusive discount codes on your customer’s birthday
  • Tailoring content to your customers’ position in the purchase cycle
  • Recommending products most relevant to your customers’ browsing behavior 

Take this example from Qalo, who gave their customer an exclusive offer after they’d abandoned their online shopping cart.

Cart abandonment text from Qalo

4. Offer discount codes

Your customers are becoming increasingly reluctant to pay full price thanks to the ubiquity of discount codes and sale periods, with 64% of people now waiting for items to go on sale before buying. 

The reality is that discounts drive sales, and that’s particularly true of SMS campaigns. In 2021, 8-16% of customers redeemed SMS discount codes compared to just 2.7% for email discounts. 

Only 31% of customers take action in response to general offers. With that in mind, use these three engagement-driving discount codes instead:

  • Pricing-based offers
  • Time-sensitive offers
  • Location-based offers

5. Leverage visual content

All marketers know that visual content is king, and the science backs it up: human beings process visual information 60,000 times quicker than the written word.

In SMS marketing, 51% of customers are more likely to make a purchase after receiving texts containing images, videos or GIFs – so pique your customers’ interest by incorporating these eye-catching cues into your campaigns.

6. A/B test your messaging

A/B testing is a popular marketing testing method which helps you understand how to drive the highest open, response and conversions rates from your text marketing. 

You can optimize your SMS campaigns by testing different aspects of your messaging, including:

  • Time of delivery
  • Tone of voice 
  • CTAs
  • Incentives
  • Personalization 
  • Visual content

Use the insights you gain from A/B testing to continuously adapt your SMS marketing content and align it with your customers’ preferences.  

Best tools for SMS leads

1. Yieldify

Screenshot of Yieldify's homepage

Yieldify is a fully managed personalization platform that helps ecommerce businesses generate more revenue by engaging their customers with personalized experiences. With Yieldify’s layered lead generation functionality, you can build customizable, on-brand and highly targeted opt-in forms that drive more SMS sign-ups at every step of the customer journey. 

2. Attentive

Screenshot of Attentive's homepage

Pitching itself as the leader in conversational commerce, Attentive is a text message marketing solution that helps everyone from entrepreneurs to enterprise customers form deep customer connections through SMS marketing. Grow your subscriber list with website sign-up forms, engage your customers with conversational text messages, and streamline purchase decisions with Attentive. 

3. Klaviyo

Screenshot of Klaviyo's homepage

Klaviyo is a growth marketing platform that helps D2C brands deliver more personalized experiences to their customers across email, SMS, in-app notifications and web. With Klaviyo, you can drive more SMS leads, have two-way text conversations with customers, run A/B tests, download SMS marketing reports and more.  

4. Emotive

Screenshot of Emotive's homepage

Emotive is a full-funnel SMS marketing platform with a range of features – including lead generation, automated two-way customer conversations and an intuitive data dashboard – to help you drive more sales and nurture customer relationships. Emotive promises to generate at least $2500 in revenue for new customers who spend $500 on SMS – or they’ll pay the difference.

5. Messente

Screenshot of Messente's homepage

Messente advises customers on which types of messages to use and helps B2B businesses reach mobile phones in over 190 countries worldwide. As well as powering SMS marketing, Messente helps businesses deliver pin codes and notifications to their customers.

SMS Lead Generation FAQs

Is SMS a marketing tool?

SMS is a low-cost, high-impact way to connect with customers which ecommerce brands are increasingly incorporating into their marketing strategies. With delivery, open and response rates outperforming email, SMS is one of the most effective ways to promote sale periods, re-engage hesitant customers and form deeper customer relationships. 

Is SMS marketing effective?

SMS marketing is one of the most effective channels in an ecommerce marketer’s armory. A survey from Attentive revealed 91% of customers want to sign up for SMS marketing, and conversion rates (29%) massively outperform email marketing. 

How do I run an SMS campaign?

To run an SMS campaign, start by splitting your list of subscribers into sub groups and creating drips for each market segment. SMS campaigns that drive the highest number of conversions typically include personalized messaging, visual content and coupon codes.

A Sweetheart Deal: Top Valentine’s Ecommerce Tactics, Email Tips, Trends & Stats

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Your customers are willing to spend big to woo their loved ones on Valentine’s Day. 

Indeed, average order values rise by 11% in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, so it’s a great time for ecommerce brands to maximize revenue. 

In preparation for the season of love, we’ve outlined 4 ecommerce tactics and 5 email tips as well as a collection of hot trends and key stats especially for you.

4 Valentine’s ecommerce tactics to show your customers some love:

Use tried-and-tested holiday strategies

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel or implement fresh strategies when 14 February rolls around.

The approaches you use to drive more sales on Black Friday work on every shopping-centered holiday – and Valentine’s Day is no exception.

Use these classic holiday strategies to maximize sales this year:

  • Cross-sell related products: Your customers are willing to spend more, so help them add complementary products to their carts throughout their website journey
  • Add free shipping and threshold discounts: With Yieldify, brands have driven up to 33% higher average order values by incentivizing their customers to spend more with promotional experiences – including free shipping offers and threshold discounts
  • Provide last-minute delivery options – Because there’s always someone who leaves it to the 11th hour
Girlfriend Collective used Yieldify to lift AOVs with free shipping incentives

Create dedicated landing pages

As you know, online shoppers can be fickle. Your customers have short attention spans, and they’ll often decide to stay or leave your site in a matter of seconds.

The average ecommerce bounce rate is 20%-45%, but you can stay on the lower end of that by creating dedicated landing pages with Valentine’s Day imagery, messaging and relevant products.

A well-curated landing page will streamline your customers’ journeys and help increase conversion rates.

If you need support creating high-converting landing pages, check out potential options for your brand in our website optimization tools blog. 

Segment your audience

Market segmentation techniques are the backbone of any effective marketing campaign – ensuring you market the right products to the right customers while simplifying the path to purchase.

For Valentine’s Day, group your products by gender or by customer intent, then A/B test your calls to action (CTAs) to drive the highest number of conversions.

Example of A/B testing

Use images to clearly guide your customers to the right category pages, and display product recommendations that catch their attention.

Want more information about segmentation? Check out our blog on market segmentation techniques and eight ways it can benefit your brand.

Guide your customers 

Candy, flowers and jewelry are Valentine’s Day best sellers.

But your customers won’t always want to play it safe with timeless classics – so help them find the perfect gift for their partner.

Create curated content featuring your recommended products and tackle browse abandonment with experiences designed to guide customers through the purchase funnel. 

For example, Laithwaites, a serial award-winning D2C wine company, uses Yieldify to guide their customers to Valentine’s Day gift pages with on-site overlays.

Laithwaites' Valentine's Day gift guide experience

Valentine’s day email tips for ecommerce

Online orders from email marketing grew 367% year-on-year between 2020 and 2021. 

Clearly, email marketing is an important channel for ecommerce marketers, but how can you use it to drive more sales this Valentine’s Day?

Here are five ideas to consider:

  • Start early – In 2021, 20% of February’s sales came from the first 3 days of the month. Start your Valentine’s Day email marketing campaigns towards the end of January to avoid missing out on revenue  
  • Segment by purchase intent – Your customers may want to buy Valentine’s Day gifts for family members, friends and pets as well as their romantic partners. Segment your email lists according to who your customers are looking to buy for
     
  • Incentivize with free gifts – Lift email open rates by telling your customers about product giveaways in the subject line
     
  • Send cart abandonment reminders – Consumers open 45% of cart abandonment emails compared to just 21% of standard emails. Send cart abandonment reminders to your customers who don’t check out after adding something to their basket  
  • Use emojis in subject lines – Include emojis in email subject lines to increase your open rates by up to 45%

Valentine’s day gifts trends for ecommerce in 2023

Valentine’s Day spending in the US reached $23.9 billion in 2022, up $2.1 billion year-on-year.

That made it the second-highest year on record, but what lies in store for 2023? 

Here are three gift trends to consider:

Consumer intent is changing

Valentine’s Day is an international celebration of love, but it’s by no means exclusive to romantic relationships. Since 2010, the amount consumers have spent on their friends has increased from $737 million to $2.1 billion, while they’re also spending more on gifts for family members and pets.

Men spend more than women 

Your male customers are willing to splash out on Valentine’s Day. According to a survey from the National Retail Federation, men spend an average of $108 on Valentine’s Day gifts for their partners – which is more than double what women spend ($49). 

Candy reigns supreme 

Candy has been the most popular Valentine’s Day gift among consumers since it overtook greetings cards in 2015. In 2022, 56% of US shoppers bought candy for Valentine’s day. As you can see in the graph below, greetings cards and flowers are the next most popular purchases. And following a COVID-induced lull in 2021, evening’s out enjoyed a resurgence in 2022. 

Important Valentine’s Day ecommerce statistics

Alongside Black Friday, Christmas and Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day is one of the biggest dates in the retail calendar. 

Ahead of 2023’s iteration, I’ve sourced five stats every ecommerce marketer should know:

  • Industry size: Americans spent $23.9 billion on Valentine’s gifts in 2022 – the second-highest year on record and a year-on-year rise of $2.1 billion
  • Ecommerce is booming: 32% of Americans shop for Valentine’s gifts online
  • Timing is key: 20% of online sales in February 2021 were made in the first three days of the month
  • Leverage SMS: SMS orders for Valentine’s gifts increased by 900% between 2020 and 2021
  • Man’s best friend: 27.6 million American families bought Valentine’s presents for their dogs in 2020

Conclusion

Follow the Valentine’s Day marketing ideas I’ve detailed above to optimize your conversion rates, and you’ll have a raft of new admirers come February 14th. They might not send you chocolates or flowers, but they’ll give you something far more precious: repeat business.

If you’d like a preview of how you can increase conversions on your website with Yieldify’s fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.

FAQs

What sells the most on Valentine’s Day?

Candy has consistently been the best-selling product on Valentine’s Day since overtaking greetings cards in 2015. In 2022, flowers, gift cards, clothing and jewelry were the next best-selling items. If you need more support selling your products this Valentine’s Day, read our post outlining the best conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools on the market right now.

What’s trending for Valentine’s Day 2023?

Consumer habits around Valentine’s Day have shifted over the years. While it’s still an important time for romantic partners to exchange gifts, consumers are buying more gifts for family members, friends and pets – and that’s expected to continue in 2023.

How many people buy Valentine’s Day gifts for their pets?

Pet gifts are big business around Valentine’s Day. Consumers spent a staggering $1.7 billion on Valentine’s Day presents for their pets in 2020 – a rise of $1.25 billion since 2010. Meanwhile, 27.6 million American families bought presents for their dogs in 2020. 

10 Leading Website Personalization Tools and Software in 2023 (Pros & Cons)

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Whether they’re established or emerging brands, ecommerce companies typically face three major challenges:

  1. They aren’t generating enough email & SMS leads

Consumers are browsing but they exit without submitting their contact details. Either the ecommerce team haven’t managed to set up lead capture forms or users aren’t responding to them.

  1. Their conversion rates aren’t high enough

The ecommerce team is seeing good traffic levels. But they’re struggling to turn session numbers into orders.

  1. Their average order value (AOV) is too low

The website is converting visitors into customers. But the team needs to increase basket value to hit revenue targets.

The best ecommerce personalization platforms will help you solve these problems. They’ll help you grow your email & SMS database. They’ll help you boost conversion rates. And they’ll help you increase your average order values.

Before analyzing 10 of the best website personalization tools and providers on the market, it’s helpful to define exactly what we mean by website personalization. 

How to Choose the Right Website Personalization Tool

Website personalization tools come in many flavors – which is why it can be so difficult to select the right one for your site.

In a nutshell, a good website personalization tool will allow you to optimize your onsite experience in different ways for different audience segments. That way you can better engage your key customer groups with experiences personalized to their onsite preferences and behaviors.

Content management systems (CMSs), ecommerce CRM software (CRM tools), and ecommerce marketing automation software offer some basic forms of personalization. But if you want to understand your core audiences better and offer more nuanced website personalization, you’ll need to use a specialist personalization tool.

But before you narrow your go searching for the best ecommerce personalization tools, you need to ask yourself three things:

  • What are your core goals – do you want to increase conversions, email open rates, AOVs?
  • What do you want your brand to achieve with personalization? 
  • Do you have the bandwidth to manage a personalization platform yourselves or do you need account management and technical support?

After you’ve defined your criteria, now’s the time to look at the tools that fit your needs. To help you decide on the best ecommerce personalization software for your team, I’ve put together an in-depth, comprehensive post that compares each product’s features.

Disclaimer: Yieldify is our product. We’ve done our best to present the information fairly because we want to help you make an educated decision but we’re especially proud of what we offer. We’ve seen it transform conversion rates, lead generation and revenue for so many brands – large and small – all over the world. You may have seen we use the Yieldify platform and services on our own website too. Learn more here and schedule a call with an advisor. 

Our Picks: Top website personalization software for 2023

  1. Yieldify 
  2. Google Optimize 
  3. Proof 
  4. Sleeknote
  5. Personyze
  6. VWO
  7. Fresh Relevance
  8. WebFX
  9. FROM
  10. ZAG Interactive

1. Yieldify

Yieldify is a full-service digital customer experience platform. It helps you deliver personalized experiences to your different customer segments, boost conversions and improve the performance of your digital marketing channels.

Key benefits 

Generate more leads

Many web personalization tools limit the results you can get from lead gen. They might display the same form design for every visitor. Their forms might not be mobile-friendly. They might keep disrupting users who’ve already given you their details.

With Yieldify’s multi-layered lead capture, you can personalize your lead gen forms for different kinds of consumers at different stages in their journey, whether they’re on mobile, tablet or desktop. 

For example, you can set one lead capture form to show for visitors the first page they land on, another form later in their journey if they dismiss the first one, and then pause lead capture for visitors whose details you already have. 

Lead capture form example - Yieldify

Instead of a lead capture strategy that’s blind to your users’ behavior, Yieldify’s responsive multi-layered lead capture can help you turn more of your traffic into leads.

The takeaway: ecommerce brands see substantial email and SMS database growth with Yieldify’s multi-layered lead capture. Food delivery and subscription service, Certified Piedmontese, lifted email leads by 700%. Leading CBD brand, Extract Labs, increased their email database by 39%.

Increase conversion rates

Two of the most common obstacles to conversion are customer indecision and distraction. There are plenty of ways Yieldify can help clear these conversion rate roadblocks.

To help move hesitant visitors from product page to order confirmation page, look no further than Yieldify social proof campaigns – our clients typically see some of the highest uplifts in their conversion rates here. For example, campaigns that highlight popular products or recent purchases by other customers all give users a convincing reason to check out.

Social proof for improved conversions example - Yieldify

Whether it’s Instagram, Slack or a phone call, consumers also leave websites at the smallest distraction. With Yieldify campaigns you can keep your visitors engaged: a selection of countdown timers, progress bars and basket reminders can drive customers to check out more often and more quickly.

Keep your visitor engaged example - Yieldify

The takeaway: don’t just take our word for it. With a combination of Yieldify campaigns, Homair, a European leader in outdoor lodging and hospitality, increased conversion rates by 144%. The Healthy Chef, an emerging international food brand, boosted their CVR by 93%.

Increase your average order value

I’ve seen how much of a game-changer it can be for ecommerce businesses to increase their average order values. With Yieldify personalization, it’s easy to incentivize your customers to add more to cart – whether it’s a personalized upsell notification, a progress bar telling customers about the free delivery threshold, or an overlay spotlighting Buy Now Pay Later options.

Increase average order value example - Yieldify

For example, one of our sportswear clients, a globally recognized footwear and apparel brand, increased AOV by 26% with an upsell experience that drove customers to add more to cart at checkout.

The takeaway: you can’t improve your conversion rate and ignore AOV. With our help, Kiehl’s, the health and beauty brand, lifted AOVs by up to 33%. Similarly, HSTV, the multichannel ecommerce retailer, lifted AOVs by up to 21%. 

Increase average order value example 2 - Yieldify

Personalize your site in days, not weeks

It can take weeks – if not months – to design, build and launch personalized campaigns with your in-house or outsourced teams. With Yieldify, you can launch new campaigns in as little as 24 hours.

Once you’ve decided on your next campaign, a Yieldify graphic designer in your time zone will use your brand guidelines to create design assets for you. 

And since campaigns run code-free thanks to the Yieldify tag, you can get campaigns live without using up your developers’ time. 

The takeaway: with market-leading service – Yieldify has a G2 rating of 9.7/10 for Quality of Support – and a no-code setup, you won’t get high-quality on-brand campaigns live faster with any other website personalization software. 

Cut your abandonment and bounce rate

Keeping your visitors on site is a relationship-building exercise. But before you can build a relationship with them, you need to understand who they are and how they behave.

This is one of the first things your account manager will help you do when you start with Yieldify. They’ll analyse historical activity on your website to give you a comprehensive breakdown of user behaviour, including when, where and why your visitors are exiting.

For new users, bounce and abandonment usually comes down to a lack of brand awareness. With Yieldify’s educational experiences – such as personalized in-page banners that spotlight your USPs, product features and core values – you can show consumers what defines your brand, build trust and see bounce rates drop.

Cut down bounce and abandonment - Yieldify

For returning users, it’s typically a case of when – not if – they’re going to buy, so exit-intent promotional experiences and discount codes are key to keeping them on site.

Offer for returning users - Yieldify

But that’s not all. Social proof experiences, tab browser notifications, lead capture overlays and custom-made questionnaires are all effective at cutting abandonment. 

For example, many customers head for the exit when faced with too much choice. Many of our beauty brand clients typically run questionnaire experiences to ask customers to share their skin type, complexion and age. The customer then gets directed to the products most relevant to them rather than bouncing.

The takeaway: By optimizing landing pages to engage visitors better, you’ll connect customers with your brand and stop them leaving your site prematurely.

Improve your return on ad spend (ROAS)

Acquiring customers via paid marketing is usually not cheap. Thanks to Yieldify’s audience segmentation technology, you can maximize your ROAS by tailoring experiences for users arriving from your paid channels.

For example, many Yieldify clients run lead capture campaigns personalized for visitors landing from Google Shopping, social media ads and affiliate links. That way, they can improve UX, generate more leads and bring more of their paid traffic back to site later.

You can also use Yieldify’s promotional, gamified and traffic-shaping campaigns to convert more of your paid traffic into customers and lower your cost per acquisition. 

Improve your ROAS with Yieldify

The takeaway: your paid channels are probably your most expensive traffic source. Make the most of your ad spend with Yieldify’s audience segmentation.

Improve your customer journeys

Personalization tools are also ideal for optimizing your site’s UX. But you can only get good outcomes here if you’re capturing long-term data on your website visitors using the right technology.

With Yieldify’s server-side cookies, you can store customer data for up to 365 days. With many of our competitors’ personalization platforms, you use third-party cookies to store user data. But:

  • 30% of consumers browse on mobile using Safari
  • third-party cookies only get stored for 7 days on Safari

That means you’re potentially missing out on a lot of customer data to respond to and offering as many as 30% of your users a sub-optimal UX.

The most obvious example is to compare the experience of new and returning users in the context of your lead capture strategy.

Improve your customer journey - Yieldify

With third-party cookies, a visitor who has already signed up to your mailing list will see your lead capture forms again after 7 days. Why? Because the platform treats them as a new visitor again.

With Yieldify’s server-side cookies, you can store 365 days of customer data, so you won’t – for example – interrupt returning visitors with the lead form you give your new visitors.

The takeaway: combine Yieldify’s approach to cookies, audience segmentation and long-term user profiles, and you’ll reliably give your users a better website experience. 

What our customers say about us

“I’ve worked with Yieldify for three years and believe they have the best-in-class personalization and conversion rate optimization platform.”

Prachi Chamria

Digital & Ecommerce Manager

“We’ve seen a massive 51% reduction in bounce rate. The data doesn’t lie! There’s no doubt that Yieldify has helped our business.”

Dan Harris

Senior Product Manager

“Yieldify helped us to achieve our target subscriber numbers with strategic suggestions: +60,000 subscribers increase in 6 months!”

Ayoung Shin

Senior Digital Marketing Specialist

“Highly recommended if you are looking for a great ecommerce solution without spending hours with devs and A/B Testing. A very powerful tool.”

Terry Lee

Digital Marketing & SEO Manager

“Yieldify’s extensive range of targeting options and flexible campaign formats means we can create a personalized experience for every type of user.”

Jaine Fulcher

Head of Marketing

“Easy to work with, fast with responses and campaign updates and ideas. Always on the front foot and proactive.”

Sean Weidemann

Digital Manager

Want to find out more?

If you’d like a preview of the results you could achieve by personalizing your website with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your website performance.

2. Google Optimize

Google Optimize is a split testing and website personalization suite capable of syncing with the rest of Google Marketing Platform. Available as a free (Optimize) or paid enterprise product (Optimize 360), it plugs into your website and lets you run experiments, segment your visitors, deploy personalized experiences, and more.

For example, you can run A/B, multivariate or redirect tests on your website and determine the winning variant. From there, Optimize 360 lets you deploy the “champion” permanently on your website or target it at a specific audience. By integrating with Google Ads, you can also personalize pages to get higher Quality Scores.

The main benefits of Google Optimize are that (part of) it is free, it’s easy to deploy and requires minimum tech-savvy, so your marketing department can run website personalization experiments without heavy involvement from your tech support team.

3. Proof

Proof (also known as Useproof) is a self-service web personalization tool that offers two types of products: Experiences and Pulse. The former is centered around landing pages that creates a visual editor overlay of your website, thanks to which you can personalize text, images, CTAs and more without having to change your code. Pulse is focused on displaying social proof messages.

Proof offers audience segmentation based on customer journey stage, industry, company size and more. At the moment, it doesn’t seem to offer any remarketing or product recommendation functionality.

4. Sleeknote

Sleeknote is a web personalization tool for the ecommerce and retail sectors. With friendly pricing, a variety of pre-made templates and formats, it seems to be ideal for self-sufficient marketers. In other words, if you’re entirely comfortable setting up experiments and reporting on their findings, this may be a good tool to start with.

Sleeknote allows users to create personalized experiences for desktop and mobile, set up product recommendations, and offers audience targeting and triggering functionality.

5. Personyze

Personyze claims to offer the full suite of tools for deploying web personalization and product recommendations throughout the customer journey, i.e. from website landing pages to email drip campaigns.

What stands out is Personyze’s targeting functionality, which claims to target based on more than 70 user attributes, such as real-time behavior, geo-location, weather, social data, internal search, form input, and more. If you’re really keen on trying out creative targeting combinations, this tool could be the answer. 

6. VWO

VWO is another website personalization tool that blends software and services together. It offers a set of different products from A/B, multivariate, and split URL testing to web push notifications, session recordings, heatmaps, and so on. Due to the variety of products, you can purchase bundles depending on your needs. Its services side offers data analysis, implementation and management of campaigns.

7. Fresh Relevance

Fresh Relevance is a personalization platform focusing on ecommerce. The platform includes all the typical website personalization solutions, from product recommendations to visitor segmentation and remarketing. What’s interesting is that Fresh Relevance also extends to social media, allowing users to integrate real-time feeds with user-generated content into emails and on their websites. 

Besides the platform, Fresh Relevance also offers strategic services that will take care of personalization strategy mapping, customer segmentation, technical integrations, reporting and more.

8. WebFX

WebFX is a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in everything from SEO services for websites and marketplaces to PPC advertising, content marketing, analytics and more. Part of its offering includes UX and website design, which is where website personalization comes in.

Depending on the plan you choose, you can get behavioral, firmographic or real-time personalization with custom designed content blocks and reporting. If you’re looking to revamp your website, WebFX are well placed to help.

9. FROM

FROM is a digital transformation agency offering a “uniquely collaborative approach to innovation.” The agency offers a variety of services, starting with mapping customer journeys and optimizing customer touchpoints. They also go beyond website personalization with a full product development service as well, such as apps and games.

10. ZAG Interactive

ZAG Interactive is a responsive website design and web development company based in Massachusetts, US. Their services roster involves everything from analytics and strategy creation to the implementation of personalized web experiences. The agency also offers remarketing services as part of its pack. ZAG typically works with banking and credit unions.

Website personalization tools FAQs

What is website personalization?

Website personalization is the process of delivering a tailored experience to website visitors based on demographic, psychographic, geographic or behavioral information as well as which stage of the customer journey they are at.
Website personalization is powered by a wide stack of software tools that helps businesses to gather data on their visitors, segment them, target them, automate, and more.

What is personalization software?

Personalization software is a tool that allows ecommerce teams to customize their websites in response to customer characteristics and behaviors to improve customer experience.

How do I personalize my website?

There are many ways you can personalize your website including content, product recommendations, special offers & more. For an in-depth roadmap on how to do this, take a look at our detailed eCommerce personalization strategy guide.

How do you implement personalization?

Your CMS may allow you to implement personalization but most of the time you will need software or tools that can be integrated into your website.

Want to find out more about ecommerce personalization tools?

If you’d like a preview of the results you could achieve by personalizing your website with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your website performance.

15 Website Optimization Tools For Online Success in 2023

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It takes customers just 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website. 

In the blink of an eye, your visitors will decide whether to stay or leave – and they won’t stick around if your website is slow, poorly designed or full of generic marketing fluff. 

Don’t worry if that sets off alarm bells, because you can easily turn these split-second decisions in your favor with website optimization tools.  

In this blog I’ll walk you through 15 tools brands are using to optimize ecommerce websites just like yours. 

I’ve placed the tools into six categories: 

  • Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools
  • Page speed optimization tools
  • User experience (UX) optimization tools
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) tools
  • Landing page optimization (LPO) tools
  • Mobile usability tools

If you’re looking specifically to improve conversions, check out our blog covering 12 of the best CRO tools on the market. Otherwise, let’s dive into website optimization. 

15 Most Powerful Website Optimization Tools 

  1. Yieldify 
  2. Qualaroo
  3. Trustmary
  4. Google PageSpeed Insights
  5. Pingdom
  6. Hotjar
  7. UXPressia
  8. Contentsquare
  9. Ahrefs
  10. Surfer
  11. Semrush
  12. Google Search Console
  13. Unbounce
  14. Instapage
  15. WebPageTest

Why is website optimization important?

On a macro level, website optimization is important because it can help you: 

  • Improve your SEO ranking 
  • Increase your traffic
  • Refine your UX
  • Strengthen your brand’s reputation 
  • Lift your conversion rates
  • Generate more revenue 

Ecommerce sales are expected to account for 20.8% of retail sales worldwide in 2023, and that number is predicted to grow to 24% by 2026. 

So with the online shopping boom showing little sign of slowing down, your brand’s trajectory hinges on the strength of your ecommerce website – so make sure your customers want to click through, see what you have to offer and buy something. 

Types of website optimization software

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools (1-3): Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools help you run tests and analyze data to measure how changes to your website impact conversion rates. Most CRO tools offer a specific feature – social proof, heat maps, A/B testing etc – to lift conversions, but you can also use all-in-one solutions that contain many of the best CRO features in one platform.

Page speed optimization tools (4-5): Page speed optimization tools allow you to analyze your website’s speed and recommend changes to improve loading times. Considering bounce rates increase by 123% after just 1+ second of loading, you’re going to miss out on sales if you don’t optimize for speed. 

User experience (UX) optimization tools (6-8): User experience optimization tools help you develop and build better websites and mobile applications. Just 12% of shoppers return to sites with a bad UX, so use UX tools to build websites your customers want to visit again and again.

Search engine optimization (SEO) tools (9-12):

“Google only loves you when everyone loves you first.” 

In the hyper-competitive world of organic search, SEO tools help you increase your website’s SEO performance. Use an SEO tool to help you craft better content, secure and manage backlinks, monitor core web vitals, analyze keywords, conduct site audits, find broken links, rank higher and bring more paying customers to your website – ultimately to increase your website revenue.

Landing page optimization (LPO) tools (13-14): Landing page optimization tools help you build and display tailor-made landing pages that drive leads and conversions. Landing pages are your first – and arguably most important – opportunity to make a lasting impression on your customers, which is why 68% of businesses use LPO tools to drive more sales leads.

Mobile usability tools (15): Mobile usability tools let you test page speed and other website performance metrics by device. A huge 60% of users don’t trust companies that haven’t optimized for mobile, so ensure your mobile website displays and loads correctly with usability tools.

Best Website optimization tools 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools

1. Yieldify

Yieldify is a fully managed personalization platform that helps ecommerce businesses increase their lead capture, conversions and average order values with personalized customer experiences. If you’ve struggled to manage a CRO platform in-house or don’t have the expertise to run CRO yourself, Yieldify is probably the provider that will suit you best.

Top features

Fully managed service: Get expert support from a dedicated account manager as well as a team of graphic designers, technical engineers and quality assurance specialists. Rated 9.7/10 for quality of support by customers on G2, you won’t find this level of service anywhere else. 

Personalized experiences: Build deep connections with your customers by personalizing their website journeys from entry through to exit. Streamline the customer experience by easily adding customizable and highly targeted experiences to your website. For example, you can:

  • Simplify website navigation with journey shaping 
  • Build brand affinity with USP messaging
  • Validate product interest with social proof
  • Re-engage shoppers with browse abandonment 
  • Drive checkout urgency with countdown timers
  • Increase sales with user-generated personalization
  • Lift average order values with progress bars

In-depth website analysis & insights: Go beyond your Google Analytics data and unlock deeper audience insights using Yieldify’s Sunburst charts. Measure both macro conversions – e.g. when a customer submits an order – and micro conversions – e.g. when a customer adds to basket – to get a more granular view of customer journeys. 

A/B & A/B/n testing: Test the design, placement, messaging and triggering rules of your personalized experiences using A/B testing. If you have more than 100,000 monthly website visitors, use Yieldify’s A/B/n testing technology to test up to five different variants of the same experience.

A/B test example from Rockport
Rockport lifted conversions by up to 11% using Yieldify’s A/B testing technology

Easy integrations: Integrate any platform in your tech stack with Yieldify. Further segment your remarketing database with Yieldify’s advanced Klaviyo integration, reliably store email and SMS leads in your ESP, and enrich customer profiles in your CRM. 

Pros of Yieldify

  • Generate more revenue: Yieldify’s personalization platform has helped clients – across industries from fashion and travel to electronics and home – increase leads, online sales, average order values to generate up to 79:1 ROI
  • SMB to enterprise: With proven success helping clients including Lacoste, BYLT Basics and Made in Design, Yieldify is a market-leading solution for brands of all sizes
  • Quick-to-launch testing: Get your first tests live in under 14 days with Yieldify’s easy-to-integrate tag, and launch new ones in as little as 48 hours after that – no developers required

Cons of Yieldify

  • No free trial: You can only use the Yieldify platform with a paid package

Pricing

Speak to Yieldify’s sales team for a full product demo and information on pricing.

“In partnership with Yieldify, we’re able to enhance customer journeys through unique and targeted personalization. Yieldify is essential to growing the Lacoste brand in this ever-changing ecommerce landscape.”

 

Damon Tually

Digital Business Manager

“I’ve worked with Yieldify for three years and believe they have the best-in-class personalization and conversion rate optimization platform. With Yieldify, we increase average order values, promo engagements, conversions rates and improve our customer experience.”

Prachi Chamria

Digital & Ecommerce Manager

2. Qualaroo

Qualaroo is a user feedback tool that helps you understand your customers’ and prospects’ on-site behavior. By sending strategically timed questionnaires to your website and app visitors, Qualaroo lets you collect real-time insights and feedback that can be used to shape your optimization strategy. 

Top features

Survey templates: Use a curated list of pre-set questions – covering topics like UX, usability and navigation – to start collecting insights right away.

Exit intent surveys: Ask customers for feedback when it looks like they’re about to leave the page (desktop only).

Confirmation page surveys: Take advantage of the high response rates on confirmation pages by requesting customer feedback immediately following a purchase (mobile and desktop).

Pros of Qualaroo

  • Adaptable: Both ecommerce and SaaS companies use Qualaroo to lift conversions
  • No-code: Qualaroo requires no development work to get started – all you need is a URL 

Cons of Qualaroo 

  • Single-feature tool: Qualaroo is a customer feedback tool and doesn’t offer additional features to increase conversions

Pricing

Qualaroo packages start at $80 per month. Speak to their sales team for more information about their Enterprise offering.

3. Trustmary

Trustmary is an all-in-one review platform that helps you generate more leads by leveraging the power of social proof. Make review marketing easy by collecting customer testimonials and embedding them into your opt-in forms. 

Top features

Video testimonials: Collect video testimonials from your customers and use them across your website to build credibility.

Drag-and-drop survey builder: Use Trustmary’s library of templates and custom builder to create customer surveys. Share the results with survey report dashboards. 

Review widgets: Add reviews from all major platforms – including Google, Capterra and Tripadvisor – straight to your website.

Pros of Trustmary

  • Intuitive dashboard: Trustmary is easy to navigate and doesn’t require any level of IT proficiency to use effectively

Cons of Trustmary 

  • Limited features: Trustmary does a great job of using customer reviews to build customer trust, but they don’t use real-time data to lift conversions 

Pricing 

Trustmary packages range from $0 to $590 per month.

Page speed optimization tools 

4. Google PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a web page speed tool that provides a report on the user experience of a single page and offers suggestions on how it could be improved. Companies use PSI to debug issues on both mobile and desktop.

Top features

Capture lab data: Collect data in a controlled environment to debug in-page issues

Capture field data: Get a real-world user experience through field data 

Pros of PSI 

  • Free-to-use: Simply copy and paste your URL into the platform to get insights on page performance

Cons of PSI 

  • Inaccurate readings: Data provided by PSI is not completely reliable and doesn’t always represent true performance

Pricing

Google PageSpeed Insights is free to use. 

5. Pingdom

Pingdom is an end-user experience monitoring platform designed to provide solutions for digital marketers, web hosting providers and web developers. With Pingdom you can use both synthetic and real user monitoring to optimize your page speed.

Top features

Synthetic monitoring: Test your website’s availability from all over the world with fast and accurate round-the-clock monitoring.

Real user monitoring: Understand how the end user is experiencing your website or app with this client-side problem identification and resolution solution.

Infrastructure monitoring: Health and performance monitoring for SaaS products.

Pros of Pingdom

  • Responsive: Pingdom send alerts instantly when your website encounters a problem

Cons of Pingdom

  • Integrations: Pingdom customers have expressed frustration at the lack of available integrations

Pricing 

Pingdom prices start at $9.50 per month and rise depending on how many checks and SMS alerts you require.

User experience tools

6. Hotjar

Trusted by more than 900,000 websites in 180+ countries worldwide, Hotjar is a website optimization tool that helps product teams connect the dots between what’s happening on site and why. Through heatmaps and customer recordings, Hotjar gives you a deeper understanding of customer behavior so you can make changes that improve UX. 

Top features

Heatmaps: Hotjar’s heatmaps show you where your users are clicking, moving and scrolling.

Feedback: Gather customer feedback in real-time as users navigate through your website.

Engage: Automate the research process through user interviews. 

Pros of Hotjar

  • Ideal for ecommerce: Hotjar’s range of audience insights can help ecommerce sites optimize the user experience and increase conversions 

Cons of Hotjar 

  • Free version: Hotjar’s Basic package is too limited to get a true impression of its capabilities 

Pricing 

Hotjar packages start from $0 per month. Speak to Hotjar’s sales team for more information about their Scale offering. 

7. UXPressia

UXPRessia gives you access to multiple tools that let you visualize customer experiences and collaborate with your team in real time. Made to help beginners hit the ground running and professionals tackle more complex tasks, UXPressia helps bridge insights across teams. 

Top features 

Customer journey maps (CJMs): Work on CJMs with colleagues or clients in real time and understand your customers’ on-site experiences at every touch point. 

Personas: Create professional personas without design or technical skills using the online persona generator tool.

Impact maps: Plan future releases to see what impact they could drive and pass features to your team in just 4 steps.

Pros of UXPressia 

  • Templates: UXPressia has a wide range of templates covering different sectors

Cons of UXPressia 

  • Interface: Some users have found UXPressia clunky to use

Pricing

UXPressia packages range from $0 to $36 per month. Speak to UXPressia’s sales team for more information about their Enterprise offering.

8. Contentsquare

Contentsquare goes beyond traditional analytics to give users an understanding of customer experience they can use to transform their business. By revealing the behavior, intent and feelings of website users, Contentsquare helps you drive faster growth through the delivery of more human experiences. 

Top features

Digital: Get deep insights into how users interact with your website and identify new opportunities for revenue growth.

Find & Fix: Spot problems and pain points impacting the customer experience and find resolutions quickly to avoid revenue loss. 

Apps: Go beyond bug-fixing with powerful analytics and visualizations that let you resolve user frustration quickly. 

Pros of Contentsquare

  • Versatile: Contentsquare is suitable for businesses across a whole range of industries

Cons of Contentsquare

  • Onboarding: Contentsquare’s onboarding process is not straightforward and can be resource intensive

Pricing

Speak to Contentsquare’s sales team for more information on pricing. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools

9. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool designed for marketing professionals, providing in-depth insights into organic search traffic and the backlink profile of any website or URL. 

Top features

Keywords explorer: Analyze the ranking and calculate the traffic potential of keywords relating to your business.

Organic traffic search: Find out what your competitors are ranking for and which web pages bring the most SEO traffic 

Site audit: Uncover technical and on-page issues with Ahref’s SEO audit feature

Pros of Ahrefs

  • Experience: Ahrefs are a trusted solution who have been indexing and structuring petabytes of information since they were founded in 2010

Cons of Ahrefs 

  • User interface: The Ahrefs interface has a slightly outdated feel to it and can be difficult to navigate

Pricing

Ahrefs plans start at $95 per month and rise to $965 for their Enterprise package.

10. Surfer

A must-have for content marketing professionals, Surfer helps companies take their organic traffic to the next level with a range of features that help you write and optimize high-ranking content.

Top features 

Grow flow: Get AI-generated tasks that enhance your SEO strategy delivered weekly. 

Content Editor: Make optimizations to your content based on Surfer’s real-time keyword and article structure feedback. 

Audit: Find quick wins and potential missed opportunities with an automated, sub-one minute audit.

Pros of Surfer

  • Loved by users: With a G2 rating of 4.8/5, Surfer is one of the best SEO tools on the market 

Cons of Surfer 

  • Pricing: Some Surfer users have expressed frustration at the pricing structure

Pricing 

Surfer prices range from $49 to $199 per month. Speak to Surfer’s sales team for more information about their Enterprise package. 

11. Semrush

Semrush is a software solution that lets marketing professionals build, measure and manage campaigns across SEO, PPC, content marketing and social media. With more than 55 tools and reports available to use, Semrush provides a huge range of resources to help brands climb the ranks on all search engines.  

Top features 

Keyword research: Semrush helps you find the right keywords to drive traffic and identify ways to rival your competitors.

Content marketing: Create a data-informed content strategy and long-term calendar based on the needs of your audience.

Paid marketing: Automate time-consuming tasks and create compelling ad copy that drives click on your PPC campaigns. 

Pros of Semrush

  • Insights: The quality of Semrush’s content insights are some of the best on the market 

Cons of Semrush 

  • Pricing: Semrush have received criticism from users over pricing  

Pricing 

Semrush plans range from $119.95 to $449.95 per month. 

12. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free-to-use platform that helps you analyze website performance, troubleshoot problems and uncover new ways to improve your Google ranking. 

Top features

Analytics: See which queries are bringing users onto your website.

URL inspection: Get crawl, serving and index information about your website pages.

Email alerts: Receive updates when Google identifies an issue with your site.

Pros of Google Search Console 

Cost-free: Google Search Console is completely free to use and is a great starting point for website optimization 

Cons of Google Search Console 

Learning curve: Google Search Console is full of rich data so it can be tricky for beginners to get up to speed, particularly if they’re not familiar with SEO metrics

Pricing 

Google Search Console is completely free.

Landing page optimization (LPO) tools

13. Unbounce

Unbounce helps businesses create high-converting landing pages, turning billions of visitors into leads, sales and sign-ups. The landing page solution is used by businesses in a wide range of industries including ecommerce, SaaS and B2B marketing.

Top features 

Landing pages: Unbounce’s easy-to-use builder lets non-technical users create landing pages with AI-driven copy and visually stunning elements – no code required. 

Popups & sticky bars: Drive more conversions and leads with segmented and A/B testable website popups.

AI copywriting: Use Unbounce’s Smart Copy Writer to generate entire sentences, paragraphs and stories in a matter of seconds.

Pros of Unbounce 

  • Usability: The Unbounce platform is highly intuitive and accessible for even the most basic technical user

Cons of Unbounce 

  • Templates: Some Unbounce users claim there is a lack of high-quality templates

Pricing 

Unbounce packages range from $0 to $49 per month.

14. Instapage

Instapage combines CRO expertise with optimized landing page technology that helps businesses increase sales, leads and conversions. More than 5 million landing pages have been built by 15,000+ brands since the company launched. 

Top features 

Customizable layouts: Access more than 500 layouts built to increase conversions across many industry-based use cases. 

AMP + Thor Render Engine: Deliver best-in-class mobile experiences with built-in AMP support.

Instablocks: Easily scale with content blocks you can save, reuse and update globally.

Pros of Instapage 

  • No code: Launch landing pages without any HTML or coding knowledge

Cons of Instapage 

  • HubSpot integration: There is no out-of-the-box integration with HubSpot forms

Pricing 

Speak to Instapage’s sales team for more information on pricing.

Mobile usability tools 

15. WebPage Test

WebPage Test helps you test’s your users’ online experiences according to their location, device and browser. Get in-depth insights on mobile performance with components like DNS, TCP, TLS and more. 

Top features 

No-code experiments: Instantly test the impact of suggested optimizations without changing your site. 

Actionable suggestions: WebPage Test acts like a personal webpage experience consultant to offer suggestions on where your site can improve.

Granular tests: Test every possible factor impacting webspeed – including device types, browsers and locations.

Pros of WebPage Test

  • More than mobile: Mobile optimization is just one aspect of WebPage Test’s huge variety of testing features used to optimize page speed

Cons of WebPage Test

  • Locations: WebPage Test’s free version is only available in certain locations

Pricing

WebPage Test’s plans range from $0 to $180 per month.  

Website Optimization Best Practices 

Complete a full website audit

Conduct a full audit of your website before you tweak anything. Use page speed tools like Pingdom to uncover any loading and usability issues. From an SEO perspective, audit your published content to identify quick-wins in your current library before writing anything new.

Identify your ideal customer profiles

You can’t design a website that people want to visit until you know who your customers are. Conduct interviews, run surveys and analyze website data to understand your customers’ pain points and motivations – and use these learnings to optimize your website.

Measure, analyze, improve

Data is king, so measure everything to decide what to optimize and when. Continuously analyze the most important metrics – from page views and bounce rates to load speeds and conversion rates – to track performance, fix problems and make improvements. 

Run A/B tests

A/B testing is fundamental to any web optimization strategy, which is why 77% of marketers are already running A/B tests on site. Use A/B testing to learn what resonates with your customers, validate hypotheses, and improve conversion rates.

Use CRO tools

The cost of customer acquisition is now 60% higher than it was five years ago – and that’s a huge problem for ecommerce marketers. To mitigate this challenge, use CRO tools like Yieldify to extract maximum value from your current customers and website visitors.

Choosing the right website optimization tool

I hope this blog has helped narrow your search for a website optimization tool. I’m sure you have a particular area you want to focus on, but you’ll need to use a range of different website optimization tools to maximize revenue growth from your ecommerce store.

If you’d like a preview of how you can increase conversions on your website with Yieldify’s fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.

FAQs

What is website optimization and how does it work?

Website optimization is the process of using different techniques to improve page speed, UX, SEO traffic, conversion rates and other key performance metrics. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to website optimization, but most ecommerce marketers rely on a combination of third-party solutions and in-house experts to continuously improve their website. 

What are website optimization tools? 

Website optimization tools are software that help ecommerce brands improve website performance to streamline customer journeys and lift online sales. The best tool for you depends on your objectives and pain points, but speak to Yieldify’s sales team if you’re looking for a fully managed, all-in-one personalization platform to increase your conversion rates.

How to Get & Nurture Email Leads the Right Way

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When executed well, email marketing is a game changer for ecommerce brands. 

A survey of more than 2000 marketers revealed ecommerce, retail and consumer goods companies generate 45:1 ROI from email marketing on average.

While these figures are impressive, you won’t drive huge returns until you’ve built an engaged subscriber base. But how do you convince more people to complete your opt-in forms – and what does a profit-driving email marketing strategy look like? 

In this blog I’ll answer these important questions and walk you through the fundamentals of email marketing. 

If you’re looking specifically for a lead generation tool to grow your list of subscribers, check out our post covering 12 of the best lead generation tools. Otherwise, let’s start with email leads.

What are email leads?

Email leads are people who’ve agreed to receive your marketing emails – such as your welcome emails, brand newsletters or cart reminders – by submitting one of your opt-in forms. 

Email opt-in form displayed on Inghams' website

Your main goals with email leads are to nurture them into making their first order, bring them back to your site to make follow-up orders, and ultimately build a relationship with them so they become loyal to your brand.

Part of that nurturing process is grouping your leads into different segments (read more on this below) and sending those segments targeted marketing flows. 

For example, your email sequence might look like this: 

  1. Send new leads a welcome email with a first-purchase incentive  
  2. Follow up with your brand story video
  3. Notify them about a new product launch 
  4. Share product recommendations based on their browsing history
  5. Send them a cart abandonment reminder
  6. Email them their order confirmation
  7. Upsell recommended products based on their recent order

Why should you have an email lead generation strategy?

The profit-driving potential of a good lead generation strategy can’t be overstated.

With an average value of $102.50, email leads possess that rare blend of being both cheap to acquire and highly lucrative – so it’s no wonder email remains the major customer acquisition and retention channel for 81% of small businesses.

A successful email lead generation strategy can help you:

  • Increase your brand visibility 
  • Expand your market reach 
  • Form stronger customer relationships
  • Build hype for your new releases 
  • Promote your sale periods
  • Boost your overall revenue 

If you need support driving more high-quality email leads, Yieldify’s layered lead capture technology and full-service team can help you.

Examples of email opt-in forms

The risks of buying email leads

When you’re ramping up your lead generation efforts, it can be tempting to buy a list of subscribers. 

Sure, you’ll find plenty of companies offering that service, and you can generate leads on the cheap in just a few clicks. But don’t fall into that trap if you’re serious about your brand’s long-term growth.

Purchased leads haven’t agreed to receive your marketing emails or shown interest in your products, so the chances of them buying from you are incredibly low. If they don’t report you as spam, their email marketing software provider almost definitely will.  

When a customer marks your address as spam it: 

  • Harms your IP reputation
  • Damages your sender score 
  • Reduces your delivery rates

If you want to join those brands driving 45:1 ROI through email marketing, you should instead invest in lead generation tools that help you grow your subscriber list organically.

How to get email leads 

Now you’re committed to building your email list the right way, you’re probably wondering what techniques you should use to generate email leads. 

Here’s a six-point guide to ramp up your lead generation rate:

1. Identify your buyer personas

You need to understand who your customers are and what makes them tick before capturing email leads. Dive into the data, conduct market research and interview customers to outline your buyer personas – then create specific opt-in forms for each customer segment. 

2. Segment your website traffic

The days of displaying the same opt-in form, to the same customer, at the same time are long gone. To run an effective lead gen strategy, target your customers with sign-up forms that respond to their characteristics, interests and on-site behaviors. For example, Philips used Yieldify to embed relevant imagery into opt-in forms on their shaving product pages.

Email opt-in form displayed on Philips' website

3. Use full-funnel lead generation

Don’t limit your subscriber list growth by only displaying a single opt-in form on entry. Instead, use a full-funnel approach with different opt-in forms to continue generating leads at different stages of the customer journey – from entry through to exit. At Yieldify, we’ve helped clients increase email subscribers by up to 700% with a full-funnel approach to lead generation. 

4. Offer incentives

You can’t maximize the size of your email database until you give your customers a reason to subscribe. Discount codes are the go-to incentive for most ecommerce brands, but at Yieldify we’ve seen clients achieve great results through:

  • Offering free gifts 
  • Providing downloadable content
  • Sending cart and back-in-stock reminders
  • Recommending products
  • Gamification 

5. A/B or A/B/n test your opt-in forms

The average opt-in form completion rate for B2C ecommerce companies is 1.6%, but A/B testing will help you rise well above that. To generate the highest number of subscribers, continuously test the design, placement, messaging and triggering rules of your opt-in forms. If you have more than 100,000 monthly website visitors, use A/B/n testing to compare 3+ forms at the same time.

6. Personalize your opt-in forms

9 out of 10 consumers enjoy receiving tailored messages from brands, so give your customers what they want by personalizing your opt-in forms. Tweak the design, messaging or triggering rules to show awareness of your customer’s interests and on-site behaviors. With Yieldify, Petal & Pup personalized opt-in forms for Facebook customers as part of a strategy that lifted email leads by 116%.

Email opt-in form displayed on Petal & Pup's website

How to nurture email leads

1. Segment subscribers

Subscriber segmentation is the most effective email marketing campaign strategy. Split your email list into segments based on demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral data. Then you can send personalized, valuable content that gets readers from their inbox to your site and helps you convert leads into paying customers. 

If you’re a Klaviyo user, find out how you can use Yieldify’s advanced Klaviyo integration to better segment your audience by their on-site behaviors. 

2. Be concise 

Compression is expression in email marketing. The optimum word count for an email is just 50-125 words, which leaves little opportunity to unleash your inner Shakespeare. Instead, convey your message succinctly and use clear formatting (e.g. bullet points) to structure emails in a digestible way. 

3. Write irresistible subject lines 

According to OptinMonster, 47% of email recipients decide to open emails based on the subject line. Keep things short with a subject line between 28-50 characters, and A/B test different approaches to see what resonates with your target audience. Spike curiosity, drop a pun and show your human side to get more eyes on your content.

4. Craft compelling CTAs

With an ideal length of just 2-5 words, brevity is key when writing CTAs. Always start your CTA with a verb, and make it visually eye-catching to encourage more readers to click through to your site.

5. Personalize content 

Revenue is 5.7 times higher in emails that use personalization techniques. You should always personalize the subject line where appropriate, but that’s only the beginning of a broader email personalization strategy. Address your leads by name, attach imagery relating to their location, and tailor discounts and special offers to their interests and browsing behavior.  

6. Adopt live content

With an ROI of 56:1, live content is a low-adoption, high-impact technique that will give you a competitive advantage in a crowded market. Rather than populating email content when you hit send, live content is activated when your customer opens the email. For example, you could engage your customers with countdown timers, poll results and real-time stock updates.

7. Use cart abandonment emails 

A huge 41% of customers open cart abandonment emails, which is 2.5x higher than the average email open rate. If you’re looking for reliable ways to get people back onto your site through email marketing campaigns, send cart abandonment reminder emails to customers who added to basket but didn’t check out on a recent visit.  In partnership with Yieldify, Lacoste drove a 21:1 return on investment using cart abandonment remarketing and other personalization strategies.  

8. A/B test your content 

Companies that A/B test email content drive 42:1 ROI compared to just 23:1 ROI for companies that don’t. A/B test different aspects of your email content – subject lines, CTAs, copy length, imagery etc – to maximize open and click-through rates.

9. Test the time 

There is no consensus on when you should send email marketing content, and the optimum time for your business depends on many factors including your industry and time zone. Find your sweet spot for email engagement by continuously testing different time slots. 

If you’d like a preview of how you can capture more email leads on your website and send rich customer data into your ESP with Yieldify’s full-service personalization platform, schedule a discovery call now. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

14 Social Proof Software to Skyrocket Sales

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In the last five years alone, industry estimates suggest customer acquisition costs have risen by 60%. If your ecommerce brand is getting diminishing returns from PPC advertising and your other acquisition sources, adding social proof to your website can help.

Social proof is a psychologically powerful tool you can use to remove customer hesitation, validate decisions and drive urgency – and it’s more effective (and in my experience usually cheaper) at increasing sales than your own marketing material.

According to Nielsen, 92% of customers trust non-paid advice over paid adverts. So, if you want to lift conversion rates, start using your brand’s biggest advocates and most prolific marketers: your current customers. 

Here’s how you can use social proof on your website: 

  • Spotlight customer testimonials 
  • Drive urgency through stock scarcity  
  • Highlight product popularity
  • Leverage case studies and success stories
  • Embed trust badges 

In this blog I’ll review 14 of the best social proof tools on the market to help you choose the right one for your business. The tools fall into three categories:

  • All-in-one CRO platforms 
  • Specialist social proof tools 
  • Customer review tools

If you’re looking for software to lift conversion rates using a variety of CRO techniques, check out our post outlining the best CRO tools. Otherwise, let’s dive in. 

Disclaimer: Yieldify is our product. We’ve done our best to present the information fairly because we want to help you make an educated decision but we’re especially proud of what we offer. We’ve seen it transform conversion rates, lead generation and revenue for so many brands – large and small – all over the world. You may have seen we use the Yieldify platform and services on our own website too. Learn more here and schedule a call with an advisor. 

14 Social Proof Software to skyrocket sales

  • All-in-one CRO platforms (1-4): All-in-one CRO platforms typically lift conversion rates by using social proof in conjunction with other website optimization techniques. As well as social proof, all-in-one solutions include cutting-edge features like lead generation, user-generated personalization, product recommendations, A/B testing and more.
  • Specialist social proof platforms (5-9): Specialist social proof platforms leverage the power of social proof – with a strong focus on emphasizing product popularity – to drive website conversions. These platforms don’t include any additional features.
  • Customer review platforms (10-14): Customer review platforms provide a form of social proof marketing with a review-led focus. These platforms drive more conversions by helping you collect customer reviews and display them across your digital channels.
  1. Yieldify
  2. Optimizely
  3. AB Tasty
  4. Personyze
  5. ProveSource
  6. Proof
  7. Fomo
  8. Proven
  9. Provely
  10. Boast
  11. Trustmary
  12. Stamped
  13. Yotpo 
  14. Repuso

All-in-one CRO platforms 

1. Yieldify

Yieldify's homepage

Yieldify is a fully managed personalization platform that helps ecommerce businesses generate more revenue by engaging their customers with personalized experiences. Their social proof functionality is a highly rated feature that will help you increase your website’s conversion rates.

Top features

Real-time customer activity: With Yieldify, you can show customers almost any real-time customer activity to validate interest and drive urgency. For example, you can show shoppers how many customers recently: 

  • Viewed a product 
  • Added a product to cart
  • Purchased a product

Brand-building: Use social proof to establish customer trust from website entry through to checkout with trust badges and customer testimonials. 

Fully customizable: Rely on Yieldify’s full service team of creative designers and technical engineers to build any social proof design you want. 

Audience segmentation: Create social proof messages that reach your customers at optimal moments in their journey with Yieldify’s extensive range of targeting & triggering rules.

A/B & A/B/n testing: Achieve your highest possible conversion rate by testing up to 5 different variations of a single social proof experience, tweaking the messaging, design and placement to uncover your best performing campaign.

In-depth analysis: Go beyond Google Analytics and dig deeper into your customer journey data to identify where social proof will drive the biggest uplift in conversion rates.

Integrations: Integrate Yieldify with all major review platforms – Feefo, Trustpilot, Yotpo, Google Reviews, Bazaarvoice – to highlight customer testimonials at key touch points.

Social proof experience run by New Balance

Pros of Yieldify

  • Drive more sales: Yieldify’s social proof experiences have helped SMB and enterprise clients – from fashion and beauty to home and garden – lift their conversion rates by up to 144%
  • Incremental reporting: Yieldify only attributes value to the ‘incremental’ impact you see from your social proof experiences, not the total revenue – so you’ll always have full transparency about how your campaigns are performing
  • Market-leading service: Rated 9.7/10 for quality of support, Yieldify’s service team is second-to-none in the personalization industry. Read their G2 reviews to see what clients have to say
Customer testimonials on Spongelle's website

Cons of Yieldify

  • Category page social proof: Custom campaigns spotlighting real-time data on category pages require input from a technical account manager and can take longer to launch

Pricing

Speak to Yieldify’s sales team for more information on pricing.

“Yieldify’s flexibility and breadth means we can rapidly turn ideas into action and deliver revenue growth across consumer journey touchpoints. Our account manager is a valued partner and extension of our team.”

 

Sheena McNamara

Head of Ecommerce

“With Yieldify’s granular data segmentation and analytics, we’re able to step back and better understand our customer needs. The result is easy to test, effective campaigns that drive high ROI. Yieldify is like a flashlight in the dark.”

 

Dan Anderson

VP, Ecommerce & Engineering

2. Optimizely

Optimizely's homepage

Optimizely is an all-in-one personalization platform designed primarily for customers to run in-page tests and experiences. From content management to web experimentation, Optimizely offers a range of packages to help customers enhance digital experiences. Social proof software is included as part of an AI-powered Digital Experience Platform that delivers a range of personalized experiences and product recommendations.

Top features

A/B testing: Test the effectiveness of your social proof experiences with Optimizely’s powerful front-end A/B and multi-page testing software.

Built for enterprise: Optimizely’s features are designed to meet the advanced technical needs of enterprise-sized businesses.

Comprehensive support: With a global developer community, in-depth documentation, knowledge base and dedicated Slack channels, Optimizely provides plenty of resources to help you navigate technical challenges.

Pros of Optimizely

  • Scope: Optimizely’s features let you run almost any type of on-site personalization or acquisition experience
  • Experience: Optimizely is the longest-standing CRO platform of its kind 

Cons of Optimizely

  • Slow launch: Almost all experiences require hard coding, meaning they can take months to fully build
  • Limited experiences: Clients typically need to build out full teams to use Optimizely. After doing so, you can only run about 8 – 10 experiences per year

Pricing

Speak to Optimizely’s sales team for a quote tailored to your business requirements.

3. AB Tasty

AB Tasty's homepage

Designed as both a marketing and engineering solution, AB Tasty is an in-page personalization platform designed to test, optimize, and deploy in-page webpage modifications. AB tasty has helped brands like Decathlon and NYX Professional Makeup increase website transactions and click-through rates by A/B testing social proof experiences on product pages.

Top features

Triggering: Use AB Tasty’s range of display rules – including page load, scroll depth and exit intent – to trigger your social proof experiences at exactly the right moment.

Drag-and-drop editor: A SPA-compatible widget library lets you create social proof experiences with little or no code required.

Recurrence: Set your experiences to appear at your preferred cadence.

Pros of AB Tasty

  • Customer success: Clients have reported positive experiences with the quality of AB Tasty’s support team 
  • Multi-Arm bandit testing: Dynamically allocate traffic to the highest performing variant of your social proof experiences

Cons of AB Tasty

  • Time to live: AB Tasty’s extended implementation process requires multiple tags to run and track sales
  • Limited targeting: You can’t use demographic targeting with AB Tasty

Pricing

Speak to AB Tasty’s sales team for more information on pricing.

4. Personyze

Personyze's homepage

Personyze is an AI-powered omnichannel personalization and marketing automation platform which leverages social proof to help ecommerce brands lift sales. Founded in 2008, Personyze also offers customers target pop-ups, push notifications and product recommendations.

Top features

Multichannel offering: Use the power of social proof to boost sales at every digital touchpoint – including your website, email marketing and mobile apps.

Customizable widgets: Create social proof experiences to meet your design requirements or use a Personyze template.

Data integration: Automatically synchronize your product and content data using Personyze’s site content crawler.

Pros of Personyze

  • Step-by-step wizards: Launch social proof messaging using detailed how-to guides
  • Custom KPIS: Track customer behaviors beyond pure conversions to determine the value of your social proof campaigns 

Cons of Personyze

  • Learning curve: Some Personyze clients have reported difficulties with getting up to speed on the platform’s capabilities 

Pricing

Personyze pricing plans range from $0 to $1450 per month for their Enterprise package.

Specialist social proof platforms 

5. ProveSource

ProveSource homepage

With more than 25k customers in 104 countries worldwide, ProveSource is a social proof solution helping businesses turn data into insights that drive more website conversions. ProveSource’s feature-rich platform is designed to create a busy-store feeling on your site.

Top features

Triggering rules: Set your social proof experiences to appear at optimal moments.

Mobile-ready: ProveSource’s technology makes it easy to display device-responsive social proof notifications on your mobile site.

Customer activities: Leverage a full range of different social proof techniques – including recent conversions, trust-building and live visitor count – to build hype for your product or service. 

Pros of ProveSource

  • Quick-to-launch installation: Run your first social proof experiences on your website or landing page in a matter of minutes
  • Localized service: ProveSource supports clients in 20+ different locations and languages

Cons of ProveSource

  • No A/B testing: ProveSource doesn’t have an A/B testing feature to compare the conversion rate impact of different experiences

Pricing

ProveSource packages range from $0 to $45 per month.

6. Proof

Proof homepage

Proof is a platform aimed at entrepreneurs, marketing directors and marketing agencies. By adding a human touch to websites, Proof helps more than 25,000 businesses increase lead generation and conversion rates. 

Top features

Hot streaks: An excellent tool for high-traffic pages, show your website visitors how many people have recently taken action on your site – such as starting a free trial.

Live Visitor Count: Display the total number of visitors currently viewing a page on your site.

A/B testing: See the full impact of your social proof experiences by splitting your traffic into subgroups. 

Pros of Proof

  • Easy to integrate: Install a lightweight JavaScript to add Proof to any website, landing page or checkout
  • Free trial: Try any of Proof’s packages for 14 days without paying a penny

Cons of Proof

  • No onboarding: Customers learn how to navigate the platform through training videos

Pricing

Proof packages start from $29 per month and rise according to your website traffic.

7. Fomo

Fomo's homepage

Fomo helps entrepreneurs display a range of customer interactions – from purchases to page views and product reviews – to leverage the most powerful form of marketing: personal recommendations. Pitching itself as the original social proof app, Fomo helps businesses all over the world increase sales, trust and credibility. 

Top features

Customizable forms: You can create unlimited message permutations using Fomo’s patent-pending architecture.

Page rules: Trigger your social proof on the right page, to the right visitor, at the right time.

Translations: Translate your social proof messages into 29 different languages.

Pros of Fomo

  • Code-free: Launch Fomo on your website without a single line of code 
  • Loved by clients: Rated 4.9/5 on Capterra

Cons of Fomo

  • Dashboard: Fomo’s user interface is not the most intuitive 

Pricing

Fomo’s packages range from $19 to $199 per month. 

8. Proven

Proven's homepage

Proven is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that comes with a range of features to drive more website conversions. 

Top features

Simple setup: Quickly launch social proof experiences from Proven on your WordPress website.

Triggering rules: Control the visibility of your experiences.

Customizable: Change the appearance of your social proof to stay consistent with your website’s branding.

Pros of Proven

  • Documentation: Proven provides plenty of resources to help you navigate its features 

Cons of Proven

  • WordPress-specific: This social proof plugin is only compatible with WordPress websites

Pricing

Proven packages range from $39 for a one-site license to $99 for unlimited sites. 

9. Provely

Provely's homepage

Provely is a social proof tool that lets its customer choose 13 different types of notifications to increase on-site engagement and conversion rates. As well as serving D2C ecommerce brands, Provely provides CRO support to agencies, real estate businesses, software companies and travel agents. 

Top features

Live conversion: Show potential customers how many people have recently purchased your product or completed a sign-up.

Low stock: Drive urgency with stock scarcity messaging that displays your inventory in real time.

Timer: Add countdown timers to drive interest in time-sensitive offers.

Pros of Provely

  • Versatility: Provely caters to a large market of different customers 

Cons of Provely

  • Reviews: Provely are currently unrated on G2 and Capterra, so it’s difficult to gauge how their clientele feel about the platform

Pricing

Provely’s pricing ranges from $0 to $79 depending on how many site visitors you get each month.

Customer review platforms 

10. Boast

Boast's homepage

Boast is an all-in-one, B2B video testimonial software that helps you capture and share positive customer reviews – in photo, video and text format – to build trust with prospects and increase sales. 

Top features

Video testimonials: From automated requests to their in-app editor, Boast’s range of video testimonial features makes it simple to collect and share impactful reviews from your customers.

Online reviews: Request and collect more customer reviews to establish trust, increase visibility and maximize sales.

Customer surveys: Collect feedback from your customers to get valuable insights that help you proactively identify key areas for improvement.

Pros of Boast

  • Quick-to-launch: Boast’s library of templates helps you launch automated video testimonial requests in minutes

Cons of Boast

  • B2B focus: Boast is aimed at B2B companies and isn’t well suited to D2C ecommerce brands

Pricing

Boast packages range from $50 to $208 per month.

11. Trustmary

Trustmary's homepage

Trustmary is an all-in-one review solution that makes it easy to manage all your social proof in a single platform. You can use a variety of review platform widgets – including Google, Facebook and Capterra – to help you show your business is reliable and trustworthy. 

Top features

Import reviews: Embed reviews from customer review platforms into your website with ready-made widgets that work with any CMS.

A/B testing: Compare how your customers respond to different reviews to maximize your site’s sales potential.

Lead generation pop ups: Leverage customer testimonials on your site’s opt-in forms to drive more email and SMS sign-ups.

Pros of Trustmary

  • Regular feature updates: Trustmary are constantly innovating to create the best product for their customers 

Cons of Trustmary

  • Reporting: Some Trustmary users feel the reporting can be lightweight

Pricing

Trustmary packages range from $0 to $590 per month.

12. Stamped

Stamped's homepage

Designed specifically for ecommerce, Stamped’s mission is to help brands build stronger customer relationships with customer reviews and loyalty. 

Top features

Product reviews and ratings: Collect customer reviews through email, Facebook Messenger and SMS using custom forms localized to 20+ languages.

Visual user-generated content: Use device-responsive, in-mail technology to capture photo and video reviews from your customers.

Points and Rewards: Incentivize purchases and increase engagement by building a custom Points and Rewards program.

Pros of Stamped

  • Customer support: Stamped clients have reported excellent experiences dealing with the customer service team

Cons of Stamped

  • User interface: Platform updates mean features are regularly moved around the dashboard

Pricing

Stamped plans range from $19 to $249 per month. Speak to Stamped’s sales team for more information about their Enterprise package.

13. Yotpo

Yotpo's homepage

Yotpo is a leading ecommerce marketing platform providing advanced solutions for SMS marketing, loyalty and referrals, subscriptions, reviews, and visual UGC. With guidance from Yotpo’s customer success team, brands can leverage social proof across multiple channels to increase engagement, sales, retention, revenue and more. 

Top features

Collect and showcase: Make it simple for customers to submit feedback and share their reviews at high-intent moments.

Visual UGC: Display videos and photos of customers using your product to increase discovery and incentivize purchase.

SMSBump: Deliver personalized and A/B testable text message campaigns to foster meaningful relationships with your customers.

Pros of Yotpo

  • User-friendly: The Yotpo platform is intuitive with natural synergy across their range of features

Cons of Yotpo

  • Value: Yotpo customers have complained that Yotpo is on the expensive side compared to competitors

Pricing

Yotpo packages range from $0 to $199 per month. Speak to their sales team for more information about their Enterprise offering. 

14. Repuso

Repuso's homepage

Repuso makes it easy for companies to collect social proof reviews from a huge range of channels – including Instagram, Tripadvisor and Zendesk – and display them on their website.  

Top features

Social media monitoring: Scrape customer reviews from your social media platforms with Repuso.

Dashboard: Choose the reviews you want to display on site using Repuso’s easy-to-use dashboard.

Integrations: Integrate with different channels to find and display the most positive reviews about your business.

Pros of Repuso

  • Free trial: Explore Repuso’s platform free of charge for 10 days

Cons of Repuso

  • No A/B testing: Repuso doesn’t yet have an A/B testing feature to monitor the performance of your on-site testimonials

Pricing

Repuso’s packages range from $9 to $23 per month. 

Which of these social proof software tools is right for you?

Social proof tools are an excellent place to start when you take your first steps into CRO. The psychological power of social proof is scientifically proven, and you can easily implement it on your site using any of these 14 tools.

If you’re looking for an out-of-the-box solution to drive urgency, a specialist software like ProveSource or Fomo is likely to be the best social proof tool for you. But if you’re short of in-house expertise and need a more sophisticated approach to lifting conversion rates, Yieldify’s personalization platform ticks all the boxes. 

Either way, I hope this blog helped you find the best social proof software for your business.

If you’d like a preview of how you can use social proof to lift conversion rates with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about our personalization platform.

Social Proof Software FAQs

What is social proof software?

Social proof software uses psychology to help ecommerce brands increase their online sales. By driving urgency, alluding to stock scarcity and building brand authority, social proof software can replicate the busy in-store experience online and help you boost website conversion rates. 

What are the benefits of social proof tools?

Social proof tools help you increase revenue by boosting website conversion rates. At a time when the cost of customer acquisition is on the rise, ecommerce brands are using social proof tools to extract maximum value from every website visitor. If you’re lacking the in-house expertise to launch social proof experiences and A/B test their conversion rate impact, speak to Yieldify’s sales team to see how we can help you achieve your business objectives.

4 Types of Market Segmentation: Real-World Examples & Benefits

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4 Types of Market Segmentation | Yieldify

Market segmentation is the foundation of any successful long-term marketing strategy. 

To get maximum value from your marketing budget, get to the heart of your customers’ shopping motivations by splitting your market into subgroups – then you’ll be in a stronger position to serve your customers’ unique needs.

According to research from SALESmanago, 77% of marketing ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns. So, if your marketing campaigns are falling flat, do more market research to understand what makes your customers tick across each segment.

One of the reasons market segmentation techniques drive more revenue for your business is because they can help you deliver personalized customer experiences. That’s why the best personalization tools let you segment your audience so you can:

  • Drive more email and SMS leads
  • Lift website conversion rates
  • Improve average order values
  • Increase customer lifetime value

In this blog, I’ll walk you through the four main types of market segmentation:

1. Demographic

2. Psychographic

3. Geographic

4. Behavioral

And I’ll also cover: 

What is market segmentation?

Market segmentation is a technique you can use to divide your customer base into subgroups based on shared characteristics, such as age, income, hobbies and location. The aim of segmentation is to tailor marketing efforts to your ideal customer profile (ICP), i.e. the customers most likely to buy your product or service. 

For example, a customer at an organic food shop is likely to have some or all of these characteristics: 

  • Gender: Male or Female 
  • Age: 25-44
  • Income: $100,000+
  • Life stage: Home owner, no children  
  • Interests: Healthy eating, sustainability, sport

Rather than wasting your budget on campaigns that target a broad section of the market, use messaging that resonates with a market segment made up of customers with those attributes. You should also consider which channels are likely to drive the highest engagement.

For this hypothetical organic food shop, a Pinterest campaign marketing products with sustainable ingredients would be a strategic way to appeal to potential customers. Why Pinterest and not another social channel? Well, not only do 9 out of 10 Pinners browse the social media platform for purchase inspiration, it’s also used by up to 80% of Millennial women and 40% of Millennial men.

Why is a market segmentation strategy important? 

According to Bain and Company, businesses that tailor strategies to customer segments generate yearly profit growth of 15% vs 5% for businesses that don’t. In short, market segmentation can drive significant growth. 

Segmentation techniques are major profit drivers because they help you define your target market and qualify customers as users of your product or service. You can then provide the personalization that 73% of shoppers now expect from brands – sending the right message, through the right channel, at the right time.  

Market segmentation also helps you to: 

  • Enter new markets
  • Build products that solve customer pain points
  • Streamline sales processes
  • Drive more revenue from email marketing
  • Drive more revenue from social media marketing
  • Increase eCommerce customer retention

4 Key market segmentation types & examples

The four types of market segmentation outlined

1. Demographic segmentation: The who

Widely used by D2C ecommerce brands, demographic segmentation is one of the most simple yet effective kinds of segmentation. You can use demographic segmentation to split your audience and create customer personas based on objective information, such as:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Income
  • Level of education
  • Religion
  • Profession/role in a company

For example, if you segment your audience based on your customers’ income, you can target them with products that fall within the constraints of their budget. If you’re a small business or new to ecommerce, this is a straightforward type of segmentation with three key advantages: 

  • It’s easy to collect information 
  • It’s simple to measure & analyze 
  • It’s cost-effective

Luxury goods manufacturer Montblanc worked with Yieldify to present a selection of offers across their website. They lifted conversions by 118% with a Father’s Day deal offering a free gift to customers spending over £200 – a threshold that took the spending expectations of Montblanc’s target audience into account.

Montblanc's Father's Day campaign

2. Psychographic segmentation: The why

Psychographic segmentation is the process of grouping people together based on similar personal values, political opinions, aspirations and psychological characteristics. 

For example, you can group customers according to their:

  • Personality 
  • Hobbies
  • Social status 
  • Opinions 
  • Life goals
  • Values and beliefs
  • Lifestyle

Because these characteristics are subjective, psychographic is a harder segment to identify – but it’s also the most valuable. The best places to gather data for psychographic segmentation are through your audience analytic tools and social media, but you should also use surveys, interviews and focus groups to strengthen your customer understanding in this segment. 

Through psychographic segmentation, you can get a deep insight into your customers’ likes, dislikes, needs, wants and loves. You can then create marketing campaigns that resonate with their psychographic profile. 

Yieldify’s personalization technology helps you create on-site experiences that capture more psychographic information about your customers. For example, Heidi, a leading online travel agency, collected information about their customers’ preferred skiing style with layered lead capture experiences. 

3. Geographic segmentation: The where

Geographic segmentation is the process of grouping customers based on where they live and where they shop. People who live in the same city, state or zip code typically have similar needs, mindsets and cultural preferences. 

The real advantage of geographic segmentation is it provides an insight into what your customers’ location says about a number of geo-specific variables, such as their: 

  • Climate 
  • Culture 
  • Language 
  • Population density – (urban vs rural)

As with all market segmentation methods, you’ll need to analyze your data to understand how each factor influences your customers’ shopping behavior. For example, people living in colder climates are likely to be in the market for winter clothing and home heating appliances.

You can also use geographic segmentation to solve practical problems. With Yieldify, global fashion brand Nautica used geo-targeting to show different customers when they could guarantee Christmas delivery. Customers in rural areas had to order earlier than urban areas, so Nautica’s delivery countdown timers adapted according to the customer’s location.

4. Behavioral segmentation: The how

Behavioral segmentation is the process of grouping customers based on common behaviors they exhibit when they interact with your brand.

For this type of segmentation, you can group your audience based on their: 

  • Spending habits
  • Purchasing habits
  • Browsing habits
  • Interactions with your brand
  • Loyalty to your brand
  • Product feedback

Gather this objective data through your website analytics and you can identify patterns in your customers’ behavior that help predict how they’ll interact with your brand in the future. 

Then you can leverage this hypothesis to provide personalized recommendations that address your customers needs. For example, Spotify provides its users with curated daily mixes based on the types of genres and artists they’ve listened to previously.  

At Yieldify, we use behavioral segmentation to deliver highly relevant and targeted campaigns based on behaviors including:

  • Number of sessions to your website
  • Number of pages visited
  • Time spent on site
  • URLs visited
  • Page types visited
  • Exit intent
  • Inactivity
  • Shopping cart value
  • Campaign history
  • Referral source

For example, Petal & Pup tailor their email lead generation messaging for visitors arriving from Facebook.

Petal & Pup's sign-up form for Facebook visitors

Other types of market segmentation with examples

Demographic, psychographic, geographic, and behavioral are the four pillars of market segmentation, but consider using these four extra types to enhance your marketing efforts. 

Technographic segmentation

Technographic segmentation groups people based on the technology they use and how they interact with it. For example, you could segment early adopters of new tech and target them when you launch a new product to market. 

Alternatively, you could present customers with deals depending on what device they use to shop online. For example, you could show Apple products to consumers who use Safari.

Generational and life stage segmentation

Generational segmentation expands on demographic segmentation by grouping customers based on their generation – Boomers, Gen Z, Millennials, etc.

You can also segment customers by factors including marital status, home ownership and number of children. 

For example, Bank of America successfully incorporated life stage segmentation in their digital marketing strategy. They invited customers using their Family Life Banking program to specify their life stage circumstances when they signed up. From there, they directed customers to a microsite designed specifically for that segment.

Bank of America's segmentation strategy in action

Transactional segmentation

Using transactional segmentation you can group customers based on their previous purchase interactions with your brand, including: 

  • Source of brand discovery – e.g. social media, organic
  • Date of most recent order 
  • Total number of transactions 
  • Average order value

Firmographic Segmentation

Most of the market segments I’ve discussed focus on D2C brands, but firmographic segmentation is a tool B2B companies use to create more impactful marketing campaigns.

Firmographic segmentation is the process of analyzing and classifying B2B customers based on shared company characteristics, and is similar to how D2C marketers use demographic segmentation. 

Use these 7 factors to create firmographic customer segments:

  • Industry
  • Location
  • Company size
  • Status
  • Number of employees
  • Performance
  • Executive title
  • Sales cycle stage

8 Benefits of Market Segmentation

1. Better ROI from marketing

According to research from SALESmanago, 77% of marketing ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns. 

2. Set your omnichannel strategy 

The deep insights you glean from a strong market segmentation process will help you set an omnichannel strategy that better addresses your customers’ needs. For example, if a high percentage of your customers are from Gen Z, tailor your messaging across all channels to speak to their cultural and social reference points.

3. Build customer loyalty

Market segmentation helps you build the personalized journeys your customers are craving. According to Accenture, 79% of consumers are more loyal to brands that use personalization tactics. 

4. Reach new markets

Segmentation helps brands identify gaps in the market. For example, world-renowned camera company Canon took a 40% share in the low-end digital camera market by spotting an opportunity to sell cameras to children without smartphones. 

5. Reduce customer acquisition costs

The insights you glean from creating segmented customer personas will make your marketing campaigns more effective. That can be said for both D2C and B2B brands.For example, insurance giant Metlife set annual savings targets of $800 million after streamlining its sales process to consider the behaviors and attitudes of each customer segment.

6. Build better products 

With a clearer understanding of who your customers are, you can create products that better serve their needs, desires and expectations. 

7. Higher quality email & SMS leads 

You’re more likely to get leads into your email and SMS databases by adapting your opt-in form according to customer segments. With Yieldify, American footwear company Rockport drove 30% more revenue per lead using a segmented approach to lead capture.

8. Drive more revenue from email marketing

Marketers have increased open rates by 14.3% and revenue by up to 760% using segmented email campaigns.

Build your own market segmentation strategy

I hope this blog has given you a clear understanding of how you can use market segmentation tactics to optimize your market strategy. If you want more information about how you can leverage market segmentation on your ecommerce website, check out this page on Yieldify’s audience segmentation capabilities.

Market Segmentation FAQs

What is meant by market segmentation?

Market segmentation is the process of dividing the market into subsets of customers who share common characteristics. The four pillars of segmentation marketers use to define their ideal customer profile (ICP) are demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral.

What are the 4 types of market segmentation?

The four main types of market segmentation are:
1. Demographic
2. Psychographic
3. Geographic
4. Behavioral

What are the advantages of market segmentation?

Market segmentation helps you qualify customers of your product or service and serve them with more personalized marketing campaigns that speak to their unique needs. A good market segmentation strategy will help you:

– Drive more marketing ROI
– Reach new markers
– Cut customer acquisition costs
– Build better products
– Increase brand loyalty

Best Social Media Platforms for Ecommerce That You Should be Using

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Social media is a goldmine for ecommerce marketers. 

Online stores with a social media presence drive 32% more revenue than those without. If you’re looking to drive more revenue and maximize your marketing ROI, it’s time you invested in social media ecommerce and tapped into a global audience of 4.7 billion.

To help you incorporate the right platforms into your marketing strategy, I’ll walk you through 7 of the best social media platforms for ecommerce.

  1. Facebook for Ecommerce
  2. Instagram for Ecommerce
  3. Pinterest for Ecommerce
  4. YouTube for Ecommerce
  5. TikTok for Ecommerce
  6. Snapchat for Ecommerce
  7. Twitter for Ecommerce

Top 3 platforms for ecommerce social media marketing

Social media marketing is a channel you can use to build brand awareness, connect with customers and drive more sales. To drive the highest ROI from your social media accounts, focus your marketing efforts on a select few platforms.

In this blog, I’ll break down the top three referral sources – Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest – and also guide you through YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat. 

1. Facebook for ecommerce

Commanding an audience of 1.62 billion daily users, Facebook is the world’s most used social media platform. The sheer size of Facebook makes it a powerful marketing tool for ecommerce brands to run their paid advertising campaigns.

If you’re trying to build awareness of your ecommerce brand, Facebook is the platform to use. With 78% of American consumers saying they’ve discovered products on Facebook it’s become an essential part of many ecommerce customer acquisition strategies. 

Facebook advert from Anastasia Beverly Hills
Source: Drip

Using a range of market segmentation techniques, including age, gender and location data, you can acquire new customers and retarget existing website visitors with in-page ads on news feeds and in Facebook Messenger.

2. Instagram for ecommerce

Instagram is constantly innovating to make it easier for its 500 million daily users to shop through the platform. In 2021, a survey conducted by the social media giant revealed that 44% of people use their platform to shop weekly.

Instagram is a highly visual platform, so it’s a smart channel to use if you sell products that you can showcase with photo and video content. 

Features such as Instagram Shopping – which attracts 130 million monthly taps – and Instagram Checkout have made it a key marketing channel for many ecommerce brands. 

Available in a wide range of global markets, Instagram Shopping lets you create an immersive storefront to help users explore products with a single tap. You can share products through your own posts and stories and create clickable tags that take visitors directly to product description pages.

Check out the example from Marks & Spencer to see how you can encourage users to click through to your ecommerce site from Instagram Shopping.

Marks and Spencer's Instagram page
Source: M&S

3. Pinterest for ecommerce

Given Pinterest drives 33% more referral traffic for shopping websites than Facebook, Pinterest is an underestimated ecommerce marketing channel. Renowned for its range of highly visual and aspirational posts, Pinterest is a breeding ground for product discovery and a highly effective full-funnel marketing channel. 

Pinterest stats
Source: Pinterest

Thanks to features like Rich Pins, an incredible 98% of Pinterest’s 444 million monthly users have tried something they’ve seen on the platform. You can use Rich Pins to provide potential customers with links, references, and product recommendations that help them find everything from skincare products to DIY inspiration.

According to The Social Shepherd, 77% of Pinterest users are female and the platform is most popular among people aged 18-44, so consider your audience demographics before you start using Pinterest.

Examples of Pinterest Rich Pins
Source: Pinterest

Other ecommerce social media networks to consider

4. YouTube for ecommerce

With a reported 2.1 billion monthly active users, YouTube is the world’s most popular video platform.

Many of the biggest brands – including Coca-Cola, LEGO and American Express – regularly post content on a dedicated channel, and with good reason. According to Google, 70% of people have purchased from a brand as a result of seeing it on YouTube – but be aware that patience is key. You need to build your audience before you get results on YouTube.

One way you can add new subscribers quickly is by collaborating with influencers. Let’s take GymShark as an example. The majority of their videos contain sponsored athletes with established and highly engaged social media followings.

Gymshark's YouTube channel

To lift conversions through YouTube, produce in-depth product video reviews or explainers that showcase how your product can solve your customers’ pain points.

With Yieldify, you can make your YouTube content go further by embedding videos into your website. For example, Marwell Zoo reduces cart abandonment by displaying a promotional video in response to exit intent behaviors. 

Marwell Zoo's embedded YouTube video

5. TikTok for ecommerce

A relatively new kid on the block in social media, TikTok lets you upload and share videos up to three minutes long. With 1 billion active users in more than 150 countries worldwide, TikTok has become universally popular in recent years – and its highly engaged users make it a valuable marketing channel for ecommerce brands. 

In 2020, TikTok launched TikTok for Business, which lets business owners connect their online store and TikTok account. You can engage new and existing customers on TikTok by using hashtags, collaborating with influencers and running four different types of ads, including: 

  • Dynamic Showcase Ads – Deliver personalized ads to your customers 
  • Collection Ads – Drive product discovery with curated product collections 
  • Spark Ads – Leverage organic posts to provide authentic brand experiences
  • Lead Generation Ads – Build subscriber lists & collect customer data
TikTok Ads Manager page
Source: Channable

If you can crack TikTok’s algorithm and go viral, you’ll rival the world’s top brands for engagement. 

That’s what BlendJet did, for instance. BlendJet used TikTok’s Discover page to identify fitness and foodie creator accounts to collaborate with. The creators made “Things TikTok Made Me Buy” and “Life Hack”-style videos pitching the BlendJet device as a bulky blender alternative, and promoted the videos as Spark Ads.

BlendJet's TikTok content
Source: TikTok

The results?

BlendJet’s interest-based targeting strategy, strong creator partnerships and use of TikTok’s Spark Ads helped them get more than 28 million impressions, 407,000 clicks and 12,000 conversions with a click-through rate of 1.43%.

The main takeaway: identify creators that closely align with your brand’s target audience and give them the freedom to develop authentic and shareable content.

Want to share TikTok content on your ecommerce site? Just like with YouTube, you can embed TikTok videos into your website using Yieldify’s technology.

6. Snapchat for ecommerce

Snapchat is a messaging application that lets users share photos and bitesize videos. With 363 million daily active users, Snapchat carries huge potential for ecommerce brands – particularly those serving Gen Z and Millennial customers. In the US alone, Snapchat reaches over 75% of the millennial and Gen Z population. 

You can run different types of ads on Snapchat to target your customers, including: 

  • Snapchat Story Ads – Deliver ads through friends’ stories or Snapchat Discover
  • Collection Ads – Feature products that users can tap for more information
  • Dynamic Ads – Automated ads that personalize your customers’ shopping experience
  • Lenses Ads – Replicate the in-store experience online using augmented reality 
  • Filters ads – Provide Snapchatters’ with branded filters to include in their content 
Snapchat Shopping Lens
Source: Snapchat

Given the average snapchatter spends 30 minutes a day on the platform, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to drive engagement through your ads. You can also use a range of segmentation methods to target customers based on information like: 

  • Location
  • Demographics
  • Interests 

7. Twitter for ecommerce

Dubbed the public’s de-facto town square by owner Elon Musk, Twitter is a tricky platform for ecommerce brands to drive revenue from. The limitations of a 280-character limit and short life spans for tweets have turned some ecommerce businesses away from Twitter. But these obstacles haven’t stopped the 67% of B2B businesses that use Twitter as a marketing tool. 

As with every social media platform, consider your audience demographics before using Twitter. With 63% of users aged between 35-65, Twitter attracts an older crowd than TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. So if your target customer is over the age of 35, Twitter is a platform you’re likely to reach them on. 

For ecommerce brands, the best way to drive engagement on Twitter is through product videos, images and giveaways – all of which can be leveraged with strategic hashtags and collaborations with influencers. 

Twitter’s algorithm rewards profiles that regularly publish new content, so post a minimum of once a day to maximize audience engagement. Other engagement tactics to note include: 

  • Tweets with images get 150% more retweets
  • Tweets with hashtags drive 1065% more engagement
  • Threads get 63% more engagement than tweets with links

Social Media + Ecommerce = Social Commerce

You can grow your ecommerce business by investing in the right social media channels. Platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook help you connect social media users to your ecommerce store and build online communities. 

Consider your audience demographics, product and in-house expertise before launching a social media strategy, and remember to focus on a select handful of channels.

If you are interested in understanding more about how to refine your ecommerce social media strategy and grow your online business, then check out our in-depth social commerce guide.

Social Media ecommerce FAQs

Which social media platform is best for ecommerce?

The three best social media platforms for ecommerce are Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Other platforms to consider are Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter.

What is the role of social media in ecommerce?

Social media plays an important role in ecommerce by helping brands build awareness, generate email & SMS leads, and increase paid and organic traffic. Social media can also be used to provide customer service.

How does social media affect ecommerce?

Social media is a huge revenue driver for ecommerce businesses. Research from Yotpo found that ecommerce websites with a social presence make 32% more sales than stores that don’t. If you’re not on social media, you’re passing up a huge opportunity to drive more sales.

What is meant by social commerce?

Ecommerce brands use social commerce to promote and sell their products through organic content and paid social ads across a range of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

How effective is social media to the process of ecommerce?

Social media can be a highly influential part of a multichannel ecommerce strategy. When done well, it helps you generate more leads, traffic, sales and puts shoppers in direct contact with your customer service teams.

15 Best Ecommerce Marketing Automation Software & Platforms

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Marketing automation software allows you to streamline your marketing operations by replacing manual tasks with automated workflows. 

If you’re looking to increase marketing revenue and help your team work more efficiently, then you’ve come to the right place. 

In this blog I’ll guide you through 15 of the best ecommerce marketing automation software tools on the market today and help you choose the right one for your ecommerce business.

Best Marketing Automation Software at a Glance

  1. Klaviyo
  2. HubSpot
  3. Campaign Monitor
  4. Mailchimp
  5. Iterable
  6. Emarsys
  7. Listrak
  8. Dotdigital 
  9. Act-On
  10. Sender
  11. ActiveCampaign
  12. Keap 
  13. Hunch
  14. Drip
  15. Omnisend

What is marketing automation software?

In a nutshell, a marketing automation tool is a piece of software that allows you to automate marketing tasks such as lead generation, email and SMS marketing, nurturing prospects and posting to social media. 

Benefits of automated marketing platforms

On a macro level, automated marketing platforms help you increase revenue. In fact, almost 80% of Chief Marketing Officers say their main reason for implementing marketing automation software is to grow revenue.

Much of the revenue growth driven by marketing automation can be attributed to improvements in efficiency. More than 30% of sales-related activities and repetitive tasks can be automated, which frees up more time for marketing and sales teams to nurture prospects through the sales funnel.

As well as driving revenue and improving efficiency, marketing automation technology help you to: 

  • Reduce staff costs – The automation of manual tasks increases efficiency so you don’t have to hire more staff
  • Nurture leads – Keep your product or service top-of-mind using email marketing campaigns
  • Streamline reporting – Track key performance metrics in customizable reports delivered directly to your inbox
  • Align sales and marketing – Manage your marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads in one centralized hub
  • Personalize experiences – Segment your audiences and create personalized campaigns specific to target different personas across multiple sales channels
  • Increase conversion rates – Use conversion rate optimization techniques like basket abandonment email drips that trigger automatically in the platform

Bear in mind that your automated marketing platform should integrate with your tech stack.

You can integrate any of the 15 automation platforms in this blog with Yieldify’s fully managed personalization platform. For example, you may want to collect email and SMS leads, customer data, or customer questionnaire answers and pass them to your automation software.

If you choose Klaviyo, Iterable or Ometria, you can integrate with Yieldify to capture a wide range of customer browsing data – such as how customers navigate your website, which links they click, how long they stay on a page – and feed insights back into those platforms.

Choosing the best marketing automation platforms

You need to define your business goals before investing in ecommerce marketing automation software. For example, do you want to:

  • Improve audience tracking
  • Send real-time sales alerts 
  • Remarket to customers 
  • Collect more email addresses 
  • Collect more SMS
  • Personalize customer experiences

Once you’ve set your goals, calculate a budget, identify must-have features and agree internally on what you’re prepared to compromise on within your financial constraints. 

With your specifications agreed, you’re ready to start searching the marketplace. Here are three ways to narrow your search:

  1. Use a plug-in like BuiltWith to see which platform brands like yours are using.
  2. Find out which platforms integrate with your current tech stack.
  3. Check customer review platforms such as G2 and Capterra.

When you’re ready to engage with a provider, Justin Gray, founder and CEO of LeadMD, recommends asking six questions:

  • Is there an associated community?
  • What are the all-encompassing costs?
  • What will the ROI look like?
  • How extensive is the support offered?
  • How does the functionality align with your goals?
  • Does this brand have an innovation mindset?

15 top marketing automation software for ecommerce

1. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is an ecommerce marketing automation platform that helps businesses from SMBs to enterprise deliver personalized experiences across their marketing channels.

  • Pricing: Klaviyo’s pricing structure depends on how many contacts you have in your database. For example, businesses with 1k-1.5k contacts will pay $60 per month for Klaviyo’s email & SMS package
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.7/10 on G2
  • Features: Advanced retail integration with Yieldify, which you can read more about here. Personalized emails, audience segmentation, social ad targeting
  • Best for: Klaviyo is a great solution for businesses of all sizes to scale up their email & SMS marketing with more personalized experiences
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

2. HubSpot

One of the most widely used marketing automation tools, HubSpot offers a full stack of sales, marketing, and CRM tools. HubSpot’s flexible marketing automation functionality integrates online and social media marketing activities – including email, SEO, contacts, and analytics.

  • Pricing: HubSpot’s three marketing hub packages range from $45 to $3600 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.6/10 on G2
  • Features: Ad tracking, video content, SEO optimization, blog analytics, social media scheduling, live chat, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Marketers who need a powerful, all-in-one tool for segmentation, contact management, push-button social media control, and report creation
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

3. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is a global marketing automation tool helping businesses across a wide range of industries – including media, tech and nonprofit – to drive more revenue from their email marketing efforts. 

  • Pricing: Starting from $10 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.6/10 on G2 
  • Features: Email template builder, audience segmentation, personalized experiences, email automation, analytics, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop interface and customizable templates, Campaign Monitor is a great solution for small businesses and novice email marketers with limited experience
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most popular automation platforms on the market. Though it’s widely known as an email marketing tool, Mailchimp is a full-scale marketing platform offering CRM, design, website and campaign services.

  • Pricing: Mailchimp has four packages starting from $0 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.7/10 on G2 
  • Features: Customer journey builder, transactional emails, retargeting ads, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: small to medium-size businesses looking to scale up with an all-in-one marketing platform
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

5. Iterable

Iterable is a growth-marketing platform that helps you form deeper customer relationships and build personalized, cross-channel experiences.

  • Pricing: Speak to Iterable’s sales team for more information on pricing 
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.5/10 on G2 
  • Features: Email and SMS marketing, personalized content, centralized data, synchronized workflows, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Medium-sized businesses looking for an easy-to-use email marketing platform with a proactive and quick-to-respond support team
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

6. Emarsys

Serving more than 1500 customers around the world, Emarsys is an omnichannel customer engagement platform built to help marketers accelerate business outcomes. 

  • Pricing: Speak to Emarsys’s sales team for more information on pricing
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.3/10 on G2 
  • Features: Cross-channel execution, integrated data layer, personalization engine, customer lifecycle management, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Mid-market businesses who are prepared to go through a steep learning curve to make use of the platform’s full range of features
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

7. Listrak

With hands-on account managers in place to provide strategic support, Listrak is a customer engagement platform that helps you deliver exceptional experiences to maximize engagement, revenue and customer lifetime value. 

  • Pricing: Speak to Listrak’s sales team for more information on pricing
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.5/10 on G2 
  • Features: Dedicated account manager, email & SMS marketing, predictive product recommendations, out-of-the-box data visualizations, behavioral triggering, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Listrak is a great option to consider if you’re looking for an account manager to help you get the best out of a marketing automation platform
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

8. Dotdigital

Dogdigital is a customer engagement platform that enables marketers to forge deeper customer relationships and grow their business with data-driven personalization.

  • Pricing: Speak to Dotdigital’s sales team for more information on pricing
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.6/10 on G2
  • Features: Social and search retargeting, live chat, product recommendations, landing page optimization, data segmentation
  • Best for: Email marketing professionals who need a sophisticated all-in-one package with a powerful drag-and-drop builder
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

9. Act-On

Act-On pitch themselves as the world’s leading growth marketing company. The Act-On platform helps marketers in every industry create better brand experiences for their customers. 

  • Pricing: Starting from $900 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 8/10 on G2  
  • Features: Email marketing automation, social media automation, SMS marketing, dynamic web forms, Yieldify integration 
  • Best for: Enterprise businesses looking for a customizable tool that integrates sales, marketing automation, and many other features
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

10. Sender

Sender helps marketers bridge the gap between email and SMS lists and revenue by empowering them to grow and nurture their subscriber base. 

  • Pricing: Starting from $0 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.6/10 on G2 
  • Features: Newsletter opt-in forms, drag-and-drop editor, push notifications, landing pages, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Sender is an easy-to-use and affordable email marketing solution for small businesses
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

11. ActiveCampaign

Serving more than 150,000 customers worldwide, ActiveCampaign pitch themselves as the global leader in customer experience automation.

  • Pricing: Starting from $29 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.5/10 on G2  
  • Features: A/B testing, custom sign-up forms, pre-built automation workflows, goal tracking, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Smaller businesses looking for a powerful yet affordable entry-level marketing automation solution
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

12. Keap

Keap is an all-in-one CRM and sales and marketing automation platform on a mission to help entrepreneurs grow their business without the usual chaos that comes with it.

  • Pricing: Starting from $129 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 7.2/8 on G2 
  • Features: Advanced Automations builder, A/B testing, audience segmentation, curated templates, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: With one-on-one onboarding, 24/7 chat support and on-demand training courses, Keap is made to help small businesses thrive.  
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

13. Hunch

Hunch is a creative automation platform used by both brand and agency-side performance marketers to improve their social media management. With Hunch you can drive more engagement on Facebook and Instagram by building highly contextual customer journeys. 

  • Pricing: Hunch’s pricing is flexible and varies depending on a variety of performance metrics 
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.6/10 on G2 
  • Features: Dynamic video and image templates, automated workflows, A/B testing, custom reporting, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Ecommerce retailers and agencies looking to take their paid social marketing to the next level.
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

14. Drip

Built specifically for ecommerce, Drip is an email and SMS marketing automation platform that helps 30,000+ marketers worldwide drive more revenue.

  • Pricing: Starting from $39 per month 
  • Ease of use: Rated 8.4/10 on G2 
  • Features: Pre-built workflows, personalized product recommendations, social media synchronization, customizable sign-up forms, email testing, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Small to medium-sized ecommerce sites looking to scale up their email and SMS marketing campaigns with greater personalization
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

15. Omnisend

Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing automation platform that helps more than 75,000 ecommerce brands worldwide optimize their email, SMS and push notification campaigns. 

  • Pricing: Starting from $0 per month
  • Ease of use: Rated 9.2/10 on G2
  • Features: Omnichannel workflows, A/B testing, personalized product recommendations, lead generation, Yieldify integration
  • Best for: Marketing professionals who have outgrown basic email marketing and want to dive into omnichannel automation without sacrificing ease of use
Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your Marketing Automation Platform with Yieldify.

What automated marketing platform should you use? 

Naturally, you should choose the platform that best aligns with your budget, goals and ideal product spec. If you’re a small business aiming to scale your email and SMS marketing, there’s plenty of good options to consider – including Klaviyo, Drip and Sender. 

For enterprise businesses with large budgets that are looking for a highly sophisticated tool, Act-On may be the ideal solution. Irrespective of your particular business needs, I hope this blog helps narrow your search for an ecommerce marketing automation solution. 

If you found this guide to marketing automation useful, check out our rundown of the factors to consider when choosing a website personalization tool or a lead generation tool for ecommerce.

Ecommerce Marketing Automation FAQs

What is eCommerce automation?

Ecommerce automation is software that can automatically execute marketing tasks, processes, or campaigns across multiple channels to improve efficiency and drive more revenue.

Do I need marketing automation in eCommerce?

Every ecommerce business can benefit from some level of marketing automation. The most efficient marketing teams use automation to qualify and nurture leads, build workflows, manage campaigns and ultimately achieve greater ROI. Read our blog comparing 15 ecommerce marketing automation platforms here.

What are the benefits of marketing automation platform?

The main benefit of marketing automation is it improves efficiency and drives more revenue. At a more granular level, marketing automation platforms will help you: 

– Reduce staff costs
-Nurture leads
– Streamline reporting 
– Align sales and marketing
– Personalize experiences
– Increase conversion rates

10 Best Ecommerce CRM Software Tools for 2023

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Best ecommerce CRM software tools

CRM software tools help you manage your customer data more effectively and streamline internal processes in your sales cycle. 

In this blog I’ll guide you through 10 of the best ecommerce CRM software tools on the market today and help you choose the right CRM software for your business.

The 10 best ecommerce CRM software

  1. Klaviyo
  2. Pipedrive
  3. Capsule CRM
  4. Zoho CRM
  5. HubSpot CRM
  6. Salesforce Account Engagement
  7. Sendinblue
  8. Freshworks
  9. Copper
  10. Metrilo

Software

Pricing

G2 rating

Yieldify integration?

Klaviyo

From $17 per month

4.6 out of 5

Yes

Pipedrive

From $0 per month

4.2 out of 5

Yes

Capsule CRM

From $0 per month

4.3 out of 5

Yes

Zoho CRM

From $14 per month

4 out of 5

Yes

HubSpot CRM

From $45 per month 

4.4 out of 5

Yes

Salesforce Account Engagement

From $1250 per month

3.9 out of 5

Yes

Sendinblue

From $0 per month

4.5 out of 5

Yes

Freshworks

From $0 per month

4.5 out of 5

Yes

Copper

From $23 per month

4.5 out of 5

Yes

Metrilo

From $119 per month

4.7 out of 5

Yes

You can build richer customer profiles by integrating any of the 10 ecommerce CRM platforms in this blog with Yieldify’s fully managed personalization platform. Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

If you’d like a preview of how Yieldify can drive more leads and customer data into your CRM as well as personalize your customer experiences, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

Ecommerce CRM checklist

What are the must-have features in a CRM software for your ecommerce brand? We’ve selected the 10 best ecommerce CRM tools below based on these criteria:

Usability

  • User interface (UI): It’s best to book a demo with the CRM provider to get a feel for the user interface. During the demo, consider if the design is intuitive and includes all the features you need to support your marketing efforts. 
  • Usability: Is the platform easy to use? What support documents, service or training does the CRM offer? Take advantage of free trials to decide what you like and dislike in a CRM tool.

Features & Functionality

  • Analytics and reporting: Make sure the CRM system provides actionable customer insights that help grow your online business. A good CRM will let you run ad hoc reports and create customizable performance dashboards.
  • Automated workflows: Most CRMs have this built-in, but make sure yours can send automated emails to improve open rates and revenue from your remarketing. If you want to amplify your SMS marketing, or make your first steps into this area, then make sure your provider can engage mobile subscribers with automated text messages. 
  • Customer history: Does the platform allow you to?
  1. See purchase history 
  2. Analyze customer behavior 
  3. Segment audiences
  • Cross-channel tracking: Can the CRM track customer journeys across all your marketing channels?

Integrations

  • Your ecommerce website: Does the CRM integrate with your online store? Ideally, they’ll have customer case studies explaining how this works. 
  • Third-party tools: You’re probably using other marketing tools, so find out if the ecommerce CRM integrates with your tech stack. 

Value for money

  • Your budget: Does the CRM offer all the features you need within the constraints of your budget? 
  • Pricing: Most CRMs have different options depending on how many active deals or contacts you have, so make sure you select the package that meets your specific business requirements.

10 Best CRM for Ecommerce

1. Klaviyo

Klaviyo homepage

Built specifically for ecommerce, Klaviyo is an automated marketing and CRM platform that empowers brands to create personalized customer experiences. 

Top features

  • Historical viewing: Access information about every interaction a customer has had with your store. 
  • Predictive analytics: Use AI to predict when a customer is likely to submit their next purchase and how much they’re likely to spend. 
  • Combined email and SMS: Bring your email and SMS marketing efforts into one platform to drive more subscribers and sales.
  • Yieldify integration: By creating custom events and collecting deeper insights on your customers’ on-site interactions, Yieldify’s advanced Klvayio integration helps you send substantially more user data to your Klaviyo user profiles than Klaviyo alone. 

Pricing

Klaviyo’s pricing is tailored to the size of your contact list. Prices range between $35 and $1970 per month for email and SMS packages. You can get a free trial with Klaviyo if you have less than 150,000 contacts.

G2 rating

4.6 out of 5

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

2. Pipedrive

Pipedrive homepage

Trusted by more than 100,000 companies in 179 countries, Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM tool designed for teams of all sizes. With a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard, Pipedrive is a great option for CRM beginners.

Top features

  • Manage leads: Manage your sales leads by creating and customizing as many pipelines as you see fit. Extract data in seconds to prioritize processes and make better decisions.
  • Insights and reports: Pipedrive’s sales reports are fully customizable, allowing you to monitor the most relevant metrics for your business. Use Pipedrive’s reporting tool to track deals and make revenue forecasts.
     
  • Email builder: Pipedrive’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor and ready-to-use templates help you drive powerful email marketing campaigns. 
  • Email segmentation: Reach the right contacts with the right messaging by segmenting your recipient list into subgroups. 

Pricing

Pipedrive starts at $17 per month and rises to $92 for their Enterprise plan. You can try Pipedrive’s platform with their 14-day free trial.

G2 rating

4.2 out of 5

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

3. Capsule CRM

Capsule homepage

Capsule CRM was designed to hit the sweet spot between simplicity and complexity and is well suited to small to medium-sized ecommerce businesses. More than 10,000 companies are currently using Capsule.

Top features

  • Contact management: Access the entire history of your customer interactions in Capsule’s platform. Import existing data, sync contacts in real-time and quickly access key information about your customers. 
  • Email marketing: Use Transpond in sync with Capsule to create a powerful CRM and email marketing tool. Whether you start with a blank page or modify a pre-built template, you can run automated email campaigns and monitor performance with clear analytics. 
  • Sales pipeline: Keep track of opportunities and manage your pipeline with excellent visuals and a drag-and-drop interface. 
  • Sales analytics: Monitor your sales pipeline with insightful reporting and easily export all of your data.

Pricing

Capsule has four packages ranging from $0 to $40 per month. You can access a 30-day free trial on all of Capsule’s paid packages. 

G2 rating

4.3 out of 5

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho homepage

Designed to empower organizations of all sizes, Zoho CRM is one of the most popular CRM systems for ecommerce brands. With Zoho CRM you can build your own platform from the ground up. 

Top features

  • Omnichannel interactions: Zoho CRM lets you centralize information and consistently make impactful customer connections across multiple channels.
  • Sales enablement: Use content management tools including sales scripts, product sheets and battle cards, manage partner relationships in the portal and plan your time strategically in Zoho CRM’s calendar. 
  • Marketing automation: Segment your audience, run email campaigns and drive more leads into your sales funnel with automated marketing tools. 
  • In-depth analytics: Zoho CRM’s advanced analytics helps you monitor every step of the sales cycle and make data-driven decisions to boost your chances of success. 

Pricing

Zoho CRM has four packages ranging from $14 to $48 per month. Depending on the package, you can access a free trial ranging from 15 to 30 days.  

G2 rating

4 out of 5

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

5. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot homepage

With 150,000+ customers in more than 120 countries worldwide, HubSpot is one of the most widely used CRMs on the market. All of HubSpot’s five powerful hubs – Marketing, Sales, Service, CMS and Operations – are united on a single platform. Here we’ll outline the features of HubSpot’s Sales CRM. 

Top features

  • Email templates: Turn high-performing sales emails into shareable templates your whole team can use.
  • Email tracking: Monitor the progress of your outbound activity so you know exactly when a prospect opens your email.
  • Sales automation: Automate sequences to target prospects with personalized emails and follow-ups at every stage of the sales cycle. 
  • Call tracking: Prioritize your sales calls, record activity and automatically log them into your CRM.

Pricing

HubSpot’s three marketing hub packages range from $45 to $3600 per month and each includes a minimum number of contacts. The price of each package will increase if you need to add more contacts. 

G2 rating

4.4 out of 5

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

6. Salesforce Account Engagement

Salesforce Account Engagement homepage

Salesforce Account Engagement is a CRM software most suited to enterprise businesses looking to scale and automate their B2B marketing strategies. 

Top features

  • Customize journeys: Personalize email campaigns and landing pages with Salesforce Account Engagement’s no-code builder.
  • B2B Marketing Analytics: Showcase revenue impact and get predictive insights that connect your marketing efforts back to ROI.
  • Prospect engagement: Sales reps get full visibility into their prospects’ position in the purchase funnel. 
  • Integrate your tech stack: Segment your prospects based on previous engagement with other marketing efforts – including surveys, webinars and video apps. 

Pricing

Salesforce Account Engagement starts at $1250 per month and rises to $15,000 per month for their Premium package.

G2 rating

3.9 out of 5

Sendinblue is a leading digital marketing platform for small to medium-size businesses that ties CRM, Email, SMS, Facebook and Chat into an all-in-one platform.

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

7. Sendinblue

Sendinblue homepage

Top features

  • Pipeline management: Monitor your deals in a centralized platform and track progress at every stage of the sales cycle. 
  • Team collaboration: Link contacts, add notes, attach documents, and assign tasks to encourage collaboration and push your team to reach sales targets. 
  • Track customer interactions: Learn from past wins and losses to refine strategy and assess where you can make the biggest revenue impact.

Pricing

Sendinblue has three core packages ranging from $0 to $45 per month. They also offer a package for enterprise businesses which starts from $800 per month. 

G2 rating

4.5 out of 5 

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

8. Freshworks / Freshsales

Freshsales Suite homepage

Freshsales Suite is an all-in-one CRM that unites sales and marketing to convert more prospects into customers. 

Top features

  • Customization: Create your own customer lifecycle stages and sales activities, store information from custom fields and manage transactions in the local currency. 
  • Marketing automation: Use A/B testing, heatmaps, audience segmentation and much more to optimize your website and drive more conversions. 
  • Multichannel communication: Build strong customer relationships across multiple sales channels – including email, phone, live chat and WhatsApp.
  • 360 customer views: Get a comprehensive understanding of your customer across multiple touchpoints and bring internal teams together around a shared view of customer data. 

Pricing

Freshsales Suite offers four packages ranging from $0 to $62 per month. 

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

G2 rating

4.5 out of 5

9. Copper CRM

Copper CRM homepage

Thanks to its integration with Google Workspace, Copper is an easy-to-use CRM that is used by more than 30,000 companies in over 100 countries worldwide. 

Top features

  • Contact management: Copper organizes every customer interaction and relevant document into one place so you can access a comprehensive view of how the sale is progressing.
  • Automated follow-ups: Stay on top of your pipeline with personalized follow-up email templates. Assign time-based tasks and set reminders in response to triggers.
  • Web tracking: For any prospect who fills out a form on your website, Copper can show you where they came from and the pages they engaged with.  

Pricing

Copper’s three packages range from $23 to $99 per month and are available to trial for free before signing up.

G2 rating

4.5 out of 5

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.


10. Metrilo

Metrilo homepage

Metrilo is an ideal ecommerce CRM system for DTC brand owners, ecommerce marketers and agencies that manage the growth of DTC brands.

Top features

  • Customer profiles: Metrilo’s in-depth customer profiles give you access to purchase history and on-site behaviors, which helps you create more personalized interactions.
  • Audience segmentation: Use more than 30 filters and filter combinations to create audience segments for your marketing campaigns.
  • Email marketing: Use behavioral insights to perfectly time emails and relevant offers. Keep customers engaged and drive maximum impact from your email marketing campaigns.

Pricing

Metrilo has three packages ranging from $119 to $299 per month. 

G2 rating

4.7 out of 5 

Pass your customers’ behavioral data, email and SMS leads and survey answers straight to your CRM with Yieldify.

The benefits of ecommerce CRM

Using a CRM system helps you build more comprehensive customer profiles to shape your marketing and outreach efforts, as well as creating valuable opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. Building a stronger understanding of your clients and customers will then help you sell more of your product or service.

Most CRM systems are relatively affordable, and in the long run a good platform will help you save time and money. Rather than manually emailing, invoicing, reporting and forecasting, use a CRM to create automated workflows that trigger in response to your customers’ actions.

Choosing The Best eCommerce CRM Software

Before you choose a CRM, consider where your business is going to be in 12-18 months. Setting up a CRM is a time-intensive project, so make sure it aligns with your growth ambitions. 

For small and medium-sized businesses, Pipedrive, Capsule and Sendinblue are among the best CRM for ecommerce. They’re scalable, intuitive and don’t require huge investment upfront.

With a powerful marketing automation and sales platform, HubSpot is much more than a CRM – so it’s a great option for established ecommerce businesses. 

Ecommerce CRM Frequently Asked Questions

What is an ecommerce CRM?

Ecommerce CRM (ECRM for short) is a customer relationship management system designed specifically to help ecommerce businesses manage customer contact information, purchasing behavior, and other analytics data.

Which CRM is best for ecommerce? 

The best CRM for your ecommerce business depends on your size and potential for scalability. Pipedrive, Capsue and Sendinblue are excellent options for SMBs. Salesforce Account Engagement is made for enterprise businesses and its pricing structure reflects that. Read our comparison post outlining 10 of the best ecommerce CRM tools on the market for a more in-depth overview.

What are the 3 types of CRM?

There are three main types of CRM: Operational, Analytical, and Collaborative. 

Operational CRMs use sales, marketing, and service automation to streamline business growth. Analytical CRMs focus on gathering and analyzing customer data to improve their experience. Collaborative CRMs facilitate information sharing between various business units, such as the sales, marketing, technical and support teams.

How to Increase Conversion Rate with 14 Proven Methods

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How can I increase my website conversion rate? That’s a question on the mind of most digital marketers.

Maybe you’re driving good traffic from your digital marketing channels – whether that’s from paid ads, organic, search engine optimization, email or social – but you’re still not converting enough of those visitors into customers. 

With the average ecommerce conversion rate between 1.84%-3.71%, taking steps to improve your rate by as little as a half percentage point can be a massive win for an online business. 

In this blog I’ll outline 14 ways you can increase your conversion rate if you’re not happy with it. These are the steps hundreds of our clients have taken to successfully increase their own conversion rates.

The steps follow a chronological approach and fall into four key categories: 

  • Set your strategy
  • Personalize your customers’ journeys 
  • Test, test and test again 
  • Assess results, find new opportunities, revise strategy

If you’re looking to specifically convert more website visitors into email & SMS subscribers, then check out our post covering 12 of the best lead generation tools on the market.

14 Ways to Boost Conversions on your Website

  • Set your strategy (1-2): Clearly define your goals before you start making optimizations. Build the foundation of your conversion rate strategy by following these critical steps. 
  • Personalize your customers’ journeys (3-9): Once you’ve outlined your goals, it’s time to add personalization campaigns to your website. Follow these 7 tried-and-tested steps to convince potential customers to buy your product or service. 
  • Test, test and test again (10-12): You’ve added campaigns to your website – but how do you know they’re working? Analyze the performance of your campaigns with 3 common ecommerce testing methods. 

How to increase conversion rates at a glance

  1. Set your goals 
  2. Analyze your existing customer journeys 
  3. Use social proof
  4. Improve user navigation
  5. Embed USP banners
  6. Leverage customer testimonials 
  7. Deploy countdown timers
  8. Reduce browse abandonment 
  9. Tackle cart abandonment
  10. Incremental testing 
  11. A/B testing
  12. A/B/n testing 
  13. Optimize your campaigns
  14. Set best-performing campaigns to 100% of visitors

Set your strategy

1. Set your goals

Before you take any steps to increase your website’s conversion rate, ask yourself: what does success look like? 

You’re reading this blog, so obviously you want to lift conversions and increase revenue – but how do you want to achieve that? Here are five common ecommerce conversion goals:

  • To gather deeper customer insights
  • To streamline website navigation 
  • To maximize sales during promotional periods
  • To collect more leads 
  • To increase their return on ad spend (ROAS)

With Yieldify’s fully managed service, one of our industry experts will give you strategic advice to help you define your objectives.

2. Analyze your existing customer journeys

Customer journey analysis is a key step in improving your conversion rate. 

You need to dive deeper into your customer data and conversion metrics to learn where your customers are buying – and where they’re not. Once you know how customers are behaving on your site, you can form hypotheses about how to increase your conversion rate. 

It’s easier to understand  your customers with a complete view of their journeys – which Yieldify offers with Sunburst charts. Sunburst goes beyond Google Analytics by providing a multidirectional view of a customer journey, which helps you to: 

  • Understand how users navigate from one page to another
  • Identify looping behaviors
  • Identify high-bounce pages
  • Identify the top conversion paths
  • Unlock 80% more data vs Google Analytics

Made in Design analyzed their customer journeys using a Yieldify Sunburst chart and realized customers arriving from PPC ads were rarely converting. They created personalized campaigns specifically for PPC customers and lifted conversion rates by 18%.

Personalize your customers’ journeys

3. Use social proof

Social proof is a psychologically powerful marketing tool that speaks to our innate desire to belong to the tribe. When we see our friends, peers and idols wearing the latest on-trend brand or using the latest cutting-edge technology, we’re naturally drawn to purchase those items as well. 

For ecommerce marketers looking to increase conversion rates, social proof is a go-to tactic that can help you to:  

  • Validate customer interests
  • Drive urgency
  • Highlight stock scarcity 
Social proof on New Balance's site

With Yieldify, New Balance used social proof to lift website conversions among mobile users by 10%.

4. Improve user navigation

According to a report from KoMarketing, 37% of shoppers say poor navigation is enough of a problem to make them leave a website. If your online store isn’t easy to navigate, then your website conversion rate will inevitably suffer. 

To make your site more user-friendly and improve your conversion funnel, create and embed website experiences that help shoppers find the products they’re looking for. For example, you could:  

  • Provide basket reminders to returning shoppers
  • Guide customers to relevant category pages 
  • Show recently viewed products
  • Provide product recommendations based on customer preferences 
  • Direct customers to complementary products – increasing average order value as well as conversions
Traffic shaping on Clarins website

The more you can replicate the in-store experience online, the better. For example, Clarins used Yieldify to guide shoppers to a virtual skincare consultation – which resulted in a 11% increase in conversions. 

5. Embed USP banners

In a crowded market, you need to differentiate yourself from your competitors with a clear value proposition. Your USPs will give customers a reason to shop with you and not your competitors, so spotlight them in embedded site banners. 

USP banner on Butlin's' website

Not only will USP banners increase short-term conversions, they’ll also streamline the user journey and increase customer loyalty, which will boost conversion rates in the long run.

6. Leverage customer testimonials 

Customer testimonials are an excellent way to build credibility and convert interest into sales. According to Big Commerce, 92% of customers read reviews before buying and 72% say positive testimonials increase their trust in a business. 

Your prospective buyers are more likely to trust unbiased claims from real-life customers than your own marketing material – so use them to back up claims about your product or service. 

Customer testimonials on Spongelle's website

For example, Spongelle, an up-and-coming personal care brand, embedded a rotating GIF featuring customer testimonials into their site using Yieldify – resulting in a 14% uplift in customer conversions. 

7. Deploy countdown timers

For customers who regularly visit your site, it’s a case of when – not if – they’re going to buy. But how do you drive urgency and convince them to buy now, not later? 

Countdown timers are a great place to start – a survey by Whichtestwon showed that countdown timers increase revenue by 9% on average. 

With countdown timers you can: 

  • Highlight the cut-off point for next day delivery 
  • Highlight when your sale period ends 
  • Highlight how long your customer has to redeem a discount code

You can use countdown timers everywhere on your website from the homepage through to checkout. They’re also a great way to increase conversions from your email marketing. 

Countdown timer on Laithwaites' website

Laithwaites, a leading D2C wine company, used Yieldify to embed next-day-delivery countdown timers into their basket pages and lift conversions by 8%.

8. Reduce browse abandonment 

Browse abandonment is a major problem for ecommerce marketers. According to Zenreach data, 70% of first-time site visitors never return to your site once they leave. 

To combat this problem, run campaigns that respond to exit intent behaviors, including: 

  • After a set period of inactivity 
  • When a customer moves their cursor above the nav bar
  • When a customer changes tabs 
  • When a customer copies the product name and opens a new tab
Skinny Tan's recommended product categories

Stop shoppers leaving your site by re-engaging them with exit-intent campaigns. Skinny Tan increased conversions with Yieldify by 4% by guiding customers displaying exit intent to popular category pages.

9. Tackle cart abandonment

When a customer adds an item to their basket, you know they’re considering buying – but the sale is still far from guaranteed. Indeed, the average cart abandonment rate, just like browse abandonment, is 70% across all industries. 

The challenge for ecommerce marketers is to incentivize shoppers to check out now, not later – which you can achieve through these five tactics: 

  • Use urgency messaging 
  • Provide discount codes
  • Spotlight “buy now, pay later” options 
  • Embed trust badges – e.g. money back guarantees
  • Run “welcome back” campaigns
Basket reminder on BYLT's website

Test, test and test again

10. Incremental testing 

Incrementality testing is referred to as the “North Star” of marketing. You can use incremental tests to accurately analyze the conversion rate impact – whether it’s positive, neutral or negative – of any marketing initiative. 

In a typical incremental test, you’ll keep your site the same for 50% of your audience and change a single element for the other 50%. 

For example, California fashion brand BYLT Basics ran an incremental test with Yieldify to re-engage returning visitors. They showed 50% of their returning customers a promotional banner directing them to the sale page, and left the website unchanged for the other 50%. The result? A massive 34% increase in conversion rates. 

11. A/B testing

A/B testing is a must when you’re working to improve your conversion rate optimization methods. Successful A/B testing can bring a 50% increase in the average revenue per unique visitor for ecommerce sites – so no wonder 77% of organizations are running A/B tests to increase their conversion rates.

With A/B testing you can optimize various aspects of your website by dividing your traffic into two groups of 50%, showing them different experiences to uncover which variant drives a higher conversion rate. Common website elements ecommerce marketers A/B test include:

  • Design 
  • Placement
  • Call to action 
  • Timing 
  • Audience 
  • Product pages 
  • Blog posts
  • Landing pages 
  • Live chat features

While uptake is high, just 28% of marketers are satisfied with the conversion optimization results they achieve through A/B testing. To avoid feeling short-changed by your A/B tests, make sure you choose the right A/B testing tool for your business. If you’re short of in-house expertise, consider using a fully managed platform like Yieldify to get expert support from a team of CRO specialists.

12. A/B/n testing 

A/B/n testing is an extension of A/B testing which lets you test more variants at the same time. 

Because your audience is split into smaller testing groups, A/B/n tests take longer to reach confidence, so you should only run this type of test if you’re getting 100k+ monthly website visits.

The benefit of A/Bn testing is that the additional variants can help you glean deeper audience insights quicker than a standard A/B test. 

Lead generation forms on Heal's' website

Heal’s used Yieldify A/B/n testing and learnt that their customers are more incentivized by discounts than belonging to an exclusive club. They tested CTA messaging on four different email opt-in forms – two promotional-based, and two exclusivity-based – and drove 60% more leads with promotional messaging. 

Assess results, find new opportunities, revise strategy

13. Optimize your campaigns

Increasing your conversion rates with personalization is an ever-evolving ecommerce marketing strategy that adapts to changes in user behavior. So, once your tests reach completion, analyze performance and launch new campaigns to further optimize your website conversion rates.

For example, you may drive a 10% conversion rate uplift in an incremental test by embedding social proof to product pages. The social proof message is simple, “Customer favorite”, but “In high demand” or “x people viewed this today” could lift conversions even further. It’s only through testing that you’ll be able to find the most impactful social proof message.

On the other hand, another website change may have a negative impact – a poorly designed landing page, for example – but that doesn’t necessarily mean a different variation won’t lift conversion rates. 

At Yieldify, our account managers provide analytical support to help clients optimize both high and low-performing campaigns, ensuring they drive maximum impact from their next round of tests.

14. Set best-performing campaigns to 100% of visitors

Finally, once you’ve run your tests to completion, it’s time to set your conversion-lifting campaigns to reach 100% of your website visitors. This one’s a no-brainer – by doubling your audience, you’ll maximize the extra revenue you get from lifting your conversion rate. 

Ready to Increase your Conversion Rate? 

If you don’t have the expertise to lift your conversion rates in-house, consider using a fully managed personalization platform like Yieldify. Want to learn more about how you can optimize your website? Read our post outlining 17 top conversion rate optimization tips for ecommerce. 

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. An advisor from our sales team will be delighted to share more.

Conversion rate FAQs

How do you increase sales conversion rate?


One of the most effective ways to increase conversion rates is by optimizing your website. Many ecommerce brands from SMB to Enterprise level use CRO tools like Yieldify to implement an effective conversion rate optimization strategy. To increase your conversion rates, you’ll need to: 

– Set a clear strategy 
– Analyze customer data
– Create personalized campaigns  
– Continuously test website elements 
– Adapt to customer needs

What is a good conversion rate? 


The average conversion rate for an ecommerce brand sits between 1.84%-3.71%. For B2B businesses, the average conversion rate is slightly higher than ecommerce, hovering between 2.23% – 4.31%. A good conversion rate is relative to the industry you’re operating in, but anything on the higher end of the averages for ecommerce or B2B is considered to be strong. Speak to Yieldify’s sales team to find out how you can improve your website conversion rate.

How does digital marketing increase conversion rate? 


Marketers use a variety of digital marketing techniques – including personalization, A/B testing and heatmaps – to improve their website’s conversion rates. In ecommerce, many marketers struggle to lift conversion rates due to a lack of expertise. To overcome this challenge, conversion rate optimization tools like Yieldify, which includes a fully managed service team, help you to streamline customer journeys and lift conversions.

Why Integrated Marketing is the Future

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The environment faced by marketers competing in the digital marketing industry is complex, competitive and filled with moving parts.

Integrated marketing, which combines traditional marketing elements with digital marketing tactics, is the approach experts say is best suited to address today’s challenges.

In this blog, we’ll discuss why integrated marketing is the best solution to the hurdles faced by modern marketers. 

What is integrated marketing? 

Integrated marketing is a comprehensive approach that addresses each step of the customer journey through a unified strategy across channels.

It has been proven to drive better results than traditional marketing because it allows you to create a single message across all channels that resonates with your audience, rather than sending out messages that are only optimized for one channel or another.

When companies use integrated marketing, they can see higher conversion rates across their entire funnel by creating personalized and relevant experiences for every customer interaction. They can also reduce costs by limiting the number of touches needed to deliver a message and increasing efficiency through automation processes such as digital advertising and email campaigns.

Integrated marketing is a holistic approach to communications that combines all aspects of an organization’s brand touchpoints into one cohesive strategy. It combines traditional tactics such as out-of-home advertising, public relations, and social media, along with more modern approaches like search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. 

This is not to say that traditional marketing and physical advertising don’t have their value – bold, unique packaging and thoughtfully crafted labels and signage can have a profound impact and reinforce brand awareness. But they’re not the whole story; today’s marketers have to integrate these meaningful elements with digital ones as people’s physical and digital lives become more integrated. 

Source: AdRoll

The concept of integrated marketing originated in the early 1900s when industrial companies started using direct mail campaigns alongside their traditional sales efforts. As technology developed over time, so did integrated marketing practices; today, we see it used by every industry imaginable, from retail clothing stores to professional sports teams to financial services firms – it’s become ubiquitous because it works.

So why does integrated marketing work so well? Because it helps companies reach their target audiences through multiple channels at once, resulting in higher ROI than any other approach available today.

Why using integrated marketing matters

But why? What’s the point of integrating your marketing efforts if you’re a small business and don’t have the budget for it? And how do you even begin to start integrating your efforts if you’re already working with multiple vendors?

We’ll break down why integrated marketing matters, what data integration means for marketers, and provide some tips on making sure your data is all in one place.

Source: Oberlo

Why integrated marketing is the future

Integrated marketing is part of a larger trend toward managing a brand’s reputation rather than just selling products or services. It’s a shift in focus from one-off campaigns to an ongoing relationship with customers that builds long-term value.

This strategy is viewed as the future of marketing because it enables you to combine your efforts across channels and touchpoints in order to achieve a greater ROI than any other method. It’s also more effective because it allows you to reach your audience at the right time and place for them, which helps you create more personal and organic interactions between your brand and your customers — and that means better customer experiences that lead to higher loyalty rates over time.

There are a lot of buzzwords that float around in marketing, but integrated marketing is more than that – it’s a way of doing business. By combining all the different aspects of marketing – from sales and advertising to social media and digital – you can create an experience for your customer that will make them feel valued and appreciated.

Integrated marketing is important because it helps you get closer to your customers. In many ways, this makes you more like your customer: when you understand their needs better than anyone else does, you can serve them better and give them what they want. 

If you’re going to optimize your marketing strategy through integration, you must use all available channels to reach your target audience. You’ll use social media, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and more – all at once.

This is important because it’s not an either/or situation: either you use a channel, or you don’t. Instead, the most effective way to reach your customers is by using multiple channels at once, and it will lead to better results. 

Source: Hubspot

Integrated marketing means having a holistic view of what your customers want and how they engage with different types of content. You can’t just focus on one channel. Instead, you have to consider how each piece of content interacts with others so that it provides a cohesive experience throughout the customer journey. 

What data integration means for marketing

Data integration is the process by which different data types are combined into one cohesive whole. It’s similar to the concept of data aggregation – but while aggregation is usually focused on a single type of data (for example, web analytics), integration can combine any type of data that are relevant to your business: sales and customer service records, product information and inventory levels, emails and social media posts, etc. 

According to Gartner, “Data integration tools enable organizations to access, integrate, transform, process and move data spanning various endpoints and across any infrastructure to support their data integration use cases. The market for data integration tools includes vendors that offer a stand-alone software product (or products) to enable the construction and implementation of data access and data delivery infrastructure for a variety of data integration use cases.” 

Many tools are available to businesses to incorporate data integration, so you’ll need to do your research to find one that best suits your needs. Many of the existing data integration tools come from well-established names like Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon Web Services. The tool you choose will depend on your goals, which means you will be looking at options like:

  • Data pipelines: tools that gather all the data you want in one place 
  • Data management platforms: tools that gather data and store and organize it for analysis 
  • Data visualization tools: entaging tools that allow you to see trends and quantify what’s happening with your business
  • Data transformation tools: tools that help you filter and edit data for further analysis 

Data integration means that all aspects of your business are working together to improve your customer’s experience with your brand. Importantly, it also means that everyone on your team has access to the same information at any given time, so they can work together seamlessly and efficiently towards their goals of delivering value to customers through every aspect of their interaction with your company or brand.

However, data integration is more than just merging different sources of information together into one place; it’s also about making sure those sources are accurate and up-to-date so you can make more informed decisions about how you want your marketing team to behave on social media channels like Facebook or Twitter.

Why is data integration so important for marketers?

Data integration is a vital part of an integrated marketing strategy because it allows you to combine your data into a centralized hub. From this hub, you can analyze your data, draw conclusions and make decisions. 

If you’re looking for ways to improve your marketing strategy or increase sales opportunities within your company, then there’s no better place to start than by integrating all those disparate sources of information into one place.

For example, let’s say you have a customer database with information about your customers’ interests, previous purchases, and demographics. You could use this data in conjunction with data from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to create different sets of customer profiles. You could then create targeted ads and content for each customer type so that your marketing messaging aligns with each customer’s specific interests. 

The importance of data integration in an integrated marketing strategy cannot be overstated: without it, companies would be unable to take full advantage of their existing data — and therefore unable to deliver the most relevant content and offers across all channels.

Data integration is the way to go – so where do you start?

The process of data integration begins when you combine data from multiple sources into a single source. It can be used for analyzing, reporting, and sharing information between different systems and applications. Data integration is also known as ETL (extract, transform, load) or ELT (extract, load, transform).

You need to integrate your data to ensure you achieve your marketing goals. If you don’t integrate your data and run the same campaigns to all of your customers, don’t be surprised when you find yourself battling low engagement. Instead of funneling all of your customers to the same place, tailor each experience according to individual purchase behaviors and product preferences.  

You need to integrate data to analyze and report on your campaign performance. You might want to look at how many clicks each campaign received and what kind of engagement they generated, or maybe you just want an overview of how many people have viewed each piece of content within the last month. This would tell you whether people are engaging with your content at all.

Data integration: Is it complicated?

The answer depends on how far you want to go. If you’re just looking to make sure your website is up-to-date and relevant, then it’s pretty simple. But if you want to use data for more than that, things can get pretty tricky.

There are so many different types of data, from customer information to customer behavior, that all need to be integrated in order for a marketer to see the big picture. You can’t just integrate one type of data or another type of customer information; you have to integrate them all.

And that’s where things get complicated – but also really exciting. The possibilities are endless when it comes down to what kind of information can be used by marketers today.

The outlook for integrated marketing

There’s no question that integrated marketing is the way of the future. The world we live in is increasingly becoming an integration of our online and real lives, so marketers need to be sensitive to this reality and understand how to integrate their own strategies to engage effectively with their audience.

Data integration helps marketers map data, find patterns, and predict customer behavior. Marketers need to integrate all types of information for a deep understanding of their customers to drive more sales.

While it may seem complicated, there are more and more tools available for businesses to take advantage of this powerful technology.

Integrated marketing FAQs

Why is integrated marketing so important to marketers? 

By adopting an integrated strategy, marketers can streamline their efforts and create consistent messaging across multiple channels. They can then use data integration to spend more time and energy on creating personalized messaging for their customers, rather than trying to manage disjointed pathways to reach a wide range of customers with differing needs and expectations.  

What is the main goal of integrated marketing? 

The main goal of integrated marketing is to create a unified experience for customers across all channels. This approach enhances brand awareness and builds trust and recognition among your customers. When your customers experience a consistent message across platforms, you can expect greater brand loyalty and more repeat business. 

What is the impact of integrated marketing? 

By combining traditional and digital marketing strategies with data integration, marketers can reach a bigger audience with personalized and more impactful multichannel experiences. 

12 Best CRO Tools To Boost Conversions in 2023

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If you’re in the market for a conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool, I imagine you’re looking to turn more of your existing traffic into sales, improve your return on ad spend (ROAS), increase customer acquisition, reduce your testing time, or upgrade your current provider. Perhaps it’s all of them. If you tick any of those boxes, you’ve come to the right place. 

Broadly speaking, CRO tools fit into four main categories. 

  • All-in-one personalization tools 
  • User behavior analytic tools 
  • A/B and multivariate testing tools
  • Single-feature tools 

All of the 12 CRO tools below will help you improve your conversion rates. But if you’re specifically looking for a tool to convert more of your visitors into email and SMS leads, then check out our post on the 12 best lead generation tools. 

What To Look For In A CRO Tool

A typical CRO tool will come with features that let you do at least one of the following: 

  • Gather data-driven analytics 
  • Run A/B tests
  • Target audience segments 
  • Gather customer feedback
  • Display social proof messaging

Which features you need will depend on your goals and bandwidth. For example, if you only want to gather more first-hand feedback from customers, Qualaroo is a great option. 

If you want to do more than that – such as understand your visitors’ browsing behavior, run tests and launch on-site campaigns – an all-in-one personalization tool like Yieldify might be a better fit.

Disclaimer: Yieldify is our product. We’ve done our best to present the information fairly because we want to help you make an educated decision but we’re especially proud of what we offer. We’ve seen it transform conversion rates, lead generation and revenue for so many brands – large and small – all over the world. You may have seen we use the Yieldify platform and services on our own website too. Learn more here and schedule a call with an advisor. 

12 Best CRO Tools

  • Single-feature tools: Add a specific conversion rate optimization software function – including chatbots and customer feedback surveys – straight to your site 
  1. Yieldify
  2. AB Tasty
  3. Dynamic Yield
  4. Hotjar
  5. Crazy Egg
  6. FullStory
  7. VWO
  8. Google Optimize
  9. Intellimize
  10. Qualaroo
  11. Chatbot
  12. Nudgify

All-in-one personalization tools

1. Yieldify

Screenshot of Yieldify's homepage

Yieldify is a fully managed personalization platform that helps ecommerce businesses increase conversion rates, average order values and lead capture with personalized customer experiences. If you don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to manage a CRO tool yourself, Yieldify is probably the platform that will suit you best. 

Top features

Market-leading managed service

Yieldify’s service team will handle your CRO strategy for you. You’ll get expert support from a dedicated account manager as well as a team of graphic designers, technical engineers and quality assurance specialists. Together they’ll help you identify opportunities, set up and monitor campaigns, and optimize performance.

Rated 9.7/10 for quality of support by customers on G2, you won’t find Yieldify’s market-leading service with any other CRO provider.

Audience segmentation 

Yieldify’s audience segmentation functionality lets you reach different customer groups by setting custom combinations of targeting and triggering rules. That way you can optimize your conversion rates by delivering personalized campaigns to the right customers, at the right time, with the most suitable messaging. 

Their targeting and triggering rules are comprehensive – including segmenting by session number, basket value, time on page, page type, pages visited, time on site and in response to exit intent behavior and inactivity.

Personalized campaigns

With Yieldify’s technology you can personalize your customers’ journeys from website entry through to purchase. By tailoring experiences to your customers’ specific needs using overlay, embedded and dynamic campaigns, you’ll drive more engagement, build brand affinity and convert interest into more sales. 

Some of the personalized campaigns you can run with Yieldify include: 

  • Social proof messaging
  • USP banners
  • Progress bars
  • Website navigation 
  • Browse abandonment 

User behavior insights 

With Yieldify you can uncover actionable insights on your audience behavior. Their Sunburst charts give you a practical, granular and ‘multidirectional’ view of your customer journeys, explaining how your users navigate your site, where they exit and why. That way, you can see what’s holding back your conversion rate and take the right steps to improve it.

Want to track micro conversions as well as macro conversions? Track, measure and report absolutely any custom goal on your site with Yieldify’s Purchase Indicators.

A/B & A/B/n testing

Yieldify’s A/B and A/B/n testing engine helps you quickly pinpoint which website messaging, design or placement is proven to drive the most conversions. Depending on your traffic volumes, Yieldify lets you test up to 5 variants at the same time and get insights in as little as 14 days. 

Example of A/B/n test

Integrations

Yieldify integrates with all major ESPs, CRMs and ecommerce platforms – including Klaviyo, Hubspot & Shopify – to ensure you’re getting maximum value from your increased conversions. Yieldify’s technical account managers will also help you set up your integrations. Check out Yieldify’s partners and integrations here.

Pros of Yieldify

  • Count on expert service: Yieldify’s service team is second-to-none in the CRO and personalization industry. Read their G2 reviews to see what their clients say
  • Launch your first tests in 14 days: With Yieldify’s easy-to-integrate tag and no-code builds, you can get your first tests live in under 14 days, and launch new ones in as little as 48 hours after that – no developers required
  • Incremental reporting: Yieldify only attributes value to the extra or ‘incremental’ impact you see from your CRO experiences, not the total revenue – giving you maximum transparency about how your campaigns are performing

Cons of Yieldify

  • No free trial: You can only use the Yieldify platform with a paid package

“Yieldify’s platform and analytics take our ecommerce sales to the next level by making it easy to optimize the customer journey – increasing lead generation, conversion rates, and overall new customer revenue.”

Casey Sneath

Director of Ecommerce

“I’ve worked with Yieldify for three years and believe they have the best-in-class personalization and conversion rate optimization software. With Yieldify, we increase average order values, promo engagements, conversions rates and improve our customer experience.”

Prachi Chamria

Digital & Ecommerce Manager

Book a demo with Yieldify

If you’d like a preview of how you can increase conversions on your website with Yieldify’s fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.

2. AB Tasty

Screenshot of AB Tasty homepage

AB Tasty is a customer experience optimization platform that helps brands develop their CRO strategy across all of their digital channels. As well as improving CVR, AB Tasty campaigns are designed to manage other ecommerce goals, such as AOV, CTR and revenue impact. 

Top features

A/B and multivariate testing: Use audience segmentation rules, KPIs, traffic allocation and other testing features to optimize conversion rates. 

ROI Dashboard: AB Tasty allows you to track the impact of your tests and attribute gains in revenue to your experiments.

Personalization: Resonate with your audience by crafting granular, personalized experiences that drive brand loyalty and revenue.

Pros of AB Tasty

  • User-friendly: A good option for non-technical ecommerce teams without coding expertise
  • Regular updates: AB Tasty keep their platform fresh by responding to user feedback
  • Customer success: Localized, personalized support and guidance for every client  

Cons of AB Tasty

  • Reporting: AB Tasty’s reporting suite is not the most intuitive or quickest to update
  • Data: Clients have experienced issues when exporting data from the platform

Pricing

Speak to AB Tasty’s sales team for information on pricing.

3. Dynamic Yield

Screenshot of Dynamic Yield homepage

Dynamic Yield is an all-in-one, self-service personalization platform and CRO tool that helps brands to create end-to-end customer experiences across the web, email, mobile apps and advertising. 

Top features

Product recommendations: Dynamic Yield uses an advanced deep learning recommendation system – AdaptML™ – to predict the next best series of products to each shopper.

A/B test anywhere: Run experiments across all of your digital channels to optimize content, recommendations, overlays and more. 

Omnichannel personalization: Personalize every interaction to deliver an optimal customer experience at scale across web, mobile, email, and ads.

Pros of Dynamic Yield 

  • Customer support: Though Dynamic Yield is a self-serve CRO tool, their support team introduces clients to the platform during onboarding and provides ongoing support and resources to help clients use the platform effectively
  • Built for scale: Dynamic Yield is a great CRO solution for enterprise-size businesses

Cons of Dynamic Yield

  • Setting up tests: It’s difficult to set up A/B tests if you do not have coding experience 

Pricing

Speak to Dynamic Yield’s sales team for information on pricing. 

User behavior analytics conversion rate optimization tools 

4. Hotjar

Screenshot of Hotjar homepage

Hotjar is a product experience insight tool that gathers data on user behavior and helps companies understand how and why users interact with their product.

Top features

Heatmaps: Visualize user behavior with easily digestible heatmaps.

User recordings: Watch playbacks of users interacting with your website or product to understand where you need to make improvements.

Surveys: Capture in-the-moment feedback at any point in your customers’ journeys.

Pros of Hotjar

  • Perfect for product managers: A great tool for observing and responding to patterns of user behavior
  • Granular perspective: Acquire deep and unique customer insights that you can’t get from raw numbers alone

Cons of Hotjar

  • No mobile: Hotjar isn’t compatible with mobile applications and is used primarily for websites and web apps

Pricing

Hotjar’s packages range from $0-$79 per month. You’ll need to speak to Hotjar’s sales team to get a quote for their Scale package. 

5. Crazy Egg

Screenshot of Crazy Egg homepage

Crazy Egg is a user optimization tool offering a variety of features to help ecommerce businesses understand how people interact with their websites.

Top features 

A/B testing: Run experiments to analyze the effectiveness of different headlines, copy and product descriptions on your website, web app and mobile experiences. 

Snapshots: Crazy Egg’s heat maps are known as Snapshots, which you can analyze in five different reports to see where users are clicking, who is clicking, how much they’re clicking, what elements they’re clicking and how far they’re scrolling.

User recordings: Watch recordings of your visitors using your website to understand their behavior.

Pros of Crazy Egg

  • Support: Customers have reported that Crazy Egg’s support team are insightful and go the extra mile to answer concerns and queries
  • User-friendly: Small learning curve, intuitive and visually appealing platform 

Cons of Crazy Egg

  • No free trial: Crazy Egg don’t have a free version available so you can’t test out their product before buying

Pricing

Crazy Egg packages cost between $29 and $249 per month. Speak to Crazy Egg’s sales team for information about their Enterprise package. 

6. FullStory

Screenshot of FullStory homepage

FullStory is a digital experience intelligence tool built for product teams to acquire in-depth insights on user behavior.

Top features

Real-time updates: Data is automatically indexed and presented in heat maps, click maps and scroll maps to provide a visual representation of how users interact with websites. 

Framework for UI and UX teams: FullStory helps brands identify bugs, optimize low-performing pages and understand what’s working well.

Full-session recordings: Acquire deeper insights into how customers navigate your site.  

Pros of FullyStory

  • Try before you buy: FullStory offer a 14-day free trial 

Cons of FullStory

  • Learning curve: It can be challenging for non-technical users to extract insights

Pricing

Speak to FullStory’s sales team for more information on pricing. 

A/B and multivariate testing tools 

7. VWO Testing

Screenshot of VWO Testing homepage

VWO Testing is a web testing platform that optimizes customer experiences and increases conversion rates through a wide variety of AI-powered tests. 

Top features 

AI-powered, Bayesian-based copy generator: VWO intuitively suggests changes to CTAs, product descriptions and headlines and tests them against one another to find the highest converting variant. 

Advanced testing: “Code-only” mode for developers wanting to run more complex tests on site. 

Point-and-click visual editor: Edit any element – such as text, images, shapes or backgrounds – on your webpage.

Pros of VWO Testing

  • Adaptable platform & pricing: The tool is available as a self-service or serviced package depending on your business needs and budget
  • Versatile: VWO Testing’s platform has been intelligently designed for both non-technical users and developers

Cons of VWO Testing

  • Buggy editor: VWO customers have experienced issues with the visual editor’s functionality

Pricing

Speak to VWO’s sales team for more information on pricing. 

8. Google Optimize 

Screenshot of Google Optimize homepage

Google Optimize is an entry-level website testing tool that runs A/B tests, multivariate tests and redirect tests. 

Top features

Audience segmentation: Run tests for specific groups of users. 

Integrations: Integrate easily with Google Analytics and Google AdWords.

Pros of Google Optimize

  • Accessibility: Completely free to use, making it a great option for smaller, low-budget teams who are new to conversion optimization tools

Cons of Google Optimize

  • Not scalable: Google Optimize is a good A/B testing tool for beginners but is limited compared to other CRO tools on the market

Pricing

Google Optimize is free to use. 

9. Intellimize

Screenshot of Intellimize homepage

Intellimize is an AI-powered CRO tool designed for marketers who want to test their creative ideas and uncover the most effective messaging, content and experiences. 

Top features 

Machine learning: Intellimize runs combinations of experiences and learns what converts, drawing on data including location, device type, time of day, day of the week, and traffic source. 

Multi-purpose: The Intellimize platform is suitable for B2B SaaS, B2C and ecommerce.

Pros of Intellimize

  • Seamless testing: You don’t need technical expertise to launch A/B tests
  • Support: Intellimize has a highly rated support team in place to launch more complex tests 

Cons of Intellimize

  • Data analysis: Intellimize does not offer any predictive analytics 

Pricing

Speak to Intellimize’s sales team for more information about pricing. 

Single-feature conversion rate optimization tools 

10. Qualaroo

Screenshot of Qualaroo homepage

Qualaroo is a user feedback and survey tool that helps companies gather valuable insights and dig deeper into customer motivations. 

Top features 

Nudges: Qualaroo uses surveys (Nudges) to collect in-depth user insights across various touchpoints. 

AI Sentiment analysis: Automatically mine through data to acquire insights into customer feedback.

Survey templates: Ask your customers questions with curated templates based on years of feedback experience.

Pros of Qualaroo 

  • User-friendly: Qualaroo’s platform is incredibly simple to use 
  • Quick-to-launch: With a collection of inbuilt professional templates, customers can get set up and launch their first surveys within minutes

Cons of Qualaroo

  • Integrations: Qualaroo don’t offer any integrations with their Essentials package

Pricing

Qualaroo’s Essentials package is $80 per month rising to $160 for their Premium package. You’ll need to speak to Qualaroo’s sales team for more information about their Enterprise package.

11. ChatBot

Screenshot of ChatBot homepage

ChatBot is a CRO tool that helps companies to build and launch conversational chatbots without coding. 

Top features 

Capacity: speak to an unlimited number of customers in real-time, providing 24/7 support and instant answers to common questions.

Integrations: Thanks to its one-click integration, ChatBot is available on various platforms including Facebook Messenger, Slack, LiveChat and WordPress. 

AI-powered algorithms: ChatBot is constantly gathering data to improve customer responses.

Pros of ChatBot 

  • Efficiency: Eliminates the need to hire multiple support agents

Cons of ChatBot

  • Price: ChatBot is slightly more expensive than similar conversion optimization tools on the market

Pricing

ChatBot packages cost between $52 and $424 per month. Speak to ChatBot’s sales team for more information about their Enterprise package.

12. Nudgify

Screenshot of Nudgify homepage

Designed to turn browsers into buyers, Nudgify is a social proof tool capable of turning any data into social proof messaging in real time. 

Top features 

Templates: Use Nudgify’s pre-configured library of templates for ecommerce, SaaS, Travel and more.

Analytics dashboard: Track how your social proof messaging impacts conversion rates.

Language: Nudgify supports 32 different languages.

Pros of Nudgify  

  • Scope: Nudgify can send social proof notifications based on stock scarcity, product popularity, visitor count, customer reviews, delivery incentives and more
  • Integrations: Nudgify integrates with all leading eCommerce platforms and site builders

Cons of Nudgify

  • Limited: The technology is niche and gives you just a single strategy to improve your conversion rate

Pricing

Nudgify’s Lite version costs just $0.99 per month, rising to $89 per month for their Agency package.

Picking the right conversion rate optimization software

I hope this blog helps you find a CRO tool that brings you closer to your customers, uncovers your website’s strengths and weaknesses and, most importantly, increases conversions and ROI. 

Whether you’re just launching your ecommerce site, scaling quickly or are looking to optimize a well established brand, there’s a conversion rate optimization software in this blog to help you achieve your objectives and correct any mistakes you may have been making. Choosing the right one will depend on your in-house expertise, business goals and budget. But if you’ve already decided you need a fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform to lift conversion rates, Yieldify ticks all the boxes. 

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your website’s CRO strategy with Yieldify, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.

CRO Tools FAQs

What Is A CRO Tool?

The “CRO” in CRO tool is short for “conversion rate optimization”. Marketers, CRO specialists and product managers use CRO tools to deploy tactics that improve conversion rates on their websites. If you’re an ecommerce marketer, a good CRO tool will help you gather audience insights, test hypotheses and increase conversions at each stage of the customer journey.

What are CRO techniques? 

CRO techniques are used by digital marketers and product managers to increase website conversion rates. There is no one-size-fits all CRO technique, but every technique will help you optimize your website to streamline the customer experience and drive more conversions. Here are some of the most commonly used techniques: 

Here are some of the most commonly used techniques: 
– User behavior analytics 
– A/B and multivariate testing 
 – Social proof messaging
– Product recommendations 
 – Live chat bots
– Customer surveys

How can I improve my website CRO?

You can improve your website’s conversion rates by analyzing user data and testing hypotheses. However, implementing a CRO strategy in-house requires lots of bandwidth and coding expertise that many businesses don’t have. For that reason, using a website personalization tool like Yieldify is typically the most practical and cost-effective way of increasing website conversion rates.

If you’d like a preview of how you can increase conversions on your website with Yieldify’s fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more about increasing your conversion rates.