Joyce Qian

Black Friday Report for Ecommerce 2018 [Infographic]

Published: Dec 5, 2018 | Updated: Oct 1, 2021 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

As we flip over the most recent Black Friday Cyber Monday chapter of the retail year, it’s time to dive into data to call out a few key eCommerce trends from this year’s biggest shopping event. This is our second Black Friday Report since 2017 where we analyzed millions of transactional records across ContactPigeon’s eCommerce 250+ clients across North America and Europe. Consumer enthusiasm drove online sales to new heights this Black Friday 2018 weekend at $18B in turnovers just in the United States. This trend reflects globally as well, as more retailers across Europe and Asia adopt the occasion

The Ultimate eCommerce Marketing Automation Guide for 2023

Published: Jun 26, 2018 | Updated: Feb 3, 2023 by Joyce Qian in Marketing Automation

A primary attraction of running an eCommerce business is the ability to control many aspects of your business operations from just about anywhere via the internet. But merely existing as an online business isn’t enough anymore. To thrive, you need to continuously adopt best practices to refine your business model. One of the most profitable arrows in your eCommerce quiver is the automation of your marketing processes. This article attempts to gather the best practices across the globe into this step by step eCommerce marketing automation guide for your reading convenience. Marketing Automation: Why Should I Bother? The e-Commerce boom is revolutionizing

May 4th Marketing Ideas to Rocket eCommerce Conversions

Published: May 3, 2018 | Updated: May 4, 2023 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

For the millions of Star War fans across the world, May 4th is a special day. The fanbase has elected this day as Star Wars Day for the pun on the franchise’s now legendary catchphrase “May the Fourth be with you”. As our tribute to this day, we channeled some Jedi wisdom to come up with four May 4th marketing ideas to give your eCommerce results a boost. May 4th Marketing Ideas for Your eCommerce Store All of the ideas can be implemented any time, but you can opt to maximize the effect by implementing it with a touch of Star

5 Advanced Mother’s Day Marketing Ideas for eCommerce

Published: Apr 24, 2018 | Updated: May 8, 2023 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

On Mother’s Day, we celebrate the Moms in our lives. For eCommerce marketers, this is a holiday not to be missed. Mother’s Day is the 3rd biggest retail holiday, after Black Friday / Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Spending on Mother’s Day has risen, even in 2020, with total revenue reaching almost $27B in the United States alone. Additionally, despite the social distancing, the lockdowns, and the overall effects of COVID-19, consumers are expected to spend $8 more than in 2020. With this enormous market of anticipated spending, how to stand out against the competition and appeal to your target audiences

3 Proven Ways to Reduce Category Browse Abandonment

Published: Feb 6, 2018 | Updated: Aug 30, 2019 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

For the majority of online retailers, keeping shoppers on their site and avoiding category browse abandonment is a significant challenge. Various types of abandonment can cost U.S. e-commerce merchants billions of dollars in sales every year. Estimates range from 70% cart abandonment to almost 80 percent of all possible orders are lost from a form of visitor abandonment. This post will cover the various types of abandonment and introduce 3 ways to tackle the most common one – Category Browse Abandonment. Types of Visitor Abandonments Website bounce A bounce refers to a single page session on your site. It takes

The eCommerce Checkout Best Practices Infographic

Published: Dec 21, 2017 | Updated: Aug 30, 2019 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

It is particularly frustrating to see online visitors go thru the entire shopping journey – finding their desired product, add to cart, and hit checkout – only to drop out at the very last step at checkout. This is a common challenge eCommerce marketers and owners face. Which also explains why our earlier article on eCommerce Checkout Best Practices is one of the most read pieces. So, we created an eCommerce checkout best practices infographic with all the best practices of the checkout process that may help you reduce your checkout abandonment rate, thereby boosting your store’s conversions What causes eCommerce

Black Friday Email Marketing Report 2017 [Infographic]

Black Friday 2017 Email Marketing Report

Published: Nov 28, 2017 | Updated: Oct 1, 2021 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

2018 update: Our new Black Friday report 2018 is out! Read it here! Each year, online retailers make new records during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping period. In 2016, consumers spent a total of $12B online over the Black Friday weekend alone. Black Friday 2017 was no exception, as a growing number of consumers opt for the comfort of their home (office) over the crowded streets and malls when it comes to grabbing the best Black Friday deals. At ContactPigeon, we analyzed millions of transactional records for a sneak peek into how Black Friday 2017 was shaped up. We have wrapped

Study: How Do Millennial Shoppers Behave on Black Friday & Cyber Monday?

How Millennial Shoppers Behave on Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Published: Nov 22, 2017 | Updated: Oct 9, 2019 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

This year, 20% of Millennial shoppers won’t make a single holiday purchase in a brick-and-mortar store. Instead, they will likely continue escalating an unstoppable national trend toward e-buying by holiday shoppers. Dollars spent online already outpace those spent in retail stores during this Christmas shopping season. According to the National Retail Federation, 154.4 million shoppers bought products on the Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend in 2016. Of those, 108.5 million shopped online while 99.1 million shopped in stores. Nearly half of Black Friday and Cyber Monday are Millennial Shoppers Millennial shoppers love Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 2016 Black Friday sales buried 2015 numbers

[Poll Results] What’s Your Biggest eCommerce Challenge?

Sept '17 Polls Are In - The Top eCommerce Challenge

Published: Nov 9, 2017 | Updated: Aug 30, 2019 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

In our September newsletter, we posed the following question to 2000+ fellow digital marketers and eCommerce readers: As eCommerce marketer, what’s your biggest eCommerce challenge to growing your business? To limit the range of possible options, we proposed 3 general areas. Grow visitor traffic Convert visitors into customers Get more returning customers Well, the results are in! ? While the responses are insightful, we are not entirely surprised by the results. Nearly half of the respondents (45% to be exact) considers sales conversion optimization as a major eCommerce challenge. This corresponds to recent studies that place visitor abandonment to ~92% of

eCommerce Retention Strategies for Happy Customers

Published: Nov 2, 2017 | Updated: May 11, 2023 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

Retention is a key part of selling and growing an e-commerce business. Keeping existing customers on for repeat business is often a more cost-effective and easier way to sustain your company than putting the time and money into gaining a new customer. In fact, the most commonly quoted “average” is 7 times more to sell to a new customer than to an existing one. Not only that, but repeat customers typically spend up to 67% more. Overall, managing to hang onto a customer improves the lifetime value of that customer. But it is a major challenge for marketers to retain

Get Better Results with Repurchase Reminders (aka Replenishment emails)

Published: Aug 30, 2017 | Updated: May 16, 2023 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

Winning a customer is hard, winning a loyal customer is even harder. Despite the difficulty, it’s worth the effort because the ability to effectively re-engage existing customers is vital for the longevity of an eCommerce business. After all, having a larger percentage of returning customers significantly increases the average customer lifetime value of your business. Consequently, when it comes to investing in marketing automation, it’s efficient to start with scenarios that will win back customers. Today, we cover a top scenario for re-engagement email strategy – Repurchase Reminders (or Replenishment Emails!) Remind and conquer The most popular forms of Repurchase Reminders are automated

The Starter Guide to Ecommerce Marketing Campaign Automation: Getting Repeat Customers

Getting repeat customers with marketing campaign automation.

Published: Aug 24, 2017 | Updated: Aug 29, 2019 by Joyce Qian in Marketing Automation

2019 Update: We released a detailed eCommerce Marketing Automation guide. You can read it here. In recent articles, we have established why marketing campaign automation is an important part of eCommerce for nurturing leads and increasing conversions. Our post today will explore the final part of the customer journey – engaging your customers after first purchase. We will address how marketing automation can play a key role in extending your customer’s lifetime value (CLV). What is a customer worth? For any eCommerce to be truly successful, it’s key to really understand the unit economics related to your customer acquisition, retention and

The Starter Guide to Ecommerce Marketing Campaign Automation: Lead Nurturing

Published: Aug 17, 2017 | Updated: Feb 4, 2021 by Joyce Qian in Marketing Automation

2019 Update: We released a detailed eCommerce Marketing Automation guide. You can read it here. Unless you sell magical elements or proclaim to be a wiz in online marketing, chances are, a good majority of your online visitors don’t convert immediately. Acquiring leads and turning them into customers requires a gradual process. This process, also known as lead nurturing, can not only bring customers but also increase the overall customer lifetime value. In eCommerce, you can tap into the power of marketing campaign automation for leads nurturing to win conversions in the long run. Today, we will cover the key Marketing Automation scenarios

The Starter Guide to Ecommerce Marketing Campaign Automation: It’s All About Conversions

Marketing Campaign Automation - Conversions!

Published: Aug 8, 2017 | Updated: Aug 29, 2019 by Joyce Qian in Marketing Automation

2019 Update: We released a detailed eCommerce Marketing Automation guide. You can read it here. In a recent article, we discussed the rising role of marketing campaign automation in e-commerce marketing due to the tremendous benefits it has on e-commerce sales. In this post, along with the two subsequent articles as part of our Marketing Automation trilogy, we dive deeper to explore the essential e-commerce automation workflows that nurture leads, optimize conversions and increase returning customers. We start by addressing the number ONE concern of all e-Commerce marketers – converting web visits to sales. So, let’s dive right in. The eCommerce conversion challenge Let’s

Use Real-time Web Analytics to Boost Real-time Marketing

Actionable insights with real-time web analytics

Published: Jul 28, 2017 | Updated: Aug 30, 2019 by Joyce Qian in Ecommerce

In the first part of this series on live web analytics articles, we wrote about the importance of focussing on customer experience, highlighting that a data driven approach employing real-time web analytics is essential. We went on to outline the major benefits afforded by monitoring real-time traffic along with real-time retargeting and promotions. In this article, we extend the analysis to examine in greater detail at how live web analytics tools such as ContactPigeon’s analytics underpin this. Real-time Marketing There is nothing new about real-time marketing. It first gained the attention of marketing professionals back in the 1990s when the