6 Highly Effective Ways to Increase Conversion Rates With Behavioral Targeting Written by Peter Messmer, Director of Marketing at AddShoppers
First off, what exactly is Behavioral Targeting? Behavioral Targeting is an onsite marketing app that non-invasively tracks a visitors actions while they shop on your site and displays targeted messages through a modal or banner at key trigger points, such as when they come to your site for the first time, abandon your site, or pretty much whenever else you can dream up. It s like those popup modals you see around the web but much smarter (Side note: there s a good chance you received this guide from a Behavioral Targeting offer on our website) Without further ado, here are 6 highly effective ways you can use Behavioral Targeting to increase conversion rates on your site: 1. Offer a discount or free item/bonus when someone abandons their cart to drive immediate sales Behavioral Targeting can determine when a visitor is exiting a webpage (for example, clicking on the X button on the tab), and when that happens, it can trigger a modal popup with a special offer in order to re-engage the visitor instead of leaving. In this example, we would be focusing this functionality on your cart and checkout pages. Because our goal is driving immediate sales, we ll be offering a discount for their purchase. This often is all it takes to turn someone from abandoning their cart to completing their purchase. One of the biggest reasons that people abandon is to search for a coupon, so this offer will: Fill the need of a coupon for your customers Keep them on your site Reduce coupon searching and coupon affiliate commissions Here are some specific offers you can use for this campaign: Checkout now and get $5 off your purchase Wait Use this code: XYZ for free shipping with your order Complete your order now and get a free $15 gift card You can get creative with the rewards you re offering here, especially for if you want to avoid discounting. We always encourage thinking out of the box Bonus: To boost conversions here even higher, you can add a timer to add urgency. For example, Complete your order in the next 30 minutes and get $5 off your order. 2
a. Example of a Behavioral Targeting popup that shows on abandon: b. Here s what the Behavioral Targeting popup looks like after completion: 3
c. Lastly, here s a countdown timer that shows after completion to create urgency this is an example of the bonus mentioned above (see the blue top bar). 2. Collect an email address and trigger a cart abandonment sequence This one is very similar to #1 but it has some more power behind it. Instead of just giving away a coupon code or free offer when someone abandons your cart, you can gate the coupon code behind an email capture. This allows you add their email address to an automated email series built for cart abandonment. This way, even if they do end up leaving without finishing their purchase, you ll still be in touch over email to finish the sale. Bonus: If you d like to drive more social sharing, one thing we can do here instead of (or in addition to) the email capture is allow people to share for the coupon as well as 4
3. Collect customer data and/or show answers to frequently asked questions on abandon Often, people are leaving because they need a question answered, not because they necessarily need a discount. Why not collect their thoughts, point them to resources that can help, and allow them to contact you if they still have questions? This is one of the less frequently used Behavioral Targeting campaigns but it can be very effective (Side note, you can still offer a discount in addition to collecting feedback. See the example below to see this in action.) Bonus: In your Behavioral Targeting modal, you can embed a video to grab attention and link to a live chat, phone number, or embed a contact form if they still have questions. Double Bonus: Take the customer data from their submissions and use it to tailor your website messaging to address their concerns or even use it to build a better version of your product It might not seem like it, but this will help increase conversions in the future once you have better messaging and a better product. And it all came from a simple data capture form using Behavioral Targeting Example: The first image shows a modal that is triggered on abandon. The second image shows the form that is shown when I just need help is chosen. 5
4. Collect email addresses with rich data about each visitors interests while they are browsing Here, we can track visitors activity while they re browsing the site and monitor for specific patterns that we have predefined. Once someone matches a pattern that we know to look for, we ll show them a targeted message with an email capture. Here s an example: Let s say someone looks at 4 or more products in your Home Theater category. We ll show an email capture popup with an offer such as Free report: How to choose the perfect home theater for your house and family. What can you do with the rich data? Well, obviously the first thing you ll do is send them the free report you offered. After that, because you know what they re interested in, you can send them highly targeted emails around their interests. Using this example above, you could send them emails about The top 3 most popular home theater systems, Read the latest reviews about X, Y, and Z home theater systems, and/or Watch our video review of this highly rated home theater system to help create interest in your products and ultimately lead to a sale. This might not increase conversions right away, but with some strong email marketing (like the examples above), your customers will be nurtured, educated, and pre-sold on your store and your products. Once that happens, the sales will start pouring in Bonus: To really drive sales here, set up a follow-up email a couple days after you send them a buyer s guide with a time-sensitive coupon code -- this will create urgency at the right time, after they have had the chance to do research using your guide. 5. Upgrade your entrance email capture messaging One of the most common campaigns that ecommerce companies run is what we call the generic entrance email capture. You ve seen it countless times and you probably have it on your own site already. The way it works is as soon as a visitor comes to your site for the first time, you popup a modal offering a small discount for joining your newsletter. For example, Join our newsletter for 10% off your first order. These entrance email capture modal popups are standard and they do work. However, with Behavioral Targeting, you can integrate data into your messaging in these popups to display smarter, more personal messages that will get higher conversion rates. Some of the factors that can be integrated into the messaging are the traffic source (referring website), geographic location of the visitor, custom parameters, and more. 6
Example: If you receive a good amount of traffic from Pinterest, you could set your entrance popup to say Welcome Pinterest visitor for people that are referred from Pinterest. This will increase conversion rates because you re showing a more highly targeted message. Bonus: Using the Contests & Giveaways app on our platform, you can run a Pin to Win giveaway. In the example above, if you had a giveaway running, you could change the message for Pinterest visitors from an email capture to Enter our Pin to Win giveaway. This will help get more people into your giveaway, which will increase Pins of your products, which will boost traffic and sales. (You ll also capture emails of everyone who enters the giveaway anyway). 6. Promote referral-boosting campaigns While this is a fairly indirect conversion booster, it can still have a powerful impact on driving more conversions to your store. A great use of Behavioral Targeting is to show message to promote referral campaigns to visitors that are most likely to join them. By referral campaigns, we mean something like a Refer-a-Friend program or a Social Contest/Giveaway (one example being a Pin to Win giveaway), as mentioned above. One of the hardest things about running referral campaigns like the ones mentioned above is promoting them and getting people to share our (especially with Refer-a- Friend). We ve seen a lot of success here by targeting customers who would be the most likely to join a referral campaign and showing a Behavioral Targeting message to them at key points in their shopper journey. Example: If you re running a Refer-a-Friend program, you might want to show a message to promote it to customers right after they make a purchase. Or, you can also target customers who are returning to the site and have purchased in the last 7 days. Going even further, with an integration with your CRM, you can target anyone who has purchased over 5 times from your store or spent over $300. This allows you to target your most likely brand advocates and kickstart your referral programs What do you think? We hope these tips were able to spark some creative insights for you on ways to increase conversion rates on your own ecommerce store Now, the most important thing is to take action on the ideas that you have come up with and watch your conversion rates rise. 7
How Does AddShoppers Help Boost Conversion Rates? AddShoppers is a complete onsite marketing platform built for ecommerce brands. Our Apps plug into any ecommerce site and make it easy to launch powerful marketing campaigns that increase conversions like the ones detailed in earlier in this guide. AddAnalytics Track the value of social, discover your top brand influencers, and measure your ROI. Actionable Analytics ROI Tracking AddSocial Powerful infrastructure to enhance your store and make it shoppable and user-friendly. Sharing Buttons Social Login Trending Wall AddReferrals Drive more customer sharing, referrals, and sales with fun social campaigns. Social Rewards Refer-a-Friend Purchase Sharings Contests & Giveaways AddTargeting Increase conversion rates, email captures, and more with powerful targeted campaigns. Behavioral Targeting Smart Retargeting Facebook Retargeting 8
Some of our clients The Economist Problem The Economist was unsure if they were fully harnessing the power of social promotion for their online GMAT prep course. Results Our Share for coupon feature drove increased conversions and customer referrals. This instantly increased social networking traffic and provided them with customer insights previously not possible. AddShoppers has helped get the word out there and create a buzz about our program. LostGolfBalls.com Problem Other solutions for sharing buttons and social rewards that LostGolfBalls.com had heard about did not fulfill all of their needs,especially analytics that would help them equate social shares to sales. Results Enticing social interaction from their target demographics created a 9% boost in overall revenue, a 450% increase in social sharing, and 12% of revenue now attributed to social within just 30 days. We generate over $9,000+ in social revenue weekly from AddShoppers. -Elizabeth Alexander, Marketing Executive - Denise Huynh, Marketing Manager Want to learn more about how we can help? If you think you can grow using any of the campaigns we talked about in this report, you should take a closer look at our platform. You can request a private, one-on-one consultation to see if AddShoppers is right for you or join a live demo to see our Apps in action. 9 Request a Consultation Join a Live Demo