Connect Marketing and Commerce

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit you'll be able to:

• Explain the difference between transactional and behavioral emails.
  
• Describe two ways to make your advertising more targeted.
  
• Demonstrate the benefits of social media and how it is part of the unified consumer experience.
  

Connect Marketing and Commerce

Think about the last time you received an email promotion from an online purchase you made—was it personalized? Did it feature a product you previously viewed? Or did it fall into a category—such as women’s shoes, men’s shirts, children’s toys, Acme brand power tools—you had recently browsed? And did you click on that promotion? If you clicked, then you understand the power of connecting marketing and commerce.

Companies, brands, and retailers have many challenges—rising competition and market saturation, limited attention span and loyalty from consumers, and shifting ways of shopping. All of these obstacles are changing the way retailers think about business. But these changes also provide retailers with opportunities to create new experiences that encourage shoppers to browse and buy.

And today, those experiences that we all have as consumers are driving expectations for B2B Commerce.

Email Marketing

Marketing Cloud is the solution for creating engaging, multi-touch journeys that span all of the touchpoints your customers use todayͥ—advertising, mobile and email.

Retailers and brands seek a direct line of communication with consumers to develop the relationship over time. One of the most common ways to do this is via email marketing. Email marketing generally covers two broad categories: transactional emails and behavioral emails.

• Transactional emails: Retailers send transactional emails that don't necessarily seek to sell anything, but rather inform the customer. These include order confirmation, shipping status, a password reset, or even a welcome email after a customer signs up for a newsletter. Take a look at the Transactional Email Solution Kit to learn how to implement this (English only).
  
• Behavioral emails: Emails that are triggered from a particular action—like abandoning a site after searching, browsing, or adding an item to a cart—is called a behavioral email because it triggered a... wait for it... behavior. Recent research has shown that more than 75 percent of shoppers will abandon their shopping cart with an item in it. But if the customer receives a follow-up email with a promotion, retailers can win back more than half of those lost sales. Take a look at the Abandoned Cart Solution Kit to learn how to implement this (English only).
  

Between those two types of email communications, marketers can build out a variety of programs that keep customers in the loop, drive revenue, and even win back sales. For B2B companies who are looking to develop long-term trusted relationships with their customers, we turn to Pardot.

Merchants can use email to send personalized recommendations based on customer order history. Take a look at the Personalized Marketing Recommendations Solution Kit to learn how to implement this (English only).

Merchants often use coupon campaigns to incentivize shoppers. They want to increase the number of responses they get from coupons sent through email. Coupon redemption data can help them customize customer journeys or change their approach with shoppers who don’t respond. Take a look at the Coupon Redemption Solution Kit to learn how to implement this (English only).

Targeted Advertising

In addition to keeping customers engaged once they’ve made a purchase, retailers need to attract new customers. Advertising on social channels and the web are great ways to acquire new customers. Two ways you can make your advertising more targeted are:

• Use a data management platform (DMP) to advertise products to guest and unknown shoppers in a segmented audience across the web.
  
• Advertise to known audiences and “lookalike” audiences on social channels.
  

Social Media and Commerce

Instagram shopping. Instagram is a visual platform full of assorted and often stunning images posted by friends and family, celebrities, influencers, and brands. Companies are now using Instagram to create entire brand experiences, posting photos of products and in many cases the posts are shoppable. Audiences can click a product image, arrive at the brand’s product page, and complete a purchase—all initiated from an image on Instagram.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Transactional Email Solution Kit (English only)
• Salesforce Help: Abandoned Cart Solution Kit (English only)
• Salesforce Help: Coupon Redemption Solution Kit (English only)