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What is CRM Automation?

CRM automation is about automating repetitive activities such as capturing and assigning leads and sending out emails; along with so many other things

As a business owner, you can decide what tasks are needed to automate for CRM and configure the automated workflow to save time

What is CRM automation?

It means a software application that automates repetitive tasks to improve productivity.

It can help all aspects of a business. Automating allows you to spend a lot of time on achieving broader strategic goals.

CRM systems that are automated will reduce complexity and increase productivity. Like automation in marketing, these systems can be implemented either stand-alone or embedded into an integrated CRM system.

CRM Automation: Key Functions You Should Know

The use of CRM automation has become increasingly popular in recent years, as it offers a range of benefits to businesses of all sizes. 

Here are some of the key functions of CRM automation:

Data Collection and Management

One of the primary functions of automation is to collect, store, and manage customer data. This includes contact information, purchase history, preferences, and more. 

With the help of automation, businesses can gather and organize this information more efficiently, reducing the likelihood of errors and inaccuracies.

Lead Management

It can also be used to manage leads more effectively. This involves tracking and analyzing customer interactions, such as website visits and social media engagement, to identify potential leads. 

Automation can also be used to send personalized follow-up messages and track the progress of each lead through the sales funnel.

Customer Service and Support

CRM automation can also be used to enhance customer service and support. For example, businesses can use automation to send automated responses to customer inquiries, provide self-service options, and track customer interactions. 

This can help businesses resolve issues more quickly and effectively, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Workflow CRM Automation

Workflow automation refers to the use of technology to automate various business processes, such as order processing and invoicing. 

With automation, businesses can streamline these processes, reducing the likelihood of errors and improving overall efficiency.

Personalization

With the help of automation, businesses can personalize their interactions with customers in a variety of ways. 

This includes using customer data to personalize marketing messages, provide customized product recommendations, and deliver personalized customer service.

Analytics and Reporting

It can be used to generate detailed analytics and reports based on customer data. 

This allows businesses to track their performance, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions that can drive growth and success.

For more information about analytics and reporting, check out our article “What is the difference between analytics and reporting?“.

Best practices for CRM automation

Define your objectives and processes

Before implementing any CRM automation, it is important to have a clear understanding of your objectives and processes.

Define the business goals and objectives that you want to achieve, and then identify the processes that you want to automate.

Keep it simple

While it is tempting to automate every task, it is important to keep it simple.

Start with automating one or two tasks and gradually increase the automation as you go. Over-automation can lead to confusion and inefficiencies.

Monitor and optimize CRM Automations

Regularly monitor the automated processes and workflows to ensure they are functioning as intended.

Continuously optimize the automation to ensure it aligns with your objectives and goals.

Ensure integration with other systems

CRM automation should be integrated with other systems like marketing automation, sales tools, customer service systems, etc.

This ensures a seamless flow of information across all systems, leading to improved efficiency and effectiveness.

Implementing CRM automation software

Automating and optimizing are key features for any business owner. Having things complex or doing tasks that can be automated is costing your business money and your time.

By using automation you can start implementing the software to take care of the tasks you no longer want to spend the time on.

Breadstack offers CRM Automation so you can continue to improve efficiency and allow yourself to scale. Contact us today to get started!

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3 Companies That Increased Sales With Tech

In today’s highly competitive business landscape, companies are constantly seeking new ways to increase sales and gain a competitive edge. 

With the rapid advancement of technology, businesses now have access to an array of tools that can help them improve their sales performance. 

Let’s look at how these companies have used technology to increase their sales.

Colleagues deciding on tech tools by doing research.

Online chat increases conversion rates by 23% for Virgin Airlines

Online chat is a program that allows you to communicate with customers in real time on the internet, most commonly through a website. 

A case study by Virgin Airlines showed a 23% increase in conversion rates when they started using online chat. They also found that customers that used the chat had a 15% higher average order value. 

Online chat is powerful in terms of customer engagement – it’s the engagement that can increase your overall sales.

Chat is the easiest form of communication with a business. Customers don’t have to pick up the phone or send an email, they can easily and with less stress send a chat message. 

Chat also allows customers to ask questions or get their concerns answered in real-time. Often, if customers have an issue or concern when browsing and can’t get the information they need, they’ll likely click off. 

However, online chat can mitigate that by being available during the customer’s experience. 

The business can also prompt online chat. Businesses can set up automated triggers during the customer journey to offer support. 

Want to learn more about online? Check out “Use online chat for your business“.

The stats of online chat

  • The customer satisfaction rate for live chat is 85%
  • 75% of people prefer live chat over any other channel
  • The average response time for chat is 15 seconds
Breadstack's live chat feature.
Breadstack's live chat feature.

CRM increases sales by 26% for Casio

CRM software stands for customer relationship management software and it’s a system that helps business track information between customers and the company. 

CRM systems can do many things such as improve sales and productivity, reduce costs, and improve retention.  

Casio saw an increase in sales by 26% by implementing a CRM software. Casio is a multinational electronic company.

They sell a series of products like watches, phone cameras, and electronic instruments. 

Companies that implement a CRM system could also expect the same success. One of the key ways a CRM system does this is by boosting conversion rates. 

The software can collect customer data that will keep detailed profiles of customers. This information can be used and shared with all marketing and sales teams. 

A marketing team can create more tailored campaigns, while the sales team can connect better with each customer. 

Learn about CRM software in our article – “The ultimate guide to implementing a CRM strategy“.

The stats of a CRM

  • 60% of businesses have increased productivity 
  • 45% of businesses have increased sales revenue 
  • 34% of businesses have increased their productivity 
Keep track of all customer data with Breadstack.

Nike remains on top of sales using inventory management 

Inventory management is tracking inventory from all aspects of the business, from the warehouse to the sales floor or the website. 

The goal is to ensure there are accurate inventory levels in the right place and right time. 

Inventory discrepancies cost the company money and can even hinder the reputation of a business. 

Nike deals with millions of products online, and in stores all across the world. Their stores and websites need to have accurate inventory levels. 

Using inventory management software has been the key to success for them.

It would be impossible to keep track of levels in real-time. Nike also had an increase of 15% in inventory last year, but still managed to see an increase in revenue. 

The extra capacity in their inventory could have been a catastrophe for their revenue, however, with their efficient inventory management software in place, everything was optimized accordingly. 

Inventory management software can use RFID technology that can keep track of individual inventory. 

Business owners can have real-time information and can adjust as needed so a sale is never missed due to inventory problems. 

To learn more about inventory management, check out “Tips for Inventory Management“

The statistics of inventory management

  • 75% of all supply chain management professionals want to improve their inventory management practices
  • 24% of small businesses track their inventory with a pen and paper
  • The top issue in 46% of warehouses today is human error
Track all products across multiple stores.
Track all products across multiple stores with Breadstack.

Breadstack’s Ecommerce Toolkit

Online chat, CRM and inventory management are some of the big tools ecommerce owners can use to not only increase their sales but also operate more efficiently. 

However, a lot of these ecommerce tools are separated. Businesses have to purchase multiple products to have a complete tool kit – but this causes issues. 

It can be expensive to purchase new multiple products for your business. The other issue is learning about their new products. 

Each product can look and feel different compared to the next one. At Breadstack we saw the need to fill those gaps. 

We offer an ecommerce toolkit that’s all in one place for ecommerce owners. All our products have the same look and feel so you won’t have to learn multiple products, and it’ll be one fee, not multiple. 

Our products: 

Breadstack Chatso

  • A powerful mobile-friendly chat service that integrates with most major website platforms
  • Drive customer loyalty with integrated CRM features, recommend products and promotions
  • Know where your customers are on your website and provide help in real time improving conversions

Breadstack Commerce Hub

  • Better understand your customer’s shopping behavior
  • Manage your inventory across multiple locations to ensure product availability
  • Clearly understand each product’s demand and sell-through rate by location
  • Gain valuable insights into your business operations. 

Breadstack Delivery 

  • Give your customers the convenience to shop their way, in-store, online or local pick up
  • From warehouse to storefront to customer, get everything you need to manage your merchandise. 

Breadstack has everything you need to supercharge your business all in one place.  

Ready to increase your sales through software?

Try Breadstack

Industry Report: Ecommerce Trends in 2023

The ecommerce market in 2023 continues to expand. Ecommerce owners need to be aware of the changes happening in their market. 

In this article, we’ll give you an overview of the 2023 ecommerce trends as well as specific trends to watch out for. 

Let’s get started.

Figuring out ecommerce trends for 2023

Overview of ecommerce trends for 2023

The ecommerce market was valued at $16.6 trillion (USD) in 2022. This number is expected to grow significantly in the next few years. Analysts have projected that the compound annual growth rate for 2023 to 2028 will be 27.43%.

Many existing trends from recent years will continue to stay relevant with even more growth in 2023. 

Areas like payment options, mobile shopping and personalization are some of the existing trends that will continue to grow. New trends emerging for 2023 are social commerce, inflation, sustainability and AI.

The growth in ecommerce is exciting for those who operate online. $16.6 trillion is a big market to find success in. By knowing these trends for 2023 it will help you prepare for the consumer’s new expectations and will guide you in staying competitive in the market. 

7 Ecommerce trends for 2023

Ecommerce has seen rapid growth over the last decade, with even more growth in these last few years. Ecommerce owners need to stay up to date to remain competitive and give their customers a great experience. 

Here are the top trends for 2023. 

1. Mobile Shopping

Mobile shopping is no surprise as a 2023 trend. Customers using mobile devices to shop has continued to grow year after year – people like using their phones, it’s easier and already in their pocket. 

Even following Google’s search algorithms, websites need to be optimized properly in order to continue ranking. In 2021 mobile usage was at 54% and in 2023 this number is projected to be at 61%. 

Focusing on shopping with mobile devices the statistics are even more surprising. In 2021 42% of ecommerce sales were through a mobile device, however, in 2022 this number rose to 43%, with expectations to be even higher in 2023 

The trends of mobile shopping for 2023 are something ecommerce owners need to keep in mind. Everything on your website needs to function properly on mobile. 

Ecommerce owners should check every sales funnel and customer journey path to ensure everything is optimized for mobile. You’ll be adhering to customers and to the Google search results page. 

Customers shopping on a mobile app.

2. More payment options

Different payment methods have continued to come forward over the last couple of years. We’ll continue to see an increase in emerging payment options for 2023.

Customers want easier and quicker payment methods for shopping online. The rise in Apple pay, Google Pay, and other mobile payments have made this more common. 

In 2021, 50% of ecommerce transactions were paid using a mobile wallet – this number will reach 53% in 2025. 

Other payment methods such as cryptocurrencies will also continue to gain popularity. A report done by CNBC in 2022, found that nearly 75% of retailers plan to accept crypto payments. These are every type of company too, from Starbucks to Lamborghini. 

The more payment options for 2023 means ecommerce owners will have to adapt and be flexible in taking payments. 

Businesses that risk not offering these new payments may see a loss in sales. Customers will choose another option with their preferred payment method. 

3. Personalization

Personalization is another upward trend, we’ve seen continued throughout the years and 2023 will be no different.

Personalization is set to become one of the biggest ecommerce trends. More and more businesses utilize personalization to connect with their customers more. 

Ecommerce owners that offer personalization can expect to see more sales, more engagement and more loyalty. 

71% of customers expect personalization and 76% are frustrated when they don’t get it. These numbers will only continue to grow in 2023. 

Ecommerce owners need to implement personalization, if they have not done so already, to remain competitive in their fields. 

Think of all the competitors in your industry, you’re all after the same customer, personalization can be the key to focusing on them. 

For more information about this trend, check out “Define personalization: How to use it in marketing“.

Personalize customer experience for more success.

4. Social Commerce

Between 2019 and 2021 the number of social media users increased by 890 million. Social media has continued to grow with the number of users at 4.48 billion in 2022 and is projected to rise to 4.59 billion users in 2023.  

9 in 10 people buy from brands they follow on social media. It’s a powerful tool businesses can use as part of their overall strategy for marketing or sales. 

A social media presence can reduce the friction between finding a brand and a conversion. 

Ecommerce owners can take advantage of social media platforms, which are a lot of opportunities available with the most noticeable being the potential to reach the customer quickly. 

Setting up the proper social media accounts can get your business on the map, help you connect with customers and increase sales. 

5. Inflation

Prices have continued to rise over the last few months. Customers are especially feeling the inflated prices, with everything overall increasing. 

This could lead to fewer online purchases and decreasing sales for ecommerce owners. Canada’s inflation topped out at a 41-year high of 8.1%. 

Customers will be more likely to shop around for better deals or look for discounts and promotions. 

More recreational spending could be cut out of people’s budgets as well, due to higher prices. Similar to recreational luxury items may be priced out due to the higher price tag.

Companies need to adjust their products accordingly to meet the needs of their consumers. 

They also need to be strategic with overall sales and operations planning. 2023 will be an interesting year for ecommerce owners due to economic pressures. 

Bank of Canada has projected the inflation rate will fall to 3% in 2023, however, you should always be weary of projections and make the best decisions you can. 

Business owner trying to cut inflation.

6. Sustainable business

Sustainable business is becoming a growing trend throughout the last couple of years and for good reason. Sustainability is a pathway to living a healthy life for our planet, with the rise in climate crises. 

72% of consumers mentioned they were buying more environmentally friendly products than they did 5 years ago, while 81% said they expected to buy even more sustainable products in the next 5 years. 

The shift in sustainability has made already existing companies cut back on their environmental impact. 

Sustainable products may cost more to make and sell, however, this won’t stop consumers from purchasing. Many customers are willing to pay more for a sustainable product with the environment in mind.

The change to sustainable products is coming directly from customers. It’s what they want businesses to take notice in. Over 50% of c-level executives in the fashion and textile industry mention consumers are pursuing them to be more sustainable. 

Ecommerce owners can make the steps forward to becoming more sustainable. They can even advertise their sustainability approach to meet the demands of the new consumer. 

7. AI Products

ChatGPT has exploded all over the internet. It’s become a talking point for the first quarter of 2023. The popularity of ChatGPT tells us that AI is popular and people are open to it. 

AI is becoming more widely adopted across industries, from healthcare, to finance to retail. As AI continues to be more sophisticated and accessible, we can expect businesses to use it to increase innovation and efficiency. 

Spending for AI including software, hardware and services was at $118 billion (USD) in 2022, with that number to increase to $300 billion (USD) by 2026. In 2022 37% of businesses used AI, while 42% of companies are exploring AI for the future. 

Ecommerce owners should look into AI functions across all departments of a business. It can allow you to save time and money with the implementation of AI.

Adapting to trends

It can be frustrating seeing new trends emerge that you may not be ready for. However, nothing is forever. What’s working today might not work tomorrow.

Times change and your business will have to change as well to adapt to trends in the market. 

Certain products and services can help business owners adapt better and more easily. Here at Breadstack, we strive to do just that. We supercharge your business using the technology of tomorrow. 

Breadstack is an ecommerce toolkit to provide you with better information to manage your business all integrated into one platform.

With tools for real-time data, business intelligence, analytics, inventory management, customer support, promotions, and fulfillment. Contact us today for a free demo!

Ready to supercharge your business?

Check us out!

How to Increase Online Sales

Increasing online sales with digital marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. 

The right strategies in place can provide engagement, capture your audience, create conversions, and of course, increase online sales. 

We’ll give you 7 strategies you can implement today. 

Let’s get started. 

Monitoring sales growth.

1. Optimize SEO

75% of users do not access the second page of results on Google! – you need to optimize your content for SEO on a consistent basis.

To rank on Google is one of the best organic ways to increase your online sales. The more likely you are to rank on that first page of Google, the better your sales could be. 

That first page of Google means your website, is getting more visibility, more traffic and more sales. 

We mentioned optimized SEO here, instead of creating an SEO strategy. Most businesses consider SEO, but they don’t continue to optimize their content. 

The Google search engine is always coming out with new updates. These updates can hinder your current search results even if you’re already ranking on the first page. 

There is also content being published every day, you need to optimize your content to continually be the best. 

Ways to optimize for SEO

  • Update existing content to be more relevant
  • Continually build backlinks for more authority
  • Find better keywords to rank for
  • Track metrics to monitor performance. 

For information about SEO, read our article “How to improve SEO in 7 Steps“.

Trying to rank on Google.

2. Create a content strategy

A content strategy is one of the best ways to increase sales with digital marketing. 

Creating content, like a blog or article, has the capacity to generate site traffic, build your authority, build trust and engage your audience. 

However, you need to produce high-quality content. 

Your content strategy needs to have relevant articles that relate to your customers. It’s about creating a post that can engage, teach, and connect with your audience. 

A blog can also be a way to move a customer through a sales funnel.  Positioning a CTA on a relevant blog about your product can convert well. 

Your content strategy also has the potential to increase your sales through social media. Content can be spliced up and shared over social media to continue expanding your online reach. 

How to create a content strategy

  • Research what your audience wants to read
  • Optimize for SEO
  • Utilize content for the sales funnel
  • Only produce high-quality content
Writing a blog with a colleague.

3. Automate email campaigns 

Emails have one of the highest conversion rates compared to any other form of digital marketing tactic. 

They’re an excellent tool for contacting and nurturing leads. Automating email campaigns can really take the guesswork out of setting up and utilizing an email campaign to increase sales through digital marketing. 

Automation will allow you to trigger emails to contact, standardize messages and connect with your customers at the right moment. 

Emails should have valuable information that relates to your customers. Again, it’s like creating a content strategy, it needs to have relevant high-quality content. The main idea is to connect and generate contacts. 

Emails could be about products, discounts, promotions, coupons or anything else that can engage your audience. Set your emails up through automation and then continue to monitor the campaign. 

Steps for automating email campaigns

  • Find an automation software
  • Create emails that engage your audience
  • Set up triggers that connect with customers 
  • Continue to monitor and track. 
Using automation for a successful email campaign.

4. Utilize social media

Social media is a must nowadays for businesses. Customers expect a business to have a social media presence, whether that’s on one platform or all of them. 

Social media is also great for businesses. They can gain more sales through free organic traffic – free is always what business owners like to hear. 

Just like the other forms of content, we’ve mentioned social media posts should educate, inspire, learn and engage your customers. 

The first step in utilizing social media is knowing where your audience is and what they like to do on social media. 

Are they more prevalent on Facebook or Snapchat or TikTok – think TikTok is for young kids, think again! 

Next is to create content that is relevant to your business. 

Some of the posts that work well with social media:

User-generated content – Its content that has been created by customers, whether they mentioned, reviewed or recommended a product. Businesses can then take this content and share it on their social media pages

Giveaways – They can build connections and inspire your audience. Giveaways can be a tool to grow your social media following as well by making the requirements to sign up, follow, comment, or share. 

Educate your audience – A helpful tip or fun fact that’s relevant to your business can go a long way. This informational content gives your audience broader product knowledge and can give them ideas on how to use it. 

How to implement social media

  • Discover where your audience is
  • Create posts that educate, inspire and engage
  • Plan social media posts in advance
  • Post consistently 
One of Breadstack's social media posts.
One of Breadstack's social media posts.

5. Simplify the customer journey 

Often when business owners, are thinking about increasing sales through digital marketing, it’s about developing and implementing new ideas or strategies. 

Of course, this is effective and needed to increase sales, however, looking within your own business first can work well. 

It’s important to see what’s working and not working on your website. The main thing to look for is the customer journey. 

If your metrics tell you, your customers click off certain points during their journey you need to simplify it. 

The more steps or click-throughs you ask your customer to take, the more barriers you have set up for them. The simplest and easiest customer journey will always convert better. 

For example, there is a reason Amazon has the option to buy now directly on the products page, or if you do manage to add an item to your cart, you’ll be able to purchase in less than 5 clicks. 

The more steps or barriers added to the customer journey, the more time a customer can talk themselves out of a purchase, or other distractions turn them away from completing the sale. 

Steps to simplifying the customer journey

  • Check your metrics to see where customers click off
  • Reduce the number of steps customers have to take 
  • Continue to monitor and optimize the journey 
An overview of a customer journey map.

6. Use chat software

Chat software can be an essential tool for increasing online sales. Chats can be automated or use a real agent. They can encourage customers to take action for purchases and help customers when they need it most. 

Chat software can work in two ways. The first way is they are triggered when a customer clicks on the chat widget. The second way is they can be automatically triggered when a customer performs a certain action. 

Sometimes customers can have questions about products or need information about shipping or returns. If customers can’t find an answer they may click off and not purchase the product. 

However, with a chat in a place, customers can be more inclined to reach out and get the answer they need. 

Chat agents can also monitor behaviours and recommend products or offer discounts to entice customers to make a purchase. 

Breadstack’s Chatso does just that, check out a free demo!

Ways to use chat software

  • Set up triggers at customer blocking points
  • Make it easy to use chat for customers to click on 
  • Track customer data to offer personalized recommendations or promotions
One of the benefits of Breadstack's Chatso.
One of the benefits of Breadstack's Chatso.

7. Gain reviews and recommendations

Customer reviews and recommendations can often be better at converting online sales than any other digital marketing strategy. 

Reviews and recommendations create trust within your business. They are known as social proof. Google reviews, third-party review sites, and forums are popular places customers turn to when they are unsure about a product. 

By reading out reviews, good or bad, customers can make an informed decision about the overall opinion of the product. Great reviews can convert a customer thats on the edge of purchasing and a negative review can have the opposite effect. 

If you already have reviews or recommendations, using them with your digital marketing strategies can be powerful.

How to use reviews and recommendations

  • Have them on your product pages. 
  • Add them to landing pages
  • Share them on social media 
Golf bag review from Amazon.ca
Golf bag review from Amazon.ca

How To Improve Your Lead Management Systems

Let’s admit it: lead management is not easy.

Keeping track of leads, assigning lead scores appropriately and having a holistic view of all the leads you have can be extremely challenging — especially when you are juggling lots of other responsibilities too.

Most business owners find lead management challenging because they must do so many different things simultaneously.

In this blog post, we will walk you through some best practices for effective lead management solutions. So let’s begin!

Define your current lead management system’s flaws

Before you go about trying to improve your lead management tool, you need to first understand exactly what’s broken with your current system.

That way, you can be sure that any changes you make aren’t going to make those flaws even worse.

To get started, look at your current lead tracking data and workflow. How many leads are you able to track and respond to? Are they being handled and managed to your satisfaction? Are there any opportunities to improve your system and increase efficiency?

Now, also try to determine why your current system is flawed. Did it start out faulty, or have you added to the problems over time? If you can get to the root of the issues, you’ll be in a much better position to start fixing them.

Assessing the effectiveness of your lead management systems

Now that you understand the flaws in your current system, it’s time to take a good, hard look at its effectiveness. To do this, you’ll want to run an audit on your lead flow and see where your leads are coming from.

Now, all of those leads are important, but some will be more important than others.

You don’t want to discount low-value or low-quality sources, but you do want to prioritize high-value sources. This way, you’ll be able to manage your sales process and prioritize your sales efforts accordingly.

Looking to improve your sales further? Check out “Increase Conversion Rates“.

Know what leads are worth to your business

The first step towards managing leads effectively is to know what they are worth to your business. To explore this, think about your business model and how much profit you expect to generate per lead.

While this will vary depending on your industry, you can use the information below as a general guideline to help you put a dollar value on each lead type.

These are just rough estimates to help you assess what each lead type is worth to your business. Once you have a dollar value for each lead type, it will be much easier for you to prioritize them and know what to do with each one.

Set up a smart lead-scoring process

Next, if you’re serious about streamlining your lead management process and making sure that you have an effective lead scoring process in place, then you’ll have to choose a lead scoring solution that enables you to do this.

A lead scoring system is an essential part of every effective lead management process. It helps you to prioritize your leads and gives you a better idea of when to follow up with them.

Choosing a tool that has a built-in scoring feature will give you more control over your lead management process and help you to more effectively prioritize leads.

This will allow you to assign each lead a unique score based on the criteria that are most relevant to your business.

Take the guesswork out which leads to follow-up on

One of the biggest challenges faced is deciding which leads to follow-up with — and when. You don’t want to follow up with leads too soon, but you don’t want to wait too long either.

You also don’t want to follow up with the wrong leads. This is especially challenging if you have a lot of different lead types coming in and don’t have a way of keeping track of which ones you’ve contacted and which ones you haven’t.

If you’re using a customer relationship management tool, you can easily keep track of which leads you’ve contacted and how many times you’ve followed up with them.

For example, if you send an email to a lead and they open it, you can mark that lead as “contacted” in your CRM.

Having a system like this in place will help you to follow up with the right leads at the right time and will make it much easier for you to manage your leads overall.

Automate tasks for repetitive lead nurturing

Another way to improve your lead management is to automate any tasks that you do repeatedly.

For example, if you have certain email sequences that you send to each lead type, you can set these up to be sent automatically so you don’t have to remember to send them manually.

If you use a CRM tool, you can set up rules to trigger certain actions whenever a lead takes a specific action.

If someone fills out a form on your website and you want to follow up with them using an email sequence, you can set up rules to trigger emails to be sent automatically once they submit the form. This will help you to save time and energy so you don’t have to manually follow up with each lead.

Lead management is not just about ROI

Finally, remember that while it’s important to track the ROI of each lead to assess how valuable they are to your business, you can’t forget about investing in building relationships with each lead.

If you treat each lead as a dollar sign and don’t invest time in building relationships with them, you can’t expect them to buy from you.

Keep in mind that lead management is a never-ending process. Once you’ve managed one lead, you need to move on to the next.

You need to keep track of all your leads, assign them a priority based on how valuable they are to your business and follow up whenever it’s appropriate. If you do this effectively, you will make more money and have happier sales and marketing teams.

Wrapping up lead management

Improving your lead management system is the single best way to grow your sales.

The best lead management software will help you by identifying flaws in your current system, assessing its effectiveness, and rebooting it with new tracking processes and better automation.

You can also start adding new tracking processes, implementing a lead scoring system, and making sure that your sales reps understand the system and why they’re prioritizing leads the way they are.

It’s now up to you in taking your lead management system up a level.

Breadstack can help optimize your business so you can continue to improve efficiency and allow yourself to scale. Contact us today to get started!

 

How to Create Effective Marketing Strategies

Creating an effective marketing strategy isn’t an easy task. There are so many different aspects to consider like customers, products, budgets, and goals.

However, an effective marketing strategy doesn’t have to be as difficult. In this article, we’ve outlined the considerations needed for a marketing strategy as well as the action steps to get started.

Marketing strategy

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is an overall plan for reaching out to customers. However, this simple definition doesn’t serve the marketing strategy justice. 

A marketing strategy can be a straightforward plan, but there is a lot to be considered when putting one into place. 

Why do I need a marketing strategy?

Every business needs to have a marketing strategy. Setting up marketing ideas and putting them into place can be a quick way to lose money and have a failed plan. As Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to plan, you are planning to fail”. 

Here are a few reasons to plan your marketing strategy. 

Know your customers 

Creating an effective marketing strategy will give you a deep understanding of your customers. The more information you know about your target audience the better marketing ideas you can come up with.

Marketing to a specific group of people you’ll be able to better position your product for the ideal customer. 

Maintain a budget 

Marketing strategies can be expensive. Spending money and hoping for the best isn’t a good way to run your marketing budget and strategy.

By gaining more information about the marketing channels you want to run on and all the costs associated with the campaign you can have an ideal budget you’ll spend. 

Keep the focus on goals 

Without a marketing strategy, it means you’re thinking of the next steps on the go, however, this can lead to a non-successful campaign.

Team members can lose track of tasks and go off-topic or the campaign can lead somewhere else. Having a marketing strategy in place gives all team members or even if it’s just one person a clear pathway to success so they know the marketing efforts needed.

How to create an effective marketing strategy?

To get started with your very own marketing strategy we’ve put together some steps you can take. 

Each marketing team may look at these steps differently, but they can be used as a guideline for creating your own. 

Step 1: Goals

Goals need to be a part of your strategy. Without a goal, you don’t know what is success. Your goal will depend on the product offered to the customers.

Coming up with a goal will create the foundation for building your marketing strategy to success. 

Step 2: Marketing Analysis

Marketing analysis will help you determine how the market is operating. It’s also a chance for you to look internally and compare your product to competitors.

Marketing analysis will give you a real insight into how your product will perform in the market. 

A type of marketing analysis is SWOT. It stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Creating your own SWOT analysis it can stand as an overall tool for developing your strategy. 

Step 3: Customers

Every successful marketing strategy stems from knowing your customer. The better you know your customer the easier it is to sell to them.

By knowing their needs and wants, you can highlight your product in the best way possible. 

Knowing your customers is also going to help you with your marketing budget. By targeting your ideal customers you’ll be only speaking to one group of people.

However, by marketing to everyone you will most likely not have a strong enough ad to speak to your ideal customer or sway new ones. 

Effective marketing strategy

Step 4. Product

Knowing your product is next on the list. Your product is your lifeline with a marketing strategy. At the end of the day, you need to have a good product.

However, you most likely have a product you are proud of and are ready to take to market. 

The challenge now is figuring out where the product stands in the market. This will help you understand the product, price, promotion and place. Otherwise, known as the 4 Ps of marketing.

Diving deep into the 4 Ps will help you position your product in the best way possible to understand your product in the market.

Step 5:  Techniques 

Now, once you have all the research done like the SWOT analysis, customer information, and product market information, you can start looking at strategies.

Everything you’ve done up until this point will make things more clear for techniques. Each technique will depend on your product, customer, and the current market. 

There are plenty of techniques out there such as social media marketing, content marketing, paid ads, influencer marketing, and the list goes on. The most effective marketing technique is the one that’s in line with your research.

For further planning outside of marketing check out our article “Guide to sales and operations planning“.

Step 6: Budget

Budgeting is going to be an essential step for a strategy and overall marketing effectiveness. 

Marketing expenditure can be quite expensive so knowing your limits can help you stay on track. It can also help you understand your ROI for each technique you want to implement. 

Actions steps for a successful strategy

As we mentioned above how to create an effective marketing strategy, the next part is being able to put into actionable steps, otherwise known as your marketing plan. 

Here are the steps you need to take action on.

Determine how you reach customers

After the strategy has been completed, you’ll know exactly the customers you’re trying to reach. The next step here is to decide how you’ll reach those customers.

Is it worth digital marketing? Like paid ads on Google or social media or is it through blog posts? On the other hand, are you going with print media? These are things you need to consider next. 

Create marketing materials

After you know whom you’re reaching out to you’ll need to figure out all the marketing materials you need for content.

This could be videos, blogs, posters and anything else you need depending on your medium for marketing. It’s important here to always stick with your brand guidelines and tones as you want to always match your brand.

Set up metrics and goals 

After you have taken the steps to determine the content needed to reach customers the next step is creating metrics in line with your goals.

You need to understand what we’ll make your strategy successful. Is it 200 sign-ups? More increased website traffic? This comes down to what you want to achiev

Launch strategy

After everything has been thought out and planned it’s time to launch your strategy. Although this could be nerve-wracking, it’s an exciting time.

We’ll also mention each strategy you create is a chance to learn and improve on the next one. It doesn’t matter if you’ve done this 20 times or never before, you’ll learn each time you do this. 

Get started with your marketing strategy today.

How to Choose a Product to Sell

One of the most difficult things is finding a product to sell online for those who want to start their own ecommerce store. If you’ve always strived to be an entrepreneur but can’t seem to find the right product it becomes frustrating. 

However, here are some useful tips for choosing a product to sell.

Solve a pain point

Solving a pain point is one of the most common ways of developing a product for your online business. A pain point is a problem people are having that causes a bad or frustrating experience with already available products. 

Every product usually solves a solution. The vacuum picks up dust, a dishwasher washes the dishes and the list goes on. Chances are there is already a pain point in your life that you need to be solved.

To give an example, Canada Pooch is a company that sells pet products. One of their products is a utility leash. A utility leash has a carabiner at the end to attach to your dog’s collar instead of a clip. 

A clip can come loose either from your dog, yourself, or any other weird instance (if you have a dog you’ll understand this one). It causes a sense of worry. The clip coming undone could mean your dog is able to run away. 

The utility leash solves this problem by using a carabiner. It gives people the safety and security that the clip can’t offer. 

Utility leash from Canada Pooch.

Follow your passion

Passion products are an interesting idea. It can be a fantastic idea because you have a passion for it. You can continue to explore your passion, learn new things and love being a part of something you enjoy. The downside to all of this is your passion may not that be profitable or you may get tired of your passion by trying to gain sales.  

Regardless, finding a product using your passion can still be an idea worth exploring. There are lots of profitable niche businesses out there that do well.

To give an example, Smart Sweets owner, Tara Bosch created the company through her love of candy. She wanted to create a candy with lower sugar. With Tara’s passion for candy and need to create a candy with lower sugar, Smart Sweets has been wildly successful. 

2 Smart Sweets products shown.

Stay up with trends

Trends have become more prevalent with the age of social media. Chances are if you’ve been on these platforms long enough you’ve seen product trends. Trends are a great way to find a product because if you’re early enough in the trend you can capitalize on the interest. 

Trending products sometimes are very niche products while others are more general. It’s a matter of finding the trends that appear to the right target audience and can generate top-selling items for your ecommerce business.

A trend doesn’t necessarily mean it comes and goes. Trending products to sell will help the initial launch, but it can still continue to be a good business. 

To give an example Air pods by Apple were immensely trendy a few months ago. Air pods are completely wireless earbuds. It’s two individual earbuds that sync together and your phone. 

Although the trending product of Air pods seems to have died down, Apple was able to create enough noise in the market with them that they’ve continued to be a success.

*Quick tip – even checking out Google trends data can be a good way to see trends emerging. 

Air pods by Apple.

Look at existing products

There are millions of products on the market right now being sold in online stores. It can sometimes be hard to create an entirely new product. Luckily, looking at existing products can spark inspiration.

Existing products and pain points can tie together. There may be an existing product right now that is good, but it’s missing a feature or could be done better. 

The clothing industry is a great example of looking at existing products. Clothing for the most part isn’t going to change. There’s always going to be a shirt, sweater, jeans, sweats, and so on.

The difference between brands could be the fit, look, or style that makes it unique to its own product. 

To give an example, if we look at Lululemon, they use to primarily focus on yoga wear but now have expanded into athletic wear, lifestyle apparel, and accessories. None of these products are necessarily new on the market.

There are lots of other brands that offer athletic wear, however, they’ve been able to elevate their products through, style, fabric and fit. 

Lululemon Fundamental T-shirt shown above.

Look at data

It’s not an interesting decision for most people deciding on a product to sell, but looking at the data of products can be a good way to see what’s worth selling.

Carrying a product comes with a lot of other costs like shipping and marketing. All of these other costs cut into your revenue for the product. 

Running the numbers on a few products can help you determine if the fees outweigh the amount of revenue you can make for your own online store. Consistently high-profit margins can be more enticing compared to a smaller profit margin.

Gain inspiration

Looking for products to sell online or thinking about products doesn’t always lead to ideas. Sometimes you can run into idea fatigue. Often times the best ideas or thoughts can come from other activities whether that’s at the gym, reading a book, etc…

Having a notepad on your phone can be a good idea for when inspiration strikes. 

Continually thinking of products to sell, may not always be the best solution. Take time for yourself and be open-minded to the ideas you’ll gain in your everyday life. 

Viewing products in the shop.

What's next after finding a product?

After finding a product, you can’t necessarily start selling online. There need to be additional steps taken into consideration. 

Evaluating your idea will help give you confidence in selling your product. Companies can spend 1000s of dollars on evaluating an idea but that’s not necessary for evaluating your own products. 

Quick tip – your product description and product photo are also going to impact selling your product.

Ask yourself the following questions: 

What do people need? 

Most people buy a product to achieve or gain something. If we go back over our examples Smart Sweets provides a lower-sugar candy or Canada Pooch’s utility leash provides a safe alternative to the regular clip.

You need to honestly answer the question of what people need. If that answer is no, your validation process becomes easier. 

Who is your audience?

Discovering who your audience is for the product is an essential step. Finding out all the information can help with understanding the potential of the product.

You’ll learn if there’s a bigger market for your product and know who to sell to.

Have you made any sales? 

Not jumping right into selling is a good idea, however, getting a few stocks of product can be beneficial. It will let you test the market and give you the confidence that your product can make sales.

Understanding these questions can help you gain better insight into your potential customers and help you decide if the product you have thought of is worth pursuing. 

If you’re looking to learn more about the process of starting an ecommerce business check out our article “How to Start an Ecommerce Business”.

Here’s How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

Whether you own an ecommerce store or shop at one yourself, chances are you’ve come face to face with shopping cart abandonment once or twice before.

For many online retailers shopping cart abandonment is one of the main causes of missed sales.

Find out everything you need to know about shopping cart abandonment in this article. 

shopping cart abandonment

What is shopping cart abandonment?

Shopping cart abandonment is the rate at which your customers abandon their online shopping carts before converting and completing a purchase.

Business owners can determine their abandonment statistics by breaking down the total amount of completed purchases they’ve processed in a given block of time and then dividing that number by the total amount of created carts.

Subtract that number by one, and you’ll have the calculated cart abandonment percentage for your site.

Here’s a quick example:

Let’s say that an online store has about 500 created carts in a month but only 200 purchases are completed. In this example, a bit of napkin math (1-[200/500]) says that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 60%.

While this sounds high, it’s a little bit lower than the industry average. According to the Baymard Institute states that business owners can expect their average cart abandonment rate to hit 69% (or a little higher).

At first blush, that number looks sky-high. Seven out of ten carts being abandoned before a sale process is tough to swallow.

Thankfully, though, your own abandonment rates will likely be lower than this online ecommerce average that averages all types of digital businesses together.

At the same time, even losing 50% of your sales to abandonment is a big problem.

shopping cart abandonment

Learning from shopping cart abandonment

Today’s ecommerce brands lose out on a combined $18 billion USD in sales revenue each year because of cart abandonment. 

You could have an excellent, really well dialed-in website with fantastic product descriptions and beautiful photography, and you still may lose out on a decent chunk of your sales and conversions during the checkout process.

It’s a good indicator that something’s wrong with your overall purchasing flow and checkout process, your user experience, or something wrong with the actual site itself.

Even worse, though abandonment is one of the biggest and most common issues retailers online face today, business owners very rarely know how to manage the problem, mitigate the issue, or overcome it altogether.

Despite throwing the kitchen sink at cart abandonment, many online retailers, business owners, and ecommerce stores still have difficulty reducing shopping cart abandonment.

They’ll discover customers visiting their website, adding all kinds of products to their cart, and abandoning it entirely as soon as they hit the checkout page!

In a digital-first world where consumers have endless options at their fingertips, this is less than ideal.

Luckily, getting a handle on reducing your cart abandonment and increasing your conversion rate is possible with enough commitment and dedication

shopping cart abandonment

What causes shopping cart abandonment?

Several factors can cause checkout abandonment, but the most instrumental one is poor customer experience. Buying online shouldn’t be a complex process.

A poor user experience, slow site speed and limited payment options are just some of the reasons why more than half of ecommerce customers abandon their carts.

Here are a few more:

Complex and confusing checkout process

Try as they might, online stores and ecommerce stores just aren’t able to fully replicate the physical retail experience. The brick-and-mortar store experience is unique. You can see the products in person, handle them personally and checkout and bring it home.

With that being said, online shoppers and retail shoppers want many of the same goals – one of them being able to make their purchase immediately and as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Nothing aggravates consumers and customers more than a drawn-out, complex, and confusing checkout flow. Even if you’re not shopping online, having to wait in line to complete a purchase is frustrating and annoying.

Nobody likes a complicated checkout process. Suppose an online store subjects its customers to multiple checkout pages.

In that case, field forms and multiple information requests just to complete their online purchase is likely to turn prospective customers into shopping cart abandoners that won’t return to your store.

No guest checkout option

Large and small ecommerce retailers love user accounts for many reasons. They provide a wealth of essential data that they can leverage to improve everything from their purchase funnel to their product pricing.

However, it can make shoppers abandon their shopping carts.

User accounts are precious when you want to collect user data and optimize your overall online shopping experience, but they also extend the checkout flow significantly.

The checkout experience needs to be optimized for customers, not for your business.

Uncertainty with security features

Online shopping is more common and popular than ever before, but a segment of the market still is a little bit hesitant about online payments.

Not all digital customers are ready to leap at the opportunity to share their personal, private, and payment information with just anyone. This market segment prefers to do some window shopping on your product pages instead of making a purchase.

To adapt to this kind of user behaviour, you have to be sure to include multiple payment options, the opportunity to use a preferred credit card account, and as many other security features as possible to assure customers and earn their confidence.

If your customers don’t feel comfortable using their digital wallets the odds of them abandoning their cart increase significantly.

Unknown shipping speeds

Faster delivery is no longer a competitive advantage – it’s an expectation.

61% of online customers even expect that their packages will be shipped out within 1 to 3 hours of placing their orders as well. 

The last thing a shopper wants to worry about is hitting your checkout page, going through the checkout process and giving their payment method and personal information, only to find out that it’s going to take them forever and a day to get their order.

Unexpected and high shipping costs

Shipping and fulfillment costs are part and parcel of the ecommerce experience. While ecommerce brands can offer free shipping, not every retailer has the means and the budget to make this a reality.

Many digital shoppers will understand the necessary evil of online shipping costs, but many more will sour if unexpected shipping costs are added later.

While extra delivery fees are understandable if the delivery destination is remote, there should never be hidden costs. When you display the costs upfront to the consumer, they’ll be able to gauge the cost of their purchase more readily.

How to reduce your cart abandonment rates

Though it might feel like cart abandoners have an unlimited amount of reasons to bail on their online shopping cart, ecommerce retailers have a few tips and tricks they can use to provide a better checkout flow and reduce cart abandonment.

While you won’t eliminate shopping cart abandonment, you can reduce the rate at which your potential customers are contributing to lost sales.

Here is just a couple of the best cart and checkout optimization tips available to improve the process, secure the sale, and drop abandonment rates like a stone at the same time

Simplified checkout process

Your entire checkout flow needs to be optimized from top to bottom for your customers, not your business.

Customers need fast load times, forms that automatically fill out, and as much simplicity as humanly possible within the checkout flow.

Anything you do to complicate the process – a questionnaire, surveys, or any other friction practically guarantees a skyrocketing abandonment issue.

Including a progress indicator, allowing users to sign through an alternative social media account, or similar checkout design improvements could hasten the checkout flow and could also do wonders in lowering your shopping cart abandonments.

Flexible shipping options

Customers are busy. You don’t want to force them to rearrange their schedule or create an appointment just to get their hands on their package and order.

Additionally, today, shoppers expect improved security, flexibility, and fantastic speed when it comes to their shipping choices. Flex delivery options (whenever possible) can boost your conversion rate significantly.

Integrating a flexible delivery scheduler onto your checkout page provides your customers with the freedom to choose when, where and how they want to get their orders and lets them enjoy their order the same day they place it. 

For more information on shipping, read our article “Why is shipping important?“

Guest checkout options

Collecting shopper data and information is a big piece of the ecommerce success puzzle but collecting it shouldn’t come at the expense of the user experience.

Make sure that you allow shoppers to check out as a guest instead of compelling them to create an account. You’ll lower friction, improve checkouts, and lower the chances of shopping cart abandoment.

Transparent pricing and payment

The last thing your customers want to worry about is surprise delivery fees, hidden charges and expenses, and other less-than-ideal price changes during the checkout process.

Nobody wants to enter their preferred payment information and then back out because there were hidden fees.

Be upfront about your costs and transparent with your pricing, and these problems disappear.

Discounts, incentives, and promotions

Shoppers abandon carts, but they might not abandon your store. There could be many reasons why window shoppers choose not to go through with their purchase, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever!

Providing a discount code for their shopping carts, and incentivizing a purchase with a voucher for free delivery can continue them threw the sales process. 

Reducing shopping cart abandonment rates

Shopping cart abandonment is endemic within ecommerce. Even if customers are visiting your site, there’s only so much that product descriptions and photography can do to spur customers into a purchase.

Implementing all of these strategies and best practices requires time and patience to get right. Although, if you are looking for extra help check out sales solutions with Breadstack. 

Breadstack lets you compete with big giants and grow your business with the right tools. 

Learn more!

14 Ways to Increase Sale Conversion Rates

Increasing conversion rates is part of any sales strategy goal. If you have the traffic coming to your website, you need to be able to develop strategies to turn those website visitors into customers.

We’ll give you some helpful tips for making that happen along with other information about conversion rates.

Let’s get started.

What is a good sales conversion rate?

Conversion rate can be a term that gets thrown around loosely. Every business wants to increase its sales conversion rate but what does that exactly mean; what is a good conversion rate? 

Conversions rates will vary depending on the company and even the industry. A good conversion rate in a general sense is around 10%, with some of the top-performing companies nearing 11-12%.

Unbounce did a fantastic industry report looking at conversion rates – check out the report here to find out where your industry and conversion rates stack up. 

Whether your conversion rate is at the top of 10% or around 5%, you can always find ways to improve your strategies to gain an increase. 

How to calculate a sales conversion rate?

To calculate a conversion rate it’s the number of sales divvied by the number of leads. After that has been collected multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Conversion rate = (number of sales/number of leads)* 100

Let’s look at an example. 

If you had 200 sales last month and 800 leads come in, then to calculate the conversion rate would be (200/600)*100 = 25%

Your conversion rate for the month would be 25%

Best sales strategies and practices

Improving conversion rates is always going to be a goal for your business. It’s part of any successful sales strategy. 

You’ll have times when things seem stagnant. Sticking with the same strategies isn’t always going to work. There are a number of ways to try new sales tactics and increase conversion rates. But, how? 

Here are 14 ways of increasing sales conversion rates.

1. Focus on good leads

A great sales strategy focuses on leads that matter. Leads can be any interest in a company, but the problem with leads is they can be good and bad. 

Good leads are people that have a general interest in the company that may be ready to buy and are assets in the sales processes. Bad leads are not all that interested in the company. Good leads can generate sales while bad leads can take up time. 

Narrowing down your leads will allow you to focus on the good leads only so you can have an easier time converting. Setting up your lead magnets to ensure good leads are entering the sales funnel will set you up for success. 

To narrow down the process asking more questions or setting up more barriers for those bad leads can be simple ways to get good quality leads. It’s much easier for the sales team to sell to someone who is already interested in buying.

Looking to manage your leads? Check out “How to improve your lead management systems“.

2. Build trust

93% of potential customers read reviews online before buying. 

Even ask yourself, do you purchase a product online without looking at the reviews or better yet, how do you feel when a product has no reviews? 

Asking these questions shows us the value of building trust with our customers. Those reviews and other social proof methods build trust. They give the buyer reasoning and confidence in the product if they have good reviews. 

Adding more social proof into the sales process is a great way to increase conversion rates. Having trust with your customers gives them the confidence and comfortableness of buying from you. 

Adam Rogers the Senior Content Marketing Manager from Shopify noted “It’s important to remember that trust is a matter of perception and something every business has to earn”.

Businesses have to continually put in the work to build trust. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen with consistent effort. 

Uncaged Ergonomics product with reviews and ratings.

3. Utilize a product demo

Product demos are key to getting your audience to interact with your product. They can see the benefits for themselves and in turn, you can have higher conversion rates. 

It can be hard when you have a great product, but no one is interacting with it – this is where a demo can come in. Customers can try your product out and fall in love with it. 

These product demos can work in two ways. It can either be like a free trial where customers can experience the product by themselves or it can be a product demo that is led by the company walking the customer through each amazing feature of the product. 

Product demos also have another feature for increasing conversion rates and that’s generating leads. 

To gain access to a demo customers should have to put in information to gain access. This way you can use that information to help with the demo and continue down the lead process. 

Spotify's "free trial would be a product demo.

4. CTA matters

Your CTA matters. At any part of your sales funnel, you need to be analyzing your CTA (call to action) if you want to increase conversion rates. 

The best CTA’s are highly visible, simple to understand, are placed somewhere with purpose. 

That last point is the biggest one. If you’re CTA is not in a position where it makes sense along the sales pipeline, chances are you’ll have lower click-through rates. 

Let’s say in this article we added a CTA button exactly right here. It said, “Start my demo with Breadstack”. We can make the assumption that this would barely convert. Why? Because it doesn’t entice the reader to click. 

It doesn’t make sense to add a CTA there because we’re not talking about Breadstack anywhere. 

Now, let’s say we connected a sales strategy with one of Breadstack’s features and then added a CTA directly supporting that. 

It could say “Check out the sales strategy on Breadstack” That CTA would have a much better CTR rate because it relates to the text and makes sense. 

These examples can be said for the CTA position of your sales strategies; your CTA needs to make sense to increase conversion rates. 

A case study around CTAs by Moz discovered they were able to increase conversion for a client by 245%. Do you know what they did? They made the CTA more convenient for the user.

Even something simple like moving a CTA or allowing better access can yield great results. 

Wealthsimple's CTA for a tax blog.

5. A/B testing 

A/B testing just means testing 2 different situations. Testing for your sales strategy plan to increase conversion rates could mean having two different landing pages, or sales pages. 

The marketing team and sales teams can set up 2 different situations you can change individual things about the pages and test which one would convert higher. 

Using A/B testing is a fantastic way to increase conversion rates because you can really discover what works for your audience and what doesn’t. 

Thomas J. Watson, the former Chairman and CEO of IBM stated “if you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate”. Businesses can’t be afraid to fail with their testing. 

Every time you test you’ll be able to continually learn more about your audience and have better information for the next time you set up a page or campaign. 

6. User Experience

A bad user experience will immediately ruin your conversion rates. Users will most likely click off before entering your sales funnel or even wanting to learn more about the product. 

A good user experience can ensure customers are continuing to engage your brand until they are ready to convert.

Every step of the customer journey needs to consider user experience in order to see a higher conversion rate. 

Understanding what your customer likes, dislikes, pain points, and interest is all things that can help with the user experience. (this is why knowing your target market is so important)

A good user experience process will increase sales conversions. You’ll have customers less likely to click off and offer a welcoming experience from start to finish. 

7. Use exit-intent popups

Exit intent popups provide the user with a compelling offer before they leave the page.

To give an example of this, if you’re scrolling a page and then you decide to click exit, you’ll immediately see a pop-up come up before you fully can exit the page – this is an exit-intent pop-up.

These pops ups usually have an amazing offer with incredible value. They also have a great conversion rate. Exit intent popups can save shopping cart abandonment and increase revenue by 30%.

It’s important to note exit intent pop-ups should only be used when a customer hasn’t taken action. If the customer is already through the sales pipeline, it could be annoying and cause the opposite reaction you’re expecting.

Allison Task's exit intent pop up

8. Use customer engagement

Customer engagement isn’t to provide excellent customer service, but of course, it helps.  It’s when a customer interacts with your business. This could be online or even offline.

An online engagement could be through social media or interacting with the website. In-person, this could be interacting with a sales rep.

Customer engagement builds trust, value, and loyal customers. When a customer interacts with your business, it means they care about your brand. 

They’re more likely to make a purchase with the business when they feel a connection. They are no longer just a number making a purchase, they can feel like a valued customer. 

Want to learn more about customer engagement? Check out our article “Why Customer Retention is Important?“

Marriott Hotels social media post showing engagement

9. Utilize promotions and discounts

We all love promotions and discounts. They can provide happiness when our favourite product goes on sale or we have a great coupon code to use. They can become a powerful tool for business owners to increase sales. Promotions and discounts provide 2 things. 

They provide the customer with a feeling like they’re getting a deal (which they are) that makes them happy to buy the products. The second thing they provide is scarcity. Scarcity is the feeling that you need to do something because you’ll miss out. 

For example, any one-day sale or Black Friday sale can count as using scarcity. Scarcity works for those on the fence about a product or service or just creates that urgency for people to take action. 

Check out these other examples of scarcity here.

Promotions and discounts can take away from your bottom line, but they can also drive more revenue with the increase in purchases. 

It’s important to note running these promotions and discounts all the time can have the opposite effect.

For businesses that offer constant promotions and discounts customers will take note. It loses value when you offer these all the time.

Create promotions and discounts at the right time to better convert customers. Check out Breadstack Chatso. It lets you offer promotions and discounts in real-time on the chat service. 

Nike's discount on hoodies

10. Referrals are a powerful tool

Referrals will work for businesses. Sales reps should be using this as part of their sales strategy. A referral is a recommendation from a friend, family or even a colleague. They can be a great way to bring in new customers. Referrals work for everyone.

The business offering a referral gets a new customer. The person mentioning the business usually gets an incentive for doing so, whether it’s a free product or a discount. The person hearing the referral gets a good recommendation. 

The best example of a referral strategy is with Hello Fresh. They offer a 25$ credit when someone refers someone they know. That person being referred also gets a free box in the process. It’s a great incentive to tell people about Hello Fresh. 

Any type of business can offer referrals. The key to this strategy is to have a proper incentive for clients (existing customers) to speak about your product or service, without it the client may not be thinking about the benefits of telling their friends and family. 

A study by the Nielsen group found that referrals and word-of-mouth are the most trusted form of advertising. The second most trusted forms of advertising doesn’t even come close. 

Remember referrals aren’t word of mouth. Word of mouth has no incentive for clients to talk about a business. 

Referrals are actively trying to get customers to talk about your business. But both hold a key message – Do a great job and tell everyone. 

Hello Fresh referral program

11. Organically upsell

Upsells can have a bad name. This is most likely due to people being upsold items when they simply don’t relate to anything you purchase.

Upsells shouldn’t be seen as a negative. They should be seen as positive. They can actively assist your customer’s experience and create more sales. 

Let’s look at an example. DeLonghi makes coffee supplies. It could be coffee machines, espresso machines, filters, accessories and anything else related to coffee DeLonghi has the products.

But DeLonghi doesn’t upsell every product, why? Because it doesn’t make sense. If we look at any espresso machine that comes with a milk frother, they offer an upsell to a pitcher and espresso cups.

Both of these products would be of value to the customer purchasing the espresso machine. They’ll need a pitcher for the milk frother and they may need to have espresso cups. Check out the upsell on their page here – DeLoghni upsell.

This upsell creates a better experience for the customer by offering a product they need and it will improve sales for the business.

Now, on the other hand, if Delonghi offered coffee filters along with this it would be a bad upsell. The customer wouldn’t be able to use the filters for the espresso machine. 

It could cause the customer to annoyed and create a bad experience. The right upsell goes a long way.

Delonghi's "complete with" is there upsell offer.

12. It’s a team effort

Each team member of a business can intervene in increasing sales whether that’s online sales or in-person sales. 

It’s not always up to the sales team. If you’re a small organization, of course, this looks much different, as individuals can fill multiple roles.  But for companies with different departments like customer support, sales, product and marketing all connect to increasing sales.

A bad experience can hinder the business reputation affecting the sales rep’s efforts. A bad customer experience can derail a successful marketing campaign.

Everyone needs to be on the same page. For any size company, this will come down to the operators. They need to set the standards and systems in place so each department knows the level of service and operation the business wants to set.

When everyone is on the same page the whole process becomes easier. Customers can have a successful and positive experience at each stage, increasing sales overall. 

13. Provide value

Right now, you have a product or service you are offering to the world, it should provide deep value to your customers.

Does your product or service fill a need or issue? Or does it provide a better or easier task for someone? These questions bring up the value needed in a product or service for it to be successful. 

With a clear value in your offerings, your customers won’t question the price (within reason of course).

Spotify, for example, provides easy music or podcast streaming on any platform and anywhere. Millions of people listen to music or podcasts. Whether that be at home, at work, in the gym, in the car. The list goes on and on…

Spotify was one of the first and the best company to offer easy streaming. Their price of $10 a month is an easy no-brainer for the amount of value it provides. 

14. Everything needs to be consistent

Everything we have listed for increased sales comes down to being consistent. It’s not engaging with a customer once, it’s not organically upselling once or it’s not offering referrals once.

All of these strategies should be done on a consistent base. Increasing sales doesn’t happen overnight with strategies. The more time spent on these strategies the better results they’ll bring in. 

Be patient and continue to do good work while implementing these strategies and you’ll see success. 

Key Takeaways

  • Always build trust with quality content
  • Focus on good leads
  • Test when possible for better results
  • Customer experience is equally as important to your product
  • Utilize many sales options from promotions to referrals

Improving sales strategies for conversion rates

Getting website traffic to convert isn’t the easiest task for businesses. It takes time and effort to develop a sales strategy that leads to higher conversion rates.

There are many ways to increase conversion rates that you can implement with your sales strategies. Focusing on good quality leads is often the simplest strategy you can start using within your business.

Whichever strategy you decided to use trying new methods is a great way to see what’s working and gives you the opportunity to learn more about your audience.

Breadstack can help with adding highly customized shopping experiences for customers. We offer a headless commerce solution that gives you more control. 

Do you want to learn more?

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