A recent study from Salesforce found that visits where the shopper clicks product recommendations comprised just 7% of visits, but drive an astounding 24% of orders and 26% of revenue. Recommendations are integral to growing eCommerce businesses like yours, which is why we’re excited to announce ShippingEasy’s latest new feature—Product Recommendations!
In this article, we’ll go over some ways that product recommendations can help you grow orders, increase conversions, and ultimately grow your business.
Why product recommendations work
Shoppers are busier and more distracted than ever before. They want you to do the work and help guide them. According to Rama Ramakrishnan, SVP of Data Science at Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
“If your catalog has more than a few dozen products, customers may not easily find what they’re looking for. And if today’s impatient shopper can’t find what they want in a click or two, they will leave you. That’s why personalization is super important.”
Product recommendations clicked by customers also lead to a 5X spending increase. Would you like to see five times more spending from your customers? Of course you would. Great product recommendations lead customers back to your site, and when they’re on your site, they’re likely to add more to their cart and convert. Couple product recommendations with offers of free or discounted shipping (which also encourage shoppers to finish checking out), and you have a recipe for success.
Types of product recommendation emails to use
There are multiple ways you can position your product recommendations to help increase conversions.
- “Other customers loved” recommendations: Use social proof to feature some of your most popular or highest-rated products. There’s a reason these products are popular, and it’s likely that a customer who recently purchased something from you may also want to purchase these other products.
- “You may also like” recommendations: These product recommendations work best if they are directly related to previously purchased items, but they don’t necessarily have to be. You’re merely planting a seed here.
- “Recently added” recommendations: Two segments where these can work particularly well are frequent customers (their loyalty could be rewarded with a “first to know” email) or lapsed customers (informing them of new items they’re missing out on could potentially bring them back).
Product recommendations placements
Now that we’re clear why sending product recommendations can help grow more orders for your eCommerce business, let’s talk about where to feature them.
Promotional Emails: As mentioned above, this is the most clear use-case. Use subject lines like “Recommendations just for you” or “[Name], we think you’ll love these” or something similar that indicates you’re personally recommending something to people. Use subject lines like this in conjunction with a segmented audience, as segmented audiences have a clickthrough rate 100.95% higher than non-segmented campaigns, according to Mailchimp.
Automated Emails: You can also put recommendations into automated emails like confirmation emails and delivery notifications. This allows you to add recommendations without relying on one-off email campaigns and extra work on your part. Adding product recommendations to confirmation emails and delivery notifications is part of ShippingEasy’s new Product Recommendations feature.
Packing Slips: An often-forgotten place you can add product recommendations is on the packing slips that go into your packages. Obviously, these won’t quite get the eyeballs that emails get, and people can’t click on them, but this is just one more place to plant the seed. One note of caution: be sure to use short links to make it easier for a customer to look up these products. No one is going to type in a full URL. Make the path to purchase as simple as possible. (ShippingEasy’s Product Recommendations does this automatically for you.)
Use product recommendations to not only increase holiday sales, but also capitalize on the increased traffic you see during the holidays and keep customers coming back throughout the next year and beyond.
Product Recommendations are included as part of our Customer Marketing add-on, and are easy to set up in just a few clicks. Want to try it FREE for 30-days? Click the button below to set up a ShippingEasy account. Let’s make this the year your business skyrockets!
Rob Zaleski
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