Are you planning to use Mailchimp for eCommerce? If so, there are a few things you need to do before you launch. We’re sure you’re itching to go live, but make sure you’re set up for success first! To that end, this article will cover the five components of eCommerce success on the platform.
There are plenty of good Mailchimp eCommerce integrations, but we’re going to focus on the new Mailchimp Store feature.
1. Connect Stripe
If you’re going to sell products online, you’ll need a way to process online payments. Mailchimp has integrations for payment processors like Square, but if you want to use a Mailchimp Store, you’ll have to use Stripe. If you haven’t done it already, here’s an article on how to connect Stripe.
2. Lead Generation
Not everyone will buy something on their first visit. In fact, most shoppers won’t make a purchase at all. That’s why you need a good email acquisition strategy so you can continue marketing to people who bounce or abandon their carts.
Popup Forms
Mailchimp has built-in support for pop-up forms. You can trigger these when a shopper’s behavior indicates that they’re about to bounce (e.g., when their mouse moves towards the back button).
They’re called exit-intent popups, and by offering an incentive like free shipping or a discount, you can increase conversions for your Mailchimp Store and grow your email list. Here’s how to set up your popup form.
Website Visitor Identification
Website visitor identification is the best inbound marketing tool for eCommerce, and LeadPost is the most affordable option. But wait—what does it do?
Visitor identification software matches your website visitors back to records in a third-party database so that it can send their names, email addresses, and mailing addresses to Mailchimp.
Even if they don’t convert on your Mailchimp Store website, LeadPost will identify up to 40 percent of your anonymous web traffic so you can market to them with email retargeting campaigns, abandoned cart recovery campaigns, and more.
For an additional fee, you can add other data like:
- phone number
- automotive data
- household income range
- age range
- education level
- gender
- homeowner status
- length of residence range
- net worth range
- marital status
- presence of children
Sign up today to get free leads as part of your free trial. All you have to do is add a short line of code to your store website and you’re ready to roll.
3. Email Marketing
One of the most effective ways to increase revenue is eCommerce email marketing. Here are two campaigns you’ll want to have ready to go before you launch your Mailchimp Store.
Welcome Campaign
A good welcome email will engage your subscribers right off the bat. These emails have much higher open and click rates than other typical campaigns, so don’t neglect this crucial component of an effective eCommerce email marketing strategy.
This campaign should be triggered immediately after someone subscribes. The nice thing about a Mailchimp store is that you can set that up with Mailchimp’s marketing automation functionality.
The email should:
- Set expectations for future emails.
- Reward your subscribers (e.g., offer free shipping or a discount on their first purchase).
- Include a compelling call to action.
Abandoned Cart Campaign
We’ve covered how to reduce cart abandonment, but a zero percent cart abandonment rate isn’t realistic. So you’ll need an abandoned cart recovery campaign to entice shoppers to come back to your Mailchimp Store to make a purchase.
As mentioned earlier, using website visitor identification and email retargeting is a good way to do this.
4. Data and Insights
Good data is critical to effective marketing. There are a lot of free tools available to get that data, but they can’t pull data from the time before they were implemented on your website. So it’s important to take the few minutes you’ll need to install them on your Mailchimp Store.
Website visitor identification is one way to get that data. Here are two more tools you should set up before you launch.
- Google Analytics (GA). GA shows you where you traffic is coming from, what pages your visitors are visiting, whether they’re converting, and a whole lot more.
- Microsoft Clarity. Clarity is a free heatmapping and session recording tool that shows you how people are interacting with different pages on your website. Heatmaps show you what elements of your website people are spending the most time on, while session recordings allow you to see exactly how shoppers interact with your site as though they were sharing their screen with you.
With these two tools, you’ll be able to assess your marketing efforts and your website to see what’s working and what’s not.
4. Audience Segmentation
Audience segmentation splits your audience into different groups based on common characteristics. That way, you can use eCommerce personalization to optimize your marketing efforts.
There are four primary ways you can segment your customers:
- Geographic segmentation is location-based.
- Demographic segmentation is based on attributes like gender and age.
- Behavioral segmentation is based on website activity.
- Psychographic segmentation is based on psychological characteristics.
Geographic and demographic data is easy to obtain through forms or website visitor identification. And Mailchimp has behavioral segmentation options built-in. Psychographic data is tougher to come by, and it usually requires the use of surveys delivered by website popup or email.
5. Conversion Tracking
Finally, there’s only one thing left to do before launch. When someone converts, that data needs to be sent to all relevant platforms so that you can use that information to improve your campaigns.
First of all, you’ll want to use goal tracking to track conversions in Google Analytics. That’s usually as easy as indicating which URL a shopper will hit when they convert (e.g., “/cart” when they add an item to their shopping cart and “/confirmation” after a purchase. By implementing GA with Clarity, you’ll be able to see heatmaps and session recordings for those conversions too.
Then, you’ll need to set up conversion tracking for each ad platform you’ll be using.
Once all that’s done, you’ll be able to answer questions like “What marketing channel is leading to the most conversions?” You can spend more on your most effective tactics and abandon the ones that aren’t working.
Launch Your Mailchimp Store
Now you can take payments, track your marketing efforts, and deliver personalized email campaigns. Your Mailchimp Store is ready to launch! Next, it’s time to learn about eCommerce marketing.