Mobile Marketing in eCommerce - Capture, Engage, & Convert

Mar 23, 2022

Mobile marketing is distinct from the traditional eCommerce marketing simply because of the device customers are using to access and navigate your online store. The general consensus is that your website should be mobile optimized. However, effective mobile marketing goes much further than that.

Here's why:

Mobile users should expect to experience a completely different experience from those who could get or want when using a laptop or desktop.

That means your mobile marketing should make use of certain tools and techniques that are especially effective for phones. Let's talk about some later. However, to give you an ideaof what to include, your mobile marketing strategies will include email marketing SMS, and social media all of which can be accessed and used with a smartphone.

In terms of the eCommerce industry, mobile customers represent around 40% of total retail sales. That's over $350 billion, and this is expected to rise in the coming years. The average person spends hours looking at their phones because unlike computers, phones take them everywhere.

There are seven elements of mobile-based marketing that you can implement to attract and drive more customers into your store

1. Utilize email newsletters, automation and automated

Email newsletters are particularly amenable to smartphones because responsive designs will perfectly fit with the tech. It's an effective way to stay in touch with your customers and leads, keep them informed, deliver valuable content and pertinent offers that meet their needs, and make them feel valued.

Plus, 68% of emails are opened using mobile devices, because the majority of people find it easier to access emails on mobile devices.

By incorporating automation for email in the mix and enhancing the relationship with your customers and not have to invest additional time on it.

Any time someone fills out the form, purchases an item, has an inquiry, leaves a cart, or takes another step on your store, you can create automated email notifications to instantly respond. A few examples include welcome messages, onboarding sequences, special offers, abandoned cart emails, and many other communications.

If you're not sending out email emails, newsletters or other types of email, you're missing an easy opportunity to keep mobile customers engaged and active. Why? Since even when your customers are in line at the school pickup line or at the barber shop, or on the subway to commute, they can check your emails, and even purchase your goods. It's all about meeting them where they are.

MailPoet lets store owners make effective email newsletters as well as automations. Its editor will ensure that your emails look great across all devices and dimensions. Short on time? Utilize pre-designed templates for a variety of scenarios for eCommerce. Learn what MailPoet can boost your mobile marketing communications with emails.

2. Create video marketing and ads

When it comes to smartphones, video is king. Text on phones that is long will probably never be as appealing as watching a video.

It is possible to post videos on social media platforms and use these to direct existing fans into your store, or to promote your content on platforms such as YouTube to attract new ones.

And embedding videos on your own site can turn users who are browsing into customers. How? Videos can be used to describe the functions of your product, or show how you can use the product. Customers can leave testimonials that show just how helpful your products can be. You can also share behind-the-scenes designs that show off your impressive team or eco-friendly materials.

Vimeo video on a product page

This is the fastest video you'll ever make and it looks stunning on smartphones.

It's a unique feature of mobile marketing. If you're not sitting in front of your desk It's much easier to talk to phones than type in it. The use of voice search is now very popular and, with apps like Siri and Alexa, a regular feature of the daily lives of many.

This affects the types of blog and content pages you produce, for several reasons.

The first is that people use voice search for answering straightforward questions, and for finding the most basic details. So, it works well for connecting people to blogs offering this kind of information.

Thus, you may want to retitle the pages you have, or even create new ones that are based on the long-tail type of questions people tend to use with voice search.

It may be beneficial to provide some FAQs on a number of your pages related to the information on the page. It is also possible to include questions within your H2 and H3 subheadings.

A bookstore, for instance, might have a title with a question someone might ask for example "What are the best books for first-time parents?" -- followed by a list of five most popular choices.

4. Create display ads

Banner ads tend to not do very effectively on desktops, as they get lost among all the other information on the page. With less screen space on mobile devices, your adverts could attract more interest.

Either way, you can make display ads that make them available to users as they use social media sites or play their favourite games on mobile. These work great in remarketing previous visitors or, when targeted correctly, helping you find new prospective clients.

 Find out more about how to create an ad display campaign.

5. Utilize social media to your advantage

What are people engaging in on their mobiles for between three and four hours per every day? A lot of them are spending quite a portion of the time using social media.

You are posting to networks where your target audience is most likely to be?

This is a great place to push out videos, special offers and blog articles, useful problem-solving tips, and other sharable content. Think about including some humor in your content, like memes and hilarious GIF animations, when appropriate.

It's not just about pushing sales to new people but it's also effective way of communicating with your existing audience to keep your brand in the spotlight, boost your brand's value, and gather feedback to help shape the future direction of your company.

6. Use AMP for your blog posts

What's the most significant obstacle to effective mobile marketing in eCommerce? Page load speed. Why? Because mobile is focused on the convenience. Fast means convenient.

The mobile-optimized websites often do not perform well here. Many pages take much longer than three seconds for loading this is roughly the amount of time people are willing to wait.

That is, the longer your pages require to load the less active visitors you'll perish. This is especially true for mobile devices.

The AMP project -- it means 'accelerated mobile page offers an opportunity to organize your blog's pages as well as other pages so they can load quicker on mobile devices.

The average load speed for AMP-style pages is under one second. It's about four times faster than standard mobile pages.

AMP pages offer a smoother, less clunky user experience. The scrolling experience is smoother and pages aren't loaded in annoying chunks, one part at a time. It also helps increase your SEO because loading speed of pages is one of the factors that rank your site with Google.

AMP for WordPress preview

The good news is that you don't have to pay thousands for developers to assist you. It's possible to use an AMP plugin that works with WordPress that can help you change your website pages into this format. Discover more about this AMP plugin.

7. Make use of SMS for marketing

SMS marketing works extremely well on mobile devices because pretty all people read and open texts.

While there are a variety of messages that you could send via text, even simply sending useful automated customer service messages can be a huge hit with your clients.

You could, for instance, transmit a text message at any time a customer's order status changes. It could inform them that they're waiting on their order, their order is being completed, their money has been refunded, their order is shipped, etc. Be aware that, like other marketing techniques like email it is necessary to get customers' permission before reaching out via text.

Twilio texts on a phone

Track your mobile marketing stats

But you can take things to the next level and see mobile-specific statistics with Google Analytics. Track individual ad campaigns and observe how visitors move across your website pages, identify what pages are causing them to leave as well as monitor exactly how much revenue different ad campaigns and traffic sources are responsible for.

Think Mobile first.

There is a chance that you're already using a number of these methods for marketing via mobile. If you are using them, here's a great reminder to make sure you're doing the same. However, if you're lagging or faltering on things like videos, social media or SMS, make the time to refocus so you can attract, engage, and convert more customers and leads who find your store on their smartphones.