Essential Ecommerce Marketing Tools Every DTC Business Needs

Noticed how much e-commerce has taken over our lives, especially after the whole COVID situation? It's like everyone's a pro at adding things to their virtual carts now!

And let me tell you, the present e-commerce environment is not only about making purchases through your preferred ecommerce platforms; it's also about how businesses are upping their game in terms of advertising and social media marketing in order to grab our attention and keep us coming back for more.

For these e-commerce businesses to stay ahead of the competition, they must always improve their advertising and marketing strategies. E-commerce is definitely not an easy endeavor, but who doesn't enjoy a good challenge?

If you run an e-commerce business, you are aware of the difficulties in managing your marketing efforts while still keeping up with regular business operations.

And in order for all those efforts to pay off, you need to know how to target the right audience, analyze data, automate marketing workflows, among so many other crucial skills.

Fortunately, the internet is a beautiful place where there are many powerful tools available that can help you streamline your marketing workflows, improve your audience engagement, and boost your sales, and that's just a start.

That being said, do you wish you could dive into marketing automation with your social media marketing campaigns?

Or have a tool that can help your ecommerce business build audience-to-brand relationships at scale, then analyze that data to make better decisions to grow your business?

Enter chatbots on Instagram DM and Facebook Messenger! Create experiences that'll have your shoppers coming back for more and then use those chatbots to increase the performance of your email marketing, social media, and ecommerce store without needing to write a single line of code.

In this article, we'll explore three essential marketing tools that every e-commerce business needs to have and that will change the way you monetize social media forever. Let's dive in!

Manychat: How to Create Personalized Customer Journeys and Improve Engagement

So, a quick recap for those who haven't read our previous blogs. Manychat is a marketing automation platform that allows businesses to create personalized chatbots that can interact with customers on various messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM, and WhatsApp.

Manychat is, what people versed in automation call a "drag and drop" tool, meaning you don't have to know how to code in order to create your very own friendly neighborhood chatbot, just learn how Manychat itself works via their many tutorials, and you'll get to put together that bot with clicks and drags of your mouse.

Another important distinction is that the kinds of chatbots you can create using Manychat and other platforms like it are not AI-powered from the get-go (at least not yet -- Manychat is working on creating a direct integration with Chat GPT).

They are rule-based and that means you need to create the conditional logic that, once selected by your customers, will push them on a prewritten journey you've designed.

And, if you've got the technical know-how, you can add AI later in your quest to create the best possible bot.

However, do not be too quick to judge these bots just because they don't have AI. The Manychat platform is full of tools that, if correctly implemented, allow your bot to help consumers with all kinds of tasks.

Those can go from the most simple, answering FAQs to customers, for example, to the most complex like tracking packages, giving out quizzes to learn more about each consumer and driving them to checkout without you lifting a finger.

Truth is, Manychat has made chatbots a lot more approachable, and with that, they have become an essential tool for DTC e-commerce businesses as they can improve engagement, increase sales, and provide better customer service.

With this last quality in mind, I'll tell you about one of the main advantages of using Manychat: the ability to create personalized customer journeys.

If you're working with ecommerce marketing in any form, be it email marketing campaigns, social media platforms, an online store, or anything else related to how people get to know and buy from your online business, you need to take into account your customers' journey from being a total stranger to a paying client.

Basically what you want to do is map out your customer journey using customer data gathered from previous purchases and build experiences that engage followers in 1-on-1 conversations at scale through your Facebook and Instagram DMs -- automated.

Manychat can help with that exact task. You can create chatbots that ask customers questions, through run-of-the-mill surveys or more fun Buzzfeed-like quizzes.

Then, with that same information, the chatbot will be able to provide product recommendations, and offer discounts based on their responses, leading to a more personalized shopping experience, which will increase customer satisfaction and increase your purchase CVR.

We talked about Manychat's awesome functionality, how it can save you time and resources thanks to its capacity to send personalized messages to customers, automate retargeting on people who don't purchase, track their orders, and provide customer support, among other things, all within the messaging platform.

However, here's the big advantage Manychat's integration with these platforms gives businesses: using this automation provides a seamless shopping experience for customers.

Throughout their purchasing journey with you, you're saving them time and resources while improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

And where does that get us? Repeat purchases, baby, and of course, excellent data you can keep using to improve that customer journey and make them keep coming back. How does that sound?

Google Sheets: Collect and Model Data From Within Manychat

Manychat is great but, by itself, it lacks some of the most important functionality: reporting (especially tracking sales!)

While it has its own pixel and dashboard, that pixel only works if a user clicks on a button inside your chatbot, goes to the page, and purchases right then and there.

If, however, they continue browsing, go 2-3 pages in, or worse, drop off and come back later and load the website from a different device, you have no way of attributing that sale to your chatbot.

Enter Google Sheets. I know this tool is no big secret, but I gotta tell you, so many users out there create spreadsheets while having no idea how much functionality they're missing out on. So here's how you can use Google Sheets to track the performance of your chatbot.

Automate data collection

Here's the magic behind Google Sheets' collaboration with your bot. Manychat has a direct integration with Google Sheets to automatically send data collected inside your bot such as emails collected, completion rates, lead score, etc, into your spreadsheets.

This will save valuable time and provide you with a new perspective on your stats that will help you adjust your marketing strategy.

Track and analyze key metrics

Once you have the data, you'll make decisions on how to improve the user experience. These decisions will affect your entire ecosystem, since your buyers interact with you on your social media platforms, via email marketing campaigns, or online stores.

This makes it simple to track metrics like chatbot traffic, conversion rates, and customer engagement over time. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas for improvement and optimize your marketing strategies.

Make: Sync Manychat With Your Tech Stack

Make is an automation tool that allows your DTC ecommerce business to sync Manychat with the other tools in your tech stack, like your email marketing service provider, SMS marketing software, Ads Manager, Google Analytics, and more.

Here's where it steps in: let's say a user goes through your Instagram DM automation and gives you their email.

You send that email to your Google Sheets, but also your ESP, for example, Klaviyo. Via Make, you'll be able to know in real-time when that specific user has placed an order, and take a look at all of the metrics that you've tracked in the backend, for example, the average time to purchase, campaign-specific lead score, purchase CVR, etc.

The Verdict: Are these the best ecommerce marketing tools?

Having the right ecommerce marketing tools is essential for any DTC business that wants to succeed in today's ruthless digital age.

With the plethora of free and paid digital marketing tools available, it can be overwhelming to choose the right ones for your business.

Manychat is an excellent tool for creating personalized customer journeys and improving engagement.

Its ability to engage users on Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM and automatically drive them to checkout with close to no human support is changing the way e-commerce businesses approach marketing, and if you are not taking advantage of this you're missing out on a lot of additional potential revenue.

Google Sheets is a versatile tool that can help e-commerce businesses make the most of their chatbot marketing campaigns built in Manychat. It enables businesses to track and analyze key metrics, automate data collection from social media in real time, and create comprehensive reports.

Make is an excellent automation tool that'll allow you to connect pretty much any platform and trigger automations that save your time and help you scale faster and with less friction than ever before.

These three tools are definitely essential for any e-commerce business, but this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Depending on your business needs, there are other tools out there that you'll need to consider, like search engine optimization or CRM tools, however you can be confident that if your e-commerce business is integrating any or all of these tools into its daily workflow, it is on the right path to success.

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