Learn how an omnichannel marketing strategy gets more conversions on restock alerts. Okay, so you've sent a back-in-stock email to your customers. But what if they miss that alert because they were not active on that channel? As an eCommerce business owner, you don't want them to miss out on updates because of their inactivity on a specific channel.This inactivity on one channel is worse when it comes to back-in-stock alerts. Because if they are late to reach the product page, they might not get the product again, leading to a bad customer experience. And more often than not, the customers are going to blame it on you because you failed to take them to the product page on time.Now, blaming it on the customer won't bring you the sale. If anything, they'll leave bad reviews on the site. So what can you do to ensure that your customers get the alert at the right time? A robust omnichannel marketing strategy is what you need.Let's see what it is and how it can improve the performance of your back-in-stock alert. We'll also provide you with six back-in-stock strategies for your omnichannel marketing. Without further ado, let's get into it.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
In omnichannel marketing, you develop your brand's presence on various online and offline channels to provide customers with a seamless experience. The more seamlessly they come across your brands, the more positive your conversions will be.This seamless and positive customer experience is so important for eCommerce business because 67% of the customers mention that the bad customer experience is one of the biggest reasons for their churn.So, if your goal is to win more customers and keep the existing ones coming to your store, you need to provide a great experience to the customers throughout their journey.
Why Do We Need Omnichannel Marketing for Back-in-stock Alerts?
According to a research study, most eCommerce businesses serve five different generations. The silent generation is the people born before 1945. On the other hand, Gen Xers are born after 1997. And because of this gap in birth years, every generation prefers different communication channels.Omnichannel back-in-stock alerts equip you to reach out to your customers on the channel of their choice and even on different channels in case of inactivity.When you don't have an omnichannel back-n-stock strategy, here's what happens. For instance, let's consider that your customer opted for the back-in-stock alert on their work email, but by the time the product is back in stock, they have taken a two-week break from their work. Now, they might open it, and when they do, there's a high chance of the product being sold out again.This is only one of the many instances when your back-in-stock alert might not reach your customers on time because of their inactivity on one channel. An omnichannel strategy helps you tackle these situations by allowing you to reach out to customers on a different channel when they are not available on one.
6 Back in Stock Strategies for Your Omnichannel eCommerce Marketing
Now that we know how important it is to have an omnichannel strategy for back-in-stock alerts. It's time to look at these strategies and see how they can boost the performance of your back-in-stock alerts.
Automate back-in-stock alerts
When you step into omnichannel strategies, you'll have to manage multiple channels and a number of other variables. And as the number of variables increases, the equation of managing tasks becomes complex. This is a situation tailor-made for automation tools to help you out.Imagine a situation where you have to add emails manually to a list and then segment those emails based on the product pages they came from. It sounds tiring and humanly impossible if you have huge traffic in your store, which you have considering you sold out your product.But the manual process doesn't end here. When you have segmented those customers, you'll have to send each one of them a back-in-stock alert. Doing this on one channel (say email) can still be possible. But when we talk about multiple channels, this can go out of your hands.The manual process is not only time-consuming, but it also comes with the risk of sending the wrong alerts to the wrong customers. This can make your customers unsubscribe from your alerts as they might think you're only spamming them.With automation tools, however, the chances of making a mistake is minimized. And no matter how big your subscriber list gets, you can share the update with a few clicks.With an app like Appikon Back in Stock alerts, your customers can sign up to receive an alert on the channel of their choice — email, Facebook Messenger, SMS, or Web Push. It ensures that you reach out to your customers on time and bring them back to get that restocked product.
Segment customers based on their preferred channels
Customer segmentation is one of the most essential aspects of the omnichannel back-in-stock strategy. It is the process of dividing the customer base into various groups of individuals that have similarities in specific ways. They can be similar based on personal characteristics, behavior, or preferences.With a customer segmentation model, you can allocate your marketing resources effectively to get your restocked product out of stock again. A segmented customer list helps you build a better relationship with your customers as you appear in front of them in a more targeted manner.For example, let's consider a customer has subscribed to receive the back-in-stock alert on SMS. If you send them an email to share the update, they are very likely to ignore it. However, if you reach out to them on SMS (the channel they picked), they feel good about it that you cared to remember the channel they picked.Segmentation helps you ensure that things go out the way they are planned for various people. It improves customer experience. Moreover, with segmentation, your messages can be more personalized, which can increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10% to 30%.
Automate the entire follow up process
In omnichannel marketing, you have to manage multiple channels such as SMS, email, social media, Messenger, web push, WhatsApp, etc. Now you can send all of these customers the initial back-in-stock alert manually. Yes, it will not be easy. But the effort required to send the first update is not even close to what you need to put in for the follow-up.You don't need to follow up with every customer. So first, you'll have to create a list of customers who you need to contact again. And then you'll send follow-up messages to all these customers on different channels — this is the epitome of a tedious task. Moreover, managing the follow-up will become more challenging as your number of subscribers increases.By automating the follow-up part, you can overcome these challenges, and even a growing list of emails won't be able to stop you. Moreover, automation will also allow you to cater to thousands of customers at the same time.
Boost customer engagement on social media
If you use social media the right way, you can improve your brand's visibility by miles. Once you expand the reach of your social media, it can even become a potent channel to share the restock updates with your customers.When you engage more with the customers, they get to know more about the products that went out of stock. And when they get restocked, you'll not just be selling them to your regular customers but will acquire new ones too.However, you should only post about a product restock on social media when you've sent the alert to the customers who subscribed for it. You don't want those customers to find that product out of stock again. It'll be a terrible customer experience for them, which might take them away from your store permanently.
Integrate different channels
If you want to get the best out of these channels, it is essential to use these in tandem. When multiple channels are involved, maintaining consistency becomes difficult. You can tackle this issue by integrating channels.Now you might ask what does it mean to integrate channels? Channel integration is when you combine your efforts across various customer channels. According to industry experts, it's the physical or logical "integration" of channels. And in simple terms, it is the practice of being consistent on all the channels with messaging and utility. Let's look at an example to help you understand it better. Your customer subscribed to the back-in-stock alert via email. So, when you send them an alert on their email, they decide to reach out to you on live chat to know some details about the product. You answer their question on live chat. Now, they are scrolling on Facebook, and another question pops up in their mind. So they reach out to you again, this time on Messenger. If your channels — email, live chat, Messenger — are not synchronized to work in tandem, there won't be any conversation history.When there's no conversation history, it becomes difficult for the support executive to determine at which stage your customers are in the buying journey. This is why you need to integrate the channels. Moreover, Appikon's Back in Stock app has integrated this functionality, which enables Shopify store owners to offer a seamless back-in-stock experience.
Monitor and Optimize the performance
eCommerce brands invest a ton of their resources in their campaigns, and the same goes for this omnichannel back-in-stock campaign. In the initial stage, it demands your time and effort. In many cases, these campaigns fail to deliver the expected results. This makes it quite essential to monitor how the brands monitor if the campaign is on track or not.And because we're talking about omnichannel strategy, of course, there are multiple channels involved. This means you'll have to track the performance of the campaign on every channel. If a certain channel is not working for you, then you can either stop using it or make some changes to check if it delivers.On the flip, if a channel is working better than what you expected, you need to invest more in it. You can further optimize it and see if the performance improves.
Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices
Here are some of the best practices that you can implement to make your back-in-stock omnichannel campaign even more effective:
Understand your buyers
Every customer behaves differently. Right from the time they land on your eCommerce store to the way they reach the product page, everything is different. So, to create an effective omnichannel strategy, it becomes essential for you to know your customers by mapping out their journey and decisions. And it's only after you understand them that you'll be able to determine what are the best channels to reach out to them (and when).
Select the right channels
Not all channels work out for every eCommerce business. Some might be working efficiently, but some might also underperform. But to deliver a positive and seamless experience to your customers, you must ensure that each of your channels is optimized perfectly.Instead of jumping to all the channels at once, pick the ones that your customers interact the most on. Leverage the potential of those channels to inform the customers when your bestsellers are back in stock.
Use the right set of tools
From what we have discussed above, it's pretty clear that you're going to need some tools to help you out in the omnichannel back-in-stock strategy. And you must ensure that the tools you're picking are the ones you can rely on.Appikon Back in Stock App does a great job of automating the alerts. And you can also opt for some tools for monitoring the performance of your omnichannel strategy. Choose the right one that fits your expectations, as using the wrong ones will only burn your fingers.
Don't force them to buy
No customer likes a brand that intrudes in their day-to-day lives. You have to understand that even if the customers have opted for the restock alert, they might not need that product from you anymore. It might be because they have purchased it from somewhere else, or maybe they don't find the product interesting anymore. You can't force them to buy. If anything, it'll repel those customers away from your brand.As an eCommerce brand, you have to be wise with every message that you send to them. You have to ensure your message not only sounds relevant but is also sent at a time that is convenient for your customers. After all, reaching the right people at the right time and with the message using the right channel is the mantra of omnichannel marketing.
Do You Have an Omnichannel Back-in-stock Strategy for Your eCommerce Business?
An omnichannel strategy allows you to provide your customers with a seamless and positive experience irrespective of what channel they prefer. It certainly improves the performance of your back-in-stock alerts.When you implement the right strategies and use the right tool, more often than not, your campaign will deliver the expected result. Moreover, the core of the omnichannel strategy is automation.By automating processes like sending alerts, follow-ups, and integration, you can make things significantly easier for you. And all of this can be done using one app — Appikon Back in Stock Alert.If you have any queries related to it, feel free to reach out to us!
