Even bad advertising is advertising. A phrase that probably everyone who has ever encountered a certain form of promotion knows. However, in the world of e-commerce, this sentence takes on a completely different meaning. An incorrectly selected marketing campaign can have disastrous consequences – a decrease in sales, a negative perception of the brand or even a loss of the customer base. In short, the common denominator of all bad campaigns is wasted money.
Therefore, we asked ourselves an important question: How to avoid these undesirable scenarios? Let’s take a look at which marketing activities can harm your online business rather than help it. And if you find yourself in one of them, you should be wary and reconsider your marketing strategy as soon as possible.
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Inappropriate use of pop-up windows
Pop-ups generally promise higher conversion rates. At the same time, however, they slow down the website and worsen the user experience.
When using them, try to put yourself in the role of a customer who often has to click through five different pop-ups to make a payment. First, they get a discount for subscribing to the newsletter, then free shipping on purchases over 100 euros, recommended products and finally a satisfaction survey. And if they change their mind at the last minute, there’ll be the notification of abandoned products in the basket.
Too much of anything is harmful, and this is also the case with pop-ups. Therefore, consider which of them are important for your business and set them to be attractive. Otherwise, they can be counterproductive to your business.
Pro tip: Registered customers shouldn’t be prompted to subscribe to the newsletter again. How to do it? Use cookies to track and save logged in users. Then set the pop-up window to specifically target only people who aren’t on the list. The result? Higher browsing fluency and a better user experience.
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Too frequent push notifications
Is your mobile app successful? Congratulations! Did you learn to successfully use the so-called push notifications in it? Even better! But how do customers react to this form of promotion? According to surveys, they react very well, but only until there are too many of them.
What do the numbers say?
- Surveys show that as many as 2-5 notifications per week result in them being blocked.
- More than 5 notifications per week result in uninstalling the app.
- On the positive side, personalized notifications bring a higher level of user engagement.
Pro tip: Give preference to notifications that are of value to the user and solve their problems. Personalize them. To create a sense of exclusivity, you can use them to offer customers a discount or a limited time offer. The higher conversion rate is worth it!
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Mandatory and lengthy account creation
Mandatory account creation is a bit of a double-edged sword. An eshop that decides to introduce it must take into account its positive and negative consequences. The advantages clearly include immediate access to contact details. You can then use them for the benefit of better targeting of advertising or communication as such.
However, with the mandatory creation of an account, the aforementioned pitfalls come as well. This is the second most common reason people don’t complete a purchase. So there’s a possibility that every fifth customer leaves your eshop absolutely unnecessarily.
So how to proceed? Think carefully about the benefits of mandatory registration and consider whether they’re sufficient to offset the risk of a 25% decline in sales.
Pro tip: You don’t need to have a mandatory account creation to incentivize customers to sign up. Once the customer completes the order, prompt them to save their contact details and enter their password to create an account. Simply put, it can be done without forcing 🙂
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Reckless mailing campaigns
How many times have you, as a customer, subscribed to a newsletter just to get a discount on your first purchase? However, every other e-mail from the store probably went unnoticed. Thousands of other people approach e-mail marketing similarly. However, it can be done another way. Try replacing a regular newsletter with more useful and less demanding automated e-mails. We’ve listed the best ones here.
And if you already have subscribers, make sure your e-mails go straight to their main inbox. We write about how to achieve this here.
What do the numbers say?
- The average e-commerce e-mail open rate is 15.8%.
- Surveys show that personalized subjects increase the opening rate by up to 29-50%. Therefore, to evoke trust and a sense of importance, try to use, for example, the customer’s name in the subject.
Pro tip: Check the current status of the mailbox from which you’re sending your e-mails. It often happens that if a customer responds to an e-mail, they’ll never receive a response because no one is watching the delivery box.
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Unattractive and inappropriately presented discounts
How to motivate customers to buy? The most effective tool is undoubtedly discounts, coupons, cashbacks or gifts coming with the purchase. However, pay attention to their value. We’ve even encountered cases where sellers offered a discount of 2 or 3 percent for subscribing to the newsletter. Is it even worth copying a discount code for this amount? Most often, no.
The same principle applies to products in your eshop. If you display a discount for each product, it’s the same as if you didn’t mention the discount at all. Therefore, discount only those products whose sale will benefit you and choose a price that’s really attractive for them. Otherwise, you may appear untrustworthy or even amateurish.
Pro tip: Instead of showing the size of the discount for products, focus on making the products with the biggest discount stand out visibly. This makes it easy to draw attention to products that will appeal to your target group and encourage them to buy.
Each coin has two sides, and this also applies to marketing activities. There’s no universal rule that can be applied to every client. What works for you may not work for others. So how do you choose? The best thing you can do is to get to know your target audience and their needs or preferences. And then we recommend exploring, testing, noticing what works, and adjusting your marketing activities based on the data and feedback you receive. And even if you encounter failure, don’t despair. The possibilities are endless and it’ll definitely work out next time 🙂
