Author: Emily Hogoboom

Q4 is drawing near and that can only mean one thing: the holiday season is almost here! 

Ecommerce brands are steadily preparing for the busiest, most important season for sales. But with the COVID-19 pandemic still looming, the high sales season will look different this year than most.

Retail stores will likely remain closed or operate at limited capacity, driving online sales even higher during the 2020 holiday season.

As more and more shoppers are turning to ecommerce to fulfil their holiday shopping needs, it’s critical for online shops to acknowledge and prepare for the demand for online gifts. 

Ecommerce brands can help customers turn any purchase into a gift purchase with things like gift wrapping options and gift messages. But some sites go above and beyond with shareable wishlists and dedicated gifting hubs to help improve the experience for those who are buying for others. 

Here are five ways ecommerce sites hosted on Shopify can meet the demand for online gift shoppers, and examples of shops that already do. 

Continue reading “5 Ways Shopify Sites Can Inspire Gifting”

Acquiring new customers is one half of the process of scaling your business. Retaining existing customers is the other. And reducing churn is essential to retaining more customers.

A quick recap: Churn rate is the rate at which you lose customers. To calculate churn rate, divide the total number of lost customers in a given time period by the total number of customers at the beginning of that same period.

Reducing your churn rate as you continue to grow means your product and messaging are resonating with your audience, and that you’re building meaningful relationships with your customers. 

So how can an ecommerce business prevent churn? With email marketing. 

The segmentation and automation capabilities of email service providers (ESPs) make them the ideal platforms to prevent churn by reaching customers with targeted messages at the right time. 

But not all ESPs are created the same. Most ESPs have the ability to segment and automate, but the ease and options vary widely. Identifying churn within an email platform can be difficult, and creating an “at-risk” segment and subsequent automation might require a little finessing. 

In our minds, here’s how two major ESPs, Klaviyo and Retention Science, stack up when it comes to helping brands prevent churn.

Continue reading “Battle Royale: Klaviyo or Retention Science for Preventing Churn?”

No industry is more suited to subscriptions than the ecommerce beauty industry.

Beauty and skin care products are used on a daily basis by millions of people. And product loyalty is high. 

Think about your own beauty or skin care routine. You may have products from 3-5 different brands. But you probably buy the same face wash from one brand, the same toner from another, and the same foundation from yet a different brand. 

The repetition and high use of beauty and skin care products make them the perfect purchases to automate with subscriptions. 

Continue reading “Ecommerce Subscriptions for Your Beauty Brand: An In-Depth Guide”

The beauty industry has benefited greatly from adding subscriptions to the mix. Ipsy, Birchbox, and the like solved the age-old problem of being hesitant to try new beauty and skincare products with their curated boxes. 

And brands like Kopari Beauty are able to anticipate and prepare for customers’ needs with replenishment subscription options. 

But as a beauty brand that offers replenishment subscriptions or curates monthly subscription boxes, your business depends on recurring revenue from your subscribers. 

This makes churn one of the most important, if not the most important, metrics to measure and act around. 

Continue reading “Our Essential Email Playbook for Beauty Subscriptions Looking to Prevent Churn”

Imagine this.

You’re down in your friend’s basement. You’ve spelt out P-I-N-G over the net and decided who serves. You and your best bud get a three-minute volley going that neither one of you wants to end. He hits a wicked curveball, but you miraculously dive to the right corner of the table to keep the ball in play.

This kind of back and forth goes on for hours, each one of you forcing the other to adapt and respond to new spins and hits. 

This is how we think about customer service. 

Continue reading “The Ping Pong Method: The Back and Forth of Customer Service”

Customer service is something an ecommerce brand cannot overlook. It’s an essential component of maintaining relationships with customers and improving the customer experience. 

But for many new ecommerce brands — and existing ones, for that matter — customer service gets forgotten as growth and scaling new customers takes precedence. 

There’s also an overwhelming amount of options for managing customer service. Outsourcing is an easy and cost-effective solution for newer brands where resources are tight. But keeping your service team in-house means you have brand experts ready to handle any problem.

We’ll break down these two common customer service solutions for ecommerce brands and discuss why an outsourced team is fine for growth-stage ecommerce businesses, but how in-house teams are better for long-term success. 

Continue reading “Why Managing Your Customer Service In-House is Better for Your Ecommerce Business”

It’s no surprise that ecommerce sales have increased in certain categories since the coronavirus pandemic swept across the country. 

As people spend more time inside their homes, the home goods industry especially has flourished. Home furnishings are essential as new home workers adapt their living space into their working space. And products that add a sense of coziness and peace at home are crucial to easing anxiety while stuck inside.

But as businesses around the country begin to open back up, it raises the question: Will home goods continue to be a strong ecommerce category once we’re not at home all the time? 

Continue reading “The Shifting Consumer Mindset: Why Home Goods Will Continue to Grow Following the Pandemic”

Email marketing is essential for most ecommerce and direct-to-consumer businesses. A healthy email marketing strategy includes targeted campaigns, promotional emails, newsletters, and automated flows.

But one of the most vital pieces of email marketing is often-overlooked: transactional emails. Transactional emails serve as one of the first touch points of customer service, and play a critical role in maintaining a positive relationship with customers.

Continue reading “Leveraging Transactional Emails for a Better Customer Experience”

The coronavirus pandemic has increased anxiety and depression around the world. 

Fears are high as people worry about contracting the virus. People are feeling lonelier than ever. And social distancing has removed the social interaction we need to feel normal.

But the beauty industry has emerged as an unlikely source of support to ease fears with its focus on self-care. 

Continue reading “Is Self-Care the Answer to Keeping Calm During Quarantine?”

Public health and safety are top of mind for most as we enter another month of social distancing. 

The Centers for Disease Control now recommends all people wear face masks when leaving their house, public parks and trails have been shut down, and businesses continue to struggle as storefronts and warehouses are forced to close. 

But for some, there’s a glimmer of hope of staying healthy throughout the spring with the help of immune-boosting products. 

Continue reading “Immune-Boosting Products Thrive During the Coronavirus Pandemic”