Six Ecommerce Conversion Hacks Your Brand Needs in 2022

Even now that consumers are slowly getting back to a bit more normalcy, their shopping behaviors are forever changed thanks to 2021 and the ongoing effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

And that includes their increasing reliance on easy ecommerce conversions and email as a main source of communication with favorite brands. In order to keep up those open lines of communication and your audience engaged in Q4 and beyond, here are six ecommerce conversion hacks every marketer needs to create seamless customer experiences that add value to shoppers’ busy lives.

Take personalization beyond the subject line to build ecommerce conversion hacks into your strategy

When it comes to email personalization, many marketers think calling customers by name is as good as it gets. But adding dynamic, data-driven elements to your ecommerce emails is one of the quickest ways to establish truly unique, one-to-one connections with your subscribers.

Creating fun, engaging content for shoppers is — believe it or not — as simple as asking the right questions more often than not. For example, when clothing retailer Hot Topic wanted to grow engagement among its new email subscribers, the brand asked customers for their Hogwarts houses during the onboarding process.

Future emails included merchandise, messaging, and dynamic product imagery tailored to their answers. A move that not only boosted open rates by 260% and click-through rates by 300%, but also proved to new customers that opening future Hot Topic emails would contain personalized, exciting offers they don’t want to miss out on going forward. 

Make messaging about more than sales

While the main goal of most ecommerce conversion hacks usually center around boosting clicks, engagement, and — ultimately — revenue, brands that make their mission and values clear in their messaging are investing in their relationships with cause-motivated customers, a smart decision that drives trust and builds loyalty. Especially if you choose to prioritize this approach over simply making the next sale.

As pandemic restrictions were removed, re-added, and evolved over the course of 2021, many businesses reached out via email to let subscribers know how seriously they were taking safety precautions and following local protocols in an exhaustingly trying time. But even as shoppers return to their pre-pandemic shopping routines, they still want to buy from brands that are transparent and forthcoming about its values.

One company taking its commitment to the missions statement seriously is outdoor brand Burton, which recently took a break from the typical holiday barrage of sales, discounts, and offers to focus on other ways the brand is participating in charitable causes during the season. By focusing on what the brand is giving and doing instead of pushing its audience to act, Burton has seen tremendous success in establishing new relationships and inspiring repeat purchases from loyal customers.

Add value to every email and ecommerce conversion hack

Everyone loves the feeling of getting an exclusive deal, and the most delightful ecommerce conversion hacks work because they combine personalized incentives to shop with the highly effective element of surprise.

Recently, NASCAR proved that everyone loves an unexpected treat by replacing its standard birthday greeting and discount email with an interactive message that mimicked receiving a real-life gift by including a “present” containing a personalized discount.

And the results? A 406% bump in online sales — among several other advantages. Whether you’re talking holiday tactics or everyday experiences, don’t forget that driving revenue growth through email marketing isn’t always just about delivering a discount. It’s also about wrapping those discounts in an appealing, personalized package that makes your subscribers want to engage. 

Use subscriptions models to generate new revenue streams

Subscription models such as newsletters are often overlooked by ecommerce conversion hack-minded marketers as the province of digital publications. However, subscribers are very often shoppers, and understanding the ways in which subscription models can generate new revenue streams is an experiment that quite frequently results in tremendous payoffs for businesses willing to innovate.

Though Food52 is often thought of as a recipe site, the brand actually captures two-thirds of its revenue from its online shop. So, when the brand wanted to merge the experiences of its online shoppers with those of its loyal readers, it began thinking of its emails as an online magazine.

Case in point, when a German egg coddler wasn’t selling as expected in the online store, Food52 used its emails to reach out to its community of subscribers with a helpful guide for explaining what the coddler did — and why dedicated foodies couldn’t call themselves one without this product. In just a month, Food52’s transactional emails sold over 20,000 of this company’s products to customers. An egg-celent result if we’ve ever seen one!

Address buyers’ needs like never before to make the most of your ecommerce conversion hacks

Ecommerce shoppers have been conditioned to act on reminder emails about their abandoned carts in 2021, but one way to make your forgotten items top-of-mind again is to let email audiences hear from happy customers. And user-generated content like product recommendations and reviews matter — 72% of shoppers say they take these factors into consideration when making a purchase.

So, why wait for your online shoppers to go looking for reviews? Bring those glowing comments and user-generated content straight to their inboxes by using first-party data to generate personalized emails. That way, you give shoppers all the information they need to make an informed purchase decision — and help them discover what they’ve been missing out on —  from the same place they browse items they’re currently on the fence about.

Create flexible shopping, fulfillment, and payment experiences

Over the course of 2021, millions of online shoppers woke up to the ease and conveniences of buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS), curbside pickup, and buy now, pay later (BNPL) experiences. But these aren’t passing trends — in fact, more than half of ecommerce customers who took advantage of these extra-flexible purchase paths say they’ll continue to use these services even after the pandemic comes to a close.

Using all of your marketing channels to create a seamless, convenient, and flexible hybrid shopping experience is an innovative ecommerce conversion hack that helps your brand provide value for busy customers — no matter when, where, or how they choose to engage.

Giving your buyers the status of their latest online order (and dynamically updating it every step of the journey) inside their purchase confirmation email with pickup hours, store location and driving directions, personalized in-store offers, and more adds value to every email send. Especially if you pair the user-generated product recommendations, reviews, and feedback discussed earlier with this live look into their BOPIS order’s progress to generate long-term customer goodwill, engagement, and loyalty.