How To Use Predictive Analytics For Ecommerce Businesses After The Holiday Season

The holiday season is in full swing. Online shoppers seem to be in a jolly good mood to splurge during the merriest last weeks of the year! A January 2016 report by eMarketer stated holiday retail ecommerce sales will grow 17% this year – and this is just the US figures.

In other news, the National Retail Federation has estimated shoppers will spend an average of $935 during November and December of 2016! This means the ecommerce industry is doing its best to ensure their shopping experience is absolutely positive and smooth.

Holiday Season Marketing Is At Its Peak

It is true around this time the customers always face plenty of information such as holiday sale advertisements, mobile and browser notifications, emailers and what not! Please be sure that as long as the messaging is personalised and relevant, your customers will be more than happy to receive communication from you.

So now that you have managed to break the ice with your customers and they have started to pour in large numbers to your website and make purchases – one part of your job is done.

Yes – only one, because you have to simultaneously monitor and analyse performance across all online channels and predict your customer’s next step!

Macy’s.com Used Predictive Analytics And The Results Were Phenomenal

In the summer of 2014, the online retailer implemented a SAP tool to understand how their customers were buying during their summer sale. This helped them create better email and website marketing campaigns. Naturally, Macy’s.com saw an impressive rise from 8% to 12% in their online sales in 3 months because of the increased level of personalization in messages on emails and website.

The point is that predictive analytics solutions helps e-firms understand their customers quickly and accurately. Which channel is taken to reach out to them is a different story and totally depends on the results. Adding to this thought, here’s how ecommerce marketers can use predictive analytics to make sure their company’s sales don’t dip during the holiday season:

Potential For Cross Selling

With predictive analytics, you can easily guess the kind of products your customers are looking for online. If you have already built a level of trust with customers, then it’s possible to make them buy more. The right predictive analytics tool will streamline the cross-selling process by analysing the previous purchase made by the customers, their spending habits and overall behaviour.

Manage Price Points

It’s a holiday sale – you have to be sure of the prices you keep for each product category. While overpricing can kill a campaign, underpricing will eventually hurt the overall ROI.

Based on the customer’s propensity to purchase, the sales team can test different price points and scenarios to predict the overall outcome of the online sale.

Study different criteria such as location, product and marketing shifts. Predictive analytics can help the sales teams understand customer from a research-based approach.

Figure Out The Top Trending Products During The Sale

To predict which of your products have the highest possibility of being purchased not just once but repetitively, showcase your best-selling items on the homepage itself. This is only possible once you know the online shoppers’ inclination towards that particular product range or services.

Calculate A Customer’s Lifetime Value

With detailed reporting and extensive data collection, determine each customer’s contribution margin. Collect meat on key points such as loyalty, browsing history, current profitability, etc. get an accurate estimate of future revenue. This might help you align future products around your most valued customers. Giving them what they want every time they arrive on your website is the ultimate goal, isn’t it?

If you are looking at fast customer engagement and growth, then marketers should not hesitate to use this online tool. During the holiday season, Wigzo can help you on three broad areas. They are:

360-degree User Profiling

Use all your audience data – from social media channels, to digital forums, online behaviour and more to create 360-degree user profiles. The better your understanding of users, the more personalised and effective your holiday sale campaigns are.

Behavioural Automation

Your users behave differently, then why treat them the same way – especially during the holidays? Wigzo helps you automate your marketing processes using 360-degree user profiling. Personalised marketing automation that will guarantee you higher ROI.

Product Recommendations

Custom product recommendations based on what adds value to your users the most, is the hack to getting higher conversions. With global profiling for each of your customers, Wigzo makes it possible to create tailored recommendation holiday sale campaigns that convert more.

[This post first appeared on Wigzo’s official blog and has been reproduced with permission.]

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