How E-tailers Can Leverage Negotiation & SMS Marketing This Holiday Season. With online holiday sales predicted to reach $91.6 billion in 2016 — an 11 percent jump from 2015 — e-commerce retailers are expected to enjoy more success than ever this season. To accomplish this, these retailers are exploring new tools, tactics and technologies to gain and keep a competitive edge. Negotiation Negotiation is a tactic as old as trade itself. But with the ability to negotiate — for shoppers to make an offer to the seller on a product they’ve been eying — online retailers find they don’t need to lose a customer over price. Perhaps best of all, implementing negotiation tools on a pre-existing ecommerce website is far from complicated. Expect to see more of it this holiday shopping season because when it comes to customer engagement, there’s not much else out there that can compete. *Only about 10 percent of SMS marketing messages are marked as spam; email metrics are astronomically higher as many customers have grown weary of email campaigns. About 50 percent of U.S. consumers make direct purchases after receiving an SMS text, QR code or coupon from a brand. These tools — proven to raise conversion rates, customer loyalty, and profits — give retailers a leg up in the increasingly competitive e-commerce market.
With online holiday sales predicted
to reach $91.6 billion in 2016 — an 11 percent jump from 2015 —
e-commerce retailers are expected to enjoy more success than ever
this season. But it
also means the space is congested, with hundreds of thousands of
brands trying to squeeze everything they can out of this flurry of
consumer spending. To accomplish this, these retailers are
exploring new tools, tactics and technologies to gain and keep a
competitive edge.
Thankfully, there is no shortage of new tools to help retailers
gain that edge, and leading the charge are two strategies in
particular that have not only proven to be popular among e-commerce
professionals but also highly effective: SMS and online
negotiation. Whether for increasing engagement and time spent on a
website or decreasing shopping cart abandonment and bounce rates,
both strategies are surging in popularity because of their ability
to drive results.
Negotiation
Negotiation is a tactic as old as trade itself. It’s easy for
brick-and-mortar retailers to negotiate price with customers
because the customers are right in front of them. Things get more
complicated for online merchants. While eBay and Amazon have been
practicing personal pricing options for years, negotiation offers a
more customized and tailored approach — for the consumer and the
seller.
Retailers that negotiate price with consumers see an increased
conversion rate of 18 to 20 percent, largely because they are
better able to successfully cut down on comparison shopping and
shopping cart abandonment; 68 percent of shoppers leave their carts
to price compare midway through…
COMMENTS