In big-ticket retail, purchase decisions take longer for a variety of reasons: products tend to have higher price tags, customization is part of the process, and often the input of another party is sought before making a final decision.
Retailers in this space need ecommerce CRM and email marketing tools to help them actively persuade customers during the decision-making process, by finding the combination of personalized content and offers that drive a customer to buy. These same tools assist retailers in making sure a first-time customer becomes a customer for life.
With a robust ecommerce CRM database solution retailers can capture customers' online shopping behaviors, account information and satisfaction scores. Store information can be cross-referenced for a complete picture of a customer's online and offline activity, which is key for big-ticket ecommerce.
Unlike most retailers looking to sell their products online, big-ticket retailers need an
ecommerce platform that is specifically designed to address the "big-ticket" barriers that have prevented them from going online.
Unlike their mass merchandise counterparts, big-ticket retailers need a platform that will help them overcome challenges such as:
- Merchandising products that are challenging to sell online because they are expensive, unbranded, not well understood or highly customizable
- Managing shipping requirements and costs for products that have complex delivery requirements that can't be met by standard parcel services
- Integrating franchise or co-op models where brand, product offering and distribution is controlled locally by independent dealers
- Greater emphasis on cross-channel shopping
These retailers need a system that goes beyond just a standard ecommerce platform. They need a
business solution that integrates their ecommerce store into a seamless multi-channel strategy offering.
Key ecommerce platform requirements for big-ticket retailers include:
- Localization
- Custom System Integration
- Online Merchandising
- Online Marketing
- E-Commerce
- Order Tracking
- Franchise/Co-op Extranet
- Store Intranet
- CRM & Email Marketing
- Inventory Management
The
Blueport platform represents a decade of big-ticket learning in a specialize, comprehensive, hosted solution used by retailers representing billions in big-ticket sales.
For big-ticket retailers, email marketing programs can play a significant role in guiding customers along the path to purchase. To be successful, these email programs will require careful planning and robust data but the benefits are significant.
A robust ecommerce email marketing program enables retailers to track every registered user and leverage ecommerce CRM data for personalized marketing. Based on this information, retailers can create customized email marketing campaigns to help actively persuade customers during the big-ticket decision making process.
Use the items a customer left in their shopping cart, their number of visits to the site, the categories they shopped and the items they viewed to craft personalized, automated ecommerce email marketing programs that reach out to talk about new products, sales or promotions to match an individual customer's preferences.
If you're outsourcing to an email services provider, look for an
ecommerce email marketing system that supports segmentation of email content, offers, subject lines and timing to personalize campaigns and maximize results.
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