Today, it is important to have a brand presence online. You need to constantly and effectively keep in touch with your old customers while you engage in creating more customers. For that, you need to have proper feedback on your site or e-commerce site. You need to know what your customers want and how you should present offers in an attractive way to make them keep coming back to you. Conversion Rate optimization, marketing automation software, and market segmentation are powerful marketing aids that will help you to:

• Close more deals as they increase conversions
• Have better relations with customers
• Create brand affinity
• And a market niche for your brand

What does Conversion Rate Optimization mean?

The systematic method of getting more and more visitors to your website who take the planned action set forth for them. The desired action may translate to filling out a form, or purchasing products and turning into a customer.

But before we jump deeper into conversion rate, let’s look into conversion.

What is Conversion?

Conversion is an expression that refers to a visitor who carries out a website’s goal. Goals may be big or small and come in various sizes and shapes. Macro conversion, for a site whose primary focus is to sell products, succeeds when users make purchases on a website. Some examples of Macro Conversion include:

• Buying a product from the website
• Asking for a quote
• Subscribing to a provided service

There may be smaller conversions as subscribing for emails that visitors may fulfill before they complete the macro-conversion. The smaller conversions are referred to as micro-conversions. Some examples of micro-conversion include:

• Registering for email lists
• Creating a user account
• Adding service or product to the shopping cart

Why is the conversion rate important?

Say you are an event food supplier and run an entire buffet during corporate meets and weddings. You prepare numerous dishes and serve in warming pans. The guests self-serve. You need to pay attention here to what is in demand and not. You could be serving charred catfish that no one cares for in the evening event after a heavy luncheon. So catfish end up in the garbage and so does your investment on it.

Each time someone takes catfish it is a conversion. Your customers view and accept the offer that makes money for you. You would want to know how many customers eat charred catfish because you would prepare as many without wasting your money.

Websites are no different. You need to know how many people go for your offer amongst the total number who visit.

What is Conversion Rate?

So let’s now look into conversion rate technically. To calculate a conversion rate you would simply divide the number of times the user completes the desired goal by the website traffic. If a visitor can convert each visit to the website by, say, buying a product, then simply divide the number of conversions by the total sessions.

Practically, conversion takes place only after a visitor enters your site. Do not confuse with SEO Conversion Optimization. – SEO is only concerned with the clicks on-site from organic search results, the number of clicks you get, and the important keywords that drive the traffic.

Calculating Conversion Rate

If a visitor converts every time they visit your site:

Say you own an e-Commerce site for computer devices- digital bazaar. A visitor purchases in each session. So we decide to optimize to increase the number of purchases. So if the user visits say 5 times, it would mean 5 chances to convert.

Let’s take a look at the 5 sessions of our user, how they behaved:

• Session 1: No purchase, No conversion — the visitor was getting familiar with the site and just looking and poking around
• Session 2: The visitor bought an optical mouse. That is a conversion!
• Session 3: User returns and buys a Braided Micro USB Cable and that is another conversion!
• Session 4: The user buys a Portable LCD Writing and Drawing Slate. Yet another conversion!
• Session 5: The user buys Gaming Touchscreen-Finger-Gloves and a pair of Headphones. Another conversion!

It does not matter the number of items the customer buys. The session includes a single unique order and that counts as one conversion.

In the hypothetical scenario, our user converted 4 out of the 5 visited times to the website

So in this case we divide the total unique orders by unique users to calculate the conversion rate for the site.

But if see the CR by unique users:

Conversion rates can be used for:

• Sales
• Email signups
• Webinar registrations
• Survey participants
• Poll participants

Actions as Email signups, webinar registration help to quantify lead generations- capture interests of people in a service or product that increases sales.

Why Bother With CRO? How Does Conversion Rate Optimization Benefit Your Business?

• You know your customers better

You learn what your customers like, what they need, and what they visit your site for. You will get answers as you test the different aspects of the website’s functionality as users will give their vote. It will help you to understand what makes them tick.

• Boost Revenue

As your sales go up, invest some in your website’s growth. Run ads on the basis of your learning and keep drawing them back for more. You can optimize your metrics. Increase your customer’s lifetime value by finding ways for them to invest more.

• Power-up your Website

Take advantage of your current assets which include your web traffic. If you have the traffic you want them to convert into customers. You can make use of Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Hello Bar to help you know how your customers will interact when they visit.

• Cut costs on Customer Procurement

Customer lifetime value is important as it is cheaper to keep than to get new customers. Plus, you want to cut your costs in getting new customers.

• Increase Your Customer’s Lifetime Value

Offer your products in packages, invite your customers via email marketing, engage them on social media- Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest Instagram, YouTube. Enhance your Customer support so that they return.

• Improve SEO Search Engine Ranking to improve CRO

People need to find you in order to buy your products. Focus on Primary keywords per page and optimize each page so that your website ranks higher in search engines.

• Make Paid Advertisements more Profitable

As the business grows you may want to invest in social ads and paid searches. Your organic marketing search data will enable you to create more targeted ads.

• CRO helps Leads to Business

CRO will help lead generation results. As you get more info on your visitors, you will be able to market them over a period.

• Improve your Website Trust

Trust is important for growth. Your customers can rely on your products and services. You will know how and when to target your customers with offers that will appeal to them.

Marketing Automation

The number of companies implementing automation tools is constantly growing. About 75% of marketers use one tool at the least to automate the marketing activities. But many don’t see the results that they desire. This is because few understand what marketing automation is or its possibilities. Lets take a closer look at what marketing automation is and what it can do for you.

Marketing automation means utilizing the software made for automating the marketing activities of a company.

But the crux of the situation lies at knowing how to use it. The software won’t automatically achieve your goals, you would have to implement the appropriate tool in the right manner.

Why is marketing automation not always successful?

Let’s say that your company wants to automate the email marketing process. Your sales team can send promotional emails to the entire customer list in a very simple and immediate way. But the question lies- will your team be able to close more sales? Maybe for a short while. But many recipients may want to unsubscribe as they do not want any irrelevant messages. So the main aim of marketing software is to deliver the appropriate messages to the right group of people at the right time. And not just merely automating the marketing activities.

The marketing automation can do much more for you than simply relieving you from the activity of sending a thousand emails with a click.

SEO Optimization

You need to get more traffic to be able to convert them into leads. The marketing automation software comes geared with Search Engine Optimization SEO tools. It will recommend keywords and allow you to compare yours with your competitors.

Tools for Personalization

The greatest benefit of marketing automation is personalization. You can address your visitors and subscribers by name which makes them know you. This helps to build up brand loyalty. To state an example you send personalized emails to your customers that address them by name. Also, the subject lines bear highly targeted info custom made to their requirements and product interests.

A/B Testing

Marketing automation is an ongoing process and has to be constantly set to new findings and requirements. It allows you to know your customers better and discover from their behavior. In this perspective, A/B testing of emails and landing pages is a must. You must go for software that has provision for A/B testing.

How can A/B Testing help?

After you finish up on your creative for the landing page your message will be better received by your audience. It will lead them to faster decisions on buying your product or service. A/B testing will help you know if the tweaks that you are making are helping you in funneling onto your visitors to convert them into customers.

Controlled online experiments or A/B testing help you to discover which elements on your landing pages are working or not for your conversion rate? They help you to get the most of the traffic, reducing your acquisition cost.

Is A/B testing Different on Landing Pages than Emails?

Users interact with emails differently than with landing pages. Say, the user lands on a landing page post click, from your email which is the pre-click. The landing page would have to be aligned accordingly- this is referred to as “message match” or scent.

Landing pages contain more elements and interaction is more complicated. The optimization is at macro-conversion level whereas for an email it is at micro-conversion level- kike CTR click through rate. You need to analyze the entire process of the campaign, starting from email click to using credit card to complete shopping. This is why you need to invest in a centralized optimization team.

Heatmaps for Tracking Customer Behavior

The heatmap analytics allow you to understand your customer behavior. The feedback enables you to optimize the customer’s path to purchase. A website heatmap shows the most popular marked as hot and unpopular- marked as cold in red and blue colors respectively. They aggregate the user behavior and simplify data analysis by providing an at-a-glance visual map as to how people interact with a page. What they like and click on, what they don’t click on, and scroll through. This helps to understand the user trends and optimize the pages for more engagement.

So, Marketing Automation will Benefit you with

• A Higher revenue
• Improved targeting
• Increase in conversion rate
• Stronger engagement with the customer
• Enhance your business’s productivity.

Market Segmentation

Market Segmentation allows you to divide the potential customer market into segments. Segmentation takes place on the basis of various characteristics. The consumers in a segment will respond in the same manner to marketing strategies. They share traits as the same type of interests, requirements, or locations.

Market segmentation allows you to create effective marketing campaigns. It also finds opportunities for your business in your market.

The benefits of market Segmentation include focusing all your marketing efforts and your resources on reaching valuable customers and meeting business goals.

You know your customers better, identify the requirements, and determine the best methods to reach those requirements for services or products.

The four types of Market Segmentation include

Demographic segmentation, Psychographic segmentation, Behavioral segmentation, Geographic segmentation.

Benefits of Market Segmentation

• Create Precise Marketing Messages:

Market segmentation will allow you to create stronger marketing messages. Your messages will be more directed and have precise language aimed at your customer’s wants, unique characteristics, and requirements of your target audience.

• Identify Effective Marketing Tactics:

With a multitude of choices in tactics, segmentation makes it easier for you to decide which works best and will appeal to your audience.

• Create Ads that are Hyper-targeted:

You can target the audience on digital ad service by location, age, purchasing habits, interests… When you define your Targeted audience with segmentation, the detailed characteristics will enable you to create targeted and effective digital ad campaigns.

• Attract Traffic and Convert Leads:

When your messages are clear and direct you will attract the right people. Drawing ideal prospects creates more conversions.

• Set Apart your Brand from Competitors:

Being more specific in messaging and value propositions, you will stand apart from your competitors.

• Build more meaningful Customer Affinity:

When you discover the needs of your customer, you can create offerings that serve your customers uniquely and lingers on with them.

• Recognize opportunities in Niche Market

Niche marketing relates to realizing industries and vertical segments with a large audience whom you can serve in newer ways. You will be able to find and tap the underserved niche markets and develop new products and services for them.

So, you can plan out great marketing campaigns with help of Conversion Rate Optimization, Market Automation, and Market Segmentation.

CRO will enable you to optimize customer communication and every feature of your website.  You must start measuring Conversion Rate if you already aren’t. You will discover what percentage of traffic that actually engages with what your business offers. It will enable you to know what needs improvement and how to do it. Also, metrics as customer lifetime value and value per visitor will give you a complete picture of conversion rate.

You can take your knowledge from CRO to marketing automation to increase your conversion rate, revenue, and leads. You will also learn through Heatmaps how users interact. The info from Heatmaps coupled with Market Segmentation will allow you to group your customers by age, spending habits and behavior, requirements, or location. A/B testing will allow you to study what types of messaging and ads work and not.

So, equipped with all Conversion rate optimization, marketing automation software, and market segmentation knowledge, you can close more and more sales, build better customer relations, and head for business growth.