Automation helps you save time and become more efficient. Here are four functions of your eCommerce company that can be automated using artificial intelligence.
There are three keys to business growth: Save money, save time, and sell more. The majority of eCommerce companies, irrespective of sector and size, focus on the third ingredient, i.e., boosting sales rapidly.
What they often forget is that with an increase in demand and complexity of tasks, systems that used to work before losing their efficiency and start breaking down.
In response, eCommerce companies resort to taking unsystematic partial measures that require unnecessary attention from employees. Time is primarily spent on driving ad-hock functions and on what’s urgent, instead of working towards a bigger goal.
So, if you are in a similar rut, we have the perfect solution – Artificial Intelligence (AI). A Narrative Science report states that in 2017, 61% of businesses used AI in some form or the other. That enabled them to improve workforce productivity and focus on tasks that mattered.
No wonder, the online revenues show an impressive growth by covering an additional 1.5% of the annual retail sales in the past few years. This feat goes to AI. Therefore, pack more hours to your day and complete more tasks in an hour with AI.
Here are four functions of your eCommerce company that can be automated:
- Marketing
In this day and age, business growth is next to impossible without marketing. You must produce content consistently, ramp up your social media presence and send regular emails to increase brand visibility and website traffic to keep the customers engaged.
With AI, you can create and schedule monthly content and social media calendars in advance, and make time for other high-margin activities such as measuring metrics to improve your marketing strategy.
Almost 61% of marketers who invest in a minimum of six hours every week on social media saw a considerable improvement in the search engine rankings.
Automation also improves the email marketing initiatives of an eCommerce company.
An Epsilon Email Institute report states that triggered emails have a 70.5% higher open rate and 152% higher CTR than regular newsletters. Artificial intelligence algorithms enable you to send emails to whoever performs a specific action or qualifies for a particular condition on your website.
AI improves the conversion by analyzing information about a potential customer’s behavior to deliver relevant, personalized marketing messages on the right platforms at the right time.
For example, a UK-based parenting site, Mumsnet, sends email newsletters to expectant moms (once they share their due dates) throughout the pregnancy for them to learn about the different stages. The newsletter is fully automated, and of course, creative too.
“3 Effective Ways to do eCommerce Marketing using Artificial Intelligence.”
- Sales
Artificial intelligence can take the sales function to new heights. For example, AI-powered virtual sales assistants such as Drift Assistant increase the productivity of your reps by determining the best time to contact a potential customer or identifying the right words to use to close the sale.
Regarding your lead database, tools such as Seamless.ai, use artificial intelligence to validate the lead contact information. This allows you to search criteria to find your entire addressable market in a matter of seconds. Time saved!
Besides, CSO Insights reports that less than 50% of all forecasted sales opportunities are accurate. AI-driven tools such as Clari can be used for sales forecasts. Using AI, they can predict sales revenue more accurately. Algorithms can help your sales team in gathering data about previously lost and won deals and collecting data signals such as emails, phone calls and meetings.
These data points, after analyzing how they affect the sales outcomes, can be applied to the current pipeline, which gives accurate insights into the next course of action.
“A Quick Guide to Forecasting Sales using Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce.”
- Inventory management
When you run an eCommerce business, having an inventory management system is a must-have as it gives you insights into every aspect of your products and target customers, including demand and supply ratio, seasonality metrics, and buying patterns. Yet, 43% of SMBs don’t track inventory or do so manually.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a big or small inventory, automating the process can save you countless hours of manual work and prevent massive headaches! Plus, human error is a top issue of 46% warehouses.
eCommerce companies that don’t take inventory management seriously end up frustrating their customers who place orders for out-of-stock products. In 2017, 34% of businesses shipped an order late because they unknowingly sold a product that wasn’t in stock.
With the help of AI, you not only keep track of the supply-and-demand of your products but also set alerts for the stock running low.
Automation allows you to stay on top of things, make appropriate arrangements, and update your eCommerce website accordingly so that the customers don’t purchase something you can’t fulfill. Orderhive is one such inventory management tool that automates your order workflow.
“4 Applications of Artificial Intelligence in eCommerce.”
- Customer experience (CX)
CX should always be a top priority for any business. Your eCommerce company is no exception. An Oracle research found that 42% of respondents say that automation technologies in sales, marketing and customer service improve the overall customer experience.
After all – acquiring a new customer is 5X more expensive than retaining an existing one, according to Invesp. AI enables you to transform your customer service interactions, provide better response times, and increase the quality of interactions.
Algorithms can collate data from several sources; it can factor in details such as buying patterns, geographical location, browsing history, weather, seasonality, and more to understand every individual customer better and offer tailored experiences at the right time and on the most suitable channels.
Starbucks customized their user experience using artificial intelligence. Their spend-based rewards system involves pushing 30 variations of emails to over 400,000 highly personalized customer profiles every week. Such email interactions led to increased customer engagement, and that shot up sales.
With AI, the coffee chain was able to dig deeper into the popularity of products, give insight into how different locations are performing, and optimize labor to accommodate the increase/decrease in-store footfall.
“Implementing Product Recommendation Engines in eCommerce – A Quick Guide.”
Conclusion
Time is of the essence when you run an eCommerce business of any kind. Therefore, it is necessary to prioritize work and free yourself and your team from tedious tasks. Automation can help you become more efficient and save time. If you’re looking to automate tasks within your business, start with the four mentioned above.
Automation helps you save time and before more efficient. Here are four functions of your eCommerce company that can be automated.
Datoin is an automated AI platform for helping improve performance of sales at eCommerce companies. Sign-up for a free demo here – https://app.datoin.com/signup.