On The Web : Don't Just Make Friends

Use engagement marketing to increase conversions and attract new customers

You also can encourage voting with a banner on your homepage. Request e-mail addresses from these on-site voters so you can send them the results; it's a great way to increase conversions and build your list.

2. Invite shoppers to enter a contest. Ask your customers to submit stories about innovative and interesting ways they use your products. Publish the results online. Ask winners to demonstrate their techniques in a live webinar. Make it even more interactive: Ask your customers to vote for the winner from a top 10 list.

3. Conduct customer surveys. Shoppers love to share their opinions because it makes them feel involved. So send a survey, and ask what they think. This is particularly effective for customers who appear to have lost interest in your e-mail program or haven't been to your site in months.

Ask your customers about potential new products, changes you're considering for the site or a possible new line of business.

4. Ask shoppers to e-mail five friends. Offer shoppers a prize, discount, free shipping or even a token gift for passing one of your promotional e-mails on to five friends.

Tracking these e-mails needn't be daunting for your IT people. Simply tell shoppers to redeem their prizes by returning to the site and clicking a link that certifies they passed along the e-mail. No worries if a few people cheat the system; most will do what you asked and earn the prize (and you'll save on IT costs).

5. Offer discounts to bloggers. Incent shoppers to blog about your product and/or create links back to your site by giving away discounts as mentioned above. You're giving away a small discount, not a 52-inch flat screen TV, so trust people to self-report their work.

Shoppers who like your product enough to get motivated by a discount will do a good and honest job blogging. Inbound links can directly drive new shoppers to your site — and even help search engine optimization.

6. Use ratings and reviews. If you're not giving customers a chance to rate and review your products, fix that immediately. This is a standard feature on today's e-commerce sites.

You can get even more out of this information by featuring five-star rated products in e-mail, using ratings as a sorting tool for search results and on category pages, or by showing online ratings in your catalog.

I've seen top-rated products (four and five stars) convert about 40 percent better than products with lower ratings or no reviews at all. You need to get those ratings and products in front of 
your customers.

The ideas for engagement marketing are infinite, so be innovative and prove that e-commerce — and you — can engage shoppers in ways that promote sales. I'm confident you'll see positive results.

Larry Kavanagh is founder and CEO of e-commerce
and e-mail solutions provider DMinSite (lkavanagh@
dminsite.com).

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