In addition to enabling better customer journeys across multiple online platforms, eCommerce marketers have to drive better buying and shopping experiences through these multiple channels, including boosting the efficacy of their online store or website experience; what does it takes for today’s eCommerce marketers to stay ahead of the game?

Einat Etzioni, CMO at Namogoo shares a few interesting tips in this quick chat:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat Einat, tell us more about yourself and your marketing journey through the years. If you hadn’t been in marketing, in what other role or function would you have been in…?

My entire background has been in tech – working for application development and integration companies and now in eCommerce technology. I actually started in sales roles – sales operations and sales management before I made the transition to marketing. I think that made me better at my job because one of the main challenges all of us marketers face, whether we are selling to businesses or consumers, is our contribution to revenue. I think it’s an even bigger challenge for B2C companies as they invest so much in brand building and in driving traffic to their sites only for 90-98% of visitors to drop off without buying. Companies are starting to realize now that their main revenue driver has to be CVR and AOV improvements as well as LTV, but not necessarily just to get more and more traffic. That is when companies can really start balancing their CAC and creating a sustainable business.  

For the last couple of years, I have been an active member of the G-CMO Forum, which is a community of CMOs from global companies, startups, and VCs in Israel, to help them become leaders in SaaS technology marketing. 

If I wasn’t a marketer I would have probably been in sales. When I was younger, I actually wanted to be an actress but was not accepted to Art school

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We’d love to hear the top insights from Namogoo’s recent survey on eCommerce promotion trends? 

Before our consumer-focused survey on promotions, we also completed a survey of global eCommerce leaders. When comparing the results of both surveys, we found a few very interesting contradictions. While only 4% of retailers reported free shipping as the most effective promotion, 77% of consumers reported that they not only expect to receive free shipping, but they demand it. 

In that same survey, the majority of eCommerce leaders (43%) reported that they believe next-purchase discounts are the most effective while a whopping 90% of shoppers ranked next-purchase discounts as the least impactful promotion they could be offered. 

And it didn’t stop there. We found that 96% of companies reported that promotions are negatively affecting not only their margins but also brand perception. Meanwhile, 49% of consumers look favorably at brands that offer promotions and 46% said promotions don’t actually play a role in determining brand perception. 

But as 54% of eCommerce leaders responded that their execution strategy is to use site-wide promotions, it makes sense that retailers are seeing the ramifications of that in their margins. If used strategically and measured properly, promotions can increase brand loyalty and save margins.  

Your survey highlighted that customers find more information on products they need via email promos as opposed to hearing about them from influencers, yet, influencer marketing is still growing at a rapid pace across segment; can you share some thoughts on the trends surrounding influencer marketing today and how do you feel this will evolve in the near-future? 

Influencer marketing certainly isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Especially now that most of the major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and now Twitter) at least have commerce capabilities, brands will continue to invest in affiliate marketing. Especially among Gen-Z, this is an imperative marketing tactic. About a quarter of the consumers we surveyed were Gen-Z. 72% of Gen-Z college students say they are more likely to buy from a brand they follow on social media. They view influencers as peers with credibility and they want a peer to vouch for a product before making a purchase. Influencer marketing hasn’t broken the barrier to other generations just yet, but is beginning to make inroads, and will continue to be an important part of brands’ marketing strategy.

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What are some of the top tips and best practices you have in mind for eCommerce marketers of today? 

I love working with eCommerce marketers because their audience is more emotionally driven. Those who crack the psychology behind customer engagement can really win. For example, we know that certain pricing strategies motivate customers to buy while others can actually ruin your chances of conversion. If marketers don’t understand the psychology behind pricing, they could be driving customers away without even realizing it. Understanding this will enable companies to improve conversion rates while protecting brand perception.

In general, as marketing trends change and impact how marketers plan their customer acquisition strategies, what are some fundamentals that they should be keeping in mind? 

Until recently personalization was a nice thing to have but has quickly evolved into an expected fundamental and is no longer a “bonus” in the eyes of shoppers. As personalization tactics have come a very long way, all marketing plans need to ensure that maintaining high or at least industry-standard levels of personalization are key parts of their strategies.  

A few thoughts on the future of eCommerce Marketing?

Predicting the intent of individual consumers is going to be the basis of eCommerce marketing in the future. If we can predict the customer’s intent similarly to how we look at intent data for acquisition, it can be a game-changer. Big tech companies like Google and Facebook are strong at collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data to engage in intent-based marketing, creating high-intent audiences, and serving ads that are tailored specifically to each user. 

However, it’s impossible for eCommerce companies to target Google or Facebook users based on customer intent. These external platforms have no way of knowing what a customer’s intent could possibly be on any given site, rather the true measure of intent happens on the site itself. If we know the customer’s intent in real-time, we can use that as a tool to optimize our strategies and dramatically increase our funnel conversion.

 Some last thoughts and takeaways for CMOs?

The customer’s voice is critical. Staying in constant contact with consumers will always be a crucial tool. Performing surveys like the one mentioned above regularly, especially during a time when norms are constantly changing are necessary. The key is to never get too comfortable and assume that expectations are rapidly shifting and that unless you invest in ongoing efforts to keep up, you will quickly fall behind.

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