A few years ago, if you said “marketing automation” at an ecommerce conference in Bucharest, half the room would check their phones and the other half would think of banks, telecom operators and companies whose marketing budgets were bigger than the annual revenue of a typical online store. It was an expensive toy for the big players.
Since 2013 I have been working with Rareș Bănescu on Retargeting, a marketing automation and personalization platform for online stores. I have talked to hundreds of founders and heard the same reaction over and over: “sounds great, but it is not for us, we are too small.” I want to take that idea apart, in plain language, without jargon and without “double your sales in 30 days” promises.
What marketing automation actually means
Put simply: messages sent automatically to a specific person, based on what that person did on your site. You do not decide today to email everyone. The customer decides, through their behavior, when and what they receive. You just set the rules once.
It is the difference between a sales assistant shouting the deal of the day at the shop entrance and one who remembers what you tried on last week and asks whether your size came in. The first one makes noise. The second one sells.
Newsletters versus triggered emails
Most online store owners do one thing with email: the newsletter. One message, the same offer, to the whole list, once a week or whenever they remember. It is not wrong, but it is the weakest form of email marketing.
A triggered email goes out when something happens: someone subscribes, leaves products in the cart, or has not bought anything in a long time. It arrives while the person is still thinking about you, and it talks about something they already care about. That is why it generally gets opened and read far more often than a newsletter. I do not need numbers to convince you: just think about which of the two you open yourself.
Six automations every store needs
- Abandoned cart. By most industry estimates, the majority of shopping carts never make it to checkout. Some people got interrupted, some were put off by shipping costs, some are comparing prices. An email sent a few hours later, showing the items and a direct link back, wins some of them back. This is where you start, no question.
- Browse abandonment. The visitor did not add anything to the cart, but looked at the same pair of shoes three times. A discreet message the next day, with that product and a few alternatives, is a service, not pestering.
- Welcome series. Someone just subscribed. This is when they pay the most attention to you. Do not just send a discount code. Tell them who you are, why you exist, what they will find in your store and how you help when something goes wrong. Two or three messages in the first week.
- Win-back. A customer who bought six months ago and never returned is not lost, they just forgot about you. A “we miss you” message with something relevant to their last purchase can bring them back. What “a long time” means varies: for flowers it is a month, for furniture maybe a year.
- Product recommendations. “Customers who bought this also bought…” Amazon has done it for years, and not by accident. On the site, in emails, after the order. Done well, they feel like help, not advertising.
- Post-purchase messages. Order confirmation, shipping updates, a review request a few days later, a suggestion for a complementary product. These are the most-read emails you send, and the most wasted.
Why it used to be a luxury, and why it no longer is
Until a few years ago, getting this meant an enterprise platform with a hefty annual license, an integrator spending months connecting it to your store, a data person and someone to write dozens of scenarios. For a store run by two or three people, it was simply out of the question.
What changed? Three things. Software moved to the cloud, sold as a monthly subscription (SaaS), so there are no big upfront licenses. Popular ecommerce platforms now have ready-made plugins and integrations that install in minutes, not months. And the basic scenarios above come preconfigured: you only adapt them to your tone and products. That is what we set out to do with Retargeting: put tools that used to belong to big retailers within reach of a small store with no technical team.
Competition between vendors has pushed prices down even further. Today, for a small store, such a tool costs about as much as a modest monthly ad budget. The difference is that ads bring new traffic you pay for again next month, while automation works on the visitors you have already paid for.
How to get started in one week
You do not need a 40-page strategy. You need one week and some discipline:
- Day 1: pick a tool that integrates with your store platform and install it. Check that it correctly tracks visits, carts and orders.
- Day 2: clean up your subscriber list. Remove invalid addresses and people who never actually opted in. A small, clean list beats a big, dirty one every time.
- Day 3: launch the abandoned cart email. Just one, simple, with the products and a clear button.
- Day 4: write the welcome series. In your own voice, not your legal department’s.
- Day 5: turn on product recommendations on the site and in post-purchase emails.
- Days 6-7: test everything on yourself: subscribe, abandon a cart, buy something. See what you receive, how it looks on a phone, whether the links work.
Add win-back and browse abandonment after a month, once you have some data and understand how often your customers buy.
The mistakes I see most often
Spam with good paperwork. Being able to send automatically does not mean you should send a lot. I have seen stores send four emails in two days for a single abandoned cart, each with a bigger discount. The result? Customers learn to abandon carts to get a discount, and everyone else unsubscribes. One message, two at most, and a discount only when it makes sense.
No segmentation. Sending the same offer to men buying power tools and to mothers buying children’s clothes is a waste. Segmentation is not rocket science: who has bought and who has not, from which category, how often, how recently. Even three or four simple segments completely change how relevant your messages are.
“Set it and forget it.” Automation does not mean you stop looking. Prices change, products go out of stock, seasons pass. A win-back email recommending winter jackets in July tells customers nobody is home.
Messages with no personality. If your email sounds like a notification from your bank, do not be surprised when it gets treated like one. People buy from a small store precisely because it is small: they want to feel there is a human on the other side.
The small store advantage
This is the part I like most. A big retailer needs automation because it has millions of customers and no way to talk to them personally. A small store knows its customers. It knows what they like, what they ask about, what they complain about. Combine that knowledge with a tool that sends the right message at the right time, and you have something stronger than a giant’s entire ad budget.
I ran ecommerce businesses before these tools existed, first MarketOnline (one of the early Romanian online stores) and then Floria (an online florist). I know how much time and money went into trying to bring customers back by hand. Today, that excuse is gone.
Are you already using any automation in your store? If so, which one surprised you most? If not, what is holding you back?