Articles about Marketing by dbdc

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Marketing Automation for WooCommerce is way less complicated than this.

Marketing Automation for WooCommerce: The Definitive Guide

Marketing Automation isn’t just for big companies with big marketing teams and big budgets. By combining WooCommerce and its rich ecosystem of extensions with MailChimp’s robust API and automation features, businesses of any size can benefit from automated workflows that increase engagement, conversion rates, and return customers. Here’s everything I know about Marketing Automation for WooCommerce, so you can put it to work for your online store.
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Is Ethical Social Media Marketing Possible?

Does “ethical social media marketing” sound like an oxymoron? With all of the recent revelations about all the exciting places our Facebook data goes without us knowing about it, I’ll bet many people who use Facebook Ads as a part of their marketing strategy are wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into right now. Is it ethical to advertise on a platform like Facebook? And knowing that there’s little that any one of us can do to change Facebook’s ingrained behavior, what can we do to make sure that our own businesses are doing the right thing?

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How to Start a Loyalty Program for your eCommerce Business

“Are you a member of our Loyalty Program?” It seems that everywhere I shop, those are almost the first words out of the cashier’s mouth, right after “Did you find everything you were looking for?”. First it was the coffee shop with punch cards and free drinks. Then the grocery store, with special members-only discounts on everything. Then the drug store. And the hardware store. And the auto parts store. And the liquor store. So what about you? Are you ready to start a Loyalty Program for your eCommerce business? Continue reading “How to Start a Loyalty Program for your eCommerce Business”…

How Top Seasonal Businesses Maintain Cash Flow and Survive the Off-Season

Many handmade businesses sell seasonal products, and even those that don’t are affected by the seasonality of craft fairs, art shows, farmers markets, and the like. Most of the advice on setting up your seasonal business to survive year-round comes down to socking enough cash away during the fat times to survive the lean ones. That’s good advice, but your seasonal business should do more than simply survive. Here are four ways to not only survive, but thrive for all twelve months of the year. Continue reading “How Top Seasonal Businesses Maintain Cash Flow and Survive the Off-Season”…

Create Desire for Your Products the Ikea Way

How do you use your website to create desire for your products? You show a) the quality of your products and b) how they are different from similar items being sold elsewhere. Many small businesses think that means a home page with few product photos and a welcome paragraph talking about what makes their store unique. But take a look at the websites of big retailers selling in competitive markets. There’s not a single welcome paragraph in site. How do they create desire? Do they lead with their products or their story? The answer is that they lead with both.

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Etsy Changes Make me Question Everything

What Makes Etsy Changes so Controversial?

Etsy changes things about their service all the time. Just about the only time they aren’t testing or introducing changes and new is the Christmas season. There’s nothing unusual about this—technology companies are always developing their products and services to improve them or keep them competitive. Shopify, for example, releases piles of new products at their annual Unite conference, and WooCommerce issues major updates at least once a year. But there is one way in which Etsy is different. When WooCommerce and Shopify make changes, it makes their users cheer. When Etsy makes changes, it makes their users furious.

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An Abandoned Shopping Cart. Someone send someone an email.

Abandoned Cart Emails are the Least You Can Do

Abandoned Cart Emails are the first automated email you should set up for your online store. Even though they might only work 15% of the time, that’s 15 orders out of every 100 abandoned carts that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. But there are also other emails you can send to past or potential customers in order to reduce cart abandonment and increase repeat business. Since I know that you can’t do ALL of them right away, I’m going to list them in order of importance, and at the end I’ll give you some links to get you started. Ready? Let’s go.
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How dbdc Helped Double Chocolate and Steel Jewelry’s Order Volume

Chocolate and Steel is a handmade jewelry business started by the owner, Christine Street. They sell a variety of products, from earrings to bracelets to quote necklaces. Their existing site dated back five years and was no longer meeting their needs in terms of brand identity and current technology. In addition their web host had become unreliable and slow, hurting their WooCommerce performance.
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Getting Started with Facebook Messenger Chat Bots for WooCommerce

Here’s a question for you: if you run an online store that is always open and is available to customers in every time zone, how do you provide the best customer service experience? For those of you who answered “Stay Online 24 Hours a Day!”, I admire your dedication but I don’t think there’s enough coffee in the world to make that work. A more realistic solution that many companies use is to use a Live Chat feature that lets customers leave a message when you’re not online. But what if there was a way to answer customers’ questions in real time, even when you aren’t there?

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Happy Birthday to Woo(commerce)

Today is the 5th anniversary of the release of Woocommerce, the eCommerce platform the engine behind almost 40% of online stores and the one I recommend for artists, makers, and businesses selling products online. To celebrate five years of empowering people to start their own, independent online stores, I’m writing a 2016 in Woocommerce Review. Let’s take a look back at the highlights of past twelve months because age certainly isn’t slowing Woocommerce down!

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