Guide to increasing e-commerce traffic

Want to increase your e-commerce traffic to generate more sales? Then you first need to convince your customers to visit your online store. There are various ways you can approach your customers and establish yourself as their first port of call. In this guide, you'll learn how to increase e-commerce traffic through new and existing customers. Enjoy reading!

Use your email marketing

You can connect with your existing customers through email marketing and encourage them to return to your online store. Once they have made a purchase in your online store, you can start your email marketing and send newsletters to your customers. This will keep you in their minds and encourage them to return to you. Of course, there are various ways you can optimize your emails and attract more e-commerce traffic.

Example 1: Send emails on specific occasions

hagebau.de sends various types of trigger emails, such as birthday emails. Showing appreciation to customers, for example in the form of a voucher, can increase customer loyalty, which in turn increases the likelihood that the customer will shop at the store again.

Excerpt from birthday email at hagebau.de

You can give your online shop a decisive advantage by sending such newsletters automatically. Take a look at the following blog article: Email automation: More traffic for less work – cool, right?

Example 2: Send newsletters with personalized content

To ensure that you don't just send your customers anything in your newsletter, but rather content that they will enjoy, you can track the click and purchase behavior of your existing customers and use this information for your newsletter. That's why many marketers today rely on email marketing personalization. If you would like to learn more about this, we recommend reading our blog article: Email marketing examples with personalized content.

The online shop excellent-hemd.de sends a regular newsletter to each customer with personalized content and discount promotions. In this way, excellent-hemd.de directly and actively encourages its customers to return to the online shop.

Newsletter excerpt from excellent-hemd.de

By displaying relevant brands and sale items, customers are more encouraged to click on the items in the newsletter and thus return to the online shop before looking at competitors' offerings. Personalized newsletters give customers the feeling that "the shop knows what I like," and the positive experience stays in their memory, so that they are happy to visit the online shop again.

Example 3: Send email newsletters about new releases

Personalized and automated email campaigns can help increase e-commerce traffic to your online store without requiring a lot of manual effort. Ex Libris, a Swiss media provider, sends out personalized email campaigns about new releases in addition to its regular newsletters.

A book can be recommended to customers for purchase as early as 90 days before its release. The appropriate recipients are identified using artificial intelligence (predictive analytics). The email is automatically sent only to recipients who are likely to be interested in the new book.

This allows automated and highly personalized emails to be generated without a lot of manual effort, which are highly likely to bring customers back to the store. Ex Libris was able to generate 10 times higher email marketing revenue in its online shop and won the 2018 Email Award for this achievement. If you would like to learn more about this use case, we recommend reading the case study.

Example of an email campaign about new releases from Ex Libris

Create a natural customer loyalty effect

However, increased e-commerce traffic to your online store cannot be generated by email marketing alone. By offering your customers a personalized stream, you can create a natural customer loyalty effect—similar to Netflix, Facebook, or Instagram. This will automatically increase your repeat purchase rate.

You can think of the personal stream as a personalized shopping area for each individual customer in your online store. The content is compiled individually for each customer: blog articles, favorite brands, favorite categories—all on a separate page for each of your customers. This allows you to create a special and highly personalized area in your online store that sets you apart from your competitors and makes customers feel like they have to check their own stream every day to see if there is anything new.

OUTLETCITY METZINGEN is a pioneer in this field and offers customers precisely this kind of personalized stream.

Preview of a personal stream at OUTLETCITY METZINGEN

New favorite products and matching outfits can be discovered using interactive product finders. Shop visitors are encouraged to interact, and browsing through their favorite products is fun and ensures that they stay on the site for a long time.

Preview of an interactive product finder in your personal stream at OUTLETCITY METZINGEN

With matching outfits and intelligent filtering using attributes, you can showcase your online shop's expertise and ensure that you are perceived as an expert in your field. Just like in brick-and-mortar stores, your customers will return to places where they felt well advised and had a positive shopping experience. Since the stream is constantly filled with new content, returning to the store several times a day means customers can discover exciting new products. The personal stream thus adapts to the new needs of customers in the digital age.

If you would like to learn how OUTLETCITY METZINGEN implemented this new customer loyalty strategy, watch the webinar recording "Wow, it's like Netflix for shopping."

More information about personalized emails >>