In 2019, the ecommerce retail industry saw $3.5 trillion in global sales. Needless to say, online retail is one of the world’s fastest-growing markets, and the competition for customers is fierce. As businesses modernize their online shopping experiences with smoother payment processes, intelligent product suggestions, elevated brand strategies, and the like, the way they talk to customers must advance as well. In a world where more than 50% of customers feel that companies don’t make it easy to contact them, being active on the communication platforms your customers use and love is an easy way to differentiate your online shopping experience from the competition.

MessageBird works with retailers like Hugo Boss and Rituals to integrate intelligent communications into their shopping experiences that drive faster sales and build long-term brand loyalty. We’ve collected some of the most compelling use cases below to help you elevate your online shopping experience.

Drive sales with Abandoned Checkout Recovery

Any ecommerce business is unhappily familiar with the pains of abandoned shopping carts. With a staggering cart abandonment rate of 75.5%* globally, targeting (and converting) shoppers who have drifted away during the payment process is a surefire way to drive sales. 

Of course, building strategies to reduce cart abandonment is nothing new, but businesses often rely on email to do the heavy lifting. MessageBird is helping customers leverage SMS to drive higher conversions and faster sales. If we compare the average SMS open-rate of 90%* to the average 45%* open-rate of cart abandonment emails, the choice is obvious. SMS enables businesses to bypass the clutter of an email inbox to land straight on customers’ phones—reminding them of that beautiful juicer they're two clicks away from owning, or the free tote bag they’ll receive with their order.

Not to mention, customers are increasingly moving from desktop to mobile to do their shopping. Case in point: in 2018, Shopify reported that 77% of traffic and 67% of orders came through mobile, whereas 2019 saw mobile generate 81% of traffic and 71% of orders*. By reaching customers directly on their mobile devices, whether it’s through SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat or Line, brands are better positioned to deliver cohesive, engaging experiences.

Deliver impactful campaigns with an omnichannel marketing approach 

Effective marketing relies on understanding your customers. As any marketer will tell you, the more personalized and contextual an interaction is with a customer, the more likely they are to engage. Think about it this way: it's one thing to tell a customer you're having a sale via an impersonal email blast. It's another thing entirely to message a customer about a sale on an item in their specific size, in the color they like, at the store location closest to them.

MessageBird is helping brands build these types of personalized, seamless communication experiences at scale. With MessageBird’s ecommerce solutions, retailers can automatically trigger restock notifications that default to a customer’s preferred messaging app, or run click-to-message campaigns that put you in direct contact with potential customers straight away.

The trick is plugging into cloud communications software that centralizes every customer’s purchase and engagement history in one place. When businesses have easy access to their entire interaction history with a customer, it improves the customer experience and extends the customer journey.

Modernize your customer support with MessageBird Inbox

Whether a customer is looking to return a faulty product, check in on an order, or lodge a complaint, every support interaction is an opportunity to turn a potentially dissatisfied customer into a brand loyalist. And if support teams count on one weapon to combat customer dissatisfaction, it’s context. 

Empowering your support agents by centralizing every customer’s interaction history in a simple, accessible conversation thread is the easiest way to drive faster ticket resolutions, build smarter support processes, and boost NPS and CSAT scores. With tools like MessageBird Inbox, retailers are not only delivering better customer support—they’re creating more efficient processes, automating repetitive manual tasks, and shifting towards engagement patterns that meet and exceed customer expectations.

Build brand loyalty with modern communications solutions

Shoppers want their loyalty reflected in a personalized, seamless customer experience that accounts for their unique relationship with your brand. Retail isn’t simply a transactional experience that starts and ends at the point of sale—it’s a relationship. Building brand loyalty hinges on having a strong connection with your customers, understanding their needs and meeting them where they are.

MessageBird is empowering retailers around the world to do exactly that with easy-to-use, omnichannel solutions that reduce shopper dropoff, drive sales, increase campaign engagement, and maximize the impact of your communications. Learn more about our ecommerce solutions or reach out to us today to see how you can transform your online shopping experience with cloud communications.