Ecommerce and marketing: The dream team for app success
Once you’ve taken the leap and made the investment in your new app, it’s crucial that it delivers the results you’ve promised the business it will.
The best way to ensure that your app performs, drives sales, and meets ROI is to make sure that your ecommerce and marketing teams are working together from the beginning.
This isn’t always as easy as it seems, however – often ecommerce and marketing are separated, and when either one of the teams is excluded this can mean the app isn’t reaching its full potential.
This blog post will show you the benefits of connecting your ecommerce with your marketing team to support your app, and will show you how to make sure both teams are joined up to guarantee your app delivers.
Where’s the love between ecommerce and marketing?
Ecommerce and marketing can often be disconnected.
This is especially true in very large companies, where the marketing department largely takes care of brand and shopper marketing, while ecommerce deals with all things online.
Often when it comes to apps, the ecommerce team will take complete ownership of the app including elements of marketing associated with it, as apps are often considered an extension of the online shop.
This can mean that app marketing efforts run purely within the ecommerce team aren’t aligned with broader marketing initiatives, and can lead to missed opportunities for sales or customer relationship building on the app.
Marketing the app separately from the rest of the business also means that it doesn’t receive the attention and investment that other parts of the business do, such as stores or the website, which can mean that it will struggle to perform as strongly.
It also places undue pressure on the ecommerce team to prove ROI on the app, without the same degree of support from other areas of the business that different revenue streams receive.
So what are the benefits of joining forces between ecommerce and marketing, and how exactly can you do it?
Combining forces for app success
Although the app is usually in the remit of the ecommerce team, the marketing team should be involved as early on as possible – ideally during the implementation process to ensure alignment across the business.
The marketing team can help to identify particular channels and targets for promoting the app itself, and can help to position the app’s messaging and brand in a way that fits with the business and resonates with the market.
Promoting the existence of the app itself is the first step to success, and marketing should be a key stakeholder in planning and rolling out the launch of your app.
Ecommerce and marketing can work together on a launch plan, combining expertise to understand the best keywords and descriptions to help the app perform well in app stores.
The app should be cross-promoted during and after launch, not just on the online shop, but also through other marketing channels such as email and instore. It’ll be much easier to ensure the app is more than an afterthought in future campaigns if marketing is involved from day one.
Social media, PR and advertising campaigns should also be used to promote the app during launch, and should form the core of ongoing efforts to boost app sales by raising awareness of the app and making it a prominent retail and engagement channel.
It’s not just the ecommerce team that stands to gain from a closer relationship with marketing.
Ecommerce is all about testing and measuring success, with a huge amount of data available through shopper behaviour online and in-app.
There is a huge degree of insight that the marketing team can gather from the ecommerce team, and an opportunity to test new marketing methods that might not be possible with alternative channels.
For instance, online and app analytics provide detail into what leads to higher conversion rates, larger basket sizes, reduced basket abandonment, as well as engagement with certain messaging, categories, or collections.
This data is available much more quickly than undertaking research in the field, and your marketing team can use data from app sales or user behaviour to inform what campaigns to focus on next.
The app can also be used as a quick and low-risk way to A/B test certain messaging and visuals to see what results in more engagement on the app and what might work better as an ad campaign.
Syncing ecommerce and marketing
Communication is key when it comes to joining the dots between two teams. Depending on the structure of your business and the size of your teams, you’ll be able to find the way that works for you, but here are a few tips:
Assign app champions – Nominate a member of each team to advocate for the app and be responsible for syncing both teams.
Get in the calendar – Schedule regular catch up meetings with key stakeholders from each team.
Bring marketing in – Involve marketing decision makers in all app strategy discussions, from pre-launch onwards.
Don’t get left out – Make sure ecommerce is represented in marketing strategy meetings.
Share insights – Ecommerce should share reports and useful app analytics insights with marketing to inform strategy.
Think “app”
Ecommerce teams – don’t go it alone when it comes to your app.
Marketing should think “app” in all activities they do – and likewise, ecommerce should think “marketing”. The app will only be a success as far as customers know about it, and that’s where marketing is key.
Joining the dots between marketing and ecommerce is crucial to ensuring that your app is a success. Get a head start on working out your app marketing plan by downloading our App Marketing Guide.
