NEW FEATURE - Popup Session Timer

This is a mini announcement for a new feature we added to Gather!

By collaborating with one of our customers we learned that there is an additional indicator to a visitor's intent to exiting your site. This comes from simple statistical probability.

If you know how long, typically, a visitor spends on your site, before they exit the site, that is valuable information.

You can typically get this information from Google Analytics or similar analytics software.

Let us say a typical visitor spends 5 minutes on your site (which you would typically get from knowing the median website session).

Now if a visitor on your site approaches the 5 minute mark, statically they may be approaching the end of their visit on your site. Now if they are not in your cart pages, or if they have gone idol, you want to incentivize them with an offer or ask them to opt in to your list.

Why?

So that you do not loose them and deliver value to them, and have a direct channel to their inbox, to deliver value to them until they become ready to make the decision to purchase from you.

For that reason, we released the session based popup timer. 

Now you can define how many minutes before a visitor should browse your website, before they receive your promotional popup.

This timer is unlike the existing page timer, which tracks how long a visitor should stay on a single page before receiving the popup.

The session based timer tracks the time your visitor spends on your whole site.

To access this feature:

1. Head to your account area

2. Head to the Editor section

3. Under Show Modes, select "Show Popup after a customer spends a period of time on your whole website?", choose a time and save. 

Enjoy the new feature :)

Iz - Founder and Product Manager, Gather.

Improve Conversion Rates with Mailchimp and Gather

To celebrate Gather's new integration with Mailchimp, I'll run you through the essence of this integration and how it will help improve your conversion rates.

How Gather helps Improve Conversions

Gather isn't your average optin popup provider. With Gather's rules based system, you can target the popup to only present itself to certain customers based on their behaviour.

One of Gather's core values comes from giving you the ability to automatically place your prospect customers in a funnel, when you would otherwise lose them as they exit your site without taking a desired action.

This gives you the chance to convert those customers at a later opportunity, and hence improve your conversion funnel.

Imagine if you knew what those customers were interested in, what they were looking at, when they opted in?

Well that's already possible with Gather. Gather gives you the acquisition URL from which an opt-in came.

Now, with the Mailchimp integration, not only does Gather send your opt-in's name and email address to your Mailchimp list, it also sends Mailchimp  the acquisition URL (the page they were on when they signed up).

This gives you the opportunity to segment customers based on their interests. Which also means you get to send them highly targeted emails, aiding with conversion optimisation.

Connecting your Gather account to Mailchimp is as easy as 1, 2,3:

1. Tell Gather you wish to connect to Mailchimp, with a click of a button.

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2. Log into Mailchimp to authorize Gather

3. Select the Mailchimp list where Gather would push new email leads.

Here are a few examples to illustrate how this new functionality can benefit you:

Ecommerce Example - More Power to your Store

Cart abandonment is such an issue for many ecommerce merchants. This is when a customer adds an item to their cart, checks out, but leaves without making a payment.

By the time a customer checks out, they usually register with the store, adding their email address. With that, Mailchimp is then able to send the customer an automated reminder email.

However, until a customer adds their email address in the check out process, cart abandonment emails cannot be sent.

Gather can help with that.

When enabling the Exit Intent Mode, and adding a cart targeting rule  on Gather, when a visitor adds an item to the cart and for whatever reason they decide to exit the site, they can then be given the option to opt into your email list and can be offered a compelling discount code.

A significant number of visitors will opt-in at this point, where Gather gives them the discount code automatically. Gather then sends their email addresses to Mailchimp, including the page on which they were on when they signed up (the acquisition URL).

Mailchimp works with a number of ecommece software, like Shopify, to track customers by email and provide you with details as to if they have made a purchase, and how much they made in orders?

Ok, this is when you can get super smart:

You can then create a segment for a particular customer interest (based on the URL information sent by Gather to Mailchimp), and only for customers who have not made a purchase yet.

That way, you'll know which customers have not completed a purchase despite being given a coupon code.

You can then send an automated email with Mailchimp to remind them to use their code, and perhaps follow up with a series of emails with information about other products which are related to the product they were originally interested in.

Content Marketing Example - Better Email Open Rates

Combining Content marketing, opt-ins and email marketing is a powerful pattern for targeted customer acquisition.

As your content grows and you add more and more content categories, you may find that your email readership and open rates fall due to the wider set of interests you now cater for.

For example, an opt-in who is interested in cake baking, may not be interested in content related about farmers markets.

When Gather sends the URL Acquisition details to Mailchimp, you can start segmenting readers by their interest categories, based on the page they were on before opting-in.

As and when a particular segmented list reaches a certain number of subscribers, you can start tailor-sending emails specific to that segment based on their interested; which in turn helps with keeping the content sent to readers (or customers) targeted and relevant to them, increasing open-rates and clickthroughs.

These were just two of many wayswith which you can utilise the power of the Gather - Mailchimp integration.

Hope that helps.

Having read this, do you have any other ideas that come to mind? 

What other customer information would you like Gather to send to Mailchimp?

I would love your comments below.

Iz. Founder, Gather.

How to Identify and Reward Loyal Customers - Tools and Processes

“Anyone can see the reason to focus on getting customers to buy. It’s obvious profit. But it takes some wisdom, experience, and long-term thinking to understand that keeping your existing customers thrilled is even more profitable.”

- Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby, one of the most respected ecommerce stores. - https://sivers.org/cs

How much do you value a loyal customers?

Well for many ecommerce stores, loyal customers are a big deal. Loyal customers are significantly more likely to buy from you again in comparison to the likelihood of a new prospect buying from you.

The loyalty of your customer is one of your business’ intangible assets and it is always a smart move to be able to quickly identify who they are and give them that loyal, or I should say that royal, treatment!

In this article, I will show you why you would want to do so, and how.

There are many ways to acquire new customers, these are some of the channels through which you could do so:

1. Advertising

2. Social media

3. Customer referrals

4. Email marketing

5. Organic traffic from content marketing

To reap the desired results, each of the above channels requires a lot time or monetary investment. A smart store owner would calculate the cost incurred through the chosen channel(s) to acquire a new customer; often known as the Cost of Acquisition.  

If the balance between the cost of acquisition and the sale value of the purchases made by the customer is positive; this means the business model is heading in the right direction.

Sometimes you can strike that balance really well. However, overtime some of these channels become more expensive causing slimmer margins. This makes the model a little risky.

So what if I told you, that (in this age of connection), sometimes it is a smarter choice to focus less on ‘getting’ new customers and more on nurturing your existing customers; increasing the value of the customers you already have.  This could well be a much more cost effective option, especially if you’re starting out.

It all starts with knowing your customer. Really knowing them! And being able to identify who those loyal customers are.

Before we can explore this, let’s first define what a loyal customer really is.

It turns out there are many ways to identify a loyal customer; including:

•    A customer who makes repeat purchases

•    A customer who follows your brand

•    A customer who refers their friends

•    A customer who subscribes to a product

You will have to work out which of the above customer attributes are the most important to you, but for the purpose of this article, I’ll show you how you can leverage technology to make the process, of identifying the customers who do fit under those criteria, a breeze.

A customer who makes repeat purchases

Using an app like Mailchimp or Dotmailer  for Shopify, you can automatically know who your repeat customers are, through smart segmentation and integrations with, for example, you Shopify store.

You can then send specific messaging to those customers, perhaps rewarding them with discount codes that are based on the products they are interested in.

This a laser focused approach and has huge benefits over generic - one size fits all - messaging.

A customer who subscribes to a product

In addition to using Mailchimp or Dotmailer, as a way to know who your repeat customers are, and specifically communicate with them, you can use another app to make it easy for your customers to subscribe to a product that they may need on recurring basis.

This is more applicable if your store's products aren’t one time purchases; personal care products for example.

For example, Both The Recurring Orders and Subscriptions app by Bold (for Shopify) and the Recurring Billing & Subscriptions by ReCharge (for Shopify) are sophisticated solutions that facilitate recurring orders, using multiple payment gateways.

Using these apps, you can identify which and how many of your customers subscribe to your products, and how much in orders they have made so far.

You’ll be able then to perhaps delight them with exclusive promotions, slowly turning them into fans of your brand.

A customer who follows your brand

Following your brand could take the form for a customer subscribing to your newsletter, liking your Facebook page or following you on Instagram.

Whilst Facebook and Instagram give you insights as to who is connecting with your brand on Social Media, a tool like Gather helps you increase the number of email subscribers you have, which is a direct channel to your customers.

Customers who follow, and better still, interact with your newsletter would naturally be interested in what you have to offer.

As this case study  indicates, newsletter subscribers form  one of the main channels for repeat purchases.

A customer who refers their friends

Customer to customer referrals is an effective way to acquire new business, and in many cases, is cheaper than advertising.

After many trials, the standard, proven, way to incentivise referrals is by rewarding both the referring customer and their referred friends. The reward could be granted for a certain desired action, like your customer’s friend making a purchase or joining your store’s email list.

A tool like Gather automatically facilitates friend to friend referral campaigns, where the app rewards your customer, with a coupon, for referring their friend to your mailing list. Their friend also gets rewarded with a coupon upon joining.

Putting it all Together

Combining insights from the above tools gives you the power to make smart decisions about rewarding your loyal customers.

If your customer joined your newsletter, then made repeat purchases, then successfully referred her friends and connected with your  brand on social media; she is a super loyal customer.

You would want to make those customers feel special, as they could perhaps become an ambassador to your brand.

So how do we combine the data from all the above tools?

Generally speaking, you can  connect apps together or aggregate data from multiple apps using connecting tools like Zapier & Gekoboard. They both integrate with Shopify.

For example, a new email lead acquired by Gather can be synced to Shopify, which will in tern sync it to Mailchimp.

Gather sends shopify tags to identify the source of the email leads, as well as the page from which they were acquired. This gives you a good indication as to what would products would interest your customer.

In Summary

You have learned here the importance of marketing through your existing customer base, by identifying and rewarding your loyal customers.  We have also touched on multiple ways and the tools you can use to identify who those awesome customers are.

Finally we suggested a few ways you can combine data on your loyal customers to help you identify the super loyal customers; those who have demonstrated loyalty in more than one way.

Over to you

How else do you manage to track customer loyalty and take action on it?

How else can you marked through your existing customer base?

Would love to learn from you in the comments :)

To find out more about how Beautifulbecause.com.au, a successful ecommerce store, has used Gather to add 2300 customer emails and generated over $100,000 worth of orders. Get the case study here.

Gather for Shopify Integrates with: Klaviyo for Shopify

A prospect client asked me to check if Gather integrated with Klaviyo.

Because Gather integrates with Shopify and syncs the email leads you receive with Shopify, any other Shopify app that gets leads from your Shopify account automatically integrates with Gather.

Sure enough this is the case with Klaviyo. Klaviyo is an email marketing application that is focused on results. According to Klavioyo, the average Klaviyo customer makes more than $75 for every $1 spent on email.

When your customer sees a Gather popup and signs up, they receive their discount code instantly in the same popup so that they can use then and there.

Gather then syncs the lead with Shopify, which in turns syncs it with Klaviyo. When we tested it for our client, the email lead, along with the associated tags, appeared in Klaviyo in seconds.

Works great!

Hope you enjoy using Gather with Klaviyo, via Shopify; a great match!

What other Shopify email integrations would you like us to test for you? Leave some suggestions in the comments.

New Features - Targeting Rules and Email Lead Referrals

Super excited to tell you about the new features we've been working on over the last few months, which are now available to you.

Increase the Effectiveness of your Campaigns through Customer Targeting

Customer targeting is incredibly useful in getting the most out of Gather. These are some of the things you can accomplish with targeting rules:

• Restrict coupon codes only for products that are slow shifting
• Making sure that discount codes do not eat into your margins by restricting coupon popups for only when a customer  has added more than, for example, 2 items in their cart.
• Only offer discount codes to customers who come from your Adwords campaign.
• Only acquire customer emails when they're on your blog.

As you can see, these are smart and powerful ways to build your list as well as increase sales and profitability.

Acquire New Lead through your Existing Customers through Lead Email Referrals

This is a new product addition in your Gather toolkit. Not only you can use Gather's email overlays to capture emails, grow your list and increase sales; but you now can use Gather to acquire new leads who probably had never visited you site before.

With email lead referrals, you can easily incentivise existing customers to refer their friends to join your list or newsletter. They can refer friends through email and social media. Referrals is an effective alternative to advertising. Companies like Uber and Dropbox encountered huge growth through referrals.

Click here for a list referral features that come with Gather.

Help Gather, with Gather Branding

Subtle Gather branding is now included in all Free accounts. This helps Gather maintain the ability to sustain and support Free accounts.

Paid accounts have the choice to include or switch off Gather branding. This can done in the account area, where Gather branding is switched off by default.

Minor Improvements

We have consistently been improving Gather, fixing bugs and refining the product. In the last few months, notable improvements have included:

• Tightening the security on spammers, and blocking certain IP addresses that are known to cause problems.
• Improving the speed and responsiveness of the account area.
• Improving the way popup widgets appear on older browsers and mobile
• Fixing minor bugs

Enjoy using Gather and let me know if there is anything I can help with, by emailing hello@gathercustomers.com or using the customer service chat in your account area.

All the best,

Iz - Founder Gather