Archives for April 2019

Every business wants loyal customers. It doesn’t matter if yours is big or small, old or new, offline or online—this fact holds true. Fortunately, there are a number of low-effort methods for retaining your ecommerce customers.

Read on to find out more about turning one-time buyers into loyal customers in the ecommerce realm.

What Is
Ecommerce?

What is ecommerce? Shopify defines ecommerce as “the buying and selling of goods or services using the Internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.”

Did you notice the part about transfer of data? in other words, ecommerce businesses can strategically use the data they collect from online shoppers to retarget and retain buyers.

How to Retain
and Retarget Your Ecommerce Customers

Therefore, without further ado, here’s how to keep ecommerce customers through retention and retargeting schemes.

Take
Advantage of Online Advertising

Targeted advertising is all the rage these days, and with good reason. Instead of merely buying ad space on a webpage or blog, which could be shown to anybody, you purchase the opportunity to remind specific users about your e-store.

For example, if a web user visits your store twice a day to view the same jean jacket, he or she will likely be shown an advertisement for that jacket on a third-party website through the use of cookies. This helps keep your ecommerce store top of mind. Moreover, it could motivate a purchase.

Harness the Power of Email Marketing

While social media is the talk of the town right now, you shouldn’t ignore the old standby—email marketing.

As a matter of fact, ecommerce email marketing has a reported ROI of $40 for every one dollar spent. Luckily, it’s easy to capture a customer’s email address. For example, just use email campaign subscription opt-ins or checkout forms.

However, don’t abuse this privilege. In other words, don’t send your ecommerce customers spam or other unwanted messages.

RELATED ARTICLE: 3 EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGIES TO BOOST YOUR BUSINESS

If you want to harness the power of email marketing, there are a number of approaches you can take. The first is run-of-the-mill marketing announcements. These include store news, notices of upcoming sales, alerts regarding new product launches, and the like.

Get Personal
with Your Ecommerce Customers

The second type is personalized email messages. These should mention the shopper’s first name along with content specific to them. For instance, “Hey Jessica. Are you enjoying your new cookware? Find deep discounts on kitchen products in our clearance section!”

RELATED ARTICLE: BIG DATA: 6 WAYS LEARNING HOW TO USE IT WILL HELP YOUR BUSINESS

The email starts by getting the buyer’s attention. Then it provides them recommendations based on their recent purchases. However, don’t get too specific. That’s because some of your ecommerce customers could find hyper-specific messages creepy.

Retarget Your
Ecommerce Customers

A third suggestion is to retarget shoppers who have inexplicably abandoned their carts before completing their orders. This doesn’t have to be a big to-do.

Instead, make it a gentle nudge reminding your customer about their pending order. For example: “Hi Tom. We noticed you had three items in your cart. Complete your order to avoid missing out on these exciting products. If you have any questions or need further assistance, see our contact page.”

A note like this one could make the difference between a successful sale and a missed opportunity.

Leverage Order Fulfillments for Retargeting Your Ecommerce Customers

Then again,
not every method of retargeting is digital. There are tactics to retarget
customers offline as well.

Consider your order fulfillments for a moment. A first-time buyer purchases something from your website and waits eagerly by their mailbox for its delivery. Once the package is in hand, she tears open the box and is delighted to see her merchandise.

She tosses the cardboard box into the recycling bin and forgets about your e-store. And this is despite the fact that she loves your product.

You just missed
an opportunity to retarget this customer.

How to Retarget This Customer

To retarget this customer, consider dropping limited-time coupon codes into the delivery box. For example, one could read, “30 percent off your next order. Good for 60 days.”

The idea is to offer the new buyer a personalized discount code that automatically reintroduces them into the ecommerce sales cycle within a short period of time following their first purchase. And since it’s a unique coupon code, you can track the efficacy of this program. Pretty clever, no?

Stay Front
and Center with Your Ecommerce Customers

As you can see, retargeting and retaining ecommerce customers is all about keeping your ecommerce website top of mind. This can be accomplished through digital advertising, email marketing, or even during the order fulfillment process.

Of course, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other methods out there. Therefore, feel free to experiment until you find what works best with your ecommerce customers.

Feature Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

70Trades is one of the most well-regarded trading platforms on the Internet.

You might wonder if it’s safe to trust any online trading platform. And, while it’s true that some are merely scams, 70Trades is set up to guide you safely through the intricacies of the forex market, as well as other markets.

What’s more, you can begin trading with 70Trades with only a minimal amount, and their customer service is second to none. While you’ll need to do the work of educating yourself about trading in foreign currencies or any other market, 70Trades is a platform that can help to demystify the process for you.

In this post, we focus on how 70Trades can help you learn about and navigate the various markets, including the forex market.

Start with a Demo Account

If you’ve never traded on an online market before, then 70Trades offers you the opportunity to start your trading with a demo account. This means you can begin making practice trades without putting up any money at all.

In this way, you can begin to educate yourself about the markets and start developing your own trading strategy. This will be important when you start trading for real.

In addition, 70Trades frequently offers contests for its clients as a part of the learning process. If you enter and play well, you could win. The prize is a premium that you can use when you’re ready to begin investing actual money. As a matter of fact, this premium could be your stepping stone to your first real income as a trader.

RELATED ARTICLE: WHERE ARE THE BEST PLACES IN TEXAS TO BUY REAL ESTATE FOR RENTALS?

With 70Trades You Don’t Have to Go It Alone

At 70Trades customers always have a professional on their side when they begin their trading adventures. What’s more, this state-of-the-art online trading platform gives you access to fast-paced news sources frequently updated by the world’s leading global trading agencies.

70Trades customers from all over the world, both newbies and expert traders alike, engage on a daily basis in the forex and other trading markets. That’s because once you have registered your account at 70Trades, you’ll have access not only to forex trading but also to CFD trading as well. In addition, you’ll also be able to explore the possibility of trading in futures and commodities markets, too.

Get a Free Bonus When You Register

At 70Trades, you’ll find only the latest trading platforms. Moreover, every transaction and every process is explained in easy-to-understand terms. Best of all, when you register, you’ll automatically be eligible for a free bonus that you can use in future trades.

Choose the Market You Wish to Focus On

When you register at 70Trades, you will have full freedom to choose from among various types of trading accounts. What’s more, you’ll enjoy an array of benefits at at 70Trades, including:

• Customer service 24 hours a day and 5 days a week
• User-friendly forex trading platform
• Multilingual support: English, Arabic, and Spanish
• Easy withdrawal process
• Online trading courses
• The latest news and updates about the various markets
• Professional analyses
• Training sessions for each level
• Webinars with investors from all around the world
• A reliable and secure brokerage service
• Scam-free trading services

70Trades Is Trusted by Customers All over the World

Have you been considering the possibility of jumping into trading on the forex market, the CFD market, the futures market, or the commodities market? Most likely, what has been stopping you is uncertainty about how to make your first move. If this is true for you, let 70Trades show you the way. Before long, you could be well on your way to becoming an expert trader in whatever market you choose.

Creating a balanced and fair schedule for your workforce might seem like a far-fetched dream. However, it is possible to make this a reality.

Having the perfect work schedule in place keeps you and your staff happy. Moreover, it boosts efficiency and profits at the same time. But how can you achieve such perfection? We’ve laid out the six tips you need to create employee-friendly workforce scheduling.

1. Be Accurate in Your Projections

When creating a schedule for your workforce, you need to anticipate the number of work hours your staff will need to complete the work that needs to be completed. Also, you need to take into account by when that work needs to be done.

Consider things like business growth, holiday peaks, and fluctuations in sales to adjust your staffing projections. Fine-tune the schedule as the situation changes.

2. Create Balance in Your Workforce

Make sure there is balance in the staff. For example, if you have a lot of new and inexperienced employees in your workforce, it can create stress on the staff and lead to unhappy customers. Therefore, make sure there are experienced staff on the schedule for each shift, along with supervisors, to keep the business running smoothly.

RELATED ARTICLE: NEED EMPLOYEE TRAINING ASAP? WHY ONLINE TRAINING IS THE BEST SOLUTION

3. Get It Done Ahead of Time

Your employees need time to review the schedule. Therefore, aim for completing each week’s schedule about two weeks in advance. This way, members of your workforce will have plenty of time to schedule their personal life around their work life.

Also, if extra hours become available, or the schedule needs to change for any reason, make sure everyone on your workforce is aware of those changes.

4. Know Who Your Employees Are

When you’re creating a schedule for your workforce, it is important to know your employees. For instance, a younger employee or college student might prefer night hours or a similar arrangement. On the other hand, parents likely appreciate nights off to be with their children. By creating a schedule that works for everyone, you will have happier employees. And that always translates to happier customers.

5. Make Shift Changes Easy for Your Workforce

Employees need an easy process for swapping shifts when they need to. Therefore, make sure you have clear procedures in place. This will help to avoid confusion. For instance, an employee handbook can help to easily outline the steps, such as clarifying who on the workforce needs to be informed about any changes. Also, it can let employees know how much time in advance they need to make their requests for changes to the schedule.

6. Use an Online Solution

To make scheduling easy, accurate, and quick to access, get the best employee scheduling app available. And that is Connecteam. With this easy-to-use app, you can create single, multiple, or team shifts. Or you can upload shifts in bulk with an Excel file.

Save time when you’re creating schedules for your workforce. Also, get more daily operations completed at the same time. How? Simply use Connecteam’s calendar view. It allows you drag-and-drop options, and you can easily copy the previous week’s shifts.

Does your team work recurring shifts? Or do you dispatch per jobs, clients, or projects? Whatever your scheduling needs are, you’re covered.

Plus, as soon as you publish a schedule, relevant employees receive a push notification that lets them know about it. Then, as a manager, you can see who viewed the schedule and who didn’t. Additionally, every time an employee clocks in or out, the software tags their GPS location. This helps to prevent buddy punching.

Connecteam is available for a fixed monthly price, with plans starting at $29 a month. If you need it, however, there’s a plan at $72 a month for up to 200 users. In other words, you don’t need to pay per user to benefit from all the features this workforce scheduling app has to offer. Start a free 21-day trial now.

Treat Your
Workforce Right with Employee-Friendly Scheduling

Create an enjoyable and friendly work environment by applying the six points we laid out above. All of this will lead to happier employees and therefore happier customers. And that is a real win-win.

Featured Image from Pixabay on Pexels

Who hasn’t been stung by a surprise overdraft charge? Judging by the sums banks are collecting in overdraft charges, it’s clearly a big problem, both for individuals and for small businesses. As a matter of fact, in 2017 Americans paid a total of $34 billion in overdraft charges. And that’s a lot of money.

There are two reasons for this large amount. First, millions of people pay overdraft charges for a range of avoidable reasons. Next, these charges have been increasing over the years. At the turn of the millennium, for example, they hovered around $20. But today, they’re commonly about $35.

Overdraft Charges Can Be Extremely Painful

An overdraft charge of $35 might seem harmless enough, but it really isn’t. The problem lies in the fact that the effective interest rate of a $35 overdraft fee is extremely high. Just spent $10 at the supermarket? The implied APR of a $35 charge is huge.

Where matters get far worse is when a checking account suffers from multiple overdraft charges. Let’s say you spent the day making several small payments with your debit card. Each payment can trigger a further overdraft fee, and you could end up with more than $100 dollars in overdraft charges just by making a couple of small payments.

Don’t Be a Victim

Consumers who get stung by high overdraft charges don’t necessarily find themselves in that position because they have no other choice. Instead, high overdraft charges are often the result of a degree of negligence from the side of the checking account holder.

Banks offer services such as “overdraft protection” because they know that their clients will fall into the trap of paying overdraft fees. However, as much as overdraft protection sounds like a way to save your finances, it is more likely to cost you significantly in the long run. But how can you avoid being a victim of high overdraft charges?

Act Quickly

We mentioned how repeated overdraft charges can quickly add up. The best way to ward off the worst effects of these fees is to make sure you correct a negative balance as quickly as possible.

First, ensure you get a warning: Enable any low balance alerts, and enable an overdraft alert if you have the option to do so. Alternatively, make sure you check your account balance regularly so that you spot when you have overdrawn your account, or if you are in danger of overdrawing it.

Next, react quickly when you overdraw your account so that you can prevent further overdraft charges. Transfer spare cash if you have cash available or consider borrowing to top up your checking account.

Plenty of overdraft apps can give you a small loan at low or even no cost. The Overdraft Apps site reviews all the popular overdraft apps. There’s a good chance one of these can help you out at a far lower cost than the cost of an actual overdraft.

RELATED ARTICLE: MANAGE YOUR FINANCES AND STAY DEBT-FREE WITH THESE TIPS

Plan Ahead

As we mentioned earlier in this article, banks know that checking account customers are lackadaisical about their financial management habits. And banks cash in on the resulting overdraft fees. However, it’s easy to steer clear of these fees.

Simply get better at financial planning. The key to preventing overdrafts lies in ensuring that you don’t spend more than your income. In fact, you should attempt to spend a bit less so that you can build a buffer of savings.

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

A Final Word About Overdraft Charges

However, it’s not just cash flow planning that can save you from overdrafts. Consider opting out of your bank’s overdraft protection service. Sure, you could end up getting some transactions declined, but that’s not the end of the world.

If you really struggle with overdraft fees you could also choose to make use of a prepaid debit card instead of paying with your checking account debit card. With a prepaid card, you’ll simply get a transaction declined if you’re out of funds, instead of having an expensive overdraft charge.

There’s a huge difference between attending a trade show and being a trade
show exhibitor. If you’ve never stood on the other side of the booth, there are
some things you probably don’t know about the experience.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE BEST GIVEAWAY ITEMS FOR MARKETING YOUR HOME-BASED BUSINESS

The Lowdown on Being a Trade Show
Exhibitor

If you’ve never attended a trade show as a trade show exhibitor, you aren’t
fully aware of how catalytic trade shows can be for businesses that are
pursuing exposure, growth, and sales. Some of the key benefits of trade shows include:

Brand Exposure

For one, a trade show can enhance your brand’s exposure. Even if people don’t stop by your booth, they’ll still see your brand name or logo. And this is something that could influence a decision down the road.

Relationships

There’s a powerful networking component to trade shows that brands can
benefit from. Whether it’s a one-day event or a week-long show, rubbing
shoulders with others in the industry gives you a more powerful network.

Lead Generation

There’s nothing like being able to communicate and engage with your target
customers in a face-to-face manner. In terms of lead generation, this is like
tossing gasoline onto a simmering fire: It accelerates the process and improves
your chances of generating significant results.

Every business will have its own trade show experience, but it’s hard to
overlook these three benefits.

However, if you want to increase your chances of having a successful
experience, you need to be aware of what you’re getting yourself into.

Tips and Tricks for Being a Successful Trade Show
Exhibitor

Here are some tips and tricks that have been curated with the first-time
trade show exhibitor in mind:

1. Register Early

Try to register for a trade show as early as possible. Not only is there
limited space at most events, but you’ll also find early-bird pricing.
Moreover, this can be as much as 15 to 25 percent cheaper than standard
pricing. Furthermore, you’ll give yourself more time to plan and invest in
pre-trade-show marketing and promotion.

2. Choose a Good Location

The location of your booth at a trade show will have a direct effect on your
ability to engage people. At some trade shows, most booth spaces will be
created equal. However, at other shows, there’s a significant disparity between
the best and worst booths. Good booths are located near restrooms, concessions,
or points of entry. Bad booths are tucked away from the main avenues.

3. Design a Compelling Booth

Booth design is important for a number of reasons. First off, it helps you generate attention and bring people into your booth. Secondly, it allows you to articulate your branding and develop a specific emotional response. Be sure to invest
in quality trade show displays so that you’re able to use them over and
over again.

4. Staff the Right People

A compelling booth located in a conspicuous area will bring people into your booth. But once they’ve shown up, you need the right reps to interact with them and start the process of qualifying and converting leads. Choose people who are gregarious, experienced, and familiar with the ins and outs of your brand.

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS BY FOSTERING A TEAM MENTALITY

5. Collect Information

You never want someone to visit your booth, interact with your reps, and walk away without leaving you their information. Moreover, it’s impossible to generate warm leads without having a system in place for collecting data. Even if it’s as simple as a name and email address on a note card, every trade show exhibitor needs a system.

6. Get Out and Network

Don’t spend all of your time sitting at your booth. Even if you’re
interacting with prospective customers, every trade show exhibitor has
additional responsibilities. So while your brand reps stay behind, go out and
network with other business leaders. This is a perfect opportunity to grow your
professional network and get a pulse on your industry as a whole. 

Sign Up for Your First Experience as a
Trade Show Exhibitor

Trade shows may or may not be extremely effective for your business. It all
depends on the industry you’re in, what your main focus is, and how your
customers move through the purchase process. However, you won’t know until you
try. Sign up
for a trade show this year and give it your best shot. There’s a lot to
like about being a trade show exhibitor!