Social commerce has been gaining immense traction since the last decade. This of course lends credence to the fact that ecommerce marketplaces should become more and more social. Besides, it is in the nature of all customers to share their reviews about a particular product or a brand. However objectionable and even downright silly or exceptionally stellar the reviews may be, it is important for retailers to provide an avenue that lets its customers share their respective opinions. Both Americans and Indians spend an estimated 25 percent of their online time on social media platforms.
According to the latest Internet Retail Social Media 500 report, it is no exaggeration to expect that social shopping will hopefully account for as much as $5 billion in 2016 alone. Well, this is a huge positive prediction for 2016. In a fierce competitive world when brands are doing their best to refine and re-define customer relationships via social media channels, it is important that you include the following social sharing tools in ecommerce marketplace scripts:
SumoMe:
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Ever wondered how to ask your website visitors their respective email addresses? SumoMe exactly does this task. This plugin offers a host of options to grow your email list. But how does this tool work? If you wish to test various pop-up windows such as displaying pop-ups on the top of the page, at the bottom right corner or pop-ups that wave at you, what all you have to do is to install this plugin.
To check if you have installed SumoMe plugin or not, just open your Dashboard and verify your Plugin’s menu. Start trying your hand at what SumoMe offers. SumoMe comes with an assortment of both premium features and free features. Let me give you a quick run-down of the free version of the plugin:
- SumoMe List Builder
- SumoMe Scroll Box
- SumoMe Smart Bar
- SumoMe Welcome Mat
- SumoMe Highlighter
- Share and Image Sharer
The only disadvantage with SumoMe is that its free version has its brand name everywhere. In other words, its watermark is present everywhere.
AddShoppers:
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AddShoppers is a social analytics tool that lets you track your Return on Investment. Apart from this, it also helps in sharing rewards and recovering majority of lost sales. To recover lost sales and win your lost costumers, you have to leverage Social Retargeting and Facebook Retargeting apps. As the appellation suggests, AddShoppers lets you add smart social sharing buttons and identify the social networks that are driving traffic.
There is a feature called ‘Trending’ that features all the popular products. If you feel that customers have to spend quite some time to complete their registration process, you can use AddShoppers and replace the tedious registration with Social Shopper Login app. And yes, by periodically sending reminders to all the shopping cart abandoners, this social analytics tool increases your conversion rates. It hardly takes 5-minutes to install AddShoppers in your ecommerce marketplace.
As an alternative action, you can integrate AddShoppers with Google Analytics tool and review your social statistics on the reporting dashboard. This social sharing software also sends weekly and monthly email summary reports.
InviteReferrals
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InviteReferrals is a referral marketing software that initiates the so-called customer referral program. Thanks to the presence of numerous types of widgets that are endowed with classic email templates and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, detailed analytics can be obtained. This software tracks the number of invitations that have been sent by monitoring each and every invitation sent, referral visit and subsequently rewards the referrer based on filters such as number of referral sales, number of invitations sent, number of referral site visits etc.
The ultimate goal of this ecommerce software is to kick-start referral campaigns so as to convert your target customers into social media advocates. And yes, this software is mobile compatible and hence, it works on almost all types of devices. You can always select multiple customer referral options that include the obvious social networking platforms such as Facebook share, Twitter, Email chat, Google+, LinkedIn etc.
As this is a one-time installation and one-time integration software, it hardly demands any code changes. The fact that marketers are able to use it seamlessly is a testimony that it demands zero code changes. Apart from all the aforementioned features, InviteReferrals lets you select between unique and static coupons. In addition, it has a robust built-in feature called ‘Referral Fraud Protection’ that obviates any spams. By the way, it lets you initiate the following three types of referral campaigns:
Referral program with instant rewards: You have to invite just 50 members (who may friends or strangers or both) to unlock the so-called ‘gratification’ feature.
Top Referral campaign: What all you have to do is to refer the top three referrers of the several referral campaigns based on parameters such as the amount of referral traffic, number of sales, invites etc.
Goal based referral campaigns: This is a referral campaign in which you reward customers who have referred other customers. This is all about transforming your customers into social media brand advocates.
NextBee
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NextBee comes with the tagline- Savvy Marketers’ Toolbox. NextBee is a social sharing software that is built around the following three cornerstones:
- Customer Acquisition
- Brand Affinity
- Revenue Optimization
This is a metrics driven gamification platform where creative marketing ideas can brought to fruition and eventually achieve all the challenging Return on Investment (ROI) goals. Thanks to its turnkey solution that is 100 percent customizable, brand building and brand reputation have always been NextBee’s cup of tea. Here are the features that NextBee offers to all its registered premium plan users:
- Refer a Friends
- Advocacy
- Affiliates
- Loyalty Program
- Gamification- I assume, you are well versed with the concept of ‘Gamification’. If not, please read my educative article on Gamification here.
- Social Fans
- Retention Program
- Up Sell and Bundling
- Offers and Coupons
- Actionable Analytics
- Real-value rewards
Popdeem
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Here is what the developers of Popdeem have to say about the product- Popdeem is a social engagement platform that enables location-based brands to identify their most influential customers and reward them for sharing brand experiences on social networks. When Steve Watson, our ecommerce consultant indulged in a free-wheeling interview with Popdeem team, the team’s Product Development head remarked, “Popdeem turns your visitors into brand advocates.” One of its reputed clients is Telefonica, the Spanish broadband telecommunications provider. Here is a simple three step procedure to leverage Popdeem:
Choose a Social Action: This step is all about selecting what action you want your customers to complete. This can be anything from a Facebook check-in, a photo, a Tweet or an Instagram photo.
Incentivize with a reward: Set up a reward to incentivize your customers to share their experience. This can be a coupon, sweepstakes or a custom loyalty integration.
Generate Word-Of-Mouth: WOM or Word of Mouth marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Generate WOM to increase social sharing and watch your customers turn into any army of advocates.
Let us talk
Got any concerns or any serious ecommerce conflicts to be resolved? Fret no more!
Team Ecommercemix is ready to help you. Drop a comment or two in the comments section and bask in the glory. You may reach Steve Watson on +1.302.525.8125 . Alternatively, drop a mail to steve@ecommercemix.com. We can help you integrate all the aforementioned must-have social sharing plugins.
Keep watching this space. I will be back with a detailed account on five more social sharing plugins. Keep reading. Cheers!
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