the state of ecommerce marketing

THE STATE OF

ECOMMERCEMARKETING

Author Profile

Sam is the author of the book “How to Sell Better Than

Amazon” (yes - it’s ironically available on Amazon) and

the Head of Ecommerce Marketing @ HubSpot. Feel free

to connect with him if you have comments or questions

on this report specifically or ecommerce marketing in

general!

Sam Mallikarjunan

Expert Analysis By

Greg WisePrincipal Ecommerce Inbound Marketing Expert

Ted AmmonPrincipal Ecommerce Inbound Marketing Expert

Morgan JacobsonPrincipal Ecommerce Inbound Marketing Expert

CONTENTSInbound Marketing Adoption

Blogging

Company Focus & Priorities

Customer Segmentation

Customer Education

Marketing Spend

Visits and Customer Sources

Personalization

Shopping Cart Insights

Cart Nurturing

Survey Methodology

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

THE STATE OF ECOMMERCE MARKETING5

www.Hubspot.com

Welcome to HubSpot’s first annual State of

Ecommerce Marketing Report.

At HubSpot, our founding mission is to

transform the way people do marketing.

The traditional methods of reaching people

through interruptive and annoying tactics

are disappearing – and those that aren’t

are becoming increasingly expensive and

ineffective. Further, these high pressure tactics

are counterproductive to building long-term

relationships with customers.

We also believe engaging consumers means much more than simply

finding the newest channel to push out a message to the masses. Instead,

marketing today is about understanding how consumers research and

make purchase decisions in this hyper-connected, digital world. It’s about

meeting them at every stage of that decision by integrating relevant content

with context on your consumers. It’s about a unified process of attracting

audience, converting prospects, closing leads, and delighting customers in

ways they actually desire.

Every year, HubSpot releases the State of Inbound Marketing report

analyzing the tools, tactics, and results of thousands of marketers around the

world.

Introduction

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This year, HubSpot is also releasing the results of our first State of

Ecommerce Marketing report, drilling down more specifically into the multi-

trillion dollar world of ecommerce marketers. We expanded the survey far

beyond HubSpot’s ecommerce customers (with only 5% of respondents

reporting that they use HubSpot’s ecommerce marketing software), and the

results are very interesting.

Some interesting conclusions from the data are less encouraging than

others. Ecommerce marketers as a whole are still lagging behind B2B

marketers in adopting inbound practices like social media or blogging.

Ecommerce marketers as a whole are still not measuring basic metrics

like shopping cart abandonment rates, much less actively engaging those

customers to bring them back with personalized experiences.

What is encouraging is the data from marketers who are measuring and

marketing in a customer-centric way. Marketers who focus on creating

customer-centric experiences are more likely to see a Return On Investment

(ROI) from their inbound marketing activities, and marketers who choose

to use content over coupons also see a higher ROI. There are some other

interesting pieces of data, such as the fact that a customer abandoning a

shopping cart once may not be a bad thing like we always assume - and

may in fact lead to higher spending when marketed to appropriately.

We are incredibly excited to share our first State of Ecommerce Marketing

Report with you. We welcome any and all questions and feedback as well:

[email protected].



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Inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven strategy that involves attracting

and converting visitors into customers through personalized, relevant

information and content - not interruptive messages - and following them

through the sales experience with ongoing engagement.

Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing

method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound marketing

methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and paying for leads, inbound

marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward

your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning

the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract

inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time.

What is Inbound Marketing?



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www.Hubspot.com

There are digital marketing tactics that are specifically designed as “inbound

marketing” and those that are not. While it’s easy to explain why direct mail

and PPC banner ads are “outbound,” it is more complicated to define more

flexible online strategies as purely inbound versus outbound. At HubSpot,

we see the distinguishing factor as how people are using a specific channel

more than the definition of the channel itself. In the simplest sense, it’s about

consumer choice.

For example, depending on how it is deployed,

the email channel often can be considered

either inbound or outbound. One-off, non-

permission based email blasts (SPAM) are

nearly always bucketed as outbound, because

they aim to interrupt people’s inboxes.

However, as a part of an opt-in, nurturing

strategy, email is a terrific complement to other

inbound techniques. Similarly, if you were to

simply send out 200 tweets a day announcing

a “new special,” you wouldn’t really be doing

inbound marketing. An inbound marketing relationship goes both ways

between the business and the individual customer.

A Note On Channel Distinction



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INBOuND MArkETINg METhODOlOgIES ArE BECOMINg ThE NOrM AMONg ECOMMErCE MArkETErS.

Stat: 55% of ecommerce businesses invest in inbound marketing, and 22% of respondents don’t know if they do inbound marketing at all.

Inbound Marketing Adoption

Expert Analysis: 23% of respondents not knowing if they do inbound marketing or not is not too surprising, given how relatively new the methodology is (much less the term to describe it). It’s encouraging to see 55% of respondents self-identifying as using inbound marketing methodologies.

Ted Ammon Principal Ecommerce Inbound Marketing Expert

55%

22%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Implements Inbound Marke:ng Does Not Implement Inbound Marke:ng



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www.Hubspot.com

B2B ECOMMErCE MArkETErS STIll lEAD IN OVErAll IN-BOuND MArkETINg ADOPTION.

Stat: 54% of B2C ecommerce companies implement inbound marketing, compared to 60% of B2B ecommerce companies.

Expert Analysis: B2B companies continue to adopt inbound marketing at a slightly high-er rate than B2C companies. This has stayed constant over the last several years. It may be due in part to the economic contractions that affected B2B companies more heavily than B2C companies in the past few years when inbound marketing was first being de-veloped as a cohesive methodology. As competition in B2C ecommerce increases dra-matically, adoption of inbound marketing methodologies is growing as well.

Morgan Jacobson Principal Ecommerce Inbound Marketing Expert

60% 54%

24% 21%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

B2B B2C

Implements Inbound Marke=ng Does Not Implement Inbound Marke=ng



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www.Hubspot.com

lArgEr rEVENuE BuSINESSES lAg IN ADOPTINg INBOuND MArkETINg.

Stat: Only 19% of companies with more than $50MM in annual revenue are using in-bound marketing.

Expert Analysis: Large businesses have lagged in adopting inbound marketing, usually because control of the decision-making process is more decentralized and they’re less likely to make big changes quickly.

Greg Wise Principal Ecommerce Inbound Marketing Expert

30%

19% 22%

11%

18%

39%

25%

17%

5%

14%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

0 -‐ $100,000 $100,001 -‐ $1,000,000

$1,000,001 -‐ $10,000,000

$10,000,001 -‐ $50,000,000

Over $50,000,000

Implements Inbound MarkeAng Does Not Implement Inbound MarkeAng



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www.Hubspot.com

lArgE COMPANIES lAg IN ADOPTINg INBOuND MArkETINg.

Stat: Only 32% of companies with more than 50 employees are doing inbound market-ing.

Expert Analysis: With more cooks in the kitchen, the decision to adopt a disruptive marketing methodology like inbound takes more time and has more opportunities to get killed by the stakeholders. As with most “new” things, smaller and more agile companies are more likely to adopt them.


40%

22%

6%

15%

6%

11%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

1 -‐ 5 6 -‐ 25 26 -‐ 50 51 -‐ 200 201 -‐ 500 More than 500

Implements Inbound Marke<ng



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ADOPTION By MArkETErS.

Stat: 67% of marketers at ecommerce companies invest in blogging.

Blogging

Expert Analysis: Blogging is gaining rapid adoption in ecommerce, with fewer firms able to grow sales while ignoring it entirely.


67%

33%

Invests in Blogging Does Not Invest in Blogging



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MArkETEr INVESTMENT IN FrEquENCy.

Stat: 47% of marketers at ecommerce companies blog at least once a week, with 14% of marketers blogging at least once every day.

Expert Analysis: As adoption of blogging as a marketing method grows, ecommerce marketers are investing more heavily in building an audience and providing more entry points through organic search by blogging more frequently.


14%

33%

20%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Once a day Once a week Once a month Blogging Frequency



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www.Hubspot.com

B2C VS. B2B ECOMMErCE BlOggINg ADOPTION.

Stat: 64% of B2B inbound commerce companies blog at least once a week, while 71% of B2C inbound commerce companies blog at least once a week.

Expert Analysis: B2C ecommerce companies are adopting blogging at a slightly faster rate, possibly because B2B ecommerce firms can rely more heavily on sales reps and account managers to educate prospects and nurture them through the initial buying cy-cle.


64% 71%

66%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

B2B B2C Both

Invests in Blogging



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www.Hubspot.com

BlOggINg ADOPTION BASED ON COMPANy PrIOrITIES.

Stat: Companies that describe themselves as “customer focused” are 24% more likely to blog at least once a week than companies that describe themselves as “sales focused”.

Expert Analysis: Although “customer centricity” is still an imprecisely defined term within the industry as a whole, ecommerce firms that self-identify more strongly with that term are more likely to focus on creating content that addresses a broader range of cus-tomer education topics than firms who self-identify as being sales, product, or marketing focused.


60%

75%

40%

25%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Sales focused Customer focused




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www.Hubspot.com

BlOggINg AND INBOuND MArkETINg rOI.

Stat: 72% of people who saw ROI from inbound marketing blog at least once a week, and people who blog are 155% more likely to see ROI from inbound marketing.

Expert Analysis: With blogging being such a fundamental part of inbound marketing, those who focus exclusively on other aspects of inbound marketing (such as On-Page SEO) without investing in blogging are less likely to see an ROI. In addition, blogging at least once a week dramatically increases the value that survey respondents report from inbound marketing as a whole.


72%

28%




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BlOggINg AND CuSTOMEr lIFE TIME VAluE.

Stat: Companies that are focused on increasing customer life time value are 216% more likely to invest in blogging. 78% of ecommerce companies are focused on increasing customer LTV and are investing in blogging.

Expert Analysis: Ecommerce companies that are focused on growing customer life time value in addition to new customer acquisition are investing more heavily in blogging than companies focused primarily on new customer acquisition. These companies tend to use blog content in marketing automation to re-engage contacts and up-sell/cross-sell/re-sell items with educational content before using discount or coupon incentives.


78%

22%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%




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SuCCESS IN OrgANIC SEArCh OPTIMIzATION AND BlOggINg.

Stat: 69% of companies whose major source of customers was from organic & direct traffic blog at least once a week.

Expert Analysis: In addition to more traffic from organic search, ecommerce firms that invest heavily (meaning at least one original blog article per week) tend to see more sales from organic and direct traffic. Blogging is becoming a more indispensable part of an organic search engine optimization strategy.


69%

31%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%




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www.Hubspot.com

CuSTOMEr CENTrICITy IS ON ThE rISE.

Stat: Overall, 40% of inbound commerce companies are customer focused.

Company Focus & Priorities

Expert Analysis: It’s good to see more companies consciously focusing on customer centricity, although the vague definitions of “customer centricity” and the number of peo-ple who claim to be customer centric but don’t engage in “customer-centric” activities (such as using content and marketing automation to increase customer lifetime value or educate prospective customers) means that people may self-identify as “customer fo-cused” emotionally without practically being so.


20%

40%

25%

8%

Sales focused Customer focused Product focused Marke9ng focused



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Stat: Customer centric ecommerce companies are 107% more likely to see an ROI from inbound marketing than sales focused companies.

Expert Analysis: A fascinating statistic that dramatically validates the “Customer Cen-tricity” narrative. Companies that are sales focused, which an earlier statistic affirmed meant primarily focused on the initial transaction, are significantly less likely to see an ROI from inbound marketing. It’s still telling, however, that a significant portion of respon-dents in each category don’t know or aren’t able to tell if they’re getting an ROI from their marketing. This indicates a lack of access to closed-loop marketing analytics. It’s very telling that neither sales- nor marketing-focused companies had a majority of respon-dents say that they saw an ROI from inbound, whereas customer- and product-focused companies did. Product focused companies are also, in a way, highly customer focused because of their focus on the end user’s requirements and feedback.


21%

44%

21%

9%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

Sales focused Customer focused Product focused Marke;ng focused Company Focus

See ROI from Inbound Marke;ng



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www.Hubspot.com

SMAllEr COMPANIES TEND TO BE MOrE CuSTOMEr FOCuSED.

Stat: Very small businesses (less than 50 employees) are 145% more likely to self-iden-tify as customer centric than large companies (more than 200 employees), which tend to be more product focused (with 40% of large companies self-identifying as product cen-tric).

Expert Analysis: This data aligns fairly well with what we know about the growth cycles of ecommerce companies. Small companies frequently have a smaller number of overall customers and are able to devote more individual attention to customers. Also, smaller companies are less likely to be able to compete with large firms in acquisition costs and more likely to invest in customer delightion and retention.


42%

23%

19%

8%

35%

23%

27%

11%

29%

40%

25%

5%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

Customer focused Product focused Sales focused Marke=ng focused

Small (1 -‐ 50) Medium (51 -‐ 200) Large (More than 200)



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BlOggINg IS AN IMPOrTANT PArT OF SEEINg AN rOI WITh INBOuND MArkETINg.

Stat: Companies that focus on SEO and PPC without also investing in blogging are 201% more likely to label proving the ROI from marketing activities as a significant chal-lenge.

Expert Analysis: On-page SEO without a blogging or content creation component is be-coming less and less effective each year as search engines weigh fresh, unique, valuable content more and more. It follows, then, that On-page SEO strategies without a blogging component are driving less revenue and making it more difficult to demonstrate an ROI. Similarly, companies that focus on PPC, which has seen an explosion in competition in the last few years are seeing their cost-of-customer-acquisition (COCA) rise and their ROI fall. On the contrary, relatively lower competition for audiences through blogging leads to a lower COCA and higher ROI.


13% 14% 14%

26% 24%

22%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

Proving the ROI of our marke<ng ac<vi<es

Securing enough budget Understanding my contacts database

Blog Focused SEO & PPC Focused



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www.Hubspot.com

COMPANIES FOCuSED PrIMArIly ON NEW CuSTOMEr ACquI-SITION ArE lESS lIkEly TO WOrry ABOuT CuSTOMEr hAPPI-NESS.

Stat: Companies that self-identify as “sales Focused” and are primarily focused on new customer acquisition over selling to existing customers are 30% less likely to rate “cus-tomer happiness” as “very important”.

Expert Analysis: Companies that aren’t focused on – or aren’t able to – engage in up-sell/cross-sell/re-sell marketing activities and focus primarily on new customer acquisi-tion aren’t as concerned with customer happiness, since the happiness of existing cus-tomers is primarily a factor of LTV. However, these firms may be putting themselves at risk for negative social proof through negative product reviews or reviews in social media that might eventually end up impeding new customer acquisition anyways.


69%

26%

95%

4%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Very important Somewhat important




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CAlCulATION OF CuSTOMEr lIFE TIME VAluE By COMPANy SIzE.

Stat: 45% of larger ecommerce businesses calculate the life time value of their custom-ers.

Expert Analysis: This might be due to the fact that, although smaller businesses tend to self-identify as customer centric more than larger businesses, they lack the resources to effectively track, calculate, and leverage the LTV of their customers as a marketing met-ric. The larger a company is, the more likely it is that they can dedicate analytics resourc-es to calculating customer life time value.


17%

37%

45%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%


Calculate LTV



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www.Hubspot.com

Stat: 96% of businesses that saw ROI from inbound marketing rate raising the lifetime value of existing customers as a somewhat or very important marketing activity.

Expert Analysis: Inbound marketing can have huge implications for new customer ac-quisition, but one of the key advantages in building an experience that customizes itself to the buyer instead of forcing the buyer to adjust to the experience is that customers remain more loyal and spend more over time – growing LTV.


69%

26%

4%

Very important Somewhat important Somewhat unimportant



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www.Hubspot.com

Stat: On average, 72% of ecommerce businesses implement some form of customer segmentation.

Customer Segmentation

Expert Analysis: It’s encouraging to see only 24% of marketers not segmenting their contacts in some way. On the flip side, it’s discouraging that 24% of marketers still aren’t segmenting their database in any way. The most popular method of segmentation is based on product purchase history, which is the easiest since that data is processed in most shopping cart software. Segmenting based on buyer personas and social media interactions is more sophisticated and usually requires some kind of specialized contact management software, so it’s understandably lower.


9%

9%

18%

24%

25%

Social Media Interac6ons

Website Page Views

Based on Buyer Personas

We don’t segment our customers

Product Purchase History



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www.Hubspot.com

CuSTOMEr SEgMENTATION AND lTV CAlCulATION

Stat: Companies that are focused on tracking and increasing customer lifetime value are 790% more likely to segment their customers.

Expert Analysis: Companies that are focused on increasing the value of existing cus-tomers rather than primarily focusing on new customer acquisition get more value from segmenting their databases to engage in personalized marketing. Buyer persona seg-mentation actually exceeds segmenting on website page views (which is a more widely adopted form of behavioral segmentation).


28%

25%

11% 10% 9%

23%

15%

9% 8%

31%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Product Purchase History

Based on Buyer Personas

Website Page Views Social Media InteracCons

We don’t segment our customers

Calculates LTV Does Not Calculate LTV



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www.Hubspot.com

rEMArkETINg ChANNElS

Stat: 25% of marketers use email for remarketing to existing customers, making it the most popular channel followed closely by social media.

Expert Analysis: One surprising finding is that email adoption is so low, even though it still tops the list. This method has been around for quite a while, so seeing social media follow so closely is very interesting. It’s encouraging to see so many ecommerce market-ers using a sophisticated enough integration with their social media channels to follow and pro-actively engage existing customers in social media.


25%

24%

12%

11%

13%

Email Social Media Blog Paid Campaign Search Engine Marke<ng



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www.Hubspot.com

ADOPTION AND DISTrIBuTION OF PrE-TrANSACTIONAl CON-VErSIONS.

Stat: 58% of ecommerce marketers use educational content for pre-transactional con-versions.

Customer Education

Expert Analysis: It’s definitely encouraging to see ecommerce marketers relying less on coupons. It’s also encouraging that only 17% of the respondents report having no con-version options outside of completing a purchase. Historically, the contacts databases of most ecommerce companies were filled primarily with existing customers, with very few contacts converted earlier in the consumer buying cycle and nurtured to make purchas-es.


12%

58%

9%

17%

Coupons Educa3onal Content (Guides, Feature Sheets)

Aspira3onal content No non-‐transac3onal offers



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www.Hubspot.com

CuSTOMEr FOCuSED COMPANIES uSE lESS COuPONS, MOrE EDuCATIONAl CONTENT.

Stat: Companies that self-identify as customer focused rather than sales focused are 491% more likely to use educational content than coupons.

Expert Analysis: Both sales-focused and customer-focused companies are significantly more likely to use educational content as pre-transactional conversion events (usually someone filling out a form in exchange for a piece of content) than coupons.


18% 12%

63% 70%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%


Coupons Educa=onal Content

*Educational Content includes Guides, Feature Sheets and Aspirational Content



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www.Hubspot.com

lArgEr COMPANIES ArE MOrE lIkEly TO uSE EDuCATIONAl CONTENT.

Stat: Large companies are 25% more likely to use educational content to convert con-tacts prior to a sale than small companies.

Expert Analysis: Coupons are a very low barrier-to-entry for pre-transactional content. It’s built in to most ecommerce shopping cart platforms natively, so it’s not surprising that smaller companies are more likely to rely on those than educational content – which takes time to write and often requires design resources that small businesses don’t have easy access to.


13% 10% 11%

64%

76% 80%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%


Coupons EducaEonal Content *Educational Content includes Guides, Feature Sheets and Aspirational Content



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www.Hubspot.com

Stat: Businesses that offer educational content on their website are 527% more likely to see ROI from inbound marketing (IM) than businesses who offer coupons.

Expert Analysis: Although some marketers try to use them this way, coupons aren’t actually inbound marketing. Therefore, it follows that marketers that don’t have any ed-ucational pre-transactional content on their site will see a higher ROI. In fact, marketers who use coupons and no educational content are 150% less likely to see an ROI from inbound marketing. Coupons can be very beneficial when used during the proper phases of the buying cycle, but when you rely on coupons to fill the top of your funnel, you’ll only attract price-sensitive customers. Using coupons instead of content to re-engage exist-ing customers can actually turn those customers who weren’t price sensitive and make them that way.


12%

76%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

See ROI from Inbound Marke<ng

Coupons Educa<onal Content



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www.Hubspot.com

Stat: 42% of ecommerce marketers prefer social media to educate consumers.

Expert Analysis: This is somewhat surprising! Social media posts tend to be more ef-fective when used in a communicative manner rather than educational due to the limited amount of time that consumers are exposed to them. Email’s popularity makes sense, since that’s still the primary way that people digest new information. Ebooks and we-binars and podcasts are all harder to produce, so their lack of popularity is also under-standable.


8%

10%

20%

3%

42%

Ebook Webinar Email Podcast Social Media Posts



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Stat: Only 36% of companies that spend less than $25k/year on marketing see an ROI from inbound marketing. Companies that spend at least $25k/year on marketing are 178% more likely to say that they saw an ROI from inbound marketing.

Marketing Spend

Expert Analysis: It’s difficult to imagine a company spending less than $25k/year on marketing having the resources to implement inbound marketing. Content creation alone will probably cost at least that much in order to be effective, if only in terms of the salary required to hire a dedicated marketer. Spending less than $25k, the owner (this group skews heavily in favor of being very small businesses) likely has to do all the marketing themselves in addition to running the business, a significant – though not obviously com-pletely insurmountable – challenge. What’s encouraging is that a relatively small invest-ment in marketing (from the perspective of slightly larger small businesses and mid-sized businesses) has a very high likelihood of seeing an ROI from inbound marketing.


36%

39% 10%

8% 7%

68%

20% 8%

2% 2%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Less than $25,000 $25,001 -‐ $250,000 $250,001 -‐ $1,000,000 $1,000,001 -‐ $5,000,000 Over $5,000,000

Sees ROI from Inbound MarkeEng Does Not See ROI from Inbound MarkeEng



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Stat: Companies that spend less than $25k/year on marketing are 23% more likely to rely on coupons than educational content. Larger companies ($5M+/year on marketing) are 50% more likely to rely on coupons.

Expert Analysis: It’s interesting that the extremely small businesses and the larger busi-nesses share this characteristic. For the small businesses, it’s likely that they don’t have time or resources to create educational content. For the larger businesses, it’s more likely just internal resistance to investing in more educational content when they’re already seeing an ROI. At any rate, the rapid-growth-focused mid-sized companies are much more likely to invest in educational content.


59% 24%

7%

2%

9%

48% 27%

11%

8%

6%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Less than $25,000 $25,001 -‐ $250,000 $250,001 -‐ $1,000,000 $1,000,001 -‐ $5,000,000 Over $5,000,000

Coupons EducaAonal Content *Educational Content includes Guides, Feature Sheets and Aspirational Content



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www.Hubspot.com

Stat: Organic search remains the largest driver of ecommerce traffic, at 22% on average. However, social media has now passed PPC and Email with 17.37% of traffic share.

Visits and Customer Sources

14%

17%

19% 22%

13%

10% Sources of Visits

Email

Social Media

Direct Website

Organic Search

Referrals

PPC

Expert Analysis: Ecommerce sites have long relied on organic search as the primary driver of traffic. PPC’s declining importance is likely a reflection of marketers getting more sophisticated around attributing customer acquisition costs and the climbing costs of clicks. It’s extremely surprising to see social media having such a large share of the traffic. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, with the fantastic success of sites like Pinterest.




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Stat: Direct and organic search traffic are the primary drivers of ecommerce customers with 40% of total customers attributed to those two sources.

16%

15%

20%

20%

15%

9% Sources of Customers

Email

Social Media

Direct Website

Organic Search

Referrals

PPC

Expert Analysis: Referrals and email both have slightly disproportionate levels of cus-tomers attributed to them based on the amount of traffic they drive, which is interesting to see. Also noteworth is the fact that traffic from social media is the most disparate from the amount of just visitors it drives.




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Stat: 65% of businesses are investing in marketing personalization.

Personalization

Expert Analysis: Personalization is a harder inbound tactic to deploy, usually requiring specialized software and a centralized contacts management database. Although some shopping carts have the functionality built in natively for product recommendations, the percentage of marketers using it in email indicates that it’s rapidly expanding into other channels.


37%

27%

8% 10%

36%

30%

11%

7%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Important Somewhat Important Somewhat Unimportant Not Important

Personalized Email Personalized Website



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Stat: 74% of businesses who got a majority of their customers from email, rated person-alized emails as at least somewhat important.

Expert Analysis: It follows that marketers who get lots of value from email would invest in getting more – and email personalization is the next level of contextual marketing.


48%

26%

8% 5%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Important Somewhat Important Somewhat Unimportant Not Important

Personalized Email Ra0ng



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Stat: 82% of businesses who got a majority of their customers from direct & organic, rated personalized product recommendations as at least somewhat important.

Expert Analysis: This is a little interesting because organic and direct traffic are less directly controllable channels. That is, you can’t pro-actively email or post to those chan-nels to attract traffic. So, the emphasis on personalization and conversion optimization and helping those customers discover more products makes sense.


45%

37%

11% 7%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

Important Somewhat Important Somewhat Unimportant Not Important Personalized Website Ra1ng



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Stat: 60% of marketers don’t know their current cart abandonment rate.

Shopping Cart Insights

Expert Analysis: This is an astounding statistic. Shopping cart nurturing is usually the lowest hanging fruit for ecommerce marketers to rapidly drive more revenue. If you’re not at least tracking this metric, you need to.


10%

7%

7%

4%

3% 3%

2% 2%

60%

Cart Abandonment Rate

0 – 10%

11 – 20%

21 – 30%

31 – 40%

41 – 50%

51 – 60%

61 – 70%

Greater than 70%

Don’t know



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Stat: Of marketers that can track cart abandonment, only 42% of companies are nurtur-ing abandoned carts. B2C companies are 128% more likely to implement cart nurturing than B2B Companies.

Expert Analysis: It’s still the minority of ecommerce marketers that are engaging in cartabandonment activities. It makes sense that B2C has a higher level of abandoned cart nurturing. In B2B, you usually have a human involved in some capacity with the sales process. In B2C, you have only one “sales rep” - your shopping cart + marketing au-tomation – and it has to engage with sometimes hundreds of thousands of contacts a month. Therefore, implementations like cart abandonment tend to have much greater leverage in B2C companies.


16%

37%

84%

63%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

B2B B2C

Implements Cart Nurturing Does Not Implement Cart Nurturing



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Stat: Of marketers that track cart abandonment, 66% successfully recover less than 20% of abandoned carts.

43%

23%

12%

7%

7% 2% 2% 4%

Cart Recovery Rate

0 – 10%

11 – 20%

21 – 30%

31 – 40%

41 – 50%

51 – 60%

61 – 70%

Greater than 70%

Expert Analysis: A quarter of marketers are recovering 21-50% of carts. With the aver-age cart abandonment rate at 13% (once you exclude those that don’t track it), that’s a significant revenue lift.




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Stat: 59% of ecommerce marketers primarily use email for abandoned cart nurturing.

Cart Nurturing

59%

11%

5%

14%

8% 4% Cart Nurturing Channels

Email

Social Media

Blog

Direct Phone Call

Direct Mail

Other

Expert Analysis: Email was the expected clear winner. Surprising, however, are the num-ber of companies that follow up with a direct phone call (mostly B2B ecommerce com-panies) and the number of companies using social media in cart recovery. Again, that requires a fairly sophisticated software alignment between the cart, a contacts manage-ment database, and their social media channels.




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Stat: 75% of companies did not know if abandoned cart nurturing demonstrated ROI for them.

Stat: Customer-focused companies are 12% more likely to demonstrate ROI from cart nurturing than sales-focused companies

1%

14%

3%

4%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

B2B B2C

Cart Nurturing Demonstrated ROI Cart Nurturing Did Not Demonstrate ROI

9% 10%

8%

15%

6% 5%

2%

5%

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

Sales focused Customer focused Product focused Marke<ng focused




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Stat: 46% of businesses that tracked abandoners’ spending stated that customers spent more than the original cart value after being nurtured.

Expert Analysis: Cart abandonment is often considered a negative metric. However, as we’ve discussed elsewhere, consumers don’t think of their path to purchase as a linear progression. The fact that the largest cohort of recovered cart abandoners are those that spend more money is a further reinforcement that other motivations – such as education, timing, and trust – are motivations that marketers can address instead of just using cou-pons and framing the abandonment nurturing solely from the perspective of price.


46%

31%

14%

9%

More than original amount spent Less than original amount spent Don't spend at all Other



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Stat: 31% of marketers use coupons in abandoned cart nurturing.

Expert Analysis: Coupons tend to be the most gratifying solution, so it’s not surprising they’re the most popular. What’s surprising is that 14% of marketers are doing aban-doned cart nurturing with direct mail. It’s not a channel typically associated with the near-real-time requirements of abandonment nurturing.


7% 7%

18%

31%

13%

14%

10%

Ebooks Webinars Customer Reviews Coupon Codes Newsle?er Direct Mail Other



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Stat: Using educational content is 32% more likely to recover cart abandoners that spend more than the original amount than using coupon codes.

Expert Analysis: It makes sense: Coupon codes recover price-sensitive customers and inherently reduce the amount they’re spending without encouraging them to add addi-tional products to offset the unit discounts. Educational content addresses non-price issues and better positions the marketer for up-sell/cross-sell activities when they return to the cart. Also, consumers are becoming savvier around cart abandonment – with mag-azines and shopping tips websites even telling consumers to abandon carts to receive coupons, thereby increasing the number of costly deal-seeking customers you acquire with coupons.


38%

29%

15% 16%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

Educa1onal Content Coupon Codes

More than original amount spent Less than original amount spent



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Stat: 72% of marketers that do abandoned cart nurturing send the first message within the first day.

Expert Analysis: Data from ecommerce and B2B direct sales, as well as common sense back up that consumers will be easier to connect with and more likely to be receptive to converting the quicker you engage with them. Within 1 hour you run the risk of losing consumers who just hadn’t finished browsing or checking out yet, which is especially dangerous if your first message contains a coupon instead of educational content.


21%

51%

14%

8% 4% 2%

Within 1 hour of the abandonment 1 – 24 hours 25 – 48 hours 49 – 72 hours 3 -‐ 7 days A>er 1 week



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Stat: Businesses that send the first nurturing message within 1 hour of the abandonment are 326% more likely to see ROI from abandoned cart nurturing.

Stat: 60% of customers that were sent the first nurturing message within an hour of re-covering their cart spent more money than the original cart value.

Expert Analysis: There’s definitely a diminishing value here that backs up conventional wisdom in this case: The earlier you send the first email, the more likely you are to re-cover the abandoner and the more likely they are to spend more than they had originally planned. 0% of marketers who reported waiting a week to send the first nurturing mes-sage reported that the carts they recovered spent more.


81%

8%

6%

4%

52%

14%

5%

10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1 – 24 hours 25 – 48 hours 49 – 72 hours 3 -‐ 7 days


70% 10%

3% 3%

0%

56% 11%

4% 4%

4%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1 – 24 hours 25 – 48 hours 49 – 72 hours 3 -‐ 7 days A8er 1 week

More than original amount spent Less than original amount spent



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Stat: Customers who receive nurturing emails with product descriptions included are 52% more likely to spend more money than the original cart value when they return.

Expert Analysis: It’s a pity that not enough people are collecting “use case” information in pre-transactional conversions (that is, collecting information about why or for what the customer wanted to use a given product) for us to use that data, because being able to remind people why they wanted something is a powerful ability. At the very least, how-ever, this data backs up that you should reference what the customer wanted when they came to you. What’s interesting is that recommending additional products was the one category likely to cause the customer to spend less money. Educating and persuading seems to be effective; confusing cross-selling seems to be detrimental.


52%

13%

6% 8%

37%

17%

5% 5%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Descrip3on of the product (Text and/or Text & Pictures)

Addi3onal product recommenda3ons

Product how-‐to videos Product Guides / Ebooks

More than original Less than original



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Stat: 49% of marketers who send abandoned cart nurturing emails include a description of the products in the cart.

Expert Analysis: Personalizing the message with data about the actual product the customer was interested in is the most popular method. However, still 17% of marketers aren’t including any product messaging – even though customers nurtured with such content are more likely to spend more when they return.


52%

13%

6% 8%

37%

17%

5% 5%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Descrip3on of the product (Text and/or Text & Pictures)

Addi3onal product recommenda3ons

Product how-‐to videos Product Guides / Ebooks

More than original Less than original



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Stat: On average, 57% of abandoners revisit the website with 1-5 days. However, busi-nesses that send their cart abandonment messages within 24 hours of abandonment are 14% more likely to get those customers back to their website within 5 days.

57% 21%

6%

4% 3% 3% 4%

3% Revisit Timing

1 – 5 Days

6 – 10 days

10 – 15 Days

15 – 20 Days

20 – 25 Days

25 – 30 Days

More than 30 Days

Never revisit



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www.Hubspot.com

HubSpot fielded our 2014 State of Ecommerce Marketing Survey between

January 07 and February 02, 2014. The query took the form of an online

survey, to which there were 1,099 qualified complete and partial responses

from marketing and business professionals in 45 countries on six continents,

including North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, Australia, South/Central

America, and Africa.

Survey respondents included business owners, marketing practitioners,

marketing managers, marketing directors, CEOs, CMOs, and agency sales

and IT professionals from the ecommerce industry.

The sampling method was an incentivized, non-probability, voluntary sample

composed of HubSpot prospects having expressed the willingness via opt-

in to receive marketing-related email messages and those responding to

invitations via social media promotion on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

As the goal of this survey was to assess the market saturation level of

inbound ecommerce marketing tactics (which are often decoupled from the

larger framework), we did not exclude any responses, including those who

indicated they did not implement inbound marketing strategies specifically.

For visual purposes, we eliminated “don’t know” and/or “not applicable”

responses from various analyses.

The incentive for participating in the survey was entry into a contest to win

either a free iPad or $500.

To request further information about the design or conduct of this survey-

based study, please contact [email protected].

Survey Methodology



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