Let’s start on a POSITIVE note!

We are all in this together and we will get through this together! - A true ARManion

Some of us are still not sleeping well, sanitisers are making our hands dry, and our brains are foggy from reading too much about covid-19. It is okay to feel overwhelmed but it's also important to pause for a moment and collect your thoughts.

Taking care of yourself is important so you are equipped to help your family through this time.

We are here to talk about how you can help yourself and your family during these difficult times to recover mentally and physically. We won’t say it’s going to be easy but we can make it happen by our willingness to move forward and #StayPositive.

A FEW FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO MENTAL HEALTH DIFFICULTIES DURING PANDEMIC (CHINA VIRUS)

• Loneliness and Isolation during quarantine.  
• Financial problems due to long medical bills  
• Difficulty working due to fatigue or loss of focus.  
• Grief due to the loss of a family member or close friends.  
• Disruption to routines and anchors caused by lockdowns and restrictions  

How can you overcome them?

1. Be Patient: The key here is to pull yourself together and stay strong mentally! Take each day as it comes with patience and just as Dory said...
2. OTTs to the rescue: If you are home quarantined and isolated, boredom can strike very quickly. Use this time to watch all those binge-worthy shows/movies you always wanted to watch, but make sure you rest more!

3. Talk to your friends/family/peers: Communication is key! Stay connected with your loved ones virtually and keep checking on them every now and then. The sense of togetherness will give a massive boost to your mental health. 

Hum Saath Saath hain cues in

4. Workplace-related stress: You need to build resilience and manage job stress. Identify things that cause stress and work together with co-workers, supervisors to identify solutions. Increase your sense of control by developing a consistent daily routine when possible — ideally, one that is similar to your schedule before the pandemic.

5. Seek social support: “Empathy” is the key here. Losing someone can be devastating and not something one should go through on their own. You will find it helpful to work with a peer-support group, either in person or online. 

HOW TO GET BACK ON FEET AND GET BETTER, POST-COVID?

First and Foremost REST!

Yes, we know you’ve had to rest a lot but you need more, in between daily tasks your body needs enough opportunity to recover. Get enough sleep because that will speed up the recovery procedure. Focus on healing.

Focus on alarming signals

Monitor your symptoms closely by checking blood pressure, sugar levels, etc on a regular basis and monitoring them. If you notice a pestering headache or fatigue, check with your physician.

Take your time 

Give yourself some time to slowly adjust to your old routine, taking one day at a time. Don’t exert yourself by doing too much work. Keep it slow and take rest at regular intervals so that you give your body ample time to adjust back to its normal routine.

Take a nutritious diet 

The most common practice to lead a healthy life that we all know but don’t follow is to better our diet. Include high protein and fibers in your diet with eggs “cause sunday ho ya monday roz khao Anday”, at least 1 fruit a day, nutritious veggies, and safe poultry to compensate for the lost appetite.

Avoid binging on junk foods for a while.

Healthy Gut, Healthy Mind!

Some exercise for your brain 

Exercising your brain is what’s going to help you gradually get back your concentration levels on track. Invest some time in solving puzzles, memory games, and activities that make you think harder. A little KBC might help. haainnnn!!!!

After Brain comes Muscles 

Gradually including light exercises in your everyday schedule will make you both physically and mentally healthy. Walking, light yoga, breathing exercises, etc. will help you gain strength and endurance back.

Just make sure you exercise in a socially distanced environment and open areas.     

Follow this link for more information on exercises and how to take care of your heart and lungs: Click here

HOW LONG DOES ONE NEED TO RECOVER AND WHEN TO TAKE A VACCINE POST COVID?

Now, the big question which everyone is asking. 

When and which vaccine should I take?

The answer is rather simple. Have a look:

For people who have contracted the disease after the first dose

• It is advised to wait for at least two to six weeks to take your second dose post-recovery. 

For people who have contracted the disease and have not got the first dose

• You should wait 90 days as there are already antibodies in the immune system, which means you will not be able to develop a robust immune response to the vaccine.

But when you are ready for the vaccine you would have already seen your friends, relatives, or acquaintances receiving their COVID vaccine, but you have also heard of side effects such as fever, body aches, headaches, and more. While the side effects may sound scary, it does not mean that you have to suffer through them to a full extent. There’s always a doctor who will give medicines and multivitamins to cope with this, so don’t be afraid and

 “chal beta vaccine le le ree”. 

So if you are ready to roll and get your jab let’s find you a slot by clicking here.

Which Vaccine should you go for? COVAXIN or COVISHIELD

Well, in the present context, it is safe to say that ‘Jo mile wo lagwa lo’ 

As per the leading medical portals and doctors, both vaccines are equally safe when it comes to building immunity. There’s however a slight difference in their efficacy rates which is actually marginal. 

(Note: Please check with your physician if you or any of your family members have any underlying body conditions which can pose complications before going for the vaccination)

Both will have their fair share of side effects which you will experience like fever, body pain, malaise, fatigue to name a few. These effects can last up to 24-48 hours ideally but can vary depending on body type.

You can read the below PDFs or watch the video to get details about the vaccines: 

https://www.seruminstitute.com/pdf/covishield_fact_sheet.pdf

When can kids get their vaccine shots?

The immune system in children could vary greatly depending on age. A 6-year-old will have a very different immunity than a 16-year-old. Medical trials for vaccines involving children usually undergo stricter protocols than involving adults. Some pharma companies have already started trials for these vaccines and we will soon have them.

** Check out these links from WHO and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for more insights.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/support-for-rehabilitation-self-management-after-covid-19-related-illness

https://www.mohfw.gov.in/

Elevate your CRM Platform

Effective Segmentation of Contacts

Trigger Dynamic Workflow Processes

Nurture Through Lead Scoring

Recover Abandoned Carts Losses

Refine Media Strategies

Prioritise Plans for Video Advertising

Deploy Programmatic Advertising 

Practice Moment Marketing

Optimise Revenue-driven KPIs

Declutter your Website

Provide Stellar Customer Experience

Plan for SEO before Launching  

Produce Omnichannel Capabilities

Experiment & Evaluate

In the process of acquiring new customers, retaining them sometimes takes a backseat. Studies have shown that retaining customers costs seven times lesser than acquiring a new one. To prevent such situations, businesses have to focus on extending their customers’ lifetime with their brands, a.k.a., customer retention. They have to keep giving their audience opportunities to  hold onto so that they do not think about switching to other brands or products.

Retention can help boost revenues significantly as  customers trust the brand and keep coming back to it for repeat purchases. To help you out, here are five plans of action that will help keep your audience hooked - 

Cultivate your Listening Skills

Businesses should focus on becoming active listeners as this helps in enhancing their customers’ overall social experience. To do the same, a social listening software can be employed wherein listening alerts can be set up to understand customer queries better. It can also be used to give product/service information. This makes two-communication much faster, and the customer feels acknowledged.

Several kinds of social listening tools can be used to open potential windows for link building by digging up unlinked product/brand mentions. Also, by using different active listening approaches, businesses can identify customer pain points and design compelling offers to engage and retain them in the future.

Infer engagement Analytics

Businesses can find out a lot about their customer by analysing their online behaviour on social media platforms, as they offer better insights into the customer’s life and choices. They can interact with their customers on social media platforms like Snapchat and Twitter as it will help them create an in-depth user experience via hyper-personalisation.

Tools like Instagram Insights or Facebook Analytics can be utilised to keep a real-time track of activity duration, online purchases, customer demographics, and content statistics. Furthermore, analytics can be divided into separate categories like prescriptive, descriptive, predictive, diagnostic, and consumption to have a more streamlined content creation approach. This way, personalised content can be used to engage the customers.

Upscale your CRM game

Businesses must have a  good CRM game-plan as that can be a huge selling point. It genuinely helps with customer retention and also creates a huge window for building long-term relationships. Brands can open support accounts across all kinds of social media platforms to actively interact with their customers, boost brand health, and reduce customer dissatisfaction.

To take it a step further, well-segmented community-specific groups can be created on social media pages that can employ customers as brand ambassadors. This will have a powerful impact on purchase decisions and bring positive results. Additionally, there is an option for ‘Profile Enrichment Services.’ This can be employed to get better information about customers, complete their profiles, and address their actual needs. 

Incentivise Incessantly to boost ROI

Businesses should always ensure that they provide incentives to their customers as this will kickstart a cycle of giving and receiving, which will help boost sales and increase ROI. There should keep an active lookout for brand advocates across platforms so that incentives and rewards can be given to them to ensure a lasting relationship.

Marketing gimmicks like ‘irresistible offers’ can be used to ensure that customers do not switch brands and continue to be loyal to the business’s products and services. A thorough analysis of customers’ social media profiles should be done to maintain the correct timing and tonality of sending out incentives as this will impact CTRs significantly.

Automate to be efficient

Businesses should make an active habit of using automated systems and scheduling tools to ensure flexibility of posting content and information. Today, customers are more into raising queries on social media platforms rather than calling on customer service numbers. Automation will address their issues in real-time and keep them interested.

Social media scheduling tools like Buffer, Taggbox Commerce, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, and many more can be used to track UGC, competitors, content, and optimisation. Also, businesses can invest in marketing automation software as it will allow them to have a clear insight into the customer journey and help develop customised deals to keep them coming back for more purchases.

Customer retention is not something that can be achieved overnight. It takes consistent dedication and time to get to that point wherein your customers will return to your business for more. You need to have some plans or strategies in place so that you can give them the incentive to do so - like finding ways to delight them, improving their experience, giving them discount offers, and making them realise that your business enjoys and appreciates their goodwill and support. The more consistent your efforts are, higher will be the retention!

A few core fixes can significantly impact your search traffic without needing to earn new links. It is the art of converting more visitors on your website to boost your sales. On an average, companies are spending as much as $2,000 a month on CRO tools.

With the classic mix of SEO and social media tactics, you can watch the number of new visitors to your store skyrocket when you originate. These strategies will continue to encourage more traffic as your business grows. 

Here’s how your E-commerce business can achieve organic growth with helpful SEO strategies:

Phase out your SEO plan

By understanding your target market better and creating a strategic, data-driven SEO plan, your business will be able to market your website more effectively. Your business should make use of tools like Google Keyword Planner that will help you narrow down your list of the right keywords.

A study reveals that search engines contribute to 93% of the web traffic while the number of web searchers who make it to the second page of search results is less than 5%. To ensure your website is truly optimised, the key is to average out metrics from multiple 3rd party SEO tools. This can help audit your site, observe how it performs against your top keywords, and what your consumers are precisely looking for.

Call out for Call To Action

It is essential for your business to keep your CTAs effective. Run A/B tests continually to assess which CTAs are performing better. Tie in your CTA with your value proposition, giving your audience an incentive that motivates them, whether to save or make money, get fit, lose weight, or anything else.

Make use of social sharing CTAs as this helps boost your visibility, follower count, and website traffic. According to conversion researcher Michael Aagaard, first-person language is powerful as it becomes the internal dialog in the visitor’s mind. Rather than talking ‘to’ them, the CTA speaks ‘as’ them.

Pin it to Win it

Pinterest Pins help your business to reach a wider audience, create a seamless E-commerce experience for your customers and increase brand awareness and conversions. These pins work consistently to let your business provide impeccable customer service.

Research from Pinterest has found that 93% of pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases. And 87% have made a purchase after seeing something they liked on Pinterest. Use Pinterest SEO to capture sales immediately and bring in impressive revenue for your business.

Powerful Promotions for Page Traffic

To continue your business's growth trajectory, you need to and out to potential customers in your niche with a toolkit of organic promotional tactics and campaigns at your disposal. A study has shown that 93% of online buyers are encouraged to buy more products if free shipping options are available, whereas 58% of consumers add more items to the cart to qualify for free shipping.

To optimise on-page website SEO content, highlight Offers & Discounts to drive clicks/taps. Factors like headlines, URL slugs, and meta tags, alt tags can be used to sprinkle your primary and related keywords throughout your body copy. To incentivise hesitant shoppers to make a purchase, deploy the BOGO (Buy One Get One) promotional tactic. It also helps keep the SKUs in check and increases time spent per page.  

Quest with Quora

Quora is an excellent marketing strategy tool to generate organic awareness, build an E-commerce rapport, and enlighten you about your prospective audience. Demonstrate brand value and image by answering detailed, meaningful questions from the audience and interest them to look into the website or app links.

When running a social campaign, using a high domain authority website like Quora to magnify search engine ranks and generate high-quality traffic is essential. It builds credibility and thought leadership. According to the analytic website Alexa.com, Quora ranks 80th for global traffic. Track your E-commerce referral traffic on Quora to gain an incredible source for leads. 

If you are able to convince a customer that is intending to leave your site to finalise a purchase, the chances are high that they will leave a good review on your website, share their favourite products on their social media, or even participate in your referral plans, all of which help bring additional people to your E-commerce stores.

Traffic is the lifeblood for any E-commerce store. If people aren’t visiting your site, you’re missing out on huge sales. You must grab onto each opportunity to your advantage and drive traffic back to your store!

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Influencer Marketing promotions have become an absolute necessity for E-commerce businesses in 2021. They are quick and effective to increase brand recognition, trust and consumer loyalty. Data reveals that around 49% of consumers make online buys based on influencers' recommendations. Such is the potential of this powerful symbiotic relationship. 

When you launch an influencer marketing campaign for your business, the influencers’ followers become your audience, and in addition, they also bring in new ones! Here are five pro-tips to strengthen your E-commerce strategy, increase your social media exposure and reinforce consumer decisions:

Plan a Platform-First Influencer Mix

A well-planned influencer media mix will add a human touch to the brand. It makes the promotional experience through social media platforms more personalised and credible for your audience. Businesses should collaborate with influencers having different follower levels, be it micro, nano or mega influencers, as this will help in increasing their reach and allow them to tap into niche audience segments.

Brands can also organise quizzes, competitions, and contests for their consumers via influencers on social media to create buzz and enhance brand exposure. Influencers, too, can implement affiliate marketing by using customised URLs and promo codes to bring organic traffic to your E-commerce website. 

Sell Stories and Experiences 

People do not buy just goods and services; they buy relations, stories, and magic. Hence, businesses should focus on selling stories and experiences through influencers to build trust and relationship with consumers. Influencers can push consumers to break their 'media fasting' and support in giving your brand the required consumer attention and acknowledgement. 

Data says that influencer content performs 2.7 times better than regular branded advertising content through paid channels. Take brands like Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom; for example, they have collaborated with various fashion influencers to promote their brand stories on Instagram via innovative posts and reels. This made the consumers embrace brand authenticity and also assisted in increasing business revenue.

Amplify Your ROI

An influencer marketing campaign is fundamental to boost your E-commerce sales and to drive heavy returns on investment. Studies tell us that influencer marketing strategies offer an ROI that is eleven times higher than non-influencer digital marketing campaigns.

D2C E-commerce businesses should offer lucrative incentives through influencers in the form of referral codes or tracking links in order to increase traction and engagement numbers. Capitalising across social media platforms can be done, wherein influencers use hashtags/tags within their stories and posts to redirect followers and new consumers to your website. 

Brand Awareness & Promotion

In today's D2C landscape, brands can take advantage of influencer-created content to improve engagement, create brand awareness, enhance promotions and post more content without overwhelming followers’ feed. Influencers can help narrow the business sales funnel and get more leads for conversions by prompting relevant, targeted customer traffic.

Influencers can contribute to your website blogs and write product reviews to create more natural social interaction with your target audience, which can easily be converted into sales. For example, Glossier, a beauty brand, has an influential community called 'Glossier Girls' wherein followers can use their unique URLs and get a 20% discount on their first purchase. 

Beef up Brand Loyalty

Businesses should encourage consumers to give referrals by offering influencer-specific brand loyalty memberships, which will make them feel like a part of the influencer community. While collaborating with influencers, businesses should focus on GenZ and millennial demographics to re-share UGC (User-generated content).

Work on cross-promotions aggressively wherein consumers can see that the relationship between the influencer and the E-commerce business is positive. This will help urge more sales. Businesses should use influencer marketing platforms like Trend to enable them to verify preferable influencers, hyper-target consumers, and cut campaign costs.

Influencer marketing is an absolutely viable and essential strategy for us as marketers. The goal becomes to utilise an army of influencers supporting in building and developing the E-commerce business faster. It is not needed for a company to spend big bucks here, as there is a little known truth that more followers do not necessarily equate to more influence. 

It is critical to focus on setting your marketing campaign in sync with the influencers, your audience and your objective. Businesses must focus on cultivating trusting relationships with influencers to engage them with their brand and manage them to build a vast media network.

Converting potential leads into customers is one thing but retaining them is where the challenging work begins. Customer retention saves you more money than acquiring new ones. As per data, there is a 45% chance of purchase from a second-time buyer. This further moves up to 56% by the time they come around for their fourth visit. Taking good care of your customers, helps your business grow and thrive while retaining them brings in profits and enhances your brand image without any added efforts.

A small group of loyal customers can be vital contributors to a majority of sales.  Since retained customers make for such valuable assets, we bring you five effective strategies to make your customers return for those repeat purchases. 

Go for Multi-Channel Marketing

Businesses should analyse their consumers’ purchasing behaviour online and deploy this strategy to keep them engaged in the future. Time is of the essence when it comes to replenishable items. This is why businesses must segment their customers on the basis of products they buy on a regular basis and send across reminders via e-mails, in-app notifications, messages, etc.

The RFM Model (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value) should definitely be used for automated marketing to retarget customers, re-engage them, and ensure faster cart checkouts in the process. Further, businesses should run trigger campaigns to have an in-depth understanding of their customers’ response rates, as this will help immensely with personalised messaging.

Cultivate Effective CRM Plans

Ensuring a great customer experience is crucial for any business if they want retention to come into play. This is where Customer Relationship Management comes in. Businesses should use CRM software to centralise all customer data in one place, analyse it, and provide customer experiences that are consistent with their promises. 

They should also leverage CRM analytics to segment their customers on the basis of who is more profitable, who purchases more often, etc. This helps in making regular updates to their shopping requirements. Another interesting way is to create dialogues with customers through integrated marketing communications. This will improve brand positioning, build loyalty, and ultimately lead to retention.

Connect with Your Customers

Customers like to be a part of the brand family as much as they like the brand. Businesses should try and partner with them by sharing. This way, caring will automatically come in from their side. One method can include sending personal invites via effective channels for any big product launch or brand event. This will make the customers feel acknowledged and important, and they will feel a sense of belonging and obligation towards your business.

Genuine interest should be shown while taking feedback and reviews from your customers on ways of providing frictionless experiences. However, you have to be careful to not spam them in the process. Additionally, separate chat rooms should be made with the sole purpose of piloting strategies, beta testing, and experimenting with their customers.

Accessibility-first Customer Support

Providing impeccable customer service is an important and effective one-way ticket to customer retention. If the service is good, the business will surely have its customers’ long-term attention. Data suggests that around 92-93% of customers will engage in repeat purchase if they experience good post-purchase service.

Businesses should focus on having a 24*7 portal for addressing criticism and providing prompt and efficient service to their customers - be it via calls, mails, or live chats. A feedback loop system should be in place that works on collecting, distributing, and analysing customer feedback. 

Personalise Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are simply a way of letting your customers know that they are valued for their relationship with your business. Businesses should focus on building strong loyalty programs to turn customers into committed brand advocates and members of your brand community. 

Customised loyalty programs will provide personalised and brand-specific rewards to your customers. Furthermore, businesses must use reward gamification methods to motivate their customers to reach exclusive VIP tiers in their loyalty programs. Data reveals that around 92% of customers will take recommendations from their trusted friends. This is why businesses should give points to their customers for providing referrals. This will ensure both retention and acquisition.

Retaining customers is definitely an excellent way to sell more and create a hurdle-free road to achieving business aims and goals. Therefore, businesses should continuously try to garner their customers’ trust and loyalty through well thought out marketing strategies. It will ensure a proactive retention approach and healthy profits in the long run!

Cart Abandonment is plausibly one of the most significant hurdles that E-commerce retailers face on a daily basis. Most online businesses lose out on their conversion rates and revenue due to the same. Data tells us that around 67.91% of consumers abandon their carts. Apparently, in the E-commerce industry, this is pretty common. Despite the business’s best efforts, consumers seem to casually visit their websites and window shop, but never complete their purchase. This is a clear indicator of opportunities missed. 

Fortunately, this is a problem that can be fixed. There are several ways to reduce this number. Here are five game plans that your business can implement to stop consumers from abandoning their carts -

Deploy Exit-intent Pop-ups

Businesses can employ this strategy to change their consumers’ minds at the exact juncture where they choose to abandon their shopping carts. Consumer attention can be captured effectively using exit-intent pop-ups that will show a business’s campaign when consumers are actively opting to leave the checkout page. Simultaneously, pop-ups regarding feedback can also be triggered to understand why they are choosing to abandon their carts at all.

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Further, incentives like coupons, promo codes, and discount offers can be used via pop-ups to ensure that consumers go ahead with the purchase and help boost conversion rates for the business. One huge benefit here is that these pop-ups will help in converting casual window shoppers into loyal consumers who fall back on the business’s website for repeat purchases.

Avoid Price Shockers

Usually, consumers exit the checkout page once they realise that they will incur charges that they did not anticipate at all. These hidden costs are typically discovered after entering the shipping details. This is something that businesses should be absolutely transparent about from the very beginning of a consumer’s shopping journey.

They can make use of floating bars on their E-commerce websites to showcase their free-shipping offers based on order value. Tools like shipping calculators can be used during the shopping process to ensure clarity so that the consumers know exactly what they are supposed to pay in terms of taxes and home delivery. Additionally, businesses can make use of campaigns to give their consumers incentives based on the number of products they add to their cart. This will help in increasing the number of cart items and also help make the purchase decision final.

Bolster Social Proof

The consumers of today look for extensive reviews and testimonials before buying a product. They basically want to ensure that they are getting what the product promises. This is precisely where social proof comes in. Businesses can make use of social proof notifications when a consumer is shopping to show how others have positively connected and engaged with the brand. This also helps in creating FOMO (Fear of missing out).

Related Article : E-commerce Must-Do’s Post Pandemic

This method critically helps in building strong relationships with consumers by making the brand look trustworthy and pushing hesitant buyers to make the purchase.  Further, businesses can use ‘trust badges’ on their websites to show that their consumers’ data and payment details are secure and remain private to them only. This makes the shopping experience and journey more comfortable for the consumers.

Promote Guest Checkouts

Sign-in requirements are bottlenecks that push customers to avoid your website. While this option may work with many consumers, but more often than not, they end up looking for alternatives. This is why businesses should focus on removing the sign-in barricade on their E-commerce websites. It will help avoid excessive bounce rates. 

The guest checkout option is a great solution here. This way, businesses can ensure better conversions and also get their consumers’ required information from their shipping details, which can be used later for retargeting. Also, options like ‘social login’ can be provided to the consumers to avoid the lengthy sign-in process. This tactic uses information from social media platforms, provides verified user data, and helps businesses with personalisation in the future.

Improve Browsing Experience

Businesses should focus on keeping the checkout process simple, short, and straightforward. Consumers like nothing more than a crisp online checkout experience. Too many ‘fields to be filled up’ option should be avoided entirely, and website checkouts should be wrapped up in  a maximum of four to five steps only. 

CTA or Call to action buttons can be used in the shopping cart by making use of time-sensitive words like ‘buy now’ or ‘try now.’ Further, progress bars can be used to show the consumers where they are in the purchase process. This helps create momentum that pushes consumers to reach their goal of completing the purchase and owning the item.

While consumers exhibit different shopping patterns, there are certain aspects that remain the same for most of them - be it in terms of delight or frustration. It is up to the businesses to turn things around and make the most of their opportunities. The more they work on the user experience they provide, the higher will be the benefits!

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