Marketing Ecommerce Brands For Baby Boomers

Buying products online is a relatively new trend, so ecommerce feels like a ‘millennial’ thing, right?

Surprisingly not. The number of Millennials and Boomers who shop online is pretty much equal. While Millenials make up for 30% of online shoppers – still a whopping percentage – Boomers actually beat that at 31%.

It’s obvious why really, when you think about it. Studies show Boomers control around 70% of the world’s disposable income – and spending by this demographic is predicted to increase another 58% over the next 20 years. But the most shockingly of all? While this generation is spending the most by far, they’re only targeted by 5-10% of marketing.

Why on God’s Green Earth are we neglecting this clearly eager market?

Many online merchants are on a constant, proactive search for the newest platforms to advertise through. But in their search to cast their net out as widely as they can, they often end up neglecting a generation that doesn’t necessarily use all the latest and greatest technology.

That’s not to say that Boomers aren’t online. Sure, they’re less likely to use Instagram and Snapchat – but they’re far from a lost cause for digital marketers.

In fact, Colorado Free University found that Baby boomers spend 27 hours per week online – two hours more than 16-34 year olds. And at last count 85% are on Facebook and (more importantly) 95% use email.

It’s clear that we can do more.

Keep all these statistics in mind, and let’s take a look at a few ways we can reach them with an effective, automated marketing strategy we can be sure will convert.

The customer journey

As a general rule, Boomers are more concerned about a good brand, great experience, and top-class service than they are about extravagant discounts. So first things first – you need to get out the ol’ pen and paper and jot down your customer journey.

What brings people to your brand?
What need or problem do you serve or solve?
What do your most loyal customers have in common? What makes them stay?

Write down the stages your ideal customers generally go through in their journey with your brand – from lead, to customer, to loyal customer, to brand advocate.

Now, try and identify opportunities to optimise this for your Boomer customers – from both a customer experience and revenue perspective.

Let’s take a look back at our secret ecommerce growth formula briefly: Average Order Value x Frequency of Purchase x Number of Customers.

If we truly want to optimise our revenue, we need to increase all three of these multipliers.

Lead capture

The Number of customers seems to be the most logical place to start.

Widening the mouth of your sales funnel can be done in many ways – but one of our all time favourites is the controversial pop-up.

We’ve written a lot about pop-ups in the past. With an average 3% conversion rate, they can be a marketer’s best friend if used correctly. And since 95% of Boomers are using email regularly, pop-ups seem to be the perfect way to go about capturing this audience.

Pop-ups work because, unlike other forms of lead capture, the trade-off is minimal. Most of us will gladly provide our email address in exchange for a discount coupon or free ebook download. Plus, because subscribing through a pop-up is a form of consent, as long as you don’t spam them, audiences aren’t going to feel pursued or suffer from ad fatigue down the road.

Permission marketing still works – and pop ups are a great way to spark this romance with your website visitors.

Take a look at a few of the previous articles we’ve already written on pop-ups for a better idea of the best way to implement these onto your website.

Email Automation

Now that you’re collecting subscriptions from your most engaged website visitors, it’s time to put them to good use. You’re going to want to start focusing on your Frequency of purchase and Average order value.

The first step is a solid Welcome Series.

The Welcome Series is the best way to ensure a great first impression with your brand. When someone subscribes to your email newsletter, they generally expect some sort of action. Making them wait for your next monthly newsletter means you may lose any interest you’ve already incubated. If you’ve promised them a discount or freebie in exchange for their subscription, give it to them – then follow them up with some more information on what makes your product or service stand out in a few days time.

The next best step? An Abandoned Cart Series.

If you’re an ecommerce merchant, you’re no doubt scratching your head in frustration at the huge percentage of visitors who add products to their cart, then leave without ultimately purchasing. This phenomenon is incredibly common online for a huge array of reasons – but these uncertain customers are far from lost! Setting up an email automation to incentivise them to come back and finish off their order proves to be incredibly effective. In fact, most people only need a reminder that their order is waiting – no discounts, no lost revenue, no stress.

In fact, Klaviyo’s Abandoned Cart benchmark report shows that the average performance for abandoned cart emails is roughly:

Open rate of 41.18%
Click rate of 9.50%
$5.81 average revenue per recipient

Reclaiming these would-be sales is easy – especially for a demographic with a 95% chance of using email.

Plus, you want to reward customers when they make a purchase. As we already stated, Boomers care a lot about the service they receive. Like all your customers, they want to feel loved. So pamper them with a Customer Rewards series!

Giving loyal customers the love that they deserve is easy, and can prove to be a fantastic way to not only encourage a greater Frequency of Purchase, but can also help to further boost your Number of customers through referrals from your nw brand advocates.

Retargeting

Email is probably the most effective way to market your ecommerce store. But considering 85% of boomers are also on Facebook, retargeting should also be on the to-do list.

Boomers are hungry for information, and they take action based on what they see on social media. Also, they’re 19% more likely to share content than any other generation. All of this means Facebook, with the right strategy, can be a fantastic way to nurture your leads, and help turn them into a great tool to spread your message. You just need to be sure that what you’re delivering is relevant to their interests.

Luckily, with tools like Shoelace, this is far easier to do than ever before.

Shoelace works alongside your ecommerce platform to help follow up abandoned browsers.

Say one of your prospective customers takes a look at one of your products online, but ultimately leaves without purchasing. With the power of Facebook Pixels and Shopify tracking, you can follow them up with custom-made, automated ads to remind them to return and purchase. They don’t even need to add the product to their cart first.

Furthermore, retargeting is a great way to encourage up- and cross-sells.

Cross-sell and up-sell campaigns are our favourite tactic when looking to improve a client’s Average order value. They work wonders, simply because they’re some of the most highly-targeted campaigns you can run.

You can be absolutely certain that a customer’s interest will be piqued if you’re targeting ads to them based on their past purchases. You can confidently drop that little bit of extra marketing budget on some paid social campaigns without worrying too much about whether you’ll ever see a return. Trust us – it’s worth trialling for your brand.

If you would like a hand with anything you’ve read above, or are just looking for a little more information, one of our strategists would love to discuss your brand. Get in touch anytime!