Author: LION Digital

Thankfully, the days of carpet-bombing email marketing are behind us. Customers no longer need to sift through inboxes full of generic emails aimed at mass outreach instead of building personal connections. Personalised emails are much more likely to grab the recipient’s attention and drive them to take action. It’s all about reaching the right audience at the right time with messages that feel tailor-made. With pre-built eCommerce automation and real-time audience segmentation, your chances of getting subscribers to open, click and convert dramatically increase—ultimately boosting your ROI. Data shows that personalised emails deliver six times higher transaction rates than non-personalised emails.

Thanks to AI, data analysis tools for personalisation have made huge strides, especially in email marketing. As a result, 80% of marketers state that AI has significantly improved their email campaigns’ performance. 

This article looks at the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for email marketing, targeted personalisation and send times optimisation to note how you can gain traction in your customers’ inboxes.

Email Personalisation and Beyond

Reports suggest that AI in email marketing can analyse customer data to create personalised content, leading to an increase in email open rates by 26%.

As one of the leading platforms, Klaviyo utilises AI for personalisation in email marketing and SMS in three main directions:

1. Predictive analytics to retrieve and apply useful insights from customer data.
2. Generative AI that saves time and creative energy.
3. AI optimisation without any human interference.

1. Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics allows AI marketing tools to:

• Identify emerging trends and potential issues in their inception phase through customer review sentiments analysis;
• Predict the next order date, customer lifetime value (CLV) and spending potential, average time between orders, churn risk, etc., which allows businesses to anticipate the future order flow and adjust processes accordingly; 
• Transform the email communication in AI email campaigns by integrating personalised feeds that show customers products they are likely to be interested in buying;
• Compare the outcomes with industry-specific benchmarks to check and drive the efforts’ efficiency.

2. Generative AI

With generative AI email marketing tools, businesses can:

• Utilise AI email campaign generator and effortlessly create the AI workflows in a few clicks by merely describing the process requirements in a couple of prompts;
• Apply email writing artificial intelligence capabilities or AI email generator to draft impactful subject lines and generate email content; 
• Manage the SMS marketing channel by streamlining and improving the process of writing SMS campaign copy or applying suggested responses to customer requests in SMS conversations;
• Enable customers to write impactful reviews through suggested headlines and content pieces.

3. AI optimisation

AI optimisation helps businesses to:

• Personalise emails by gaining insights from A/B tests and using the message version that resonates the most with a specific customer profile;
• Enhance the efficiency of the A/B test output by smartly identifying the outperforming subject line, image, offer, CTA, or other driving element.

AI Audience Segmentation

Segmentation allows the grouping of audiences based on personal characteristics, interests, and behaviours. There are 7 key segments used to boost email and SMS performance:

1. Cross-sell segment – customers who bought one product but skipped related items that might interest them;
2. Location-based segment – groups customers based on where they live or shop;
3. Item and brand-specific segment – targets customers who visit the website for a particular product or category;
4. Engagement tier segment – allows flexible targeting by adding multiple levels of grouping based on the conditions you set, which are variable and not fixed; 
5. Churn risk segment – focuses on customers likely to leave for a competitor, making them ideal for win-back campaigns or automated flows to reignite loyalty; 
6. Average order value (AOV) segment – groups customers by how much they typically spend, helping to spot those who are high or low spenders; 
7. Holiday shoppers segment – gathers customers who are ideal for receiving offers during key sales periods like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Mother’s Day, Christmas, and more. This keeps them engaged and reminds them of why they loved the brand last year.

Forms also can be targeted to new strategies through segmentation:

1. Expected date of next order segment – displays a form at the customer’s predicted order time, nudging them toward a repeat purchase;
2. Customer lifetime value segment – sets up forms to target visitors based on what they’re likely to spend over the next year;
3. Location-proximity segment – highlights a local event to visitors within driving distance, encouraging sign-ups.

Got a brilliant idea for a new segment but unsure how to make it work? Many email marketing experts share your frustration. AI-driven audience segmentation email marketing tools offer a completely new approach to segment building. Think of them as your personal AI assistants, helping you build the perfect audience segments with ease.

AI allows marketers to create audience segments by using natural language inputs — phrases or sentences — which the system then converts into specific segment criteria. Afterwards, marketers can further refine and edit these criteria to match their exact needs. This AI-driven segmentation is considered one of the most powerful tools in email marketing, with brands reporting up to a 760% increase in revenue after implementing it.

Personalised AI Recommendations and Addressing Abandoned Baskets

Roughly 69% of online shopping carts are abandoned, which is one of the high-priority challenges in the eCommerce business. Potential customers may abandon the cart for several reasons, including additional or hidden costs, poor delivery or return policies, overcomplicated ordering and checkout processes, payment processing problems, and technical bugs and glitches.

AI-powered tools are already tackling the problem of cart abandonment head-on. Based on AI-analysed customer behaviour and intent defined through previous searches and browsing patterns, the moment a customer abandons the cart, AI marketing tools can be implemented to catch their attention and keep them engaged:

1. AI personalised product recommendations – for example, a complimentary product or a special offer on a product a customer has shown interest in;
2. AI-driven chatbots – these bots can offer instant advanced virtual shopping assistance through conversational AI, personalised nudges to the customers and engage them with relevant reminders and exclusive offers;
3. AI retargeting campaigns – creating personalised ads in real-time through AI, reminding potential customers of the products left behind;
4. AI-powered personalised email follow-ups – a well-timed email featuring abandoned products, along with suggestions for complementary items and limited-time discounts or free shipping. Personalised follow-ups can recover up to 30% of lost sales! 
5. AI-tailored automatic SMS messages – texts offer a sense of urgency through a limited-time discount or a notification about running low stock;
6. AI-powered predictive analytics – help to identify customers who are most likely to abandon their carts and take preventative, proactive measures;
7. AI-identified detailed customer personas – adjust the marketing strategy according to a persona built around a real person who frequently abandons the carts, returns items or buys only during the sales.

Take a look at some industry game-changers: Amazon’s recommendation engine is responsible for a whopping 35% of the company’s revenue. This AI technology shapes personalised shopping experiences and boosts sales. Netflix is another prime example—the brand’s AI analyses what you like to watch, keeping you hooked with personalised recommendations, which plays a huge part in the streaming service’s high customer satisfaction and retention. And then there’s Spotify, which revolutionised music streaming with AI-powered song suggestions and tailored playlists. These are just a few examples of how AI is transforming businesses, making marketing more personal and effective.

Optimising Send Times with Klaviyo’s AI Features

Smart Send Time

Klaviyo’s Smart Send Time feature takes the guesswork out of email timing. It digs into customer data to figure out the best time to send emails, so you can boost open and click rates. In fact, research shows that sending emails at the right time can increase open rates by up to 20%.

Smart Send Time not only picks the optimal send time but also shows you exactly how and why it made that choice. By tracking engagement over a 24-hour period across multiple email sends, this AI tool gives you real insights into what works best. However, it’s only available for accounts with at least 12,000 active profiles.

The optimisation process contains 3 stages:

1. A random time is assigned to each recipient in their local time zone, and Klaviyo sends out an email over a 24-hour period;
2. The system determines the best time for the highest engagement, and to validate the selected time, one email will be sent Customer Loyalty team at a given time, another two hours before, and another two hours later;
3. Klaviyo fine-tunes the send time based on feedback, then delivers emails at the optimal moment in each recipient’s local time zone.

However, the data in the graphs is based on information gathered from exploratory and focused email sends. So, if you’ve never run an exploratory campaign before, the graphs will be empty, and you won’t see any data right away when Smart Send Time is first activated.

Although Klaviyo maintains the identified send time without further modifications in the last stage, the subscriber list may grow, and their behaviours and preferences may evolve over time.

According to studies, effective timing leads to a 7% increase in click-through rates. However, the Klaviyo Smart Send Time feature is about more than sending emails at the right time; it’s about maximising engagement, helping with:

1. Reducing email fatigue by estimating the optimal frequency and timing for sending emails to individual subscribers. 
   The Smart Send Time is equipped with an Open rate per hour graph that demonstrates the percentage of people who opened the email out for each hour of those who received it. If a focused send has a much higher open rate, Klaviyo will not spike the hours for that focused send because a single campaign performed better than average. There is also an Expected Open Rate Lift graph showing how open rates compare before and after using Smart Send Time. However, it will be populated only after a focused send time has been reached.
2. Boosting engagement metrics: Improving engagement is all about tailoring emails to each recipient’s behaviour to boost open rates and click-throughs. This way, more subscribers not only see your content but also engage with it more actively. 
   Two additional graphs based on the data from the exploratory sends allow an analysis of the efficiency of the send-outs: the Open rate and Placed Order Rate per Hour. The placed order event is attributed to the time when the email was sent.
3. Personalising email experiences: By analysing subscribers’ behaviours and preferences and ensuring that emails arrive in the inboxes when the probability of engagement is high, subscribers feel valued and understood, which deepens their connection with the brand.

Why Choose LION Digital for Your AI Optimised Email Flows

At LION Digital, we’re proud to be a Klaviyo Elite Master Partner. We choose Klaviyo’s advanced tools over other popular platforms because they simply deliver better results. With powerful features like Smart Send Time, we help you stay ahead of the curve, ensuring your emails reach the right audience at the right time. By continually optimising and adapting your strategy, you can keep engagement high and your customers coming back for more. Ready to boost your email marketing game? Contact our experienced CRM & Loyalty team, and let’s make it happen!

OVERVIEW

Discover the trends and technologies shaping the future of online search, from predictive search algorithms that anticipate user intent to AI-driven recommendations personalising content. In this article, we look at the rise of voice search and digital assistants, which are revolutionising user interaction with search engines, and note the critical role of mobile search and local SEO in providing tailored location-based results.

Part Three in our series on the timeline of online search looks at how evolving themes and technologies are reshaping the way people find information. If you missed the earlier segments, you can catch up on Part One: Early Search Engines Before Google and Part Two: Navigating the Changes in Online Search.

Predictive Search

Imagine typing just a few letters and seeing your desired results pop up instantly. Predictive search, powered by advanced AI and machine learning, is transforming how people search online by anticipating user needs before they finish typing. As the goalpost for the ultimate user experience is constantly moved, the predictive search feature anticipates user intent and suggests queries before users finish typing. Predictive search algorithms dynamically generate personalised suggestions based on accumulated user data. These algorithms track behaviour, search history, the context of the search, and search engines’ internal factors like popular searches, trending topics, and user preferences.

Earlier examples of this technology were Google’s “Google Autocomplete” or “Google Instant,” which were then augmented by Google’s “People Also Ask” and “Related Searches” sections, providing additional context and suggestions. Bing and Yahoo joined the trend and applied predictive search to offer auto-complete suggestions and refine search queries in real-time. Bing’s “Search Suggestions” feature offers predictive search recommendations based on user input and browsing history.

Predictive search helps users obtain more accurate and relevant results much faster. It also offers topics to find additional information that users may not have thought of. The more users engage with predictive search, the more accurate it becomes, therefore improving the quality of search results.

Artificial Intelligence for Search

In August 2024, one of the AI market-leading companies, OpenAI, announced the creation of a brand-new search engine called SearchGPT. In its testing phase at the time of this article going live, this prototype aims to lead the path towards a more natural and intuitive way of searching for information. AI-assisted search will allow users to ask follow-up questions and clarify the search results in the way queries typically flow back and forth during natural conversations.

Thus, the long-run concerns of Google’s parent company Alphabet’s investors got real-life proof that OpenAI could take a market share from Google. The full rollout of a service like SearchGPT would further revolutionise the search landscape through a new way of finding information.

This could be an important move for Google, coming off the back of a recent court ruling in which a US judge ruled that the search juggernaut has violated an antitrust law. The ruling potentially paves the way for a possible split of Google and Alphabet, irrevocably changing the search landscape from its current dominating position.

AI-Driven Recommendations

Ever wondered how Netflix knows what movie or TV shows you’ll love next? That’s the magic of AI-driven recommendations at work, learning from your behaviour to make suggestions for you. In an attempt to ‘think’ in the same way users do, a generative recommendation system is one of the most common ways of finding compatible items. Earlier versions, such as the “Related Articles” sections, primarily relied on manual adjustments, related information structures, and tags. However, modern AI-generated recommendations powered by sophisticated algorithms have enhanced this subclass of machine-learning information filtering systems.

AI-driven recommendation algorithms analyse accumulated user data (past purchases, viewing history, preferences, social interactions, etc.), distinguish behaviour patterns, examine ratings and trends, and apply contextual signals to match content relevance and curate personalised recommendations. These engines aim to enhance the user experience and increase engagement by extending the time spent and the depth of the journey with the aim of driving business conversion rates.

Think about the last time global streaming services suggested a show you binge-watched over a weekend or when Spotify created a playlist that felt custom-made for you. These personalised experiences are powered by sophisticated AI algorithms that learn from your habits and preferences. Amazon recommends products based on past purchases, browse history, and search history. Popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok also apply AI-driven recommendations to personalise users’ news feeds and explore tabs.

Voice Search and the Rise of Digital Assistants

Asking Siri for the weather or telling Alexa to play your favourite song make up part of the 3.1 billion voice searches every month. Voice search, which started as a novelty when Google introduced it in 2011, has evolved into a daily habit for over 50% of adults using it daily in 2024. With advances in speech recognition technology, voice search has become an integral part of search behaviour and marketing. Today, the average voice search SERP takes 4.6 seconds to load, and people use the technology to access information conveniently and hands-free, utilising natural language in their daily lives. Voice search is applied to such actions as searching for directions and making dining reservations to shopping and controlling smart home devices.

Voice search technology integrates seamlessly with leading search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, allowing users to perform voice-activated searches from their web browsers or, for 27% of users, from their mobile devices. With smartphones, smart speakers, and wearables becoming universal, voice search has shifted user behaviour from typing queries to simply speaking them.

Advances in natural language processing and speech recognition algorithms powered by AI and machine learning have made voice searches more accurate and intuitive. AI-driven voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant now understand user intent and context, providing relevant recommendations in real-time.

As the voice search market expands, it presents numerous opportunities for businesses to connect with users in new and innovative ways, but it also poses challenges in optimisation. LLM voice recognition chatbots achieve an impressive 93.7% accuracy, ensuring businesses and website owners must optimise their online presence to appear in voice search results. Voice searches are more conversational and reflect natural human communication, which has profound implications for SEO and content strategy.

The Impact of Mobile Search and Local SEO

With smartphones becoming non-negotiable for most people, mobile search and personalised local SEO have become essential for connecting with customers on the go. Google has stated it will no longer index sites that aren’t optimised for mobile as of July this year. The transition has prompted search engines to prioritise mobile-friendly websites to deliver optimised search results tailored for mobile users. For relevancy, business owners must consider applying local SEO strategies, like updating their Google My Business listing and using location-specific keywords, to make it easier for customers to find them online and offline.

Imagine a user searching for a nearby coffee shop while walking through an unfamiliar city. Mobile-friendly sites with local SEO strategies will appear at the top of their search results, providing the most relevant and convenient options.

Google’s algorithm updates, such as Pigeon and Possum, have refined local search results to provide more contextually relevant information. This makes it vital for businesses to adopt local SEO strategies to maintain visibility. Partnering with eCommerce SEO specialists like LION Digital can help your business stay ahead of the competition.

Local SEO strategies focus on optimising a business’s online presence to improve visibility in local search results and attract local customers. Features like Google Maps, Google My Business, and Google Local Pack results have made it easier for users to find local businesses and services directly within search engine results pages. Optimising website content with local keywords and claiming and optimising Google My Business listings are essential for improving local search rankings.

Maintaining an active presence on social media and vertical search engine platforms is also necessary for local SEO. Users often turn to these platforms to find local businesses, read reviews, and engage with communities. Social signals, which refer to a webpage’s collective shares, likes and social media visibility, are considered a ranking factor by traditional search engines. Social signals contribute to a page’s organic search rankings and are seen as a form of citation, similar to backlinks. When built and managed effectively, citations signal trust and credibility to search engines and potential customers, shaping local search rankings and influencing consumer purchasing decisions.

The Challenges of Online Search

Advances in online search have led to several hurdles for businesses to overcome:

• Privacy and Data Collection: Awareness and concerns regarding the protection of privacy rights and the ethical use of user data have become prevalent and are vital for eCommerce businesses to address.
• Ethical Impact of Personalisation on User Autonomy: Personalisation in search results and advertising based on user data influences user decisions, raising ethical considerations about user behaviour manipulation, autonomy, and freedom of choice.
• Misinformation: With developments in artificial intelligence, the amount and speed of web content delivery are astronomical, making it more challenging to distinguish false and misleading content. More emphasis should be placed on prioritising authoritative sources and filtering out unreliable ones.
• Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers: Personalised search algorithms can limit users’ exposure to diverse viewpoints and contribute to the spread of misinformation. This can reinforce existing biases and limit access to various perspectives, contributing to the polarisation of online discourse.

To remain relevant in today’s fast-paced digital world, search providers must address these challenges to avoid issues concerning unauthorised data collection and breaches. Managing your SEO effectively requires a comprehensive approach involving user education, algorithmic transparency and accountability, and regulatory oversight.

Boost Your eCommerce Success with LION Digital’s Search Marketing Expertise

LION Digital is a global, full-service digital agency specialising in eCommerce. Our team of over 45 seasoned veterans and channel specialists ensures smooth, journey-led experiences across multiple touchpoints. We offer search expertise across multiple channels to help you avoid SEO pitfalls in the online space.

If you’d like a complimentary audit to determine how search marketing can work for your eCommerce brand, please speak to our specialist team today!

In the overcrowded online shopping space, identifying viable methods of winning customer conversions, brand awareness, and long-term loyalty requires constant vigilance. But what if you could “set and forget” a winning strategy that brings new customers to your eCommerce store more affordably and with a greater chance of purchasing?

Our recent partnership with the innovative Shop with Friends aligns seamlessly with our dedication to client success. By installing Shop with Friends from the Shopify App Store, eCommerce websites can tap into the growing phenomenon of social shopping to do “all of the above” while winning new customers and reducing cart abandonment. 

Shop with Friends founder Kevin Hanna believes his company is a good match with LION Digital because both have proven eCommerce victories and the flexibility to meet client needs. 

Kevin says polls are a “no-brainer” for eCommerce businesses, from start-ups to major brands. It’s easy to install and offers a wealth of opportunities. Shop with Friends mainly partners with Shopify stores with over 100K monthly visitors. The platform can be up and running within 3 minutes, and polls take users 2-3 seconds to create—1 tap to create, 1 tap to share.

What Polls Can Mean for Your Business Growth

Shop With Friends results in 20% lower customer acquisition cost (CAC), with the app’s customers averaging 26% YoY growth and more than 6 million voters engaged. Votes come from shoppers who rely on input from friends before purchasing. Shopify stores that have installed the polls have seen an increase in 4x conversions and 5x user LTV (lifetime value). 

Users can send polls anywhere on all social media platforms using the Shopify Shop with Friends app. It takes seconds for an online shopper to create and share a poll with friends, transforming it into instant viral marketing for your brand while the poll creators become your brand ambassadors. Each poll, on average, acquires 2 new customers for your eCommerce store and often proves the power of social validation for influencing hesitant shoppers.

The app’s Analytics menu tracks useful data to help identify buyer behaviour. The dashboard itemises sales orders, product engagement and performance, how many people are voting, and on which products, what type of devices customers use, customer location worldwide, and revenue gained directly through polls. These insights can help you tailor your inventories to match user demand.

Key Benefits and USPs

Compared to other customer engagement tools on the market, Kevin says, “We’re the first tool to tap into the social shopping behaviour of the younger generations”. Generations Z and Alpha do “most of their shopping from their phones and like to get input from their friends from their phones, too. 

“We’re also 100% performance-based. Shop With Friends is a ‘set it and forget it’ widget that, once installed, lives on the site and will continue to help eCommerce brands grow at an exponential rate.

Shop with Friends benefits include:

• Increase Conversion Rates: Shoppers who send a poll have a 12.5x higher conversion rate due to buyer confidence in their purchase.
• Improve New Customer Conversion: The poll recipients see that their friend trusts the brand, initiating a conversion rate 3-4 times higher for new visitors than on other channels.
• Reduce Cart Abandonment: Poll senders are 19% less likely to abandon their cart than other shoppers.
• Boost AOV (average order value): Poll senders spend about 45% more on average than other customers.
• Grow Word-of-mouth Expansion: Each poll drives about 2 new visitors to eCommerce sites.

Shop with Friends: How it Works

Especially popular with 18 to 30-year-olds, users create polls from your Shopify website’s inventory styled to your brand. Shop with Friends founder Kevin Hanna explains that the polls have been very popular for jewellery, shoes, sunglasses, handbags, and apparel, but they could apply to anything. 

The user experience for creating polls is like an online version of real-time shopping for a party dress with your bestie at a brick-and-mortar store, then taking a photo and sending it to your mum and sister while asking all three opinions. Except, Kevin discovered some astounding data from Shop With Friends, which was that in the eCommerce landscape, the users being asked to vote on the items would often purchase from the Shopify store as well.

“The Shop with Friends app appears over the Shopify website in the background, so the poll creators and voters think the poll is simply a cool feature on the site itself,” says Kevin. But, as he explains, apart from increased engagement and purchasing, once poll recipients “vote on the app, they’re left on the Shopify site. So voters who may never have visited the site before will now decide to buy something from the site” as the inventory has been given the ‘thumbs up’ by their friends. 

Some brand examples showed a 36% increase in sales from the person who posted the poll, with another 33% of their friends buying from the same site. 

Polls Prove the Potential for Social Validation

Polls are yet another initiative sparked by the drastic shift towards online spending that grew out of the pandemic. The polls users create can muscle up your brand with their virality, as they’re social and designed to be shared with friends.

As the 2020 lockdowns pushed people indoors and out of traditional shopping trips with friends and family, shoppers were still relying on opinions from the people closest to them to decide which item to buy: for an upcoming event, a social occasion, or simply to add a new piece to their wardrobe, often via group chats and sharing wish lists on shopping sites. 

Kevin has a long-established career foundation in digital marketing, focusing on customer acquisition. He started the Shop with Friends company with his co-founders as an app to take advantage of this trend of sending polls to friends, focusing on a few verticals, including travel and eCommerce. However, they noticed that eCommerce polls were obtaining the majority of engagement, at about 30-40%, and were “about what to buy, from Amazon, Shopify sites, Etsy, etc”, says Kevin.

Two years ago, the team white-labelled their app to focus on eCommerce but found the development integration quite complex. About 8 months ago, they produced the app specifically for Shopify sites, which was the “game-changer”, according to Kevin. “We went from 20 customers to 200, and instead of taking an hour to add polls on a site, we got it down to 2-3 minutes.”

Performance-based Fee Structure Delivers Less Risk

The business operates on a 100% performance-based model that is free to use for the first month. Best of all, the initial 30-day free trial is extended unless the Shop with Friends App is driving at least USD$500 a month from the app, and you can cancel at any time. 

So, if your business hasn’t generated revenue from the Shop with Friends widget, you don’t pay anything, “as opposed to user-based or subscription-style apps”, says Kevin.

Kevin explains that Shop with Friends operates across 6 pricing tiers, starting from Free and increasing in incremental amounts that a business is charged each month after the 30-day assessment. “Most of our clients make 15x to 20x ROI based on our tier structure,” he says.

“There is greater flexibility in a performance-based fee structure as it’s calculated every 30 days, based on your revenue for that month. So you’re paying for the next 30 days in advance”, which future-proofs your business, “in case you experience a slow month of sales, you won’t continue to pay the higher tiers”, says Kevin.

While polls are geared towards increasing traffic and driving sales, you can have peace of mind knowing that your business can recover without suffering losses based on peak performance, which in turn has created improved client loyalty.

The Social Polls Are Just Like Shopping With Friends 

The trusted word-of-mouth referral method makes up 82% of Americans’ purchasing decisions, while 77% value their inner circle’s opinion when buying something they’ve never bought before. 

Shop with Friends has grown brand awareness and profitability for many stores, especially in America, where it was originally developed. These include 12th Tribe fashion label, Ever-Pretty US and UK wedding and formal gowns, Little Trouble children’s clothing, Erimish stacking jewellery, and Fresh Sends gift boxes.

“We are obsessed with the user experience,” says Kevin, “So we make it really fun for the shoppers themselves.”

Brands can align with new ways of shopping that bring virality to their brand via cost-effective engagement with an exponential reach, boosting sales and rapidly growing brand awareness.

At LION, we only collaborate with businesses that help you amplify your offer and increase your ROI. Install Shop with Friends from the Shopify App Store and contact us about further increasing your reach online. 

Talk to the team at LION and go from ordinary to extraordinary today!

Article by

JENNIFER MCCARTHY –
DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER

LION Digital has been awarded an exclusive Google Premier Partner status in a thrilling development for our digital marketing agency. This prestigious recognition places LION Digital within the elite top 3% of companies participating in the Google Partners program in Australia. The partnership is a testament to our unwavering commitment to excellence in Google Ads management and its substantial contribution to the digital advertising ecosystem.

Achieving Premier Partner status is not only a hallmark of LION Digital’s expertise in Google Ads, but also an acknowledgement of the consistently high levels of ad spend managed by the agency over a significant period. This achievement underscores LION’s adeptness in leveraging Google Ads to drive client growth and success in the ever-evolving digital space.

Exclusive Benefits for Clients

With this new status, LION Digital unlocks a suite of exclusive Premier Partner benefits strategically designed to enhance the service quality and outcomes for clients. These benefits include:

Advanced Google Ads Support:

As a Premier Partner, LION Digital gains access to a superior level of service from Google, ensuring more responsive and tailored support for advertising campaigns. This means that clients of LION Digital can expect even more efficient and effective management of their Google Ads, leading to improved performance and ROI.

Strategic Growth Opportunities:

The Premier Partner status equips LION Digital with advanced insights, tools, and resources directly sourced from Google. This access facilitates the development of more strategic and impactful advertising campaigns, enabling clients to capitalise on growth opportunities in their respective markets.

Competitive Edge:

Being recognised as a Premier Partner serves as a badge of honour and expertise, distinguishing LION Digital and our clients in a crowded digital marketing marketplace. This status highlights our agency’s top-tier ads expertise and signals to current and prospective clients that they are working with one of the best in the business.

Google’s Suite of Tools and Resources:

Premier Partnership unlocks the door to Google’s extensive and ever-changing library of education and insights, recognition and rewards, access and support. LION Digital will become an important link in the Google chain, gaining access to product certifications, promotional offers and executive experiences.

A Strategic Partnership for Success

This collaboration enables LION to harness the full potential of Google Ads, delivering outstanding results for our clients and setting new benchmarks in the industry.

LION Digital’s achievement comes at a pivotal time for the industry, with a projected $740bn ad spend forecast for 2024. This projection highlights the significant opportunities within the competitive landscape of digital advertising, where excellence in ad management and strategic partnerships like LION and Google are vital for success.
In celebrating this milestone, LION roars its dedication to delivering unparalleled digital marketing services for our valued clients. This recognition is our promise to our clients of continued innovation, strategic growth, and success for your business. If you’d like to find out how this impressive Premier Partnership can ignite your business growth, book a discovery call today and talk to one of our Google Ads experts.

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, email marketing remains a cornerstone of effective communication and customer engagement strategies. In this article, LION Digital’ CRM and Loyalty Director Luke Crocker will share his specialist knowledge to explain the intricacies of crafting successful email marketing campaigns and automation. Luke demonstrates how the team he leads at LION explores the various stages of email marketing, including awareness, consideration, acquisition, and retention, providing valuable insights for businesses looking to enhance their digital outreach.

The Journey Begins: Raising Brand Awareness

Luke emphasises the importance of a personalised customer journey, from initial brand discovery to their first purchase. The first step in this journey involves capturing potential customers’ attention through compelling website forms. These forms, whether pop-ups, embedded forms, or fly-out forms, offer incentives like discounts or gifts with purchases to encourage email signups. By capturing email, SMS and other crucial customer information, businesses can tailor their communications based on customer preferences right from the start.

Data Capture: The Foundation of Personalisation

A critical aspect of email marketing is the effective capture and utilisation of data. When working with LION Digital clients, Luke incorporates a multi-step form approach that balances the need for low-friction simplicity and detailed information gathering. Starting with basic customer contact details and progressively asking for specific preferences allows for a more personalised communication strategy without overwhelming potential customers.

Engaging the Interested: Moving to Consideration and Acquisition

Once a potential customer joins our LION Digital client’s mailing list, the focus shifts to nurturing that person through targeted email flows and campaigns. Luke outlines several strategies to guide customers through the consideration phase, including a personalised welcome series, browse abandonment flow, and dynamic content blocks based on their preferences. These automated sequences are designed to drive customer action through education and urgency, encouraging customers to make their first purchase.

The Power of Segmentation and Engagement Tracking

A key to effective email marketing is understanding and segmenting your audience, explains Luke. Using tools like Klaviyo, our LION Digital team can segment your business’s audience by initiating and collating email engagement, product interests, stated preferences, and purchase history. This allows for more targeted and relevant communication, increasing the likelihood of conversion and retention.

Retention: Keeping Customers Engaged Post-Purchase

Acquiring a customer is just the beginning. Luke highlights the importance of retention strategies, including the post-purchase flows, targeted cross-sell recommendations, and timely replenishment reminders for consumable products we action for our LION clients. These strategies ensure ongoing engagement, encourage repeat purchases and foster a loyal customer base.

Mastering Email Marketing For Your Business

Luke Crocker sheds light on the sophisticated yet accessible strategies that businesses can employ to maximise their email marketing efforts. From the initial data capture on a website to the nuanced engagement of long-term customers, the journey of email marketing is a testament to the power of personalised communication. Luke’s insights loosely outline our LION Digital roadmap to email marketing success, emphasising the importance of thoughtful engagement and showing considered appreciation at every stage of the customer journey.

This personalised approach to email marketing underscores the dynamic nature of digital marketing and the pivotal role of email communication in building lasting customer relationships. The team at LION Digital excels at customising tailored strategies to help our clients win more customers while successfully growing customer loyalty. If you’d like to learn more about making email and SMS marketing work harder for your business, reach out for a discovery call to discuss your business needs.

Article by

LUKE CROCKER –
CRM & Loyalty Director

Lexer has revolutionised the eCommerce customer journey with its Australian-grown customer data and experience platform supporting many of the world’s most iconic brands. Forged from a deep commitment to resolving customer problems, the Lexer offering aligns with LION Digital’s vision to enable businesses to enhance the customer journey central to their client’s goals.

Effortless Integration, Actionable Insights

Lexer’s CDP is known for its remarkably simple integration process, standing out by intuitively combining, cleansing, standardising, and enriching customer data into a single, actionable view. This streamlined approach not only simplifies data management but also enhances the ability of businesses to engage with their customers in a more personalised and effective manner.

AI-Powered Predictive Analytics

Lexer goes beyond mere data organisation by boosting customer IQ through AI-powered predictive analytics, third-party data enrichment, and targeted customer surveys. These advanced tools give businesses customer insights while simultaneously anticipating their needs and preferences, paving the way for personalised experiences that drive loyalty and sales. Additionally, their platform features Lexi, a generative AI assistant that provides role and goal-relevant insights across all areas of Lexer to help businesses know their customers and grow.

A Catalyst for Customer-Centric Transformation

The world’s great brands are typically built on exceptional customer experiences. Lexer’s platform is designed to transform disconnected data into actionable insights to help businesses overcome the challenges of becoming a customer-centric organisation. A deeper understanding and engagement with your eCommerce customers is vital for business success. Lexer’s comprehensive customer data platform empowers brands to transform customer interactions into meaningful relationships while showcasing tangible business growth.

Comprehensive Support for Every Team

Lexer’s platform is uniquely positioned to support every team within an organisation, making customer data available across all touchpoints. From marketing to retail, customer service to executive decision-making, and IT, Lexer ensures that every department can leverage enriched customer insights for informed engagement and strategic decisions. Compliance and customer data protection are key across so many access points as Lexer works to ensure data security.

Beyond a Vendor: A Partner in Growth

Lexer offers more than just a platform to help businesses overcome the challenge of becoming effectively customer-centric and data-driven. Its professional services act as an extension of your team, helping to fill strategic, analytical, capacity, and IT gaps. The flexibility and quality of Lexer’s services ensure meaningful scalability, supporting your business growth every step of the way.

Lexer’s platform integrates seamlessly with retail tech stacks, making data available across all customer touchpoints and allowing for informed customer insights and engagement. It includes solutions for marketing, clienteling (guiding retail sales associates), and service (combining all customer data and service channels into one streamlined inbox for personalised service).

Proven Impact Through Testimonials

Lexer’s transformative impact is best illustrated through the testimonials of satisfied clients:
Sam Hopgood, Digital Marketing Manager at Rip Curl: “The connection and input of data were vast. Lexer is relatively easy to onboard and connect—you don’t need to be a massive tech head to use it.”
Jeremy Hale, President of Mountain Khakis: “The CDP is solving multiple things for me at the same time. I’m going to know where my customers live, how they transact, what their interests are in my collection.”
Catherine Phuong, CRM Associate Manager at Pierre Fabre: “The platform is very insightful to explore data about our customers, and the follow-up with the Lexer team each week makes it easy to clearly highlight key priorities and recommendations.”

Embrace the Future with Lexer

As retail evolves towards more personalised and data-driven strategies, Lexer helps brands confidently navigate this experience. By choosing Lexer, businesses not only gain access to a powerful platform but also a partner committed to their growth and success in the ever-changing retail landscape.

Through our strategic partnership with Lexer, LION Digital offers a unique opportunity for clients to explore Lexer’s CDP. This collaboration enables a comprehensive review process, provided at no cost, in which LION Digital can demonstrate Lexer’s advanced data platforms using client data to identify tangible growth opportunities. Retailers get to see a live demo with their own data in Lexer’s CDP platform, and the clients who have jumped on board have been deeply impressed to see the insights on their existing customers. Through this partnership, clients are afforded a risk-free glimpse into the future of their business.

Get in Contact with LION Digital

At LION Digital, we only partner with organisations and services that help our clients amplify their offers by delivering highly strategic approaches to driving targeted traffic. We take pride in hand-selecting quality partnerships for our customers so your brand can go from strength to strength. Book a discovery call with us today to discuss your data & CDP requirements.

Leave the lacklustre results behind and go from ordinary to extraordinary today!

Article by

JENNIFER MCCARTHY –
DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER

This year looks set to send Digital Ad spending into the stratosphere, with a remarkable USD $740 billion forecast for 2024, an increase of $61 billion from last year. A significant portion of this budget is expected to go towards search advertising, which remains the most lucrative segment in the digital advertising space. It’s anticipated that businesses will allocate over $300 billion to search ads, achieving a growth of 10% compared to the previous year.

According to forecasts by Statista, this year is set to break records with an expected increase of $27.4 billion in search ad investments to reach $306.7 billion and contribute 41% of the entire digital ad revenue. The United States is poised to lead the way with $132 billion of the search ad spend, accounting for almost 45% of the year’s total, while China will follow as the second-largest market with $61 billion in spending.

“Given Google’s dominance in the search market and the widespread adoption of its tooling ecosystem, customers will persist in using search engines for brand discovery and product research,” says Robert Munro, Paid Media Director at LION Digital. “Therefore, investing in paid search campaigns remains crucial for allocating media budgets.”

Technology is Set to Heavily Influence the Ever-Changing Digital Marketing Landscape

Despite the impact of social media, influencers, retail media, and advances in artificial intelligence, search ads still hold the crown as the top revenue driver in the digital advertising landscape. The evolution of AI and natural language processing has reshaped the market substantially, contributing to an almost doubled spend from the $167.5 billion investment in 2020 for search advertising.

Mobile advertising is enjoying plenty of growth, with a projected 65% of the overall ad spend at $172.3 billion, while desktop search ads comprise the remaining 35% at $134.4 billion. Video advertising is expected to generate $191 billion, accounting for 25% of the market’s total revenue, closely paralleled by banner ads.

Meanwhile, influencer advertising is set to contribute $35 billion, representing less than 5% of the total market revenue. As digital advertising continues to expand and adapt, the popularity of search ads remains strong.
If you’re interested in tapping into this remarkable growth and want our specialist eCommerce team at LION Digital to craft a tailored blended search strategy that propels your business forward in a challenging market, don’t hesitate to get in touch to schedule a discovery call today!

Reference: Digital advertising spend to hit $740bn in 2024, with search ads dominating

 Incredible day at the Tennis Australia Australian Open to host our first
LION Digital eCommerce Business Leaders event. It was a fantastic opportunity to connect with high-level eCommerce business leaders!

Our super box guests from various industry sectors, along with our esteemed partners preezie, Power Retail, and eStar, got to enjoy a centre-court experience at Rod Laver while discussing business and making valuable new connections in a premium environment.

Thank you to all who attended… Alison Evans John Barkle Sera Volau Tatum Ambler Ryan Fehily Ash Mehta Vince Lebon Rachel Gowland Grant Arnott Jared TellingMichael Tutek and the LION Digital team Leonidas Comino George Sarris Robert Munro Deryll N.

🎄✨ Christmas is here! We are blessed to have such an amazing client roster and feel a sense of accomplishment for helping our clients hit their business goals across 2023 and the growth we managed to achieve.

Our dedicated team put in the lion’s share of effort behind the scenes to ensure our valued clients receive the best-in-class eCommerce marketing services. 
During this festive season, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy and safe New Year. See you all for more success in 2024! 🎁🌟