As an experienced eCommerce seller, you already know that keeping in touch with your customers is essential. Even if you are selling on a large eComm platform like Walmart Marketplace, your buyers need to be able to message you and trust they will get a response. Walmart.com in particular doesn’t have a great messaging interface. As a seller, you must set up an external system to manage customer emails.
This extra step may seem like a lot of additional work, but it is absolutely essential. Email communication with customers is still the gold standard of online customer service. Personalized emails let the customer know there is a real person in charge of your business – even if your emails are automated. Knowing how to set up automations that look and feel as if they came from a human (which they did) can greatly increase customer satisfaction and make it more likely the customer will buy from you again.
There are 5 main ways automated customer communication can help grow and improve your business:
Improve Purchase Satisfaction
Get More Reviews
Improve Searchability
Maintain Walmart Seller Rating
Repeat Customers
Improve Purchase Satisfaction
As soon as the customer makes a purchase, you have the opportunity to start communicating! Let them know that their order was received, that it will be shipped quickly, and that there is a real person ready to answer any questions or concerns they have. This first email can ward off later issues if the customer quickly notices they ordered the wrong size, or they are having the item shipped to the wrong address.
Subsequent email can let the buyer know that their package is on the way and provide the tracking number. These messages can let your buyer know that you are monitoring their order and are making sure they get their stuff on time. Follow-up emails have been shown to be very important for customer satisfaction – which makes your business so much stronger!
Get More Product and Seller Reviews
Product and merchant reviews are far too important to be left to chance. Ecommerce studies have shown that as much as 90% of shoppers read online reviews when researching potential purchases, and that customers find online reviews more trustworthy than recommendations from friends. Online reviews are one of the best ways customers can get what they perceive to be ‘unbiased’ information that isn’t just marketing jargon. Reading reviews is an important way customers get answers to questions, learn about a product, and feel confident in their selection.
According to Reevoo statistics, reviews for a product tend to uplift sales by 18%. Customers who interact with reviews and product Q&A are more than twice as likely to make a purchase than visitors who don’t. Customer reviews are 12x more trusted for honest information about products than seller or manufacturer information.
Even negative reviews can be helpful for sales. Customers who see no negative reviews are more likely to suspect that bad reviews have been suppressed. Reevoo found that 68% of consumers find reviews more trustworthy when products have positive and negative scores – as long as the negative reviews are a small proportion of overall reviews, of course!
Having an email sequence that customers have received through the purchase process is a great way to boost your feedback – even if you are not actually asking for feedback! You need to make sure you are communicating with customers in a way that meets Walmart’s communication policy. And when you do , the likelihood that you will receive useful customer reviews goes up dramatically.
Improving Searchability
Reviews don’t just help customers make decisions, they make it much easier to find your products in initial searches. Search engines are constantly looking for content that is regularly updated. Product listings can become stale without new information on the items. Customer generated reviews can help products boost their search ranking.
Customers increasingly search for when they are researching products. Having customer reviews on your products increases the likelihood that they turn up in these searches.
Maintain Walmart Seller Rating
When customers reach out to you, Walmart expects you to respond within 24 hours – but within 12 hours is preferred. Do you have a VA monitoring your customer messages 24/7? Do they know exactly how to respond to each customer request? Even if you are one of the very few lucky sellers who can answer yes to both questions, having an email already scripted and ready to go is a must!
The vast majority of customer questions and requests are the same over and over. Having a library of canned responses written and ready to go ensures that customer communications are handled immediately. No time for customers to grow impatient. You are also saving a tremendous amount of time in dealing with customer service – absolutely vital whether your VA is handling it or you are dealing with questions yourself.
Customer service is an extremely important metric for Walmart Marketplace. You are essentially representing Walmart in your interactions with customers and that retail giant is focused on making the experience excellent for buyers.
Having a high customer service rating keeps your products in the running for the all-important Buy Box, allows your products to show up on Google Search through Walmart, and keeps services like Walmart Fulfilment available to you if you choose to apply.
Great seller ratings create a virtuous cycle – helping to drive new customers your way. Higher sales follow customer satisfaction every time!
Repeat Customers
Millions of people around the world shopped online for the first time in 2020. They are all looking for products, merchants and marketplaces they can trust. Every positive communication with a customer leaves an impression in your favor. Emails that are sent from your business account with your business name in the address can help buyers remember your brand, search for it within Walmart, and perhaps even across your other Ecommerce platforms.
Using email to communicate to this warm market is some of the best, most cost-effective marketing you will ever do. Providing great service to the customers you already have is a great way to grow your business.
How to Automate your Walmart Marketplace Emails
All eCommerce platforms want you to keep in touch with customers, but always on their terms. Walmart Marketplace give sellers access to customer communication in a very rudimentary messaging system that all but demands sellers set up their own email management protocols on another platform
Sellegr8 is a suite of tools that were created just for Walmart Marketplace! The email automations are perfect for providing gold star customer service and inviting reviews. You will even boost your team’s productivity in dealing with customer inquiries.
The team at Sellegr8 are long time, high volume eCommerce sellers who know exactly what Walmart sellers need to skyrocket their sales.
Sellegr8’s email automation allows you to easily create powerful and beautiful campaigns and custom messages that are even more effective than those available to Amazon sellers. You owe it to yourself to check out Sellegr8 NOW.
Try for free for 14 days – you don’t even need to enter a credit card. The creators of Sellegr8.com have no doubt that as soon as you try it, you will see how indispensable it is for serious Walmart sellers.
Email Automation is only one of the vital tools Sellegr8 brings you for a low monthly price. All the information you need to smoothly and profitably run your Walmart Marketplace business is here – and getting better all the time.
Check out Sellegr8.com today and get started with your FREE 14-day trial.
About The Author
Julie Bjugan is a long-time eCommerce seller and business coach. She writes about entrepreneurship, business finance and eCommerce marketing for some of the largest eCommerce merchants in the US.
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