Lesson 7: Managing your orders with SalesAutopilot

Overview

The eCommerce module of SalesAutopilot allows you to build automated, state-of-the-art eCommerce systems. Using this module can make it absolutely unnecessary to use an eCommerce store (and can be much more productive) for businesses with relatively short product lines (a couple of dozen products), but it can also multiply the sales effectiveness of the eCommerce store of businesses with long product lines (from a couple hundred products to tens of thousands of products).

Anything from invoicing to electronic payment, from managing numerous shipping and delivery options to handling diverse coupons can be achieved with SalesAutopilot by utilizing the comprehensive integration (connecting with other software) feature, and thus the software can facilitate almost any sales and marketing technique.

To get a complete overview of the features of the eCommerce module, click here: Intro to the eCommerce Module

Harmonizing orders with your newsletters & campaigns

When you decide to target your newsletter lists with a campaign, it is absolutely vital that you differentiate between those recipients who have already taken advantage of your offer and those who have not. For example, when your campaign has an order deadline, and you automatically send reminders of the deadline to your readers, then someone who has already placed their order would be quite annoyed (and rightfully if you kept "prodding" them even after their purchase was made.

You can easily avoid this inconvenience with the product conditions feature of SalesAutopilot, which automatically becomes available when you turn on the eCommerce Module. With the help of this feature, you can easily filter out those readers who have already ordered a certain product, either by creating a segment, or by setting conditions for the delivery schedules of your emails and SMS.

Increasing (or even multiplying) the effectiveness of your eCommerce store

The product condition feature just mentioned is the very thing that can significantly increase the effectiveness of your eCommerce store. If your eCommerce store is connected to your SalesAutopilot account (i.e. every order is saved in the eCommerce store and also added to a SalesAutopilot order list), then you will be able to accomplish the following things with the product condition feature:

• Sending a post-purchase email sequence based on the products purchased
• Sending perfectly timed emails to encourage customers to buy a product again, just when they are about to run out of it
• Filtering out those who have already purchased your product during a campaign, and stop "prodding" them, while maintaining dynamic communication to others
• Sending special, customized offers based on the product or product category previously purchased
• Creating customer categories based on the number of products purchased by customers (small customers, VIP clients, etc.), and then communicating differently to each category of customers
• Sending different campaigns based on buying tendencies (e.g. purchased before but not recently, recently purchased for the first time, or has been active in the past and still is, etc.)

You can find more information on integrating SalesAutopilot with various eCommerce platforms in the eCommerce section of our Knowledge Base, but we will also list them here:

• Magento integration
• VirtueMart integration
• OpenCart integration
• WooCommerce integration

Additional information: What kind of order forms can you create with the eCommerce Module?

This information becomes relevant for eCommerce store owners when they are running a product introduction campaign, and they don't want anything to distract their visitors from the new product. In such a case, even our users who otherwise only use their eCommerce store prefer using the order forms of the eCommerce Module instead.

1.) Single-product order form. Only one product can be ordered. If the visitor fills out the form, they order; if they don't fill it out, then they don't order. It's commonly used when a company has only one product, OR when a company is running a campaign for a single product.

2.) Select-product order form. Use this type of form whenever more than one product is offered, but only one can be ordered.

3.) Check-product order form. This type of form offers multiple products, and by nature of the products (or services), only one can be ordered of each. In other words, a visitor can either check or not check a product.

4.) Multiple-product order form. Use this type of form whenever many different products are offered on a form, and more than one of each can be ordered at the same time. You also need to use this type of form when there is only one product, but you can order more than one piece.

Using SalesAutopilot with the eCommerce Module is practically no different than using the software to simply create newsletters. You have to create a list the same way (an order list in this case), then you have to create a form (essentially the signup form will be your order form), and the order confirmation email will be sent with a "simple" signup delivery schedule, and so on.