Magento 2 is one of the most powerful, flexible, popular eCommerce platforms on the market. With so many amazing built-in features and so many customization possibilities, it can become difficult for non-developers to figure out what tools are available to them. However, Magento 2 has stepped up their game for marketers and delivered everything we need on one screen. Read on for a breakdown of the Magento 2 Marketing Menu, Marketing Reports, other marketing features, and Enterprise Edition exclusive features.
The Magento 2 Marketing Menu
– Promotions
The Promotions section allows you to establish price rules and product relationships. Catalog price rules create discounts for products and can be applied to selected website, customer groups, and time periods. A rule can be applied to multiple products simultaneously. The promotions menu also contains cart rules, for creating discounts that are applied to shopping carts. Both catalog and cart rules can be set up to run during a chosen time frame. These rules can be used to offer discounts, coupons, free shipping, and more.
– Communications
This part of the menu contains transactional emails, newsletters, sales documents, RSS feeds, and variables. Magento 2 offers more than 35 transactional email templates which can be tailored to your individual brand. These emails are automatically triggered after a designated event, such as a purchase or sales alert. Predefined or custom variables can be added to email templates, allowing for increased personalization. Newsletters are easy to create, schedule, and send with Magento 2, and you can create an unlimited number of templates. Sales documents include memos, invoices, and packing slips which, like emails, can be configured to reflect your brand. Finally, this menu has six different types of RSS feeds available.
– SEO & Search
The SEO & Search section covers catalog navigation, catalog search, search terms, and tools for SEO best practices. Users can structure catalogs as they see fit, which can maximize or minimize SEO. The catalog also allows users to configure breadcrumbs and layered navigation, making it easier for customers to search through a site. Pagination and product listings control how products are displayed and how many are shown per page. Catalog search refers to how customers search your site to find products. You can also customize search terms here, to account for synonyms and misspellings. Finally, this section comes equipped with easy-to-use areas for meta titles, keywords, and descriptions, canonical tags, sitemap configuration, URL rewrites, and robots.txt.
– User Content
One of the most important types of user content is product reviews. Having reviews is crucial to ecommerce success, especially when customers can’t see your product in-person. Online shoppers rely heavily on reviews when making the decision to buy. Magento 2 lets you decide if only registered users can leave reviews, or if guest customers can as well. The default configuration is a five-star review system with comments. Submitted reviews are marked in the admin as “pending” and are not viewable to the public until they are approved. Unapproved reviews will not be published to the site. Lastly, you can add product ratings, in addition to the default price, value, and quality ratings.
Marketing Reports
Marketing Reports, found in the Reports section of the admin menu, provides data about the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. There are four types of marketing reports available in Magento 2, designed to provide insight into customer shopping habits and communications issues.
1. Products in Cart
This report provides a list of all items that are currently in a shopping cart. This can help admins know if a certain sale is being effective, estimate inventory needs, and provide insight into an item’s popularity.
2. Search Terms
Knowing what your customers are searching for allows you to add these terms to tags, meta descriptions, and product descriptions to make sure customers can easily find what they want. This report shows the search terms used, how often they were searched, and how many items match those terms. The Search Terms report can help fine-tune your catalog to account for regional dialect differences, common misspellings, alternative names, and more.
3. Abandoned Carts
This report shows all customers who have an abandoned cart. A customer must be a registered user for this information to be displayed. The report also includes contact information, products in the cart, and dates of activity. This list can be used to create abandoned cart reminder emails, which are a crucial marketing tactic for many retailers. Additionally, this list may provide an indication that a certain product is or is not performing well.
4. Newsletter Problems
Since newsletters in Magento 2 are distributed in automated batches, the Newsletter Problems report alerts admins to any newsletters that were not successfully sent and why.
Other Features
In addition to the marketing menu and reports, there are a few other tools in Magento 2 that marketers will find valuable. Magento 2 comes with guest checkout, so customers do not have to create an account before making a purchase. This can help decrease abandoned carts and improve conversions by creating less friction when customers are ready to purchase. Magento 2 allows customers to create a wish list that can be shared with others or transfer items to the cart. Customers can also share products by emailing single items to friends. Marketing products is also made easier with up-sells, cross sells, related products, and product reviews. With the Shopping Assistance feature, customer service agents can help shoppers in real-time by editing their shopping cart, which helps drive conversion and sales.
Enterprise Edition Exclusive Features
In addition to all the features listed above, Magento 2 Enterprise Edition (M2EE) offers many additional features that can make a marketer’s job easier.
– Visual Merchandiser
One of the most powerful new features of M2EE is the Visual Merchandiser. This feature allows admins to drag and drop products on category pages, rearranging them as desired. This is done simply and visually, without requiring assistance from developers. Arrange your products according to your own internal data to help increase profitability and conversion.
– Gift registry
Enterprise provides the option for customers to create a gift registry. There are three default registry types (wedding, baby, and birthday) and you can configure as many additional registry types as needed. Like a wishlist, others can be invited via email to view the registry. When an item from the registry is purchased, the list is automatically updated. If registries are an important component of your site, a widget can be installed on the site that creates a gift registry search box on almost any page. Offering a gift registry make it more likely that a customer will choose your store when seeking products for special events.
– Multiple wish lists
While the Community edition allows customers to create a wish list, Enterprise addition allows you to choose the number of wishlists that customers can make. You can also control how many invitations can be sent to view a wishlist. Use this feature to encourage customers to make wishlists for all occasions.
– Rewards and loyalty program
Unlike the Community edition, Enterprise allows you to create a reward points system. You can customize which site actions merit points, how many points each action is worth, and how many points are required to gain a given reward. Rewards and loyalty programs help retain current customers, which is valuable to your bottom line.
– Private sales
Enterprise allows you to create private sales that only a designated group of customers can access. This can help build customer loyalty by giving members or VIPs some extra special treatment. Customers can be invited to the sale via email. Custom site restrictions prevent unapproved customers from accessing the sale page. You can also specify the start and end dates and times of the sale and make this public to customers with a ticker at the top of the sale page.
– Email reminders
This feature allows you to create and automatically send emails to customers when selected events occur. Possible uses include abandoned cart emails, offering a discount, or reminding customers to purchase wishlist items. The improved admin panel makes it easy to customize the default email template to fit your store.
– Google Tag Manager
Although a separate tool from Google Analytics and Google AdWords, Google Tag Manager integrates seamlessly with these and other tools to manage site tracking. Tag Manager allows you to easily create and manage tracking tags without having to hardcode everything yourself, or needing the help of a developer. You decide what you want to track, then the data can be transferred to your preferred analytics system for enhanced performance insights.
– Content staging
Content staging allows admin users to schedule changes for various types of content. Scheduled changes can be applied to catalogs, products, rules, and CMS pages. Other users can see the changes that are scheduled, and the changed are automatically pushed live at the designated time and date. Your day is busy; this feature allows you to schedule necessary changes in advance and move on to your next task.
– Segmentation
This feature allows you to create customer segments based on a variety of attributes, allowing you to target individual groups with different price rules, discounts, banners, and more. Segments can also be exported, allowing you to use them in custom email campaigns, mailings, and other marketing efforts.
In addition to all of the amazing features in Magento 2, there are a variety of marketing extensions and integrations that can make your store even more appealing to customers. Plus, since Magento 2 is so flexible, there are many ways to customize your store to better suit the needs of your unique customer base.
Take your store’s marketing game to the next level with these Magento 2 resources:
eCommerce Marketing Services
Upgrade to Magento 2
Adaptive Subscriptions for Magento 2
Authorize.Net CIM Payment Method for Magento 2
Custom Magento Development