5 Wow-worthy Ways Automated Content Is Transforming Fashion

1. First-time Offers
2. Welcome Emails
3. Price Drop Reminders
4. Omnichannel Cart Abandonment Flow
5. Automated Website Copy

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When it comes to the retail category giants, fashion is among the biggest hitters, standing second only to grocery.

Fueled by a little global crisis we call a pandemic, the eCommerce slice of that pie is bigger than ever before. It’s growing faster than your most stubborn (and impressive! How does it keep coming back so quickly?) garden weed, slated to hit 36% of global fashion retail sales by 2022. 

What does this mean for eCommerce fashion retailers? With a market projected to hit $872 billion by 2023 according to Statista, this means an exciting abundance of opportunity. 

It also means a pivotal time to get your eCommerce strategy smoothly buttoned up and executed just right. 

Let’s face it. When it comes to fast-paced, consistent turnover, the fashion industry is the king of kings.

To stay competitive in this mad, mad world, it has become imperative for any retail players to turn to a new, deliciously potent secret sauce for their marketing strategies: automated content.  

Today we’ll share with you revenue-tickling benefits of automated content as well as 5 ways it is transforming the fashion industry, and inspire you to go do it yourself!

Without further ado, let’s jump in.

Automated Content

What is it, anyway? It’s a technology-wrapped digital strategy that touches all stages of the content lifecycle - from planning to workflows to creation and content generation, publishing, marketing, management, and even performance analysis.

At the end of the day, content automation transforms repetitive tasks into automated but dynamic processes.

The end result?

Saving your team precious time and money - with boosted customer engagement and conversions along the way.

Additional side effects (who are we kidding? They’re totally intentional) include:

• Improved customer experience 
• Increased sales
• Higher ROI
  

Sounds good, huh? Okay, okay, enough teasing - what can this actually look like in the fashion world?

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Fashion Transformative Automated Content Methods

1. First-time Offers 

Imagine walking into a shoe store you’ve never visited. The sales associate hears the door, looks up and…

…nothing.

You pinch yourself. No, you left the Invisibility Cloak at home today…

You know what they say (and for good reason): first impressions are everything. What if you could give first-time visitors to your eCommerce site a great first impression?

With automated content, you can.

Most first-timers won’t be quite ready to purchase anything. You can pique their interest and compel them to have a closer look by granting special offers in exchange for an email address during their first session. 

This could be a percentage off a first purchase or free shipping. Or, it could happen after the visitor has been browsing for a few minutes. Or, after they put an item in their cart - the web world is your proverbial oyster.   

Banana Republic, for example, offers an extra 15% off the first purchase for first time visitors.

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2. Welcome Emails

Great, you’ve got your visitor’s email address - now you’re on your way to building a solid customer relationship.  

Nurturing visitors right from the beginning is key, and sending a welcome email series is a great way to do that. It’s an opportunity to share more about your values, learn about your customer’s, or drop a call to action. 

Bellroy is a great example of a welcome series champion. They greet newcomers with a friendly tone and give a sneak peek of the content that’s to come.

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They take the opportunity to showcase popular items, and gather data about the user’s priorities based on which category they choose. This is a great way to build offers that will be specific to the customer later.

Send your initial welcome note shortly after signup, then maintain a regular rhythm for several weeks (we suggest 4-6). Each nurture flow will look different for each brand, but can include your brand story, customer favorites, new products, or even blog posts if your business maintains one. 

Relevant, targeted offers based on feedback you’ve already received from the customer go a long way, too.

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3.  Price Drop Reminders

Who doesn’t love a compelling deal? With discounts and special offers on your eCommerce site, you’re off to a great start. But what’s that extra step to really win your customers’ loyalty and drive conversions? 

A well-executed automation flow which is dynamic and specific to each person! 

This works well combined with abandoned cart automation flows. Notify your customers about exciting savings that are relevant to them - a logical opportunity here is a friendly nudge and reminder about items they have viewed but not purchased. 

Triggers for this flow would be any drop in product price that meets a chosen threshold (perhaps 10% or more). It can be a push notification or an email, and you can even filter notification recipients based on their apparent level of interest (e.g., if they’ve looked at the item multiple times in the last week). 

Venus Shop shows price notifications with just a bit of extra pressure, throwing in “you’re not the only one who’s looking.” Oh boy, FOMO (fear of missing out): engage!

Etsy notifies customers of price drops with email notifications:

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4. Omnichannel Cart Abandonment Flow

For some eCommerce shops, cart abandonment rate is as high as 80% or more! With billions of dollars left on the table each year, focusing on reducing cart abandonment represents huge potential for any eCommerce business. 

Enter: the other half of your customer retention power duo… 

The cart abandonment flow.

An omnichannel approach (combining social media, email, web, and more) can be quite effective here, taking advantage of push notifications to drive purchases back on site.

These strategies are great at supplementing your campaign off-site, targeting customers with cart items elsewhere (for example, social media is a big one).

You can try out different strategic combinations of emails and push notifications, at different timed intervals.

A starting point could be 2 emails and 2 push notifications at intervals of a few hours (4-8), then a day, then a few days (3 or so), then 1 week after abandonment. 

A friendly “Left something behind?” or playful “Your cart misses you…” can remind a user to pick up where they left off.

There are endless possibilities, though - explore what resonates most with your brand voice. Adidas has fun with this in their cart abandonment notification:

They then go the extra step to lower any last barriers to persuasion with reviews and social proof:

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5. Automated Website Copy 

Automation possibilities extend far beyond emails, popups, and offers! Did you know that you can actually automate the copy on your product and category pages too? 

Automated website copy can do more than just save money and boost conversions. It can also improve search engine rankings, decrease time to market cycles, and free up manual copywriting services for higher level tasks!

There are many providers who can help you harness the power of natural language generation to create unique content at the click of a button. 

AX Semantics, for example, has a natural language generation platform that has already helped an abundance of fashion brands revitalize their eCommerce strategies. Just a few case studies below:

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Mytheresa is a German luxury fashion brand operating in 130 countries around the world. They faced the huge challenge of optimizing their online store for search visibility - and to do this consistently and in all their target markets. 

After automating their category descriptions, Mytheresa enjoyed a range of benefits:

• Lifted relevance and uniqueness with SEO-optimized content
• Increased Google search rankings by 20 places within 6 months
• Increased primary keyword visibility by 80%

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Otto, Germany’s largest online shop, operates in more than 30 countries, offering a range of products including clothing and shoes. They have used the AX Semantics platform since 2011 to automate their content and have achieved:

• More than 100,000 unique product descriptions 
• Automation of more than 15 product categories
• Streamlined updates for easy seasonal or event-related content
• Boosted conversions
• Fewer content errors

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German multichannel retailer KLiNGEL operates more than 60 online stores in 12 countries. They automated their product descriptions and saw fantastic results:

• Millions of unique, high-quality product descriptions
• Content in 14 languages‍
• Drastically reduced call center inquiries for savings of more than 1 million € per year

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Global brand SkatePro faced a challenging, unwieldy mountain of content before they started automating. The thousands of product descriptions they needed in 17 languages would have taken 3-5 years to write manually! 

After implementing natural language generation in their content processes, SkatePro has achieved an impressive degree of automation:

• Over 71,000 product descriptions
• Content in 17 languages
• 60 product categories
• From 16% automated to 55% automated in 3.5 months

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Since harnessing this power, SkatePro has seen remarkable effects for their eCommerce:

• Drastically reduced time-to-market 
• Significant increase in top-ranked keywords and organic traffic 
• Tons of time saved on manual translation

In all cases, these brands benefitted from an automated system that enabled them to adapt and update their content in a much shorter time - no more waiting for copywriters or translators. 

They enjoyed consistent, high-quality, always up-to-date texts across their content - indistinguishable from manually written text.

The best part? Faster time-to-market and massive money savings.

Conclusion

In order to compete in the fashion industry, businesses must be on top of their game and adapt with evolving technologies to stay current and fresh for their customers.

Given the sheer volume of products and “fast fashion” refresh cycles, automating content is becoming a critical component of marketing strategy. 

There are a myriad of ways to introduce automated content into a business’s materials. From automation flows like welcome email campaigns and behavior-triggered offers, to website copy like category and product descriptions, the possibilities are inspiring! 

Which automation flow will you try first? 

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Get Started With Automated Content

Intrigued by the idea of automating your website copy? Xanevo can help! We offer full packages to help businesses implement the AX Semantics natural language generation platform.

Join our community of clients who have seen monumental improvements in workflow efficiency, boosted sales, and up to 80% time savings! To learn more, book a FREE 30 minute consultation with Xanevo today.