Emotional impulsiveness is the number one driver of purchasing decisions. And most consumers don't even realize it. In fact, 95 percent of all purchasing decisions (both online and offline) take place in the subconscious mind, according to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman.

What goes on inside the mind of a consumer isn’t always rational, either. Consumer purchasing decisions may be rooted in any number of cognitive biases, including anchoring, loss aversion, and the paradox of choice. People rely on these subconscious cues to help ease the decision-making process, and use past experiences, thoughts, memories, behaviors, and habits to inform the decision at hand.

Of course, all of this happens in the blink of an eye, without any awareness of it on the part of the consumer. As a marketer, your task is to get relevant, compelling messaging in front of customers that trigger the right emotional response, the one that results in a conversion.

Recognize and respond to emotion in online store visitors

Personalization seems daunting for a lot of marketers. How can you even begin to get in front of individual shoppers with messages that trigger some emotion for them?

Focusing on more generic emotional triggers is a great place to start.

A visitor’s behavior on your website (and what brought them to your site) contains important clues to help you recognize emotions. For example, knowing a shopper’s exact location, time of visit, number of times on site, and the keywords they used to find your site can help you craft emotionally appealing messages.

Say your visitor is from Canada and you’re promoting your new light therapy lamps (used to holistically treat seasonal affective disorder, commonly known as the "winter blues"). You can set up slide-out messaging to start when a visitor meets both of these qualifications:

1. Is from Canada; and
2. Used a search engine to query keywords related to treating winter blues, which led them to your site

Your messaging can then speak directly to that person, appealing to them on an emotional level, as in this example:

On-site activity is another great place to start. Is a person about to leave your site?

Set up an offer to trigger when a person is both:

1. A first-time visitor; and
2. About to leave your site

In seconds, you can set up another slide-out panel for repeat visitors who are about to leave your site. The idea is to show the visitor that you recognize who they are (even when you only know one or two things about them), and personalize your messaging to match their emotional intent.

Other ways you can use generic emotional triggers include:

• Greeting customers with time of day messaging
• Reflecting the keywords used to reach the site
• Confirming that free shipping is offered to the visitor’s specific location
• Answering a specific need as identified in emotional messaging on the referring page

Engage and persuade with compelling storytelling

Of course, a fantastic story helps trigger the emotional response needed to convert a visitor into a customer. In a world where publishers, entertainers, and brands compete with each other for just a few seconds of a consumer’s time and attention, storytelling is critical for engagement.

Stories are an incredibly effective way of packaging information to persuade a person to take a desired action. Take Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, for example. It’s a narrative that’s been running for over a decade, since the soap brand launched the initiative in 2004. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign tells the stories of countless women finding their real beauty, all designed to tap into prevalent human emotions and spur women to take action. Emotions like insecurity, low self-esteem, anxiety, unhappiness, and even jealousy.

Let’s face it, soap is pretty boring. By perfecting their storytelling and employing it so effectively throughout a long-lasting campaign, Dove has mastered the ability to trigger emotions that persuade and convert.

How can you use this knowledge in your e-commerce campaigns? Here are some ideas:

• Align your email marketing and on-site efforts
• Tell a story in your email with a CTA to read more on your blog
• Set up a slide-out panel that is only shown to visitors to that post who were referred from email. Use that slideout to continue the narrative with an offer. It makes for a cohesive story that ends in the conversion action you want your reader to take.

Don’t forget that stories aren’t told only in text. Immersive imagery is a great way to trigger emotion as well. Amazon, the master of e-commerce, has been using rich, colorful images on its category pages, like this:

Images help tell your story, but can also trigger a sense of longing, of wanting to be there, in that place... to have that experience. It’s an incredibly compelling tactic in e-commerce; so remember, you can go beyond your product images to create a richer, more compelling experience for your shoppers.

Reinforce positive emotions with social proof

Playing on negative emotions like loss aversion and the fear of missing out is effective, but marketers can reinforce positive emotions, as well. People naturally crave approval—we want reassurance that we’re making the right choices. Feelings of trust, reassurance, and a sense of belonging can all come from social proof.

Companies have long used the “Join [X amount of subscribers]” to sell their email newsletters, but that’s just one example of social proof.

Reviews are another popular form, as in this example from Nordstrom:

Amazon uses social proof by displaying reviews on their category and product pages to inspire people to click through on products:

Travel booking companies are the masters of social proof, as you can see in this listing from Booking.com:

They’re using:

• The heart symbol to denote the number of people who favorited this property, showcasing its popularity
• The number of people looking at this hotel to create competition among travelers, and reinforce that it’s a popular choice
• "Last booked 1 hour ago" to provide social proof that others are booking, and you should, too
• "We have 2 rooms left!" to tell visitors they’re going to miss out, which triggers loss aversion fear

Bring it all together

The conversion process doesn't happen on your e-commerce website only. It happens wherever your brand comes in contact with potential customers. Therefore, focus on appealing to prospects on an emotional level wherever you can, from your presence in search and social—to your email marketing messages, product pages, and the offers you present throughout your customer’s shopping journey.

Tell a story with your images, text, and offers. Instead of of simply trying to sell something to consumers, show people how how your products and services can solve their problems—making their lives easier, and even more enjoyable.