Have you ever bought the first thing you laid your eyes on? Sure, you may have liked or even loved it, but your first instinct is, “let’s explore options and other brands.” In fact, most of the online store visitors think the same. When you see that 96% of website visitors are not even ready to buy, a majority of the leads are either in the top or middle of your sales funnel. If you want them to buy from your eCommerce brand, you will have to nurture them. Evidently, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases as compared to those who buy immediately.
Lead nurturing campaigns play a key role in qualifying leads, encouraging conversions, and building relationships. Having languish leads is of no use to an eCommerce business. A generic newsletter or only social media marketing is not going to cut in this case. That is precisely the reason why you need a foolproof lead nurturing campaign for your eCommerce business.
To make it easier for you, we have put together 11 eCommerce lead nurturing tips, strategies and ideas. They will help you to land more sales-qualified leads, drive sales, and achieve business growth.
1. Leverage cookies and push notifications
Cookies are one of the most important lead nurturing tools for an eCommerce business. Cookies contain a unique ID that is placed on the lead’s device by your website. Once your lead allows cookies, you will be able to see the pages they visited on your site and how much time they spent on each of those pages. This data helps you to retarget potential customers on Instagram, Google Ads, and Facebook.
Despite often being blocked by many customers, cookies continue to be an important eCommerce lead nurturing tool because they can help you:
- To understand how the visitor lands on your eCommerce website
- To know the pages that a visitor is spending time on
- To gain insights into the number of site visits
- To get a real-time notification for leads visiting the site
Push notification is a powerful tool that eCommerce brands can use to nurture leads. Once the user opts-in for the push notifications, the conversations happen in real-time and aren’t blocked by ad blockers. Unless blocked by your leads, push notification helps you deliver customized notifications on desktop and mobile devices, even when they are not browsing your website.
You can use push notifications to:
- Promote discounts and announce a price drop
- Send notifications for newly added products
- Personalized product recommendations based on on-page behavior
- Cross-sell products
- Recover abandoned carts
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2. Create valuable content
Today, customers read an average of 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchase. Use this to your advantage by finding out what people want to know about your product and create valuable content that helps them find the right product.
So then, how do you find what your audience is looking for? By looking at competitors, Google autocomplete for understanding the content gap and relevant forums and communities.
After identifying the questions you would want to answer, use RankWatch to do a competitor analysis and keyword research. Consider creating different kinds of content surrounding each topic.
Now you would be wondering, why should you spend time, energy and resources in creating content. The answer is, creating valuable content that your potential users want to read allows more people to discover your website. When you are the most informed industry leader, you build trust and therefore, they are more likely to buy from you.
An eCommerce content strategy for lead generation can include content formats such as ebooks, infographics, blog posts, FAQs, videos and podcasts. You can go a step further and repurpose the same content across different formats to get your eCommerce business in front of more people.
Creating valuable content generates, nurture and retain leads, allowing you to convert them into paying customers.
One of the best examples of content marketing is by an eCommerce brand Northern Brewers. They sell home brewing beer kits, beer recipe kits and equipment. Given that homebrewing can be complicated for first-time users, they have expert advice which users can benefit. Check out how they have an entire section devoted to homebrewing, a video library, forum and a priming sugar calculator. Going a step ahead, to boost sales, they include relevant products into their content so that the reader can find the equipment they need.
Find areas where you can share knowledge and educate your shoppers. Start with a data-driven user persona, write valuable content for their pain points and use it as a successful lead generation strategy.
3. eCommerce SEO
If you don’t optimize your eCommerce website for search, nobody will find it. Certainly, while nurturing leads, you do not have to hold their hands as they move down the funnel. But you need visitors to get to your website in the first place. Push notifications, offering discounts or creating valuable content would be useless unless you have website visitors. SEO is crucial for generating relevant traffic which you can nurture and turn into sales.
A huge benefit of eCommerce SEO is that you don’t necessarily have to create long-form content such as guides, ebooks or whitepapers to rank on SERP. In other industries, that is a prerequisite for lead generation. But you can nail the SEO of your eCommerce store by optimizing product descriptions, metadata and blog posts with targeted keywords.
4. Nurture eCommerce leads with strategic retargeting
Have you ever come across Facebook ads displaying the same product you were looking at on a website? Well, these ads are known as retargeting or remarketing ads. Retargeting ads are the next piece of the puzzle. Often, you require paid promotion to get in front of a new, similar and old audience.
This is how remarketing works. It incites the fear of missing out and compels leads to take a quick decision.
If a lead doesn’t buy your product today, that is not the end of it. You can still persuade them to make a purchase. There lies the beauty of retargeting throughout the buying circle. Remarketing ads don’t automatically send the leads back to your website (well, they can at times) but increase the brand awareness of your eCommerce business. Next time your leads need a similar product, they will remember the ad that they saw.
Be it fashion clothes or homeware; you will face multiple companies targeting the same audience. Retargeting ads help your eCommerce brand to earn recognition and sell faster. Every time a lead sees your logo, USP, and product offerings, you are increasing chances of:
- Generating sales in upcoming days
- Reaching customers genuinely interested in your product
- Boosting brand awareness and building trust among your leads
5. Pitch the right product at the right time with social media
You must be thinking why to use social media marketing for eCommerce lead nurturing. The answer is, social media has the biggest directory of potential leads, with 3.8 billion social media users in 2020. Website visitors are leads because they show interest in your brand. Similarly, social media followers look forward to hearing from your business. As a result, the distance between a lead and sale is smaller as compared to the distance between a wannabe car owner and a car. Social media is a tool that eCommerce can use for lead nurturing in a way many traditional industries simply cannot.
When someone follows you on social media, they have put themselves a few clicks away from making a purchase. It is as simple as clicking on a “Follow” button to be then able to nurture an interested lead. Remember, instead of spreading thinly on all social media platforms, target those that your audience uses frequently.
Don’t forget to add links to your social media handles in your newsletters and email campaigns. Let them know that they can reach out to you on these platforms.
Facebook ads, with the lowest CPC rates, are an excellent channel to target a lookalike audience and establish a direct line of communication with them. Instagram marketing and lead ads allow you to create a visual appeal and collect customer information that you can then use to improve direct marketing campaigns for lead nurturing.
6. Nurture leads with freebies
Customers, including you and I, love free stuff. As human beings, we are simply not good at withstanding the appeal of giveaways. And, you can use it in your favor. eCommerce businesses often offer free shipping or a discount in exchange for the email address of the customer. Once the customer opts-in, you can send them member-only discount emails at regular intervals. While they spend time on your website, don’t forget to upsell your premium range of products.
MADE is a brand specializing in furniture and homeware. On their website, the two offers quickly grab the reader’s attention. The first one, (up to 20% off on lighting) is for visitors ready to make the purchase. The second one (£10 off your first order is for leads who are not yet ready to buy.) Getting them to sign up for the newsletter gives MADE a chance to nurture leads until they are prepared to buy.
Here are some of the most effective ideas for eCommerce lead nurturing using freebies:
- Launch new collections with discounts
- Create a sense of urgency by combining out-of-stock status and discount on an instant purchase
- Offer freebies for customers picking up products from store
- Provide freebies for exclusive members
7. Deliver a seamless user experience on your website
With so many eCommerce businesses selling products online, customers are never going to run out of options. Your website must be trustworthy and aesthetically appealing for people even to consider your brand. Here is how you can get website-ready:
- Reduce website loading time
- Add search functionality for easier navigation
- Write attractive and engaging product descriptions with high-quality images
- As 86% of people purchase within one week of reading reviews, add social proof in the form of reviews on the home page and product pages
- Include payment trust signals to show that the payment info of the leads is safe
- Add high-quality images and photographs
- Where necessary, embed videos and a 360-degree view of your products
- Conduct research and gather feedback using an online survey tool
Take a look at Sephora’s website. Each product has details such as ingredients, how to use it and shipping and return policy.
Along with ratings and reviews, they show photos of customers applied the product.
In a way, when you see customers using the product, it gives an impression of trust, which is crucial to nurture leads.
8. Email marketing campaigns
Has it ever happened that you didn’t buy a product because the price was exorbitant? Will you buy it if you get a 50% discount coupon in your inbox the next morning? Probably, yes. And, that’s what eCommerce lead nurturing looks like with B2C email marketing. Customized email journeys help you to qualify leads, boost awareness, and build brand identity among prospects.
Excel at email marketing with these tips:
- Segment prospects based on their position in the sales funnel
- Create automated campaigns based on buyer journey and geography
- Make your emails personalized with dynamic content
- Define and automate triggers for customer journeys (for example, abandoned cart or re-engagement)
- Place an eye-catching CTA
eCommerce brand Casper which sells sleep products, has a cleverly designed abandoned cart email. The copy is to-the-point, asking the reader if they would want to revisit the cart. It includes what they were shopping for and two CTA’s.
9. Marketing automation
Be it running email marketing campaigns or posting content on social media, running the show alone is a time-consuming process. And, that’s where marketing automation comes in. Efficient marketing automation tools like EngageBay help you to supercharge sales by lead scoring, lead segmentation, and task automation.
To get the most out of it, use marketing automation tools for various stages of lead nurturing such as:
- Segmenting contact lists based on demographics, events and customer behavior
- Running automated email marketing campaigns
- Creating landing pages for renewing the interest of cold leads
- Sending SMS and push notifications for promotional purposes
Optimize your Customer Lifetime Value strategy
Get more valuable customers for a more profitable e-store.
10. Convert faster with personalized offerings
From leads visiting your site to buying products from you – the journey is longer than it seems. One of the most effective ways to shorten the conversion rates cycle is personalization. Be it social media retargeting ads or email marketing campaigns, personalization is going to be crucial.
Here are some of the best ideas to use personalization for nurturing potential eCommerce leads:
- Grab the attention of the buyers with personalized product recommendation on your website
- Showcase a personalized range of products on social media retargeting ads
- Interact with customers one-on-one using live chat or a chatbot
- Work with influencers to offer custom products for different demographics
11. Increase visibility and nurture leads with Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns
All the methods of lead nurturing discussed above take time to show results. With PPC, you can leverage the fact that customers often tend to click on the ads that appear before the organic results on search engines like Google. That’s why it is significantly important for you to target the right keywords for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. In this model of advertising, you only pay when a lead clicks the link.
Unless you want these leads to land on your website, you can connect your Google Merchant center to Google Ads. Ideally, you should bid more on the most profitable group of products. Once you complete product grouping and bidding, all you have to do is to wait for Google to show your ad for the most relevant query.
In order to perform well in PPC ad campaigns, you must ensure that:
- Your product information is comprehensive and contains every little detail
- Your ad has an enticing title, description and high-quality images
- The landing page offers a seamless experience
Be it developing relationships with customers or guiding leads throughout the buying process; nothing will deliver desired results until you have a solid eCommerce lead nurturing plan in place. And, did you know businesses nurturing leads sell 50% more at a cost 33% lower than those not nurturing their prospects? That’s the power of lead nurturing.
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