Do you want to improve your eCommerce marketing strategy?
eCommerce continues to grow year after year. Retail eCommerce alone is projected to total over $6.9 trillion in 2024, according to projections from eMarketer. And the industry will continue to grow to reach over $8.1 trillion by 2026.
With so much money up for grabs, it may seem like it would be easy for your business to get your cut.
However, a growing industry also means more competition. You have to continuously work to optimize your eCommerce marketing if you want to earn those consumer dollars.
Here at OptinMonster, we’ve spent over a decade helping businesses generate more leads and convert their web traffic into sales and revenue.
And I’m here to share what we’ve learned with you!
In this article, we’ll share 15 proven eCommerce marketing ideas and tools. These tactics will help you rise above the competition, catch the attention of consumers, and land more sales.
- Grow Your Email List
- Catch Abandoning Visitors
- Offer Prizes
- Show Personalized Offers
- Recover Abandoned Carts
- Nurture Potential and New Customers
- Show Social Proof
- Create Urgency
- Stay Top of Mind With Push Notifications
- Announce a Product Launch or Flash Sale
- Upsell, Cross-sell, and Downsell
- Host a Contest
- Start an Affiliate Program
- Invest in SEO
- Supercharge Your Onsite Search
15 Effective eCommerce Marketing Ideas
Your eCommerce promotion strategy should include multiple tactics for building awareness and convincing consumers to buy. In our list of tips, we’ve included a mix of goals and timelines so you can the best eCommerce marketing strategies for your business.
With these tactics mastered, marketing for eCommerce will be easier than ever before.
1. Grow Your Email List
Goals: Conversion, Retention
Timeline: Long Term
Before you do ANYTHING else, you should focus on growing your email list.
You need to start right away for 2 reasons:
- Growing an email list takes a lot of time
- A good list is foundational for many other digital marketing strategies.
A large email list of highly-interested subscribers can be one of your company’s most valuable assets.
The more robust your list is, the more traffic and sales you can generate for your online store.
But what’s the best way to grow your list? The most proven method is using a variety of optin campaigns on your website.
Optin campaigns are the different ways you ask visitors to sign up for your email list throughout your website.
By that, we mean things you’re already familiar with, such as:
- Popups
- Floating bars
- Fullscreen welcome mats
- Gamified spin wheels
- And much more…
When you present special offers, discounts, or any kind of lead magnet in these campaigns, you’ll be able to grow your list FAST.
To help you out, we recommend using a tool like OptinMonster:
OptinMonster is the #1 lead generation software in the world. It allows anyone to create stunning, professional, and high-converting campaigns in a matter of minutes.
Plus, there are ZERO coding skills required. Here’s how it works…
You start by selecting the campaign type and template you want.
OptinMonster offers you lots of various campaign types to help you reach your audience in new and engaging ways.
This protects your audience from “popup fatigue,” which is something that happens when you reuse the same popup campaign over and over on your site.
When you’ve landed on a campaign type, you can choose from dozens of pre-built templates that are ready to go:
These templates are designed to save you time, energy, and money as you grow your email list.
From there, you’ll be able to personalize your campaign to your target audience with OptinMonster’s drag-and-drop editor.
If you want to change any text in your campaign, for example, you can do so directly in the builder:
And to add new features to your campaign, you simply drag and drop them into place:
This lets you create high-converting campaigns with advanced functionality in minutes.
That’s just a quick overview on creating optin campaigns to build your list. Check out our other suggestions for getting more email subscribers or this quick video tutorial on how to build your first campaign in OptinMonster.
Bonus Resource: How to Grow Your Email List: 23 Proven and Simple Ways
2. Catch Abandoning Visitors
Goal: Conversion
Timeline: Short and Medium Term
Another way OptinMonster can increase your sales is by keeping visitors on your website. To do this, we use one of OptinMonster’s best features: Exit-Intent™ Technology.
In plain words, OptinMonster can detect when visitors are about to leave your website and show them a targeted offer to convince them to stay.
Those visitors might decide to buy something after all, or they can join your email list and become customers later. Either way, that’s revenue you’ve recovered from drifting away forever.
There are many different offers you can use in your popup to convert abandoning visitors, such as:
- Discounts and coupon codes
- Downselling offers
- Free shipping
- Related posts
- Suggested products
- Gift with purchase
In fact, Kennedy Blue used exit intent offers to convert 7% of abandoning shoppers and increase their sales by 50%.
Check out our list of exit popup hacks and ideas if you want to turn more abandoning visitors into happy customers.
Creating exit intent popups with OptinMonster is simple. Create your campaign in the drag-and-drop builder, then set the targeting rules with one click.
Bonus Resource: 27 Exit Intent Popup Examples to Increase Conversions and Sales
3. Offer Prizes
Goal: Conversion
Timeline: Short Term
Gamified campaigns are some of the most effective eCommerce marketing ideas you can find. Everyone loves to feel like a winner, and the element of chance adds to the excitement.
Coupon wheels are also a great way to harness the Zeigarnik effect. The Zeigarnik effect refers to people’s tendency to continue taking action after they’ve taken the first step.
When a customer sees a fun coupon wheel popup, chances are, they’ll spin to see what their discount or prize will be. Once that’s happened, they’re far more likely to opt in with their email address to receive their coupon.
OptinMonster’s coupon wheels even allow customers to copy the code with 1 click and use it immediately at checkout.
Gamified campaigns are a great way to recover abandoning visitors by catching their interest and addressing price objections.
Bonus Resource: 8 Best Gamification Marketing Ideas to Boost Your Conversions
4. Show Personalized Offers
Goal: Conversion
Timeline: Short Term
Personalizing your eCommerce website is a great way to stand out in a crowded marketplace and boost your conversion rates.
With OptinMonster it’s easy to show the right message to the right customers at the right time. For example, you can use Page-Level Targeting to customize your discount offer to match the page the customer is looking at:
You can also use MonsterLinks™ to trigger a popup recommending a related product whenever someone clicks “Add to Cart.” For example, when someone adds a GoPro camera to their cart, OptinMonster can suggest adding some memory cards.
You can even customize your marketing campaigns based on the user’s location. For example, you may offer special delivery options or shipping deals for certain regions.
Visitors from other regions might be annoyed seeing irrelevant popups. With OptinMonster you can easily hide these campaigns from anyone who doesn’t qualify for the offer.
These are just a few of the most popular targeting rules you can use to personalize your eCommerce campaigns, though there are many others.
Ready to see for yourself? Click below to start your 100% risk-free OptinMonster account today:
Bonus Resource: 5 Creative Ways to Personalize Your Optins to Boost Conversions
5. Recover Abandoned Carts
Goal: Conversion
Timeline: Short and Medium Term
This strategy is similar to converting abandoning visitors. But this tactic focuses on customers who have already added items to their cart and maybe even started the checkout process.
If you have the customer’s email address, you can send an automated email sequence to try and recover that abandoned cart.
Abandoned cart recovery emails are a powerful way to boost your revenue. Instead of giving up on those customers, you can send emails reminding them about the products they were interested in. These emails are a great place to address the issues that stopped them from buying, such as:
- Shipping costs or timeline
- Questions about the product
- Product price
You can use an email service provider (ESP) like Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) or Constant Contact to set up an automatic abandoned cart email sequence.
Bonus Resource: Abandoned Cart Recovery: 13 Ways to Maximize Revenue
6. Nurture Potential And New Customers
Goal: Conversion, Retention
Timeline: Medium and Long Term
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your exit intent campaigns and cart recovery emails just don’t work right away.
Don’t give up! You can still continue building relationships with potential customers by providing valuable, trustworthy content, including recommendations for your products that can help them.
The way to do this is through email marketing.
Even if a customer makes it through your abandoned cart email sequence without purchasing, you can still send them helpful emails about the problem they’re hoping to solve. By positioning your brand as a reliable resource, you can keep your solution in front of them for when they’re ready to buy.
Here are some ideas for nurturing leads with mid-funnel marketing and a tutorial for how to create an email autoresponder series.
Don’t forget about your past customers either! Selling something else to an existing customer is often much easier than selling to a brand-new lead.
Email marketing is a great way to keep in touch after the sale. Send your new customers helpful tips for getting the most of their purchase, upsells or cross-sells they might like, feedback surveys, or testimonial requests. Nurturing these existing relationships can save you a lot of effort in the long run.
Bonus Resource: The Ultimate Guide Email Marketing: The #1 Ridiculously Easy Way to Grow Your Business
7. Show Social Proof
Goal: Conversion
Timeline: Short Term
Social proof is like the positive version of peer pressure. When customers see that lots of other people are buying a product, they tend to assume that the product is worth buying.
There are several types of social proof, such as:
- Expert: an expert in the industry says that a certain product is good
- Celebrity: a famous person that your customers admire endorses your product
- User: real users share their positive experiences with the product
- Crowd: a large user base shows how popular your product is
- Friend: personal connections recommend your product or interact with your brand
- Certification: an industry authority approves of your product
One of the easiest ways to display social proof on your eCommerce site is with TrustPulse.
TrustPulse is the best social proof app for WooCommerce, Shopify, WordPress, and any other eCommerce platform you can think of.
You can use TrustPulse to display notifications of visitor activity, such as purchases, email list signups, event registrations, and more.
When a potential customer sees that real people are buying from you, that’s evidence that your product is good and your business is trustworthy. That will make them more likely to buy from you.
Bonus Resource: 30+ Proven Ways to Use Social Proof to Increase Your Conversions
8. Create Urgency
Goal: Conversion
Timeline: Short Term
Another effective way to use OptinMonster is to generate urgency or fear of missing out (FOMO), also called FOMO marketing.
You can easily accomplish this by adding a Countdown Timer to your optin campaigns.
Cosmetic Capital used this floating bar campaign with countdown timer to collect 18,000 new leads!
Here are some other ways to create a sense of urgency:
- Show when an item is low in stock
- Include words like “Last Chance” and “Today Only” in your email subject lines
- Offer a bonus incentive for the first X number of customers
Bonus Resource: How to Create Urgency in Marketing to Boost Your Conversions (17 Tips)
9. Use Push Notifications to Stay On Your Customers’ Minds
Goals: Traffic, Conversion, Retention
Timeline: Short to Long Term
Besides exit intent popups and email marketing, push notifications are another great way to recover abandoned carts. And they’re excellent tools for your eCommerce promotion strategy.
Mobile and desktop push notifications show up on the devices of visitors who have opted in, even if they don’t have the original website open. This is a great way to remind potential customers that you exist.
Once they click on a push notification to go to your website, they’ll be able to make their way through the rest of your marketing funnel.
You can also use push notifications to do the same things you might do through email marketing, like abandoned cart recovery and lead nurturing. Some users prefer push notifications while others would rather get emails, so it’s just a matter of finding what works for your audience.
Bonus Resource: How to Create a Push Notification to Boost Traffic
10. Announce a Product Launch or Flash Sale
Goals: Traffic, Conversion, Retention
Timeline: Short to Medium Term
When you need to jumpstart your eCommerce marketing, special events like launches and sales give you something new to tell your audience about.
New products are a great reason to contact your existing customers. You can specifically target customers who have bought similar products, or you can send an announcement out to everyone.
Similarly, you can decide to hold a flash sale with very little notice and send an email or push notification to your list of potential customers. Those who previously abandoned their carts might find this kind of announcement especially compelling. The time limitation and surprise of a flash sale can motivate hesitant customers to act.
You can make your announcement with OptinMonster with a scheduled, targeted campaign:
You can also announce your special event with email marketing or push notifications as discussed above.
Bonus Resources:
- Flash Sales 101: How to Get More Money (and Clients) Fast.
- How to Crush Your Next Product Launch: The Ultimate Guide
11. Upsell, Cross-sell, and Downsell
Goals: Conversion, Retention
Timeline: Short to Long Term
You don’t just want to get more individual customers. Ideally, you want to increase the amount of revenue you get from each customer, as well. That’s where upselling and cross-selling come in.
Upselling is when you encourage customers to buy a higher-priced version of the product they originally intended to purchase.
Cross selling is when you sell related or supplementary products based on a customer’s purchase of or interest in another product.
Downselling is another way to increase the customer’s purchase amount, except it’s an increase from buying nothing to buying something. Downselling is when you offer a lower-priced alternative to a customer who has decided not to buy. It’s another way to recover abandoned carts.
You can upsell, cross-sell, and downsell using targeted popups and slide-in campaigns in OptinMonster.
You can also add downsell emails to your abandoned cart sequence, or place cross-sell recommendations in a post-sale email sequence.
Finally, you can use push notifications to share upsell, cross-sell, and downsell opportunities with users on the go.
Bonus Resource: How to Boost Your eCommerce Revenue With an In-Cart Upsell Popup.
12. Host a Contest
Goals: Traffic
Timeline: Medium to Long Term
Contests are a great way to build engagement and drive traffic to your eCommerce site. You may have to wait a while to see the engagement turn into sales, but growing your audience is never a bad idea.
One easy way to host a contest is to use RafflePress.
RafflePress is the best WordPress giveaway builder, allowing you to run any giveaway or contest easily on your website while still being extremely shareable on social media.
Participants can earn entries by signing up for your email list, sharing the giveaway on social media, referring friends, and more.
All of these actions can drive plenty of new traffic to your online store. If you have some of the conversion strategies from this list in place, you’ll be ready to turn those visitors into customers.
Bonus Resource: How to Run an Online Contest to Grow Your Traffic & Generate Leads
13. Start an Affiliate Program
Goals: Traffic, Conversions
Timeline: Medium to Long Term
Affiliate marketing is an amazing way to leverage one of your best assets: your existing customer base.
By paying a commission on sales brought in by your affiliates, you can easily turn your biggest fans into an enthusiastic and credible sales force. You also minimize your own risk because you don’t pay anything for affiliate marketing until the sale is made.
The easiest way to create and manage an affiliate program is to use a plugin like AffiliateWP. We especially like AffiliateWP for its ease of use, live affiliate tracking, and premium affiliate experience.
The success of your affiliate program depends in part on the reach and influence of individual affiliates. But AffiliateWP makes it easy to support your affiliates with automatic payouts, unlimited creative assets, affiliate portals, and landing pages, and more.
Additionally, you can earn revenue by including affiliate links on your website. That is, you link to other companies’ products on your site, and you earn a commission every time someone uses your link to make a purchase.
Bonus Resource: What Is Affiliate Marketing? How to Make Money While You Sleep in 2024
14. Invest in SEO
Goals: Traffic
Timeline: Long Term
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making your eCommerce website show up prominently in searches.
The websites and products on the first search engine results page (SERP) get many more clicks and conversions than those on later pages.
If your shop runs on WooCommerce or another WordPress eCommerce solution, AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin for eCommerce.
You can easily optimize your product title and meta descriptions for search. AIOSEO can also help you get those coveted rich snippets in Google to drive even more traffic toward your online store.
Bonus Resource: SEO Made Easy—Ultimate Guide to Explode Your Traffic
15. Supercharge Your Onsite Search
Goals: Conversion, Retention
Timeline: Medium to Long Term
Our last eCommerce marketing idea isn’t commonly talked about but is still incredibly powerful: customizing your onsite search.
If customers can’t find what they’re searching for, they won’t be able to buy your products.
WordPress’s default search function is limited when it comes to eCommerce. All the important product details, tags, comments, and other metadata are ignored in the default WordPress search. Customers are limited to exact word searches in the product title, description, and excerpt.
So if your store sells different products called “Baseball Caps,” but a customer searches for “hats,” nothing will show up. Even though the customer was looking for something that you sell, if they can’t find it, they can’t buy it.
SearchWP can solve this problem for you by making all your product data searchable. You can also create custom search engines to help your customers find what they’re looking for, as well as what you want them to find.
There you have it! These 15 tips will help you reinvigorate your eCommerce marketing strategy. Pick one or several, depending on your goals, company size, and timeline
Want to learn more about eCommerce? Check out these articles:
- The Ultimate eCommerce Optimization Guide: 13 Steps to Instantly Boost Revenue
- Email Marketing for eCommerce: 7 EASY Tips for Success
- 15 Ecommerce UX Best Practices to Explode Your Sales
And don’t forget that OptinMonster helps you get more leads and sales by enticing website visitors with the right offers at the right time!
Get started with OptinMonster today!
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