Published by Charlotte Davies
04.08.20
As it becomes increasingly expensive to acquire customers via paid channels, effective ecommerce operators need to ensure that they’re not leaving any money on the table with their existing ad spend. Shopify’s deep app ecosystem allows you to dial in various parts of your funnel to ensure that you’re always maximising the return from every site visitor – all without cranking up your paid ad budget.
1) Rebuy: Increase average order value
In a world of fake-drop shipper-scarcity, upsells can often feel slimy – not only as the buyer, but also as the merchant implementing it. Before your customer has received any value from you in the shape of your product or service, you’re already trying to sell them more?! C’mon. Rebuy, however, manages to pull off upsells in a tasteful way that doesn’t feel like you’re just extracting more value from a site visitor – truly feels like you’re showing them other products that they will genuinely like. Through its intelligent “if-this-then-that” technology, Rebuy allows you to show customers subtle suggestions based on what’s in their cart. If they don’t want it, there’s no overselling, they can go straight to checkout with their existing products. Offering these subtle pop-ups can increase the basket size that the average customer checks out with. This means that you’re able to increase your overall return on ad spend without any changes to your traffic strategy.
2) Swell Rewards: Organic referrals
The most successful ecommerce brands do an incredible job of giving their best customers a megaphone – they’re often your best salespeople! Oftentimes an incredible product is more than enough to enable organic referrals, but if you’re looking to really ramp up this sales channel it can make sense to introduce referral/affiliate programs. By offering payouts or discounts that are tied to conversion objectives (ie. you receive £10 and your friend receives £10 after their first purchase), you’re able to actually quantify the bottom-line impact of word-of-mouth marketing, beyond just brand recognition.
3) Privy: Exit intent + email marketing
If your site is converting at 3%, then 97% of your traffic still showed some interest in your brand! Although it’s totally plausible that these additional site visitors were just window shoppers who never had any intent to purchase, it can still be incredibly lucrative to consciously nurture them. But what many brands often forget – in order to nurture this traffic, you first need to identify this traffic. Privy’s exit-intent pop-ups allow you to offer some sort of value in exchange for a potential buyers’ email, SMS number, and/or name. From here, you can enrol them in an automated welcome sequence that builds familiarity with your offering, helps them understand your brand’s core mission, and ultimately guides them towards a future purchase. If implemented correctly, this is an opportunity to extract value from your existing traffic – no new ad spend required.
Pro-tip: There are three different types of exit pop-ups. “Welcome” pop-ups, such as “join our email list”, will get you a 1% opt-in. “Incentive” pop-ups, such as “Hey, get 10% off”, will get you a 5% opt-in rate. “Giveaway” pop-ups, such as “we select one winner for our top product every week”, will get you a 10% opt-in.
4) Social Proof Pop-ups: Increase product page conversions
All else equal – and hopefully all else is not equal – how does a potential buyer decide to choose your brand over a competitor? The simplest differentiator is social proof; they buy because others have bought. There’s a whole host of methods to implement social proof across your funnel: user-generated content in your ads, reviews across your site, testimonials on your social pages. The product page, however, is often where there is an opportunity to double down. Proof’s sales pop-ups show customers when (and who!) is buying the product that they’re currently looking at. Even if they don’t pay attention to the specifics, it’s an incredible way to show them that they’re not alone in their interest in your brand. If there’s any last-minute discomfort, social proof pop-ups show the potential buyer that other people are also interested in your product, which ultimately helps your chances of pulling them over the line for the sale.
5) Thank You Letters: Increase repeat purchase
Bonus! Even if the entire Shopify App ecosystem were to go down, you’d still have access to a good ol’ pen and paper. Some brands we’ve worked with have found incredible success in slipping in a typed out letter with every 1st order, signed off by the founder of the company. (Just copy/paste an electronic signature so he/she is signing off on every order!) Remember: your product packaging is the only marketing material that has a 100% open rate, and so this is your opportunity to thank the customer for their business, explain to them your teams’ core mission, and end off with a standard discount code for all repeat shoppers. By catching them at the peak of their excitement (unboxing), you have an incredible opportunity to immediately capture a repeat purchase. Implement this tactic and watch your repeat customer rate skyrocket.
Ad spend isn’t the only way to scale your brand! A healthy exercise for any operator to attempt – especially at scale – is to consciously imagine ad spend as a fixed expense. In the face of stable traffic, how else would you be able to scale our bottom line? By pulling on revenue levers like basket size, organic referrals, email marketing, conversion rates, and repeat purchases, you can make sizable impacts on your quarterly targets without ramping up ad spend.
Get in touch today!
If you need more advice on specific marketing techniques we’ve discussed here, then get in touch with our team of experts today!
