Acquiring and qualifying e-commerce leads using sales funnel and marketing automation
I have been working for clients from almost every industry, which presents exciting new challenges.
Large or small companies generally have very specific problems found in the Conversion Rate, the CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), AOV (Average Order Value) and LTV (Lifetime Value).
In this guide, I'll explain through a simple tactic how to lower customer acquisition costs and generate new sales.
The One-Time Offer
Once I analyzed data available in Google Analytics, Heap or somewhere I can read analytics, I created an acquisition strategy that leverages a very simple concept: One Time Offer, which is an offer available only once and at that moment for a potential customer.
It's a very simple concept, one of the 6 of Cialdini's rules (scarcity), present in many popular platforms such as Wish and Aliexpress.
Upon registration, the potential customer lands on "Thank You page" where you can give him much more information about the offer: you can talk about the benefits or the value that this offer could drive to him.
Shortly after, an initial email with a coupon is sent to him.
If you have a high CAC, up to 30% of a customer's LTV, it's possible to acquire a new customer, giving him a special timed offer. Our main goal isn't to sell something or make single sell, but it's qualifying him, feeding him with interesting content and products, at the right time, as much as more in line with his interests.
Who wants to be bombarded with uninteresting contents? I don't think anyone would like to receive only email offers or one-size-fits-all content via newsletters.
This happens in many e-commerce, not understanding that you're burning/saturating your customer base, generating many inactive customers.
Most of the information you need to scale your business or generate new revenue streams is under the hood, in your order database.
1 – Customer Base and RFM Analysis
If you have never created an RFM Analysis, you can read this article where I explain how to make it, starting from Shopify or any other E-Commerce.
2 – Attracting the correct audience
What may interest e-commerce the most is the acquisition of new customers who are much more interested in its products. The answer to this question is certainly given by the "Champions" and "Loyals" segments which "should generate" a significant part of total sales. I used the conditional because stand to my experience, I found few clients correctly having this composition.
On platforms such as Facebook and Google, it's possible to create a similar audience (LAL - Lookalike) by importing that segments. You can follow this guide, which explains step by step how to import and create Facebook LAL campaigns.
It's equally important to exclude from the selected audience those who have liked the page, have visited the e-commerce in the last 30 days and have had a minimum interaction with your company.
That's because if you want to grow your business and acquire new market shares, you must ensure that all new customers are fresh!
3 – Creating a Landing Page
The landing page structure is critically important, differentiating between significant percentage conversion points.
The OTO (One Time Offer) is represented on the landing page using a countdown which communicates the scarcity concept. The price and product need to be visible, and the problem or the benefit of your special offer needs to be written using good copywriting on the left side of the form.
These values need to be clearly explained because they drive the potential customer to fill the form or leave the page.
The form was created using a quite large and clickable field, with a large submit button and a clear Call To Action.
4 – Marketing Automation for qualifying the lead
Once the potential customer's email has been acquired, an email with the coupon is sent shortly after to obtain the discount or offer proposed on the landing page.
Lead purchase is monitored over the next few days to understand which of these potential leads have purchased and therefore have become potential customers of the company.
All leads that have not been purchased yet are sent reminders in the following days to "push" them to the bottom of the funnel.
Note
The acquisition cost could drop dramatically if this tactic generates big numbers in a structured strategy.