Customer Acquisition Strategies To Unlock eCommerce Growth

The past few years have kept things in marketing interesting. Between privacy changes, the pandemic, and economic fluctuations, adaptation is the key to an eCommerce business surviving and thriving .

As customer priorities and brand relationships continue to morph more quickly than a TikTok trend, profitable growth remains the top priority. But how do we connect with audiences while keeping budgets in check? The answer lies in crafting creative, value-driven customer acquisition strategies fine-tuned to these fast-moving realities.

Continue reading to learn more about customer acquisition, how to calculate eCommerce customer acquisition cost (CAC), channels, and the best strategies to help you unlock your eCommerce growth and keep it sustainable.

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What Is Customer Acquisition?

The process of attracting and converting eCommerce site visitors into buyers is called customer acquisition. Given the relatively low likelihood of a paying consumer visiting your store directly and making a purchase, the goal of most companies is to expand the right customer base by presenting the right products to the right people at the right time through the right communication channels.

That said, acquisition goes beyond finding and converting any new customers. It’s about identifying those who will stay with the brand, make repeated purchases, and eventually become brand advocates. Therefore, a smart strategy cannot exclude customer retention.

Why eCommerce Needs Customer Acquisition Strategies?

Without a customer acquisition strategy in place, a business is essentially relying on chance. It is waiting for somebody to stumble upon the store by coincidence. Therefore it’s necessary that businesses:

1. Outshine the competition. In the fiercely competitive landscape, where businesses vie for the same customers’ attention, a well-crafted strategy becomes the key to standing out and drawing in new customers.
2. Ensure lasting growth. Continuous expansion of the customer base translates to increased sales and revenue.
3. Enhance customer lifetime value. A robust customer acquisition strategy not only attracts but also targets customers who are likely to make repeat purchases, contributing to long-term revenue.
4. Expand market reach. Through customer acquisition strategies, eCommerce businesses can penetrate new markets, reaching a broader audience.
5. Stay ahead of trends. Given the ever-evolving nature of digital marketing and consumer behavior, a well-thought-out approach helps businesses adapt to emerging trends and technologies, ensuring ongoing relevance in the market.
6. Valuable data collection. Customer acquisition strategies often involve gathering essential customer data, enabling businesses to personalize marketing efforts, refine product offerings, and enhance the overall customer experience.

Best Customer Acquisition Channels for eCommerce

There are many customer acquisition channels a business can use to expand its customer base, including TV, radio, print ads, cold calling, and more. However, when speaking about eCommerce, there are four main channels that can unlock potential growth and keep it sustainable.

1. Social Media. The omnipotent social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn are excellent channels to acquire new customers. By posting regular content that is engaging, targeted ads, collaborating with influencers, and using user-generated content, businesses can effectively reach their target audiences. The best thing about social media is that it allows you to connect with people on a deeper level and create communities. Since social media is oversaturated with content competing for three-second attention spans, brands that can build communities around useful, informative, meaningful, and inspiring content will have a competitive advantage.
2. Email. Email marketing is another effective acquisition and retention channel. In fact, email ROI (return on investment) is an impressive 36 cents for every $1 spent. Additionally, about half of a company’s revenue comes from approximately 8% of its most loyal consumers. These are significant reasons why eCommerce should not overlook retention through actively curating content for current customers. Set up a few email campaigns every week, leveraging automation flows and segmentation possibilities, such as abandoned cart emails or welcome flows. Send engaging and interesting emails and newsletters consistently, and you will have a continuously growing loyal audience.
3. SMS. SMS marketing has gained popularity in recent years and is still not used by many. It allows businesses to send text messages to their customers. The global average open rate of SMS text messages is 95.81% and 70% of consumers opt in to receive texts from businesses.Successful businesses don’t send salesy-sounding messages all the time but, instead, mix in content like quizzes or pieces of trivia meant to educate and inform.
4. SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) involves optimizing a website’s content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). It is effective as organic search drives 1,000% more traffic than organic social and 53% of website traffic comes from organic search.Businesses that prioritize optimization must be prepared for the long game, as SEO involves regularly optimizing every aspect of their website, developing a robust blog, and creating long-format content as part of their comprehensive digital content strategy.
5. PPC. PPC also known as pay-per-click, enables businesses to customize their advertisements for specific demographics, locations, and interests. PPC platforms like Google Ads offer significant flexibility in ad styles, targeting criteria, and budgeting. Furthermore, comprehensive analytics and tracking tools enable a straightforward assessment of your campaign’s effectiveness.

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Owned Marketing and Third Party Marketing

All channels are designed to reach certain touchpoints of the customer journey. Therefore, the question becomes which one is right for the right customers.

There are channels that businesses own and have full control over: websites, email marketing, and mobile marketing. These channels are designed to deliver personalized experiences that ultimately lead to a high level of customer loyalty.

On the other hand, other channels may offer an extended reach to new audiences, including paid search, display advertising and third party marketplaces. However, these channels often restrict a brand’s capacity to effectively connect with their intended audiences.

This lack of control and precision in targeting marketing endeavors can result in increased acquisition costs, as brands contend with others that may have larger budgets.

How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost?

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the cost a business bears to acquire a new customer.
The formula for calculating CAC is straightforward:
[ CAC = \frac{Total Acquisition Costs}{Number of New Customers} ]

Where:

• Total Acquisition Costs include all expenses related to acquiring customers, such as marketing, advertising, and sales costs.
• Number of New Customers is the quantity of new customers acquired during aspecified period of time .

Tracking the CAC allows companies to make informed decisions about resource allocation and marketing budget optimization.

3 Customer Acquisition Strategies to Unlock eCommerce Growth

Focus On Building Relationships With the Right People

Upon entering a website for the first time, potential customers often come across a pop-up window that offers a small discount in return for their email. The expectation is to generate a lead quickly and inexpensively. But is this tactic sustainable? Even though it is commonly used, it may feel artificial, as no one is asked for their email or phone number upon entering a physical store.

In real life, the initial interaction between the company and the customer involves establishing contact and inquiring about the customer’s needs or how they can be assisted, facilitating a more personalized and genuine interaction.

Instead of doing what everybody does, try building more natural communication. Here’s an example of how you can improve your approach:

• Welcome the potential customer with a quiz or poll.
• Ask a couple of questions about their interests.
• Use their responses to direct them to the right product or section.
• Finally, ask for their email at the end of the quiz.

This way, you can still get your lead while gaining an understanding of what message would resonate with them the most, creating a more personalized and engaged experience.

Platforms like Jebbit can be helpful in this strategy by driving customer experiences, while capturing customer preferences as zero-party data.

Think About Reacquisition

In today’s dynamic landscape, customers are evolving rapidly. A customer acquired a few months ago is not the same as they were then. Their preferences have evolved, and their life situations are in a constant state of flux. For instance, if a business gained more customers during the Covid lockdowns, are they still considered customers today?

Thinking about reacquisition means embracing these rapid changes and continuously nurturing relationships with customers, attracting their interest again and again through social media, email marketing, etc.

One winning strategy is to hyper-personalize your communication. Consumers now view personalization as the default standard for engagement. This means adopting advanced analytical solutions to better understand clients’ expectations and then fine-tuning the communication. While chatbots are highly popular, there are many other options such as video messages that are an absolute hit. Personalized videos can be used to welcome new customers, provide product demos, and even to say thank you.

One popular platform to connect with customers through personalized video messages is Covideo. You can share your videos via email, SMS, your CRM, or social media. Covideo also offers many integrations with popular platforms such as Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoom, and more.

Diversify Your Digital Ad Spend Across Channels

Many eCommerce businesses invest heavily in paid advertising focussing on one or two channels, but they don’t apply their learnings to different ones. For instance, Meta generates deep insights that can be leveraged to scale in channels like LinkedIn, X, or others. Testing paid acquisition strategies can unlock eCommerce growth, even if a small percentage of the overall budget is allocated to paid advertising (like 10%).

Here’s why creative testing is crucial to ecommerce businesses: testing 20 ads a week on one channel won’t yield significantly better results than testing 40. However, exploring new channels can make a substantial impact.

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Wrap Up

Acquiring customers is a gradual process. Thriving eCommerce businesses consistently attempt to draw in new customers by testing new strategies. Thus, surpassing such acquisitions involves delivering top-notch products and nurturing robust customer relationships to establish a more successful eCommerce venture.