9 Useful eCommerce Lead Generation Strategies and Tips for Faster Growth

In the online shopping industry, the first step toward achieving rockstar sales for your company is to generate eCommerce leads. Two primary factors determine the extent to which leads will impact your business: lead quality and lead quantity.

Here, we will discuss eCommerce lead generation strategies to generate a large number of leads for your business.

1. Email Lists

While email lists are among the traditional lead generation strategies of the internet age, they continue to be very effective. People do still read their email, and unless the message you put out looks like spam, your mail will likely end up in their primary inbox. The more you personalize your emails for your leads, the better your chances of getting a response and engaging with these leads.

It is prudent to realize here that traditional email servers do not allow you to send the volume of emails that would be involved in scouting for leads among thousands of contacts. You might want to purchase subscriptions to services like Mailchimp, which allow you to send thousands of emails a month.

2. Voluntary Subscriptions

While it is possible to purchase email lists to scout for leads, these email lists can often be very random and contain a low volume of leads genuinely interested in your business. Among the more organic lead generation techniques is to have an email opt-in on your website.

With leads that opt for your subscription themselves, you can be sure that they are interested in what you have to offer. Hence, the chances of engaging with them and potentially converting them increase.

3. Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are primarily payoffs that you offer your customer in return for their email address. You can leverage several different types of lead magnets, depending on the industry you are working in. Among the foremost lead magnets for eCommerce is a simple discount when you register on the website.

Lead magnets provide customers with an incentive to engage with you. Additionally, it is also a symbol of the customer's interest in your product if they are genuinely looking to avail of the discount and purchase it.

4. Exit Intent

Exit Intent is a simple plugin for your website that allows you to catch the attention of your customers when they are about to leave the website. The plugin tracks the motion of the customer's cursor on the screen, and as soon as the cursor seems to be looking to exit the webpage, a campaign is displayed on the screen.

Exit Intent is among the most highly used lead generation strategies for eCommerce businesses and has been shown to increase the volume of their email list manifold. The efficacy of the plugin also depends on the campaign your show during the exit.

5. Discounts

Discounts and freebies have a huge role to play in the lead generation process. Ask any one of the leading Amazon sellers what led to their success, and the prompt reply will be - heavy discounts.

Discounts and offers, even if they do not make customers purchase your product - do make them consider purchasing, which can often be the difference between a lost customer and a potential customer who signs up as a lead. The quantum of the discounts you offer must, needless to say, be financially prudent and not strain your accounts.

6. Time-Sensitive Campaigns

Among the best eCommerce lead generation strategies is to add a sense of urgency into the mix. This is an approach that the world's largest eCommerce companies regularly utilize.

When you offer discounts, never make it seem as if the offer is perpetual. In fact, run a whole campaign around it, and make the campaign time-sensitive. A time-sensitive campaign might lead to high sales over a short time period, but more importantly, it helps generate a greater volume of leads.

7. Calls-to-Action

When you run a marketing campaign, the call-to-action, or CTA statement, is the most important part of your outreach.

The CTA is meant to incite your prospective customer to engage with you. It must make the benefits of doing so very clear - simply asking the customer to take any action without laying out the perks is inefficient. Use urgent language and temporal words to express the benefit to the customer.

8. Search Engine Optimization

When it comes to being found on the internet, SEO has to be a part of the list. The largest volume of internet users will not find you by entering the website URL. Instead, they will look you up on Google, or more frequently, look up a product on Google and find you. This underscores the importance of making your website SEO-friendly.

You must follow the best SEO practices not just in the text of your website but also in the images that you include. Ensure that your website loads fast and does not go down every once in a while.

9. Gated Content

Often enough, you stumble on a website that doesn't allow you access until you sign in. That is exactly what gated content is. This is one of the best lead generation techniques if you have confidence in the importance of the product you are offering to the customer.

You can also set up gating specifically for users who have the ad blockers turned on if you run ads on your website. It is, however, best to be wary of gating; it can just as well drive leads away from your site.

Wrapping Up

The lead generation process is fraught with various tradeoffs and strategic considerations. In a competitive landscape such as the eCommerce industry, producing leads is the best way to stand out from the rest.

The above methods can help you generate a large number of leads without having to change the core strategy of your eCommerce business, improving your bottom line at a small cost.