eCommerce Customer Acquisition | 4 Ways to Boost Acquisition

With a predicted Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 27.4% from 2022 to 2027, the global eCommerce market holds great possibilities.¹ The sheer potential of the industry has led to a steep rise in the number of eCommerce stores, resulting in tough competition.

Grabbing a significant share of the online market is more challenging than ever — but not impossible. You just need to start with highlighting the metrics that will spell out your growth and strategising ways to make them all the more sophisticated: customer acquisition being one of them. Customer acquisition is a crucial metric for eCommerce businesses to see success and the right strategies can help you get there.

It’s a given that, when it comes to customer acquisition and retention, customer experience plays a huge role. 83% of brands that focus on making customers happy also experience growing revenue and 73% of buyers feel customer experience is key to their brand loyalty. ² ³

Suggested reading: Want to learn how to improve customer experience in eCommerce? Read our blog '5 Ways to Improve Customer Experience in eCommerce'.

To boost your eCommerce customer acquisition — and all of your critical metrics as a whole — you need to develop a customer-centric strategy that constantly returns to enhancing their journeys and experiences. This blog will take you through ways to advance some interesting strategies that are critical for customer acquisition and seeing growth across the board. Let’s get started.

1. Leverage exclusive offers to excite new visitors

The vast amount of online stores that are available to shop from means that exclusive offers are critical in setting your business apart from the rest. Ironically enough though, even exclusive offers have become run-of-the-mill in online retailing. Your offers can stand out from the crowd by ensuring that they’re personalised to the desires of new customers — insights you’d be able to get from looking at your existing customers and what has historically driven revenue. Ranging from welcome discount codes to flat off on the second purchase — exciting offers customised according to your target audience’s preferences will do the job.

How Uniqodo helped Beauty Bay provide exclusive offers to new visitors

Challenge: Beauty Bay wanted to ensure that their first order promotional codes could only be used by new customers. They needed a solution that would check the validity of a customer in real-time while also displaying the new customer overlay whenever truly new audiences visited their website.

Solution: Uniqodo not only built an overlay that would solely be displayed whenever a new customer landed on the Beauty Bay website - email addresses were also collected and sent to their email marketing services in real-time so that email sends could be triggered, leading to immediate action on Beauty Bay’s part. To further ensure protection from code abuse and misuse, Uniqodo applied unique, single-use codes to be issued by the overlay upon signing up.

Result: The solution helped Beauty Bay drive their customer acquisition both faster and more effectively, while ensuring total control and security over their revenue. Beauty Bay recorded a 90% increase in promotion-related sales compared to Q1 of the previous year during the campaign period. The success of the campaign also created scope for more returning customers.

2. Immediately prolong and enhance customer journeys through sign-ups

While discounts and offers can attract new customers, incentivising sign-ups adds to the customer journey by ensuring that they will always have a pipeline to return to your business.

An email or direct message with a CTA (Call to Action) like “sign up to become a member and receive a flat 10% off on your first order” is more likely to engage customers who have an interest in your products. Adding one-time-use offer codes to personalised emails with direct links to products that the customer is likely to buy can help you grab more sales, ensure a seamless purchase experience, and provide you the control needed over how your promotions are applied.

Customers always prefer when brands treat them like a person — not a number. Offering unique and exclusive promotional codes that are more likely to attract specific shoppers or shopper groups is a great way to improve customer experience in eCommerce. Moreover, the use of single-use codes eliminates any chance of code misuse so that you can get maximum value from your campaigns and protect your revenue.

How Uniqodo deployed advanced promo codes for OVO Energy to drive greater customer acquisition

Challenge: OVO Energy had no code field on their site, which was preventing them from offering incentives through promotional codes. This in turn was affecting new customer acquisition through digital channels.

Solution: Uniqodo added a code field into the sign-up flow on the OVO Energy website. This allowed the brand to incentivise new customers on sign up and also offer special benefits on renewals. Uniqodo deployed a promo code field that was targeted by URL so that once a customer with a live supply redeemed their code, a bill credit or discount was automatically applied.

Result: This seemingly minute addition to the OVO Energy website enabled the company to acquire new customers via exclusive offers provided with a seamless onsite experience. The upgrade eliminated any promotional marketing restrictions the brand was experiencing previously from the inability to offer personalised incentives to customers. It further provided the foundation for OVO Energy to develop more comprehensive and streamlined promotional campaign strategies for the future.

3. Build personalised, sophisticated promotions that stand out

When every business is competing to engage wider audiences, what can make your promotions stand out? In a nutshell, by personalising them to your customers.

Typically, brands provide generalised offers that customers are either left unimpressed by or risk being abused and leading to substantial business losses. To stand out, your promotions should be personalised based on potential and existing customers to drive both acquisition and retention. Unique and creative offers that are specially curated for a particular buyer or buyer group are much more likely to elicit interest and make them click the ‘buy now’ button. Personalised offers can also give your affiliate marketing campaigns an extra edge.

One of the primary challenges of personalised offers is code leaking and misuse, which can easily take out a huge chunk of your profit. So, before you create personalised campaigns make sure that your offer codes are unique and single-use.

Making promo codes exclusive for a customer drives their purchase decision, leading them directly to your site or an affiliate to qualify for the offer. This helps to draw new customers from different channels while ensuring valuable customer experience and retaining critical control over all your promotions.

How Uniqodo helped Moonpig retain total control over exclusive promotions

Challenge: Moonpig wanted to run a campaign targeted towards students to drive engagement with a younger audience, but were concerned about the risks of codes leaking and negatively impacting their business metrics.

Solution: Uniqodo’s promotion experience platform generated single-use codes for Moonpig, preventing any risk of code misuse. The platform also recognised that Student Beans would be an optimal affiliate to distribute Moonpig’s promotional codes through in order to address their renewed customer focus. Seamless, controlled customer journeys were further realised with Uniqodo implementing auto-fills for promotional codes during checkout.

Result: The attention paid to enhancing the customer journey and applying sophisticated methods to drive customer acquisition led to Moonpig seeing immediate growth throughout the promotional campaign. During the promotion, they saw a massive 997.54% increase in engagement rate.

4.Upgrade your promotional strategies entirely with automation

Knowing your customers and understanding their preferences are essential to formulating promotional campaigns that convert. Plus, thorough tracking of all of your campaigns is key to determining what strategies you’re implementing are returning the best results.

With that in mind, developing and implementing your promotions manually has to be a thing of the past. Robust, powerful automation can both help you devise well-informed promotional strategies that will enhance customer acquisition, while saving on costs and resources.

An advanced promotion experience platform like Uniqodo adds the power of automation to your campaigns. It makes your strategies more customer-centric by using thorough insights and analytics. The platform offers data-driven personalisation so that you can pinpoint exactly what your audience wants and deliver it to them.

From gamifying promos and mystery discounts to expert-led methods — Uniqodo will help you formulate and implement strategies that increase engagement throughout the customer journey. Moreover, it will help you uncover areas of potential growth that you might be missing otherwise, upgrading your promotional strategies altogether.

How Uniqodo implemented exclusive page access for Beauty Bay’s VIP customers

Challenge: Beauty Bay wanted to reward their existing customers and followers in anticipation for the launch of their collaboration with NikkieTutorials by providing early access to the product. They knew the product would sell out quickly and needed a customised promotional journey that delivered their needs.

Solution: Uniqodo firstly ensured that access to the product was kept secure by deploying a gate that could only be unlocked via their uniquely generated promotional codes. Emails with these unique codes were then sent out to the VIP customers who had signed up for early access.

Result: The new sign-ups generated by this campaign helped Beauty Bay to not only acquire new customers but also turn them into loyal buyers courtesy of a personalised experience. The brand also experienced a 23% uplift in promotion-related sales.

Conclusion

Any strategy to boost customer acquisition is only made effective when implemented with a focus on enhancing the overall customer journey, making them both seamless and appealing. Uniqodo’s advanced promotion experience platform helps you take your promotional campaigns to the next level by using automation and analytics-based, customer-centric suggestions.

Uniqodo increases acquisition through personalised promos targeted at specific customers and behaviours across every channel. It amplifies conversion by optimising the customer journey for a seamless, personalised experience. To know more about how Uniqodo can revamp your promotional marketing endeavours and boost customer acquisition, book a discovery call with us today.