As customer acquisition costs have increased by 60% in the last five years, it has emerged as a top barrier for many ecommerce businesses. 

In the backdrop of breakneck competition, without properly developed strategies, you may risk falling into a classic pitfall: overspending on marketing rather than focusing on the value of the acquired customers.

This invariably leads to unsustainable growth in the long term, massive financial strain and low customer retention. 

In this blog post, we’ve compiled the top ecommerce customer acquisition strategies to help you attract more relevant customers, reduce costs, and increase your ROI.

What is ecommerce customer acquisition?

Ecommerce customer acquisition involves attracting and converting new leads into customers. It involves various strategies and tactics, such as engaging them with compelling offers or content and encouraging them to make a purchase. 

Effective customer acquisition strategies are critical for your business growth. According to a study, 81% of marketers reported revenue growth in the last two years, attributing this success to effective customer acquisition. This shows getting new customers is key to better financial results.

As Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, puts it, 

“You can’t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there, and drag them back to your store.”

While that’s said, there’s no one-size-fits-all customer acquisition strategy. There are several options in the market, and you have to choose one that fits your business, budget, and target audience while providing maximum ROI.

How to measure the ROI of your customer acquisition strategies with the right metrics?

To measure the success of your customer acquisition strategies, keep an eye on these metrics:

1. Gross margin

Your gross margin indicates how efficiently your company produces and sells its goods. It's the difference between your revenue and the cost of goods sold (COGS) divided by revenue.

Gross margin = {(Revenue - COGS)/ Revenue} * 100

For example, if your company generates $200,000 in revenue and the cost of goods sold is $150,000, the gross margin would be 40% - the revenue retained after covering the cost.

2. Landed cost margin

Landed cost margin is your total costs in getting a product from the supplier to the final destination, including shipping, handling, duties, and taxes. Subtract this cost from the revenue to find the final landed cost margin.

Landed Gross Margin = {(Revenue - Landed costs)/ Revenue} * 100

For example, if your company has $200,000 in revenue and the total landed costs (including shipping, handling, duties, and taxes) amount to $150,000, the landed cost margin would be 25% - after covering all these costs.​

3. Blended Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Blended CPA is the average cost of acquiring a customer from all marketing channels combined. It helps you understand the overall cost-effectiveness of your customer acquisition efforts.

Blended CPA = Total marketing spend/ Total new customers acquired

For example, if your company spends $50,000 on marketing and acquires 1,000 new customers, the blended cost per acquisition would be $50 - the average amount spent to acquire one new customer.

4. Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)

The Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) is the total revenue ratio to total marketing spending. It measures the efficiency of marketing spending in generating revenue. 

MER = Total revenue/ Total marketing spend

For example, if your company's total revenue is $200,000 and you spend $50,000 on marketing, the marketing efficiency ratio would be 4:1, meaning you earned $4 for every $1 spent on marketing—a pretty sweet deal, actually.

Top ecommerce customer acquisition strategies for your business

The total ecommerce sales will reach $5 trillion this year. As competition rises and advertising costs soar, you need top ecommerce customer acquisition strategies for your business. 

To ease your job a bit, we compiled seven strategies that have a direct, measurable impact on your CAC. Here are the top ecommerce customer acquisition strategies for your business:

Create unique experiences for your best customers

McKinsey estimates that personalized experiences reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent, lift revenues by 5 to 15 percent, and increase marketing ROI by 10 to 30 percent. 

Satisfied customers are more likely to purchase from you again and spend 67% more, reducing the need for expensive acquisition campaigns.

The question is, how do you shape such experiences?

Begin by segmenting your customers by demographics, purchase history, or engagement levels. Segmenting customers helps you personalize messages and provide unique experiences. For example, you can send welcome messages to first-time buyers and offers to buyers who purchase regularly. 

You can easily do this with the all-in-one customer engagement platform Plivo CX’s Audiences feature. It lets you segment all your contacts from your online stores in real time. You can create several rules to segment your customers based on contact properties and events.

Couple this with Plivo CX Journeys to deliver customers the right message at the right time. With this feature, you can identify key events to trigger messaging that meets the customers where they are in their journeys.  

Choose the right channels to reach customers

The best way to acquire and retain more customers is to meet and engage with them where they are. This means selecting the appropriate channels for each customer. 

Here are some ecommerce customer acquisition channels:

• Email marketing: Through emails, you can nurture leads and drive repeat sales. With automated email flows like welcome series, abandoned cart reminders, and post-purchase follow-ups, brands can build relationships without manual effort.
  
  
• SMS marketing: 52% of customers purchased a product after being influenced by brand text messages. Write short, clear, and useful messages to engage your customers and get maximum ROI from your SMS marketing efforts. 
  
  Plivo CX leverages Plivo’s award-winning premium career network spanning over 200 countries. We leverage direct carrier connections with multiple failover options, ensuring reliable message delivery even in case of network disruptions.
  
  
• WhatsApp marketing: With an almost 3 billion user base, WhatsApp can be one of the best ecommerce customer acquisition channels. With Plivo CX’s Channels, you can send targeted product recommendations on WhatsApp, including exclusive offers and content based on individual preferences.
  
  
• SEO: Optimize your website and content for search engines to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). It improves your visibility in search engines like Google, and you attract organic traffic to your ecommerce site. SEO is particularly valuable because it targets users who are actively searching for products.
  
  
• Social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are powerful channels for ecommerce customer acquisition. You can engage with potential customers on these platforms, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to their websites through both organic and paid strategies.
  
  
• Paid: You can run paid ads on platforms like Google and Facebook Ads to promote your products and drive traffic to your ecommerce site. Paid ads can generate immediate visibility from your potential customers as they help you reach specific audiences quickly.

Retarget abandonment carts

On average, 70.19% of carts are abandoned. It roughly means that 7 out of 10 shoppers leave your website without making a purchase. The top reasons for cart abandonment include:

• Extra shipping costs
• Request to create an account 
• Lack of trust in payment 
• Slow delivery 
• Too long or complicated checkout process 

Fixing these issues will help you retrieve your lost customers and secure revenue. Here’s how you can reduce cart abandonment and improve conversion rates:

• Provide discounts or support offers through exit intent popups when users try leaving your site.
• Making your checkout process simpler by reducing form fields, providing guest checkout, and displaying progress indicators can help reduce friction and establish trust.
• Send automated abandoned cart emails and text messages to remind customers about their incomplete purchase and motivate them to proceed with the purchase.
  
  You can use Plivo CX's Journeys to automate this process completely. Without requiring developers’ help, you can create automated personalized cart abandonment trigger events and send appropriate messaging across email and SMS to nudge customers toward conversion and salvage lost revenue.

Provide better customer service 

3 out of 4 customers are ready to spend more with brands that provide good customer service. Building better customer relationships has become super important to acquire and retain customers.

Customers also share their customer service experience with other people, which builds a brand perception that can affect future sales. No wonder 60% of consumers have purchased from a brand solely based on the customer service they expect to receive. 

To build better customer relationships, you can incorporate: 

• AI chatbots: Generative AI chatbots help your business provide human-like service to your customers. AI provides hyper-personalization using customer data - which they have agreed to share. Also, chatbots are now able to adopt a tone that falls in line with your brand guidelines. So they can find customer information faster and easily solve their queries. 

• Email communication with customers: Email flows remain one of the most effective ways of nurturing customer relationships. You can send customers targeted emails based on where they are in their journey. 

For instance, send customers welcome emails when they sign up, thank them with a post-purchase email, or share discount codes on their birthdays and anniversaries. These activities strengthen your relationship with your customers.  

You can use Plivo CX to run email campaigns. Select your audience, choose the email channel, and schedule an email. You also get access to ready-to-go templates and an AI assistant to craft personalized emails for customers. 

Improve the shopping experience on your website 

Your website is one of the chief entrances for your customers. It’s also a primary representation of your brand on the internet. Having a website that’s easy to navigate and loads quickly reduces friction and increases the likelihood of conversion. 

To improve your website's shopping experience, focus on key elements like clear navigation, detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, and a simplified checkout process with multiple payment options. 

Moreover, the shopping experience is not limited to desktops. In 2023, mobile accounted for 80% of all retail website visits worldwide. That’s why you must ensure that your ecommerce website is optimized for mobile. 

Here are some more ways you can improve the shopping experience for your customers:

• Include AR and VR technology: Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) allow customers to visualize products like furniture, home decor, etc, in their real-world environment. It helps them make more informed purchasing decisions. 
• Incorporate voice search: Voice search technology simplifies the shopping process, as customers can search for products without typing. It makes the shopping experience faster and more user-friendly.
• Add product reviews: Authentic reviews from other customers offer real insights into the product’s quality and performance. They build trust and help customers make more informed decisions. 
• Simplify the checkout process: A streamlined, user-friendly checkout process minimizes friction points and reduces cart abandonment rates. By simplifying checkout steps, offering multiple payment options, and allowing guest checkouts, you can enhance the overall shopping experience.

Use referral programs

In referral programs, you incentivize existing customers to recommend your product to their friends, family, or colleagues. Customers receive rewards, such as discounts or free products, when their referrals make a purchase.

Referral programs are an excellent way to gain new customers at a much lower cost than traditional advertising methods. By encouraging your current customers to refer others in their networks to you, you can tap into personal networks and capitalize on the trust and confidence that comes with personal recommendations.

Steps to establish a successful referral program:

1. Offer attractive incentives: Provide valuable incentives such as discounts, credits, or exclusive deals for the referrer and the new customer. You can also implement a tiered reward system where incentives increase based on the number of successful referrals. It encourages customers to refer regularly.

2. Simplify the referral process: Create easily shareable referral links, social media templates, or unique codes for your customers. Ensure your referral system is optimized for sharing across various platforms, such as social media, email, and SMS. This maximizes the reach of the program.

3. Leverage existing communication channels: Integrate the referral program with email and SMS to regularly remind customers of the referral opportunity and its benefits.

4. Monitor and adjust: Track referral and conversion rates to monitor the program’s performance. You can gather participant feedback to understand their experience and identify areas for improvement.

Using affiliate or influencer marketing programs 

In affiliate programs, you involve third-party marketers (affiliates) who promote your products or services to a wider audience—often followers on social media. 

Affiliates (or influencers) earn a commission for every sale generated through their marketing efforts. They may also have a price to market your product, irrespective of the sales they attract. Still, 60% of marketers agree that influencer marketing has better ROI as compared to traditional marketing channels.

Steps to establish a successful influencer or affiliate program:

1. Identify the right affiliates: Choose affiliates with strong reputations and audiences that align with your target market. For example, you can select a young influencer for a 
2. Offer competitive commissions: Provide competitive commission rates to attract and retain top-performing affiliates. You can also offer additional incentives such as tiered commission rates or bonus payments to achieve specific targets.
3. Provide marketing resources: Share high-quality marketing materials, such as campaign briefs, product images, and promotional copy. It helps affiliates understand your vision and create compelling content and ads.
4. Support and communication: Regular communication helps affiliates stay engaged and aligned with their marketing goals. Offer training sessions and best practices to improve the quality of content and drive more sales.
5. Monitor and optimize: Use the right tools to analyze affiliate performance to optimize the campaign and maximize ROI. You can also encourage affiliates to provide feedback on the program and the product so you can make necessary adjustments and improve the overall experience.

Boost ecommerce customer acquisition with Plivo CX

All ecommerce customer acquisition strategies mentioned above will bring you results. But you need a platform to execute them. Plivo CX provides a single platform to execute almost all your customer acquisition strategies. 

It provides end-to-end SMS, WhatsApp, and email marketing automation to help you acquire customers. It also helps optimize customer acquisition strategies with customer segmentation, cart abandonment targeting, personalized content, and robust analytics. 

‍Book a demo today!