10 Steps to a Killer Lead Generation and Lead Management Process

By John McTigueNov 3 /2015

How do you attract and handle leads? It's a simple question, but few of the companies we talk to have a
definitive answer. More often than not, there is no process in place for generating and managing leads
from first conversion through sales closing. If a process exists, it's commonly a mix of manual sorting and
inefficient communications that risk losing leads and the all-important timing between a bottom-funnel
request and a sales response. Here are 10 steps you should take to improve your lead generation and
management process.

#1 - Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Product Alignment

Lock your Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Product Development teams in a room and don't let
them out until they come up with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that commits them (and
Management) to:

Agreement on definitions and criteria—what is a lead, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead,
sales accepted lead, opportunity, customer, upsell opportunity, retention opportunity, etc.

Lead management process (have them bring this 10-step list to the locked-down meeting to guide them)

KPIs, benchmarks and monthly, quarterly and annual goals for Sales, Marketing and Customer Service

Reporting—dashboards and in-depth reports for each team and how they will be circulated to
stakeholders

#2 - Marketing Automation and CRM Integration

You will need sales and marketing technology to put your process in place and get it running. As part of
your alignment process, your teams need to agree on tools they will commit to using every day to
capture and manage leads and customers. The best solutions are easy to use and incorporate every
aspect of inbound marketing, including:

Website content management system

Content creation and promotion (blogs, social media)

Lead conversion (landing pages, forms and calls-to-action)

Lead nurturing (drip campaigns, personalized content)

Marketing automation (email marketing, list segmentation, lead scoring, lead management workflows)

CRM integration (seamless, bi-directional transfer of lead data, KPIs and communications)

Enterprise application integration (customer service apps, e-commerce, business intelligence systems)

#3 - Lead Generation

Capture qualified sales leads through high quality content and targeted:

Inbound marketing—blogging, guest blogging, blogger outreach, blog syndication, social media updates,
social media engagement, SEO on-page optimization, premium content (eBooks, infographics, videos,
webinars), calls-to-action, landing pages

Demand generation—paid search (ppc), social media ads, banner ads, native ads, email marketing,
direct mail, print ads, media ads, tradeshows, speaking engagements, personal networking

#4 - Lead Intelligence Gathering

Marketing works with Sales to establish key criteria for lead segmentation and scoring. Hopefully, you
have already created a comprehensive list of buyer personas and a detailed buyer journey for each
persona. If not, check out these resources. Now plan how you will capture this information through
landing pages and forms, using a progressive profiling approach so that conversion rates are kept high.
Identify relevant pages and events that, if visited or triggered, also allow you to update lead profiles
during the buyer journey. Access LinkedIn, Data.com, Hoovers and other business data sites you can use
to cross-reference leads and further develop their profiles. Some of these sources can be directly
integrated through HubSpot and Salesforce apps and APIs.

#5 - Lead Segmentation

Set up marketing automation workflows to categorize leads and segment them into lists using criteria
established in Step #1. Use these lists to nurture leads with relevant content and personalized email
communications. Also use them for targeted campaigns, segmenting leads with a certain role or title or
within a certain industry or market segment.

#6 - Lead Scoring

Set up lead scoring criteria and points-awarded system to update lead lifecycle stages, move leads to the
CRM when the timing is right and trigger notifications using marketing automation workflows. Leads
accumulate positive scores for behavior and demographics. For example:
Persona—industry, title, role, company size, revenues

Engagement—number of visits, unique page views, repeat visits, form conversions, email opens and
clicks, blog comments, social media mentions, inbound links

Buyer stage—clicks and conversions on specific content indicating a lead lifecycle change, such as mid-
funnel and bottom-funnel offers

Velocity—recency of engagement, volume and timing of events indicating an imminent intent to buy

Also, apply negative scoring for form answers or behaviors that designate a lead as a poor fit, for
example: competitor company, low budget or non-company email address.

#7 - Lead Nurturing

Monitor and influence the progress of leads through the sales funnel by presenting them with relevant
content based on buyer persona and content mapping. Content can be sent via personalized drip email
campaigns or by direct integration using personalized content, for example website messaging that is
tailored for lead segments or buyer personas. Apply lead scoring rules as leads consume your lead
nurturing content and move them to different lifecycle stages and segments using marketing
automation workflows.

#8 - Transfer and Assign Leads to the Sales Team

Automatically move inbound leads over to your CRM using marketing automation workflows and assign
them to appropriate sales reps when they reach lead scoring thresholds and/or trigger specific
behaviors, such as requesting a free trial or demonstration. Use segmentation rules to assign leads to an
appropriate sales rep, for example by territory or industry. This process should be carefully planned in
Step #1.

#9 - Sales Nurturing, Close and Customer Service

Following the alignment process (Step #1), every sales rep should understand how to use the CRM and
other lead intelligence tools to be able to quickly evaluate sales qualified leads and reach out to them
quickly. Lead intelligence will help reps formulate a strategy for engaging with their prospects, gain their
interest and trust, and develop a relationship that leads to a closed sale. This process is called sales
nurturing. Every rep needs to update the CRM following every communication to keep lead status up-to-
date and make sure that Marketing doesn't step on the sales process with inappropriate content. Once a
sale is consummated, Customer Service should be notified via the CRM and take over managing the
account. Sales also needs to set up automated reminders for following up with their customers and
setting the table for up-sells and retained services. Marketing and Product Development also need to
stay in the loop to send supporting, customer-centric content that educates customers on best practices
and upcoming releases.

#10 - Analytics and Reporting

None of this works, let alone improves, without closely monitoring the performance of every aspect of
your lead generation and lead management process. Account Reps, Consultants and Technologists need
to use analytics tools to optimize each step in the process and make strategic decisions to improve
results. Each team needs to know how to generate the right reports from your Marketing, Sales and
Customer Service systems in accordance with the SLA created in Step #1. Reports are shared with other
teams and Management in order to ensure compliance with the SLA, to make better budgeting and
staffing decisions and to allow senior managers to assess performance.

Boiling it Down

Companies that pay attention to each of these steps, especially in the early planning stages, and devote
the right resources and budget, tend to perform better than the competition. The process isn't simple,
and ignoring any of these steps can lead to poor outcomes. Building a killer process, on the other hand,
leads to sustained growth and profitability.

Photo Credit: dno1967b

Tips and best practices for

effective Salesforce lead
management
Companies that strive to improve their sales pipeline and close more deals with
Salesforce eventually realize that they need to go beyond regular monitoring of sales
effectiveness and creating numerous pipeline dashboards. Rather, this process starts
with building a seamless workflow that describes how sales reps should work with
leads to convert them into closed sales deals. Using Salesforce lead management,
companies can effectively organize, qualify and nurture leads as well as convert them
into opportunities thereby increasing sales and bridging the gap between sales and
marketing teams.
Live Lead Management Tour

Introducing Salesforce lead management

functionality
Using Salesforce, companies can track all stages of the lead management process,
including: 
1. Capturing leads;
2. Scoring leads to identify which ones are sales-ready;
3. Prioritizing leads and assigning them to appropriate sales reps;
4. Converting qualified leads into a sales opportunity;
5. Nurturing leads that are not ready to buy yet;
6. Evaluating lead management progress.
Note: The rule of thumb for a sales rep is to enter any new name as a Lead in
Salesforce. However, some companies ignore this rule and prefer using Contacts
tab instead. Though this format is acceptable for small companies or in case you get a
new name from an existing account, we advise bigger companies with a sizable
number of leads to follow the recommended approach.  
A standard Salesforce lead record consists of fields that store information about each
person that expressed interest to do business with your company. This record can
include up to 25 different fields, but the most important of them are:
 Lead Owner;
 Lead Status;
 Lead Source.
1. Lead Owner is a particular person that works with a lead. A sales rep can either
assign a lead owner for each lead or place a number of leads in a queue and let a sales
team decide on the lead ownership.
2. Lead Status indicates lead tracking stages that allow sales reps to track sales process
and prioritize future activities.
By default, Salesforce offers the following lead tracking stages:
 New;
 Working;
 Nurturing;
 Unqualified;
 Qualified.
In case you have a more complex lead tracking process, Salesforce allows you to
customize this standard list.
3. Lead Source shows where your leads come from. Though this field is optional, we
advise companies to make it mandatory for sales reps to fill in the Lead Source.
By default, Salesforce offers the following lead source list:
 Advertisement;
 Customer event;
 Employee referral;
 Purchased list;
 Trade show;
 Webinar;
 Website;
 Other.
Standard Salesforce lead record
You can also add custom fields to this list. Once available, this information helps
calculate the ROI of your lead-generating activities and find out if your marketing
channels work successfully. With this knowledge, you can make informed decisions
on where to spend your marketing and sales efforts.
As you can see, the ultimate goal of a sales rep in the lead management process is to make a
new lead ‘qualified’ and finally convert it. When it happens, the lead becomes a contact
(person), account (company), and an opportunity (potential sale) in the Salesforce
system. However, sometimes a lead can become a contact and an account without
becoming an opportunity. As a rule, this happens when you currently don’t anticipate
any revenue stream related to this particular lead.
Now, as you know what you should track in your Salesforce lead records, it’s time to
organize your lead management process so that it brings maximum benefit to your
company. Below, our Salesforce consultants have prepared a step-by-step guide to
help you succeed.

7 steps towards effective Salesforce lead

management process
1. Capture more leads  
The more leads you have, the more opportunities and successfully closed deals you
may have. With Salesforce, you have various options to increase your lead database:
1. Automatic lead capturing using either Salesforce in-built functionality or
Salesforce AppExchange apps. In particular, you can enable Salesforce web-to-lead
feature that automatically captures visitor information from the website
or install Toucan, a Twitter client for Salesforce that can help you promote
products through Twitter campaigns and gather information about people who
follow you.
2. Lead import using the Salesforce Data Import Wizard. With this tool, you can
ensure mass import of your leads from Excel spreadsheets or email apps, such as
Outlook or Gmail.
3. Manual lead input works well for individual leads.

2. Check whether you have duplicate lead records

The earlier you begin your lead record cleansing, the less is the probability that your
contact list will become a mess. Duplicate leads in Salesforce can appear due to
various reasons:
 The same lead may have responded to several marketing campaigns.
 The same person may have had various activities on your website (e.g.,
downloaded a presentation and sent a request for proposal).
 Someone a sales rep met at a conference may have also responded to an email.
 You have purchased a 3rd party list of leads that contained contacts you already
have, etc.
So, before you create a new lead, make sure you won’t create a duplicate. In case you
find several profiles belonging to the same person, you can merge them with either
Salesforce or partner data cleansing tools found in the AppExchange. Besides, you
can use validation rules that limit the conversion of leads with incomplete data.

3. Follow lead qualification requirements

When you get a new lead, you'll likely want to figure out whether this person is just
kicking the tires or can really bring revenue for you. That is why before converting a
lead into an opportunity, it should pass a set of lead qualifications criteria. Thus,
once you decided to manage leads in Salesforce, you should determine the
lead conversion pointso that you could build an adequate sales pipeline later on.
In our practice we’ve seen the following conversion options:
 Convert leads once they have shown a semblance of interest in your company.
 Convert leads after you have agreed on a sales meeting date and the prospect
attended it.
 Convert leads once they have passed the lead score threshold, which depends
on the degree of profile completeness.
 Convert leads only after a sales rep specified the price.
N.B.: Early lead-opportunity conversions may result in a larger opportunity pipeline
but lower win rates. And vice versa, those companies that opt for later conversions
and smaller pipelines usually have higher win rates. Thus, it’s you who should decide
on the amount and quality of opportunities you’d like to keep in your pipeline.
From our experience, we advise to convert a lead into an opportunity only when a
sales rep can specify most of the following areas:
 Business challenge
 Close date
 Deal size (amount of revenue)
 Competitors
 Name of the final decision maker.

4. Consider how to prioritize leads and distribute

them among sales reps
In case your sales team handle leads on a first‐come-first‐served basis, you may
benefit from lead queues that store pools of leads grouped by territory, business
function and other attributes. For example, you may have separate lead queues for a
California-based team and a Texas-based team, so when you add sales reps as queue
members they will be able to pick leads only from the queue they have access to.
If your company generates lots of leads or you just want to automate the lead
distribution process, you can use assignment rules to route leads to the right sales reps
or queues. With this feature, the administrator can specify who should receive a lead
and under what conditions. For example, to automate lead distribution in the above
example, you can use ZIP codes to assign leads to appropriate teams.
5. Keep your leads moving towards the conversion
point
The ultimate goal for any sales rep is to convert a lead into an opportunity or
disqualify it in case they are currently not interested in your offer. That is why a good
practice in Salesforce lead management is to assign a follow-up task so that leads
don’t stay leads for a long time. When done properly, the queue will only contain the
‘freshest’ leads for the immediate follow-up. For this purpose, we advise following a
straightforward rule: A lead should be converted within two weeks, otherwise it
should be classified as ‘unqualified’ and removed from the list of current
leads. However, it's possible to adjust this time period according to your individual
sales tactic.

6. Nurture your leads

If a lead is currently not ready to purchase your products or services, sales reps should
go for lead nurturing, which usually turns out to be a rather sophisticated task. Lead
nurturing is much more comprehensive than just sending a monthly email or calling a
lead every two weeks to check whether they’re finally ready to buy. A sales rep
should build meaningful conversations by sending guides, tips, industry research, and
other useful content that will not only help leads solve their daily pains but also
position your company as a trustworthy partner. To enhance this process, you can use
Salesforce Pardot’s drip campaigns that allow managing multiple nurturing tasks (e.g.,
dynamically choose content for each prospect based on various criteria).

7. Track your lead management effectiveness

To be aware if your lead management is effective, you should monitor which of your
marketing campaigns bring benefit and which of them need to be improved.
Salesforce offers various tools to track your lead management results.
 Lead history reports ensure traceability between various lead criteria, such as
lead source, industry, or annual revenue and opportunity amounts.
 Dashboards to track results of your lead-generation efforts with different
metrics, such as the number of leads, the number of converted leads and pipeline
amount.

On the final note 

Salesforce is a powerful tool that can help you increase the number of leads and
effectively manage them. However, Salesforce on its own doesn’t guarantee brilliant
lead management results. That is why a company that wants to see tangible benefits
from Salesforce lead management should have a clear vision of how to treat leads first
and only then automate this process with Salesforce.
Salesforce Сonsulting Services

10 Ways to Better Manage Sales Leads

If you're not following these ten tips for managing your sales leads, you're probably letting good
prospects slip through the net.

NEXT ARTICLE Add to Queue

April 1, 2005 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

If you're looking for ways to increase revenue--and what smart entrepreneur isn't--one of the
fundamental processes you need to review is your lead management program. Prospect leads can
originate in a variety of ways, and there is often only a very loose structure in place to manage and react
to those leads. Your sales pipeline and your ability to hit revenue targets all begin with good lead
management. Try these ten strategies for improving your lead management efforts.

1. Develop a concrete definition of a lead and make sure all employees understand it. One of the biggest
disconnects between sales and the rest of the company is the definition of a lead. When does a prospect
become a lead that a salesperson will actually work on? It's estimated that 90 percent of the leads that
are sent to sales staff are never acted upon. And there are generally two primary reasons for that. First,
the lead is routed to the wrong person and never gets passed along to the correct person or at least not
in a timely fashion. Second, the lead isn't ready to engage with a salesperson yet. So the sales person
will make one, maybe two contacts with that prospect and then move on to "lower hanging fruit." For
better sales effectiveness, your sales staff and the rest of the company need a more granular definition
of when a prospect becomes an actual lead that should be forwarded to sales.
2. Install an effective customer relationship management (CRM) tool. For optimal sales effectiveness,
you need to provide employees with a tool that captures information about each and every interaction
with your prospects and customers. This includes integrating your different channels, such as your
website.

3. Track the source. People most often hear about your company and products and services through ads,
referrals, online banner ads or some other form of advertising. You need to keep track of what actually
caused these suspects to raise their hands so you can better determine what works and what doesn't. In
addition, it's important to capture the source of each intervening event so you can determine such
things as how many times you need to touch a customer or what order of touches work best. If you
don't capture the source, you have no way of figuring out what's working.

4. Distribute your leads quickly. Studies have shown that if you respond within 48 hours of a prospect
contacting you, your sales closing rate goes up dramatically. Think about your own experiences. How
many times have you tried to contact a company to request information and they never get back to
you? By responding quickly, you set yourself apart from your competitors.

5. Nurture your leads. Depending on the products and services you offer, most people are probably not
ready to buy based on their first interaction with you. Best practices call for nurturing your leads over
time. You need to develop campaigns that allow you to touch your prospects multiple times so you can
move them through the sales cycle until they're ready to think about actually purchasing from you.

6. Excite your sales staff about each prospect. The best salespeople focus on detailed qualifying, and so
should the rest of your staff. The more information you have about a prospect, the more excited your
salespeople will be about the lead. Whoever's collecting prospect information needs to extract
additional information from every prospect with each interaction, including such things as "what
interested you about our products" and "why is it important to you." They should also try to may the
organization so your salespeople are getting in touch with the decision-makers in each company.

7. "Tag, you're it." How do you save those interesting bits of information about customers and
prospects? If you tag your records with the names of your competitors on deals, what their objections
are, whether they'll be a referral or not, which products they already own and so on, you can then find
those detail fast in the future. This allows you to leverage what you learn in order to be more successful.
8. Treat your prospects like customers. By capturing the source I mentioned above in #2 about each
prospect, anyone at your company can answer a call from that prospect and more effectively answer
their questions. This will have a significant impact on your prospects and will cause them to want to
engage with your team further.

9. Measure everything you do. But in order to measure your results, you need to decide what you want
to measure and why. Then you can capture the correct information upfront. And once you have the
right information, you can determine the return on investment of your campaigns and focus on the
campaigns and prospects that will increase your sales pipeline.

10. Hold regular meetings with your sales staff and anyone else involved in the sales process. You should
meet with appropriate staff members on a regular basis to review lead quality, win/loss records, and
tracking CRM systems so you can continue to improve your sales effectiveness.

Bonus Tip: Preload your database with the right prospects. Your customers are the first step in
prospecting sales leads. Most people think they already know who their customers are, but many
companies tell us they find a few surprises when they do an analysis of their customer base. So confirm
what you know about your customers. Then, once you know who your customers are, define a few key
attributes about them. This could be external attributes such as geography, SIC code, company size
(employee count and revenue), or internal attributes such as products, territory, credit type and
contract type. Now you can use the profile of your best customers to better define and acquire new
prospects.

Greg Anderson is the director of product development for GoldMine software for FrontRange Solutions.

Lead Generation Strategies for Ecommerce

Running a successful ecommerce store requires a steady flow of customers. But if you’re an ecommerce
marketer, you know that generating the sales you need involves more than just a few ad campaigns.

customer-magnet
Not all of your site visitors will want to buy your products, and many of the ones who do may not
purchase right away. That’s where a lead generation strategy becomes essential.

With a lead generation strategy, you can attract qualified traffic to your ecommerce site and move them
through the sales funnel until they’re ready to make a purchase. On this page, we’ll go over six tactics
you can use to generate leads for your ecommerce business.

To learn more, keep reading, and give us a call at 888-601-5359!

Want to earn more leads online?

CONTACT WEBFX

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Consider how your potential customers shop for the products they want online. In most cases, they
begin by searching for the items they want on search engines like Google.

With an SEO strategy, you improve your site to help your pages rank in the results of those searches.
This makes it easy for your potential customers to find you and allows you to focus your marketing
budget on the people who actively search for your products.

2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Although SEO is the best long-term strategy for reaching search engine users, running pay-per-click
(PPC) advertisements on platforms like Google AdWords is an effective way to reach searchers while you
establish SEO rankings. PPC is also useful for competitive keywords that have clear purchase intent, but
are dominated by your competitors.

When you create your campaigns, you determine where you want to display your ads based on the
keywords users search. If you sell running shoes, for example, you could display an ad in the search
results for “women’s trail running shoes.”
Then, you set bids based on how much you’re willing to pay for each click to your website, and you only
pay that amount when your ad is clicked.

3. Content marketing

Many of today’s consumers research the products they want before buying. They want to know which
products are the best options for their needs, which offer the best value for their money, and which are
the most popular with other customers.

You can provide all of this information and more as part of your content marketing strategy. Publish blog
posts, articles, and other content help your customers make informed purchasing decisions.

The topics you choose depend on your industry and products, but this content can range from buying
guides about specific products to blog posts on the latest trends to articles with helpful tips. When you
provide information that your customers want, you can help them make buying decisions – and build a
trustworthy reputation as a helpful resource in the process.

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WebFX PresidentBill Craig

SEE HOW WE CAN HELP YOU

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Want to speak with an expert? Call us at 888-601-5359

4. Social media

Social media is a valuable marketing tool, and that’s especially true for B2C ecommerce companies. It’s
the perfect channel for interacting with customers and showing your brand’s personality.

patigonia-social

Some platforms also offer effective advertising options. On Facebook, for example, you can run ads
designed to drive traffic to a specific page on your site and use their highly-specific targeting options to
reach the exact audience you want.

These options range from basic demographic information like age, gender, and location to more
advanced options like interests, career, education, and their past actions on Facebook. When you utilize
these targeting options, your ads bring the exact audience you want to your site.

5. Email marketing

As we mentioned above, not all of your site visitors will be ready to buy on their first visit. But many of
them will be ready to provide their email addresses in exchange for a discount or some other incentive.

Use email marketing to stay in contact with those leads and encourage them to return to your site. You
can tell your subscribers about new products, notify them of sales, and share any other information they
might find interesting.

You can also use automated campaigns to send specific messages to your subscribers based on the
actions they take on your site. If a customer adds a product to their cart but leaves without purchasing
it, for example, you can send them an email with a link to return and complete the transaction.
6. Personalization

Your customers don’t all want the same things, which means that you can’t reach them all with the
same marketing messages. With personalized marketing, you can tailor your ads and offers to be as
relevant as possible to different customers.

If a visitor has previously visited a specific product page, for example, you can display offers related to
that product as soon as they land on your site. The easier you make it for visitors to find what they want,
the more likely they’ll be to make a purchase.

7. Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

When a visitor arrives on your site, you want them to convert in some way. That may mean making a
purchase, signing up for an email newsletter, or another action that moves them through your sales
funnel.

Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of testing elements on your site to see which are
the most effective in getting your visitors to convert. You can test everything from the layout of your
product pages to the calls to action you use and use that information to improve your site for the most
possible conversions.

Wistia video thumbnail

Want to generate more leads for your ecommerce store?

If you’re ready to create a lead generation strategy for your ecommerce store, WebFX can help. We’ll
work with you to choose the most effective channels for your business, then create a strategy tailored to
your goals.

We’ve helped hundreds of clients reach and convert the customers they need online, and we’ll do the
same for you. Contact us today for more information and a free quote!

Find out how WebFX can create an effective Internet marketing strategy for your website. Call 888-601-
5359 or contact us online today for a free evaluation.
 commerce Marketing
Essentials: 17 Actionable
Tactics to Drive More Sales
 by Dan Wang

 Digital Marketing

 Jul 21, 2018

 14 minute read

 Leave a comment

Email Pinterest Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

Every online store wants to increase traffic and conversions. But even after
you’ve put together a basic strategy it can still be challenging to decide on
which marketing tactics you should try.

That’s why we put together an overview of effective marketing tactics

and ecommerce tools along with ideas to help you implement each approach.
The ideas themselves run the gamut from straightforward acquisition to
generating more repeat purchases from the customer base you already have.

Try to implement one of these ideas every day for the next few weeks. On the
last day of your sprint, take stock and figure out which tactics worked best to
drive new sales.
What is ecommerce marketing?
Ecommerce marketing is the practice of using promotional tactics to drive
traffic to your online store, converting that traffic into paying customers, and
retaining those customers post-purchase.

A holistic ecommerce marketing strategy is made up of marketing tactics both

on and off your website. A sound marketing strategy can help you build brand
awareness, drive customer loyalty, and ultimately increase online sales.

You can use ecommerce marketing to promote your online store as a whole
or to drive more sales for specific products. Below is an overview of a few
practical ideas to try.

Free Reading List: Conversion Optimization for

Beginners
Turn more website visitors into customers by getting a crash course in
conversion optimization. Access our free, curated list of high-impact articles
below.

Get the free reading list

17 ecommerce marketing ideas to increase

online sales
1. Upsell your products
Most of us have heard some variation of the famous, “Would you like to
supersize your order?” It’s an example of upselling, or the approach of selling
a slightly more premium product than the one the customer was originally
considering.
 For many businesses, upselling can be more effective than acquiring a net
new customer. Sometimes your customers don’t know that a premium product
is available, or they may simply need more evidence to understand how an
upgrade (or package) is a better fit for their needs.

For example, is one of your product models made of slightly better leather? Or
does one carry a special component that’s handmade? Make sure to
emphasize the difference and ask, in the right places, if the customer might
want to upgrade.

There are two main considerations when using upselling to increase sales:

1. Make sure your upsells are related to the original product

2. Be sensitive to the anticipated price range of your customers
Your product has to fit the customer’s original needs, and they may not be
enthusiastic about a higher price point once they have an anchor price in
mind. An anchor price is often the first number a customer sees, and it’s the
number against which they compare other price points. The new product must
be a discernibly better fit than the original for it to be worth the additional cost.

Anyone who’s ever purchased a computer is familiar with the screen below.
Once you’ve selected a particular model, companies will usually highlight
upgrades for performance (upselling) or additional accessories (cross-selling)
for you to consider.

2. Integrate Instagram
With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram is one of the fastest
growing social apps around, connecting consumers, influencers, and brands.

If you take compelling photos, use hashtags strategically, and post at the right
times then you’re well on your way to building a large Instagram following of
people who are interested in your products. The key to mastering your organic
Instagram presence is engagement with your followers.
What are some ways to engage with your audience on Instagram? You may
try running contests or going behind the scenes to showcase your product
development process. You can also pay to play on Instagram. For ecommerce
marketing, adding products to your Instagram posts and stories gives your
followers a direct path to purchase, which is key for increasing your online
sales.

Check out this example from GoPro to see shopping on Instagram in action:

3. Reduce abandoned carts

Harsh truth: You’re losing money every time a visitor abandons their cart
without purchasing.

This phenomenon is well-studied. Visitors add items to their carts, but

abandon their carts during the checkout process. According to the Baymard
Institute, 69.23% of shopping carts are abandoned.

It’s worth directly addressing as many hesitations as you can because some
shoppers who abandoned their carts could have been reminded to complete
their purchase. Perhaps they could have been persuaded with a discount or
free shipping, for example.

One simple and effective ecommerce marketing idea to reduce the frequency
of abandoned carts is an email recovery campaign, which can convince your
visitors to make a return visit and complete their original purchase.

The folks at LUSH use quirky subject lines and emails with additional product
suggestions to try to get customers to return to their carts.
Craft an email that entices your visitors to return to their carts by reminding
them of what they considered purchasing in the first place, and why.

4. Launch a Facebook store

Although Facebook has undergone a number of changes, it remains a viable
platform for social media and ecommerce marketing.

It’s fairly straightforward to start making sales through your Facebook store.
Better yet, your Facebook store can integrate directly with your Shopify store
so you don’t have to keep a separate inventory.

For inspiration, have a look at the Facebook store for Fiercely by Valery

Brennan.

5. Capture more email subscribers

Dollar for dollar, email marketing is one of the most effective channels at your
disposal for making sales and generating repeat customers. Roughly 17% of
digital marketing spend happens in email, but it contributes 24% of
revenue, according to a 2015 study by Forrester Research.

There are too many tweets and Facebook posts for us to keep up with, and
email can offer a more intimate interaction. People are still more protective of
messages sent to their personal inboxes versus their social feeds. Plus, email
gives you the space to say things that can’t fit into a social media post.

To get started with email marketing, actively promote your newsletter, blog
and any other email capture efforts to get as many subscribers as you can.
Take a look at Huckberry, which makes signing up for its email list the central
focus when you first visit their site.
 6. Improve your email campaigns
It’s not enough to simply capture a bunch of email addresses. You then need
to send regular, valuable emails for the channel to be an effective ecommerce
marketing activity.

There are many occasions that are perfect for sending emails that your
subscribers will actually appreciate:

 Send a welcome email as soon as a customer makes a purchase.

 Provide exclusive promo codes and free gifts.
 Send regular newsletters to alert subscribers of new discount offers,
product tips, and, when appropriate, company news.
 Share relevant content to help customers get the most out of their
recently purchased items.
 Run a BOGO campaign in time for the holidays to promote self-gifting
during the season, too.
 Thank your highest-value customers. Send a personal note expressing
your appreciation for their business.
 Solicit feedback. If someone visits your site but doesn’t make a
purchase, ask about their experience and how you can improve it.
Take a look at this simple email from Uncommon Goods. For Father’s Day,
they sent a last-minute email to remind subscribers of the occasion, and to
provide a service for the procrastinators on their list. The subject read, “The
Gift that Will Save Father’s Day.”

7. Send wishlist reminder emails

One final type of email to add to your list of ecommerce marketing ideas: the
wishlist reminder email. The wishlist reminder email is closely related to the
abandoned cart email. Both are designed to convince shoppers to take the
final step in purchasing the products they have shown intent to buy.
Has it been a while since someone checked in on their wishlist? Have an item
on sale that’s been put on a lot of wishlists? Is it selling out? Send out an
email to let your customers know.

It may just be the trigger they need to finally purchase the

item. ModClothalerts shoppers when products are nearly out of stock. This
motivates shoppers and helps minimize regret—no one wants to accidentally
miss out on a product they’ve been eyeing.

8. Make it easy for your customers to get what they

want
If your store is poorly designed, then you’re losing customers. But what
exactly does a poorly designed store look like?

Besides appearing untrustworthy, the store could be suffering from some

combination of the following: lacking a clear value proposition, hard-to-read
font, or confusing navigation.

Even when you’ve improved the dimensions above, you could still be making
a few design mistakes. Are you properly segmenting your products or are you
putting too many products on a single page? Have you figured out the right
balance between text and visuals? These are just a few of the many things
that you should consider. If your theme isn’t converting well, consider some of
the other great themes available on Shopify.

There are many examples of beautiful ecommerce websites, but

consider DODOcase in particular. Take a look especially at how clearly
products are segmented.

9. Engage online store visitors with live chat

There are other high-impact ways to engage with site visitors and customers
outside of email. For example, you could use live chat to engage with
shoppers on your site.
Many live chat tools let you target browsers on certain pages, after they’ve
been on your site for a certain length of time, or even after they’ve arrived on
your site through an email newsletter. Live chat also enables you to have
direct conversations with your customers so you can answer and address
customer concerns right while they’re planning to buy.

Luxy Hair uses live chat to engage prospects and inform current customers of
their order status, without having to contact their support team over email.

10. Anticipate future sales

If you have the ability to expand your product line, then you should evaluate
market demand and see if it’s worth the cost. You can do that through a
variety of approaches: keyword research, geographic validation, social media
trends, etc. One more creative way to test out your market? Pre-sell items to
see how many people place orders.

If you’re trying to decide which of three to-be-released products to sell, for

example, create pages for all of them, making sure to use quality product
photography and compelling copy for each one. Then list them as “out of
stock” and see which product gets the most attention in terms of back-in-stock
notification requests. That’s the one to sell.

In footwear and apparel especially, there are times when certain size or color
variants are temporarily out of stock. KEEN, which sells hiking shoes, gives
shoppers the option to receive an email when the product of their choice is
available again.

11. Start a content marketing program

 Every ecommerce store should consider blogging regularly to connect with
customers and to rank better in search engines. If you’re already creating
content, consider actively featuring your blog on your online store.

Don’t forget, there are more ways to take advantage of content marketing than
simply blogging:

 Start a podcast to feature your expertise or build a stronger community

 Guest post on other websites and blogs to build awareness and
generate backlinks, which also help with SEO
 Create long-form content and guides to help customers use your
products more effectively
One unlikely brand that has used content marketing to increase online sales
is River Pools and Spas. Their company blog has earned them kudos from
New York Times, but they don’t just stick to blogging. In time for the 2018
summer season, they have a downloadable guide featured on their homepage
to help customers buy the right fiberglass pool as well.

12. Embrace personalization

Personalization is another effective marketing tactic to drive online sales.
Using behavioral data, personalized experiences are served to the visitor,
according to their past actions and preferences.

According to BCG, personalization can lift sales as much as 10%, but the
opportunity is greater than that. Only 15% of companies are using the
technology to its fullest extent.

You can also account for location in personalization to create an experience

catered to where your customers are in the world. Someone in southern
California may be looking for bathing suits in October, while your Maine
customers probably need coats, for example.

Alloy Apparel shows a “what’s popular” carousel of products for online

shoppers, but personalizes it with trending items local to the visitor.
 13. Leverage user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) is a great way to generate social proof. When
prospective customers see that people just like them are regularly purchasing
your products, they’ll feel more confident in doing the same.

According to Salesforce, 54% of consumers trust information from online

reviews and recommendations from their peers, compared to the 20% who
trust the brand itself.

UGC can take many forms. Technically, even product reviews are UGC. One
of the most effective types of UGC is pictures of customers actually using your
products. Pepper, a store that sells bras, features lots of pictures of happy
customers in their products.

14. Think local

Brick-and-mortar businesses aren’t the only ones who can jump on the local
movement. Online retailers can also take a local approach to their ecommerce
marketing tactics to increase online sales.

To figure out what local means for you, here are a few ways you can look at it:

 Identify where you have large concentrations of customers and run a

promotion for that location. Look at which products those customers are
buying and other spending behavior indicators, and consider local events or
seasons to appropriately time a promotion.
 If you have a warehouse or multiple warehouses, consider a promotion
with free, discounted, or expedited shipping to customers in the vicinity. This’ll
be easier for your operations team to execute and also help you promote
sales in a cost-effective manner.

15. Optimize your product pages

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of optimizing your website
for on-site conversions and increased sales. Practicing CRO helps you
identify problem areas on your site.

Where are you losing sales? Who’s dropping off and why? What can you do
to capture those missed opportunities? This process is done through both
qualitative and quantitative research, so you get a holistic and unbiased view
of how conversion-oriented your site is.

Once you’ve conducted your research to identify challenges and

opportunities, you can develop hypotheses and tests to see which approaches
generate the most sales.

16. Optimize for mobile

By 2021, more than half of all online shopping is expected to happen on
mobile devices, according to Statista. Optimizing your store for mobile means
more than having a responsive design. It means you’re designing your site
with mobile visitors in mind from start to finish.

Perhaps you have a bigger add to cart button on all mobile product pages,
making it easier for the visitor to add to cart without zooming in, for example.
You might also present your images in a different format, making it faster for
mobile visitors to load product photos and easier to zoom in.

Frank Body sells body scrubs and skincare products. When a mobile visitor
lands on a product page and scrolls down, the “add to cart” button appears at
the bottom. This saves the visitor from having to scroll all the way back up,
likely losing their spot on the page.

17. Reward your loyal customers

Focusing on customer retention is a cost-effective way to increase online
sales. Return customers account for 22% of a retailer’s revenue, while making
up just 11% of the total customer base, according to Stitch Labs. They also
spend 15% more over the course of a year.
 One way to reward loyal customers and big spenders is through a customer
loyalty program. There are many ways both your customers and you can
benefit from a loyalty program. They give customers extra incentive to make a
purchase and they keep your brand top-of-mind through automated
reminders.

You choose how to reward customers, how frequently and for what actions.
For instance, you might have a point-based program, which has its own point-
based currency that can be redeemed for discounts, free shipping or free gifts.

Outdoor brand REI has a robust customer loyalty program. Members pay a

one-time fee ($20) to join the program, and they receive access to exclusive
online (and in-store) sales and events. They also receive coupon codes and a
portion of what they spend over the course of a year back in store dividends.

Your loyalty program doesn’t need to be as robust and you can implement it
easily with a Shopify app.

Move forward with your own online store

Now you have a sizeable list of tactics and apps to help you generate more
traffic and increase online sales.

For more marketing tactics, check out:

 How to Get Your First Sale in 30 Days

 How to Spend Your First $100 on Google Adwords
 20 Highly Effective Ways to Promote a Product
For useful Shopify marketing apps, check out the Shopify App Store.

Editor's note: A version of this article was originally published June 2014.