99+ eCommerce Hacks to Boost Your Sales (Updated 2021)

Ready to take your eCommerce business to the next level?

By reading these hacks, you’re going to learn all of the strategies we used to increase sales for our eCommerce stores combined generating $100M in yearly revenue.

Here are the results we achieved in the past few months:

We’re updating this guide every 6 months, so you’ll be able to see the best practices and eCommerce hacks we use at any moment in time. With this 2021 update, we’re going to be including new sales hacks – backed by experience, new trends, or relevant statistics, as you’ll find below.

There are only 4 stats every eCommerce owners/marketers should be obsessed about:

• Customer acquisition
• Conversion rate.
• AOV
• LTV

And that’s exactly how this article is written.

We’ll cover each metric and offer a TON of different eCommerce hacks and tips to boost the right metrics for your business.

You can jump to a random hack in this guide and it will probably boost your sales by the end of today.

But we recommend starting from the beginning. 

Before we begin, be sure to join our private Facebook group if you’re looking for even more growth-hacks here: eCommerce Growth Hacks | Facebook Ads, Creatives, Email & More | by Sugatan

Now, without further ado, here’s our long list of 99+ eCommerce hacks to boost your sales (updated for 2021)…

How to Increase Your Sales To an Ice Cold Audience

01. Increasing the Number of Creatives.

If you have your eCommerce store already dialed in and you want to see a big scale – then there’s the only way to do it – by testing more creatives.

How do you do it?

First of all, it’s super important to have a system in place to test.

Here’s how we do it – we have a separate campaign, which we test it on the ad-set level and test every video with 2 different copies.

We start testing at around 1.5x of our target CPA and leave it for 3 days to test.

After one or two days of testing, we trim down the ads that have a high cost per landing page views (I’m talking about $20+) and leave the ones that are within an acceptable range.

Once they pass our test phase after 3 days, we have 2 options (and we use them interchangeably):

1. To create new campaigns with all of the creative testing winners
2. Move them to the campaigns which have a high budget, but ad-sets are not working.

But the question here is – how do we increase the amount of creatives we test?

And that has been the biggest challenge of mine in the past 2 years. We’ve been relying on our creative team to create creatives for us, and it was working up until we started reaching roughly $100-300k monthly ad spend.

Once we reached that point, we realized we needed to get a lot more creatives.

So here are 2 solutions we’ve found to this problem:

1. Influencer marketing

By accessing Influencers & having them create content, we can get 50-100 pieces of raw content easily from 30-50 Influencers.

This has helped tremendously.

Check out our eCommerce influencer marketing process to learn how you can generate up to 200 high-quality creatives from influencers and our exact email outreach process you can copy.

2. External agencies/platforms

This is a much more expensive solution to the problem, however, it provides us speed that we need to grow these businesses quickly and efficiently.

So far we’ve used many platforms (and I’m not happy with most of them) and other agencies and testing a lot more (will update when we get some results).

Rewriting:

3. Hiring Upwork/Fiverr Freelancers as Video Editors to support our team

By doing this, we have a structure whereby our Lead Video Producers are in charge of Storyboarding + copy & then delegate to Video Editors to piece the raw contents together. That way, we don’t compromise on the expertise of our Lead Video Producers who know the conversion-driven principles plus leverage the volume of creatives by hiring other video editor Freelancers.

02. Create More Pages to Run Traffic From

This is my secret hack, which I hope you’re gonna keep secret (or not).

Late in 2019, I was running out of ideas on what I should be testing on the ads, yet had one idea that might work.

It turned out to be the very best hack I found in late 2019, early 2020.

It was simply creating other Facebook pages.

If you’re running a supplement store – create a Facebook Page with the name “Top Supplement Brands” or something along these lines.

It creates this effect “oh sh*t, everyone is talking about them”.

Not only that, but I saw my CPMs 30-50% lower for the first 2-4weeks while maintaining the ROAS.

Awesome hack, try it out yourself. It doesn’t work for all accounts but when it does, it’ll be the scaling bullet.

03. Let Facebook Decide Who to Serve Your Ads To

3 years ago, when I started running Facebook ads, everyone was saying how important it was to target audiences by interests, behavior, lookalikes, etc.

2.5 years have passed and all of this is obsolete.

Whenever we’re creating ad-sets, we simply exclude purchasers of 180-days.

That’s it.

No interest targeting, no genders, no age brackets.

NADA.

The structure of the campaign?

CBO –

3 ad-sets –

3-5 proven, performing ads.

P.S. I’m using this structure spending $100k/daily across 3 accounts. It might not be for you if you’re spending only a few hundred dollars, so take my advice with caution.

04. Try Out Manual Bidding

I’m assuming you’re an experienced Facebook marketer and know the differences between manual bidding and automatic bidding here.

We used to have a workflow here that whatever works on automatic bidding (interest, behaviors, etc.) – test it out on manual bidding.

Since we’re not targeting in any way, we have a campaign set-up which we call “Manual Cutting”.

What we do is very simple – we take our average CPA and break it down into $5 dollar intervals.

Let’s say our target CPA is $80, we start a CBO campaign with $65 and go all the way to $120 with $5 intervals.

There are lots of ad-sets in this case, and we usually put 3-5 ads per ad-set.

We start the budgets with $1k per campaign (or sometimes more, depending on the scale we want to have) and leave it for a few days. Usually, we’re satisfied with our ROAS and whenever we’re not – we simply put some more creatives and turn off the ones that are not working.

We don’t do any changes on the ad-set level since it varies day-by-day.

05. Start preparing For Black Friday In Advance

The small time frame of Black Friday – 26-30 November, if you count Cyber Monday, is a big deal in eCommerce.

• Black Friday 2019 saw 93.2 million buyers shopping online.
• Black Friday online shopping sales hit $7.4 billion which is an all-time high.
• 30% of all retail sales happen from Black Friday to Christmas.
• Millenials and women were the biggest spenders on Black Friday 2019.

Here’s an approximate overview of what we do to prepare for Black Friday:

• 3 Months or earlier before Black Friday – Test different offers and sales throughout the year. Look at different metrics like how your offers are balancing with the profitability of your eCommerce business, cost per acquisition for new customers, and more. Experiment with your funnel, strategies, and landing pages to know what works before.
• 2 Months before – Start planning strategies on how to build a massive warm audience to target during BFCM.
• 1 Month before – In the past, we’ve found that the majority of people were considering their purchases for Black Friday at the beginning of November. So, around a month before BFCM, we start working on cold email collection campaigns to collect as many emails as possible at a certain price (depends on the client, can be around $1.5-$2.5). This will pay off hugely. You can do: giveaways for people who enter their email, exclusive discounts, free products we’ll add if they exceed a certain purchase amount, etc.
• 2 Weeks before – We start ramping up the budget for our general campaigns and run some traffic for giveaway campaigns. Assuming everything goes well, we start to scale and add SMS marketing and postcard marketing (if relevant) into the mix.
• 1 Week before – By this time, we want to have as many people to retarget to as possible. On Monday of Black Week, we announce a site-wide blanket discount, but direct our email communications and ads towards high AOV bundles. We also start scheduling ads as it can take 24h-48h to get them approved, and start pushing out discounts and sales (which we then change the messaging for during Black Friday).
• During Black Friday – We usually go with the same offer, but change the messaging so it’s focused on Black Friday (e.g. “Black Friday sale” instead of “Black Week sale). Use FOMO and scarcity marketing principles to boost sales. 
• After Black Friday – We promote the Black Friday deal until Sunday, and then, we switch to Cyber Monday. Depending on the results, keep the same offer, and once again change the messaging of the creatives so that they’re about Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday. 
• Cyber Monday – Some brands also do extended Cyber Monday sales. But the same problem can arise here in that the momentum can be hard to maintain. You’ll have to look at the data and see what works for you.

Check out our full eCommerce Black Friday guide for a more in-depth overview of our process and to learn how we generated 45% of yearly revenue in 3 months.

06. Smart Cash-Flow Management

This is super simple.

Usually, in September, we go through the numbers with the business owners to see what’s the minimum ROAS we can be working with for the months leading up to a black week.

And we put our feet on the pedal.

Why?

‘Cause during that time we want to increase our email subscribers substantially.

You see, Facebook prices rise up starting in November substantially, while sending emails + SMS remains the same.

If we decide to go with 2.5x total ROAS, we’ll be able to scale the revenues before the actual Black Week…

But what’s better, is that our ROAS will be super high during the entire Black Week, when the spending is the highest.

That’s why we generate almost 50% of our entire years’ revenue in Q4.

You can do the same before any kind of big sale you’re preparing for.

P.S. I know a brand that’s breaking even for the entire year and pushes their ads to the max, to end up with 9-10% in profit by the end of the year.

06. Answer the Comments On Your Ads

Well, this is a no brainer, yet I’ve seen some brands overlooking it.

YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ANSWER THE COMMENTS ON YOUR ADS!

There’s no way around it.

If you don’t have customer service doing that – hire somebody and train them properly!

Encourage conversations, engage, be funny. Everything to increase the engagement. Because when you have it, your CPMs will go down!

P.S. that’s another added benefit of excluding only 180 day purchasers from your targeting – you get more comments from people who know about your brand much quicker.

07. Improve Your Video Marketing Game

I already assume you’re using video ads for your cold audience (if not, you should go ahead and start doing it now!).

Here are a few eCommerce hacks to improve your video marketing:

• Eye-catchy first 3 seconds – have a look at masterclass ads. Whenever you look at their ads, you have this one question in mind: “wtf?” and they drag you in.
• Test the first 5 seconds of your videos, including: the headline text, the colors of the text and the background, image saturation the first line of the copy different visuals and graphics. And more.
• Use high-color contrast for it.
• Close up shots to show your products.
• Try to disguise your marketing in a native/storytelling format. You can get an inside look on our Top-Performing Creatives for almost every account by opting in to receive it here.
• Have many cuts in your video. Remember, our customers (and us) are dopamine junkies. We want to satisfy our cravings by seeing something new and we want to do it quickly. That’s why it’s super important to grab and hold our attention throughout the video. The best examples for it would be youtube influencers – they’ve mastered this game.
• Have a “meme” bar at the top of your video to grab your attention (example below).
• Use user-generated content (UGC) for a more raw and sincere feeling for your ads.
• Consider placing your CTAs in the middle of your videos. According to Wistia, mid-roll CTAs usually have a higher conversion rate at 16.95%

08. Use Testimonial Video Ads

These videos are the most powerful for us so far and some of them have generated over $500k in revenue (this is the most I’ve seen a video can generate for us so far).

Here’s the structure for it:

1. Eye-catchy first 3 seconds. Example: “I was about to die”.
2. Introduction. Example: “Hey, I’m Camille and am a mother of 2 wonderful children”
3. Their lowest point: “Before trying product x, I was miserable, had no self-confidence and was about to die…” (don’t judge me for my examples)
4. Explanation of how they decided to start using our products. Example: “I saw an ad on Facebook 10 times and saw all of these amazing reviews & I decided to give it a go”.
5. How did their life change using our products? Example: “Since I started using your products, I’ve started to feel a lot more confident, and was able to go out and meet my friends”.
6. In the end of the video we include how many customers we’ve served, show all of the reviews, journals we’ve been featured on and include a call to action.

For this one to work through, we usually need to try many different “faces”. Out of 30 videos we’ve tested, only 3 were working incredibly well, and the women on them were gorgeous.

If you want to go more in-depth about our video ads – we have created a podcast episode talking only about creatives.

09. Bring in The Face of The Brand

Selling a product that solves a specific or a common problem?

Consider shooting a direct video with the founder of the brand talking about their story, why they founded the organization, how grateful they are for the support, and so on.

This will boost your emotional connection with your customers and make them even more loyal once they’ve put a face to the brand.

Emotional storytelling works wonders.

When we surveyed our customers for the number one reason why they bought the product – the majority said it was because the owner’s story resonated with them.

10. Competitor Comparison Video Ad

This hack does not work as well as testimonial video ads, but it’s something we pull off ourselves from time to time – competitor comparison video ads.

We simply include why we’re better than anyone else in the industry.

Example: “Our competitors use only 4 active ingredients, while we use over 100 active ingredients which work in unison to provide the results you’re looking for. “

11. How To Video Ad

We’re curious human beings.

That’s why these types of ads work so well.

Simply go to buzzsumo, look at what kind of “how to” articles work best in your industry and have someone to replicate them for your Facebook ads.

Once again, use the same principles I’ve covered in the 8th point when editing the video.

Here’s an example

Although it’s not a physical product, you could do a few changes and incorporate your product.

12. Use This Conversion-Driven Principles Checklist For Your Facebook Video Ads to Boost Sales

Something that looks like a super high-quality and beautiful ad might not be converting as much as you think.

Meanwhile, something that looks like it was recorded on a phone in 2 minutes can be one of your top-performing ads.

It’s hard to say. But with that said, it’s still a good idea to incorporate some high conversion-driven principles in your video ads to increase sales on a cold audience.

Here’s a checklist you can use for each section of your ad.

The Copy

✅ Is your first sentence shocking in some way?

✅ Does each sentence make the customer want to read the next one?

✅ Do you pose a big enough question that the viewer will want to sit through to get an answer for?

✅ Do you clearly express benefits, comparisons, or reviews that the customers will care about?

✅ Does it directly relate to the customer’s problem?

✅ Does it give a clear resolution?

✅ Is your CTA correct and enticing?

The Video Ad Footage

✅ Does the first shot stand out in your customers’ feed?

✅ Does it make you feel a strong emotion or reaction?

✅ Is the thumbnail the most interesting shot out of the whole ad?

✅ Do you have a pattern interrupt every 10 seconds to keep the viewers engaged?

The Logo

✅ Is your logo in the corner of the video? (Low opacity is ok)

The Text

✅ Is your text extremely easy to read and look at?

✅ Does it stand out and is in sync with the overall visual themes?

✅ Is it highlighted or bolded?

✅ Does it have an engaging and simple animation that’s easy to follow?

The Headline

✅Does it make the viewer ask a strong “How?”, “Why?”, or “What?” question that’s related to their problem?

✅ Is it specific and emotional?

✅ Is it related to the customers’ pain points and problems?

When you look at the finished product, you have to ask yourself – Was this interesting for me?

If your video ad isn’t interesting FOR YOU, it’s not going to be interesting for your customer.

We’re all opposite of patient on social media. If you’re not hooked by your own ad, neither will your customers.

It’s not a matter of target audience or separate interests. Simply put, your ad has to be entertaining for the average layman regardless of their interests.

If they love it, so will your target audience.

Check out our podcast on creating the winning video ad with our lead video producer Holly for more behind-the-scenes info on highly-converting Facebook ads.

13. Analyze Viral Video Ads, Know Your Industry, and Build Up a Swipe File With Content That Sells (Use These Tools)

Use Facebook ad spying tools like AdEspresso, AdSpy, and BigSpy to build your swipe folder (or Facebook ads manager also works).

Then, use Swiped.co to study copywriting.

And finally, use Milled and ReallyGoodEmails to study popular emails in your industry.

When doing copymining, we’re collecting the best ads and creatives we can find online from our competitors. 

Our goal is to understand exactly what our customers desire, their pain points, and objections.

In our competitors’ ads, we look at things like:

• Is the content mostly user-generated content?
• How does it look like? What does it feel like?
• What grabs my attention straightaway?
• What haven’t I used before?
• Are there any new angles I could test out?
• Is there something they’re not doing we can capitalize on?
• What is their unique mechanism? (See hack #33)
• Can we do a comparison video ad to show why we’re better than everyone else in the industry (When doing a comparison video, it’s important not to name the competitor and stick to facts instead. E.g. “Our competitors use only 4 active ingredients, while we use over 100 active ingredients which work in unison to help you…”

Looking for a more thorough Facebook viral ads and creatives analysis?

We analyzed Facebook video ads that generated $10M+ in sales. Read the article to see what we learned and other eCommerce hacks you can focus on in your ads to boost sales on a cold audience.

14. “Borrow” Influencer Accounts to Run Traffic From Them

This is a very similar hack as mentioned in the hack 2, however, it takes much longer to set this up.

It’s still a very foreign concept for influencers to understand how it works, so there has to be a system for it to be put in place.

In our case – we do have a “funnel” set-up for influencer marketing.

First they do a shout out. If that works, we offer them to create some content for us that we’d try on the ads in general.

If that works out, we offer them to put their accounts under our business manager and run ads from their pages.

Pretty simple, right?

WRONG.

While technically it’s not difficult, it’s difficult to negotiate, trying to have influencers understand what we’re going to do & setting everything up technically, is the difficult part.

We usually offer them “followers” in return, meaning their page will be seen by a huge amount of people and some of them will become their followers.

With the bigger ones, we offer them a trial period of 1 month and $100-300 to begin with and if it works out, we can go into bigger sums.

I know some brands are doing revenue-share deals with them, but we don’t want to overcomplicate our ecosystem, which is pretty complicated already.

15. Give a Go For Poll Ads

As I’m writing this article, we’ve tested this on quite a few accounts and they work incredibly well.

Last month we spent $3k on them and got $7k in return.

Not something you can scale with, but we’re getting those customers that wouldn’t buy from us otherwise, actually buy because of it.

Here’s how they look like:

16. Use Advertorials for F*ck Sake

Ok, affiliate marketers will be yawning at this one…

But some of the marketers still don’t use them properly (or don’t use them at all)!

Here’s the format I’ve found work best for me:

1. Create a sales page I’ll be using again and again.
2. Write blog articles for SEO purposes (we have writers to do that for us)
3. Rewrite the same articles and make them super short – if possible, bullet points. Example: “4 Reasons Not Do X”
4. Hook them on top of your sales page.

Voila, you have a sales page that you’ll be able to constantly use (just test if it works first) and your job will be to change the top of the page at all times.

I got this strategy from Ezra Firestone by shamelessly stalking on his ads from Boom By Cindy. They’re using it for more than a year, so it must be working.

You can find an example here.

2 types of advertorials we’ve used include:

• Emotional storytelling – Stories from the founder or the customer documenting their journey, change, applying pressure to the main pain points, and then provides a solution. Having a founder tell their story behind the brand can be a powerful advertorial.

• Educational content – Here, we educate the customers on many issues. We test different articles and angles, see what works best, and then get our copywriters to expand on them and create a long-form, SEO-friendly version of the advertorial.

17. Come Up With an Epic First

An Epic is an overarching angle your creatives will be based on.

Once you have the Epic down, you then focus on the micro-angles and creatives for that big angle.

For example, if the Epic for your Facebook ad is to be cost-effective, the micro-angles could be comparing it to a more expensive product, highlighting the bang for the buck, focusing on benefits for the value, etc.

Usually, the person that knows the most about the product should be the one coming up with the Epic after doing thorough research as it has to be data-backed.

Here’s an example of one of the Epics our copywriter released for one of our clients:

18. Use Our Creative Prioritization + Strategy Sheet to Prioritize Facebook Your Ads And Never Run Out of Ideas (Copy This)

We want to go through the top ideas and the lowest hanging fruits that will generate us the most sales.

To prioritize Facebook ad ideas and angles our team members have, we use this handy strategy sheet that everyone fills in before weekly meetings.

Usually, every single person has at least 3-7+ ideas and when we have 5-6 people in a meeting – we don’t want to sit through 21+ ideas. That would take too long.

Instead, we have each member fill out this sheet and to assign numerical value, we measure the impact their ideas might have on traffic, sales, and brand.

Once it’s filled in, members look at the sum values and only present ideas with the highest number.

Here’s what each column in the sheet means:

• Human Story – Main idea/angle for the Facebook creatives. 
• Description – Detailed description of the story.
• Comment 
• Funnel part – TOF, MOF, BOF
• Department – Who’s working on this? Ad buying, video, or graphics?
• Ownership and execution
• Status
• Sum – Sum of the below values. Bring only the highest value ideas to discuss during the meeting.
• Has impact on: Traffic, sales, brand – How much this idea will impact traffic, sales, or brand.
• Weight (# of Tasks or # days it takes to execute) – How long will it take to execute this idea? Used to gauge the complexity.
• Weight (# of Team Members it takes to execute) – How many people it takes to execute. Used to gauge the complexity.
• Price (1: Expensive 3: Cheap)
• When is it realistic to implement? (1: Later / 3: Now)
• Intuition Points (1, 5, 10) – How strongly you feel about this initiative.

Grab a free copy of the creative prioritization and strategy sheet here.

19. Move Fast. Break Things

This will not be the most tactical hack I can give you, but might be the most useful one in this entire article.

Why?

Because back in 2019, September, when we were making approximately $300k with a skincare brand I’m a shareholder of, nothing was helping us get through this magic number.

Could it be that the market was that small? Was I doing something wrong?

Having these thoughts I decided to improve my game and invest into self-education and went to a conference in Austin to improve my copywriting game.

I’ve taken away many things from that conference, but the biggest one was given by a VShred founder, Nick Daniel – “I can out-test anyone”.

And that’s when it clicked.

After that event, I closed myself off in Antigua, Guatemala and worked 12-14 hour days, taking nootropics (will write an article about it) and managed to put out 10x the tests that would normally be put.

After the same month, our revenues started climbing like crazy.

October we hit our record month of $450k, November we 3xed the business and generated $1.5M in revenue!

That’s 5x the revenue that we were making back in September.

And it all comes down to a simple rule – test more if you want to move quicker.

P.S. Most of the hacks you’re reading here were tested in this period since September, 2019.

20. Use Reddit and Facebook Groups For Community Copymining on Steroids

One great benefit about community groups is that you can find plenty of fan-made groups or ones made by other brands that you can use to your advantage.

There, you’ll find all sorts of gems – the exact language your target audience uses, their pain points, competitor reviews, what they look for in a product, and other points you can highlight to boost your sales.

To find community groups on Facebook around your niche, simply type your main keyword in the search box and filter for groups.

Then, join the groups that are relevant to your brand and keep an eye out for:

• Explanations – Features, objections and resolutions, credibility markers, damaging admissions, etc.
• Benefits – What the product does for your customer (why they buy).
• Usages – The language they use when talking about your product in action. E.g. “Quick method, don’t need a lot, and then you see your face de-puff. Pushes the wrinkles away.”
• Themes – This can be motivational factors, anxiety themes, value, and more. The more themes you can find, the more angles you’ll have for your copywriting later on.
• Word-for-word quotes – Sometimes, you’ll come across gold nuggets which you can just paste directly into your ads.

Another great copymining place is Reddit.

There, you can:

• Find relevant subreddits for your niche.
• Filter by all time (highest rated/comments) posts.
• Look at the language they use (some communities have their own FAQ and wikis).
• Look up posts that contain specific keywords (e.g. you can search for “diet” in the /r/SkincareAddiction subreddit if that’s the angle you want to focus on in your ads).

21. Fight Facebook Ad Fatigue

Ad fatigue is what happens when your audience becomes overly familiar with your ads. No one is safe from this.

This tends to happen when your campaign frequency gets too high, causing your audience to see the same ads over and over. This will hurt your ROI and you need to fight back immediately if you’re exhausting your audience.

Here’s what you can do:

• Schedule your ads to show only on four weekdays out of seven.
• Change your ad creatives or Facebook video ad copy.
• Adjust your ad targeting.
• Replace your offer.
• Choose a different campaign objective.
• Expand your audience – consider going international if you haven’t done so yet.
• Change the background of your image ads.
• Keep your ads fresh and up-to-date with ad customizers.
• Experiment with new and more creatives.

22. Model Ideas From Your Competitors

We’ve got more than 20 competitive brands for each eComm store we work with.

Lots of competitors have a very different understanding of marketing and generate very different ideas.

If you see something they’re using successfully – model it and test it out for yourself.

Be it a creative, an ad, a piece of copy – everything can be modeled and applied to your own brand.

In fact, this is what many competitors of ours do – they use very similar copy, offers, visuals, etc.

Simply go to their Facebook page and check their ads.

P.S. I don’t say COPY them, I say model them. Even try taking the ads from completely different industries.

For this, you can use AdSpy, Spyfu, or even do this manually.

23. Fear of Missing Out – FOMO Principle

It’s real! And it’s a big fear!

For years I’ve been having it and even though I’m conscious of it – I’ve never been able to get rid of it.

I’m constantly thinking about traveling to other countries, cause maybe in a few years I may not be able to do it…

I’ve seen this principle work wonders on eCommerce too.

We use it in our eCommerce sales launch formula and product launch formula. We see that during the last hours of our launches we have the biggest increase in sales.

However, I do have to warn you – don’t be lying to your customers. They will notice it. I’ve once seen an ad in the summer with a copy “Christmas Sale Is Almost Over! Grab NOW Before It Ends! Only 100 items left!”.

Do it ethically and try to think of the ways you can utilize this principle.

24. Get Clear On Who Your Customers Are

Knowing who your customers are is one thing.

But getting into a conversation they’re having in their head is a completely different one.

How do you do it?

Go to amazon reviews, comments on your ads, talk to your customer service team, get on a call with your customers, and ask them questions.

Once you have some stories, phrases they use – use them in your copy. The success can be seen when you get comments on your ad saying “this is exactly what I’ve been through” or “it seems they’re reading my mind”.

That’s when you can see you’re getting success.

Here are some questions you could ask your customers:

• What was the lowest point suffering from x?
• What’s the highest point dealing with y?
• What horror stories have you had when dealing with z…

These are amazing questions to get stories out and see how exactly they speak.

25. Use These 3 Proven Creative Angles That Work No Matter The Industry If You’re Feeling Stuck

These angles work for Facebook ads no matter what your product or niche is.

If you want to make sure your message resonates with your audience and boost your sales, use these creative angles that worked for us in the past without fail:

Testimonial videos

Testimonials are the most common form of social proof and they’re extremely powerful for sales when it comes to getting people to buy your product.

They’re amazing for persuading people who are unsure because it builds trust, provides credibility, and inspires action.

Why?

Because if it worked for other people – it’ll probably work for me as well.

Simple hack – but effective.

Testimonial creatives usually follow this structure:

• Preview – Eye catching first 3-5 seconds: “I thought I was about to DIE…”
• Intro – Introduces main pain points: “I’m 28 years olds, I’ve tried dermatologists, different face wash products but NOTHING worked. I was ready to give up.”
• The before – Agitate the problem and show the worst case scenario: “I was so miserable I had basically no self-confidence. And to make things worse, I wasted A LOT of money on other products.”
• How they found about the product – How they found the product: “I saw a random Facebook ad and all the comments were saying how much this product worked for them when nothing else did.”
• The after – How their life changed after using the product: “But ever since I started using product X, I’ve been waking up with a glowing skin and I started going out with a smile again.”
• (Optional) More proof – More proof. Wrap up the video by mentioning other reviews/testimonials. E.g. “Don’t just take our word for it though. Product X has helped 1,000+ women achieve a glowing skin…”

Story video ads

Storytelling is a timeless eCommerce marketing concept and will work for any product as long as you make sure it’s authentic.

Few tips for this hack:

• Your story video ads need to grab attention as soon as possible – ideally within the first 3-5 seconds.
• Be authentic.  Show your personality and what makes your brand different. 
• Include a hero and a desire. The hero will be your protagonist and the desire is your benefits. The purpose of a hero in your story is to give your viewers a perspective 
• The purpose of a hero is to give your viewers perspective in the story you create and then, have the viewer feel the desire and emotions through their eyes.

If you want to develop strong relationships with your customers, you need to get them to remember your stories.

You can even apply some simple storytelling formulas to your ads to hook your customers.

Advertorials and video demonstrations

This is basically a “how-to” format for your ads that demonstrate the product in action.

Because it’s not a hard-sell, this creative is ideal for converting cold audience as it’s a demonstration and people are often genuinely curious to see the before-and-after journey.

Especially if it’s done in an entertaining, and educational way.

For one of the eCommerce accounts we were scaling (protein coffee), we decided to demonstrate how to make a caramel frappe in 60 seconds in a step-by-step video – highlighting the nutritional value and the process behind it

Through fun and catchy editing – we managed to show off the benefits and the visual appeal in a fun and educational way.

For more info about this particular product, check out the full story of how we grew the account here: eCommerce Growth Saga: Scaling an eCom 0-7 Figures – Part 1

Competitor comparison video ads

Two ways you can do a competitor comparison ad:

• Mentioning them by name – You can only do this if you’re in the same industry and your comparison is factual (e.g. information about the product – sugar content, calories, ingredients, etc.). You can’t just call them out and say that your product is better. E.g. “What if you could have the same taste as Starbucks without all the calories and sugar?”
• Just say “other companies” – Don’t mention your competitors by name and let your audience use their imagination. E.g. “Most protein drinks are too clumpy and don’t taste sweet. Or they taste sweet and have too much sugar…”.

Looking for even more proven creatives and hacks that boost your sales even on a cold audience?

Check out our top Facebook video ads with examples and analysis of why they work so well inside.

Other creative angles include:

• Benefits Without the Sacrifice.
• Five Day Vlog.
• Graphic GIFs.
• And more.

26. Show Your Dirty Laundry First

People appreciate honesty. They know products can’t achieve results overnight (not everyone, but most of them I would hope).

That’s why while most of our competitors promise to achieve results in a few hours, we zag and tell them upfront:

“No. We can’t achieve X in 2 days… But what we can do…”

We’ve been using this copy for almost a year and it works wonders!

27. Segment Your Personas Into Sub-Groups

Yesterday I went through a recipe book that came together with my new NutriBullet.

After going through the whole book, I identified 3 customer personas they were targeting.

Even though one of them was more visible than the other 2, they still had these “secondary” ones included.

Here are the target personas I could identify glancing over the book:

• 55+ female and male couple who are retired, yet still love an active lifestyle – main target audience.
• 45+ female with 2-3 children, who’s also a career woman (she’s drinking smoothie in her car).
• 40+ couple with 2 children.

28. Use This One Sentence to Fuel Your Marketing Message, Boost Your Sales, and Grow Your eCommerce Brand

“People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies.” – Blair Warren.

This is a sentence that encapsulates the entire marketing.

If you think about it, all of the religions are built on that…

Politicians are using this as their core marketing strategy. Look at Donald Trump. He created a clear enemy – illegal immigrants, Mexicans, etc. that created a polarizing effect.

But we don’t have to take such an extreme example.

Let’s take Steve Jobs as an example. Even though I didn’t hear or see him attack his enemies the way Trump did, his whole pro-innovation marketing message was automatically viewed as an anti-establishment message.

There is an entire book written on Sales Force, how they were trying to position themselves against their biggest competitor Oracle.

Since I’ve read Blair Warren’s book, I have this sentence in my notebook, so that whenever I wrote copy, brainstormed a marketing campaign, or started a new project, I would always answer these questions:

• What do my customers dream about?
• What is their enemy?
• What are their fears?
• What are their suspicions?
• How can I justify their failures?

I made various tests with them and wrote many copies trying to hit super hard on one of them. “Attacking their enemies” was always the one that was converted the best.

29. Build Real Estate With SEO

Since the very beginning, I was trying to look at SEO the way investors look at investing in a property.

They know it’s a long-term game and it will take them quite a long time to build it out.

But once they build it out – it will serve them for a long time.

That’s the way I approach SEO in eCommerce.

Whenever I want to write an article on a particular topic, I don’t want to simply write an article that would be seen and forgotten.

I want to build the best article there is online and simply update it as time goes.

Why do I not chase all of the keywords I could be optimizing for?

That’s not sustainable.

There are giants like Glossier, Sephora or giants in the marketing world like Digital Marketer or Neil Patel who have a massive SEO value.

However, I know I can write an article about certain subjects better than they can.

And I invest lots of time doing that.

Because it will keep driving traffic for years to come just like the article you’re reading right now.

30. Have a Separate Instagram Page For Your Before/After Stories

4 months ago my friends started to notice how I’m balding.

Before that, I wasn’t too concerned about it. I saw that I was losing some hair, but I thought it would be fine.

But whenever I met a childhood friend who would point out I’m balding, I started getting concerned. Even though I don’t care about my looks that much (probably ’cause I have an amazing girlfriend), I decided to go through the buying cycle of shopping bald-saving hair products and was noting down how I was behaving.

To begin with, I went to the pharmacy and asked about what scalp products I should buy. I was then given direction to buy a certain product.

It was a higher-end product with a price tag of $150. I decided to give it a go.

Going out of the pharmacy I realized how it didn’t take them long to persuade me to buy this product.

My pain point was that strong.

However, when I started to think about online sales, I saw a similar pattern.

Those people who have a massive pain point – they’ll buy immediately.

However, those who are more conscious, they’ll research everything they can about the brand. They’ll go to Google, Instagram, and other places to see what others are saying about it.

And that’s what one of our biggest competitors is doing – they created an IG account called “SandAndSky Results” where they can collect all of the testimonials & before/after photos to make it easy for their clients to find them online.

Needless to say, we did the same thing.

And you can copy this hack as well.

31. Go On Facebook + IG Live

Social media platforms are SOCIAL. And it doesn’t hurt for the CEO, or an employee of a company to go live to answer the most important questions their customers ask.

Whenever we go live, we see a surge of traffic coming to our website, and sales going up.

This is because Facebook wants to be our next TV – and they promote live parties (aka gives much better reach for your efforts).

Added benefit of it – it’s good for branding. Which brings me to another point…

32. Have a Face of the Brand

Let’s be honest with yourself – marketing online is a bloodbath. To find a niche in it takes a long time, and creativity.

Products are becoming commodities quicker than gurus are launching their new courses.

And that’s super fast.

In any case, you need a big differentiator from you and your brand.

And what better differentiator can you get, than the story of the founder?

That’s why our brand, in an ultra-competitive environment, is thriving. We have a story that connects to our customers on an emotional level.

They not only buy our product – they buy a story and the promise we’re giving them.

33. Use Unique Mechanism In Your Copy

This is the strategy I learned from the Justin Goff and Stefan Giorgi conference and it changed the way I looked at copy ever since.

If you’re selling a product with a clear pain point – chances are your customers have already tried a bunch of your competitor products and none of them worked.

Because of that, they have this objection in their mind: “Why should it work this time?”

And that’s where your marketing skills should shine…

Here are 2 main parts to the Unique Mechanism:

1. The Unique Mechanism, explaining why none of the existing solutions were NEVER supposed to work (I see a chance to “attack the enemies” here).
2. The Unique Mechanism explaining how your products are different and have a much better chance of working.

This is how you’ll be able to overcome an objection and convince them you’re different.

It has worked marvelously for me.

Here’s a video by Miles Becker explaining the Unique Mechanism in more detail.

34. Have a Referral Program

In the last 6 months, a referral program has brought us $50k in revenue.

It’s not much considering our total revenues, however, it’s still something we didn’t have to work hard to get to, plus these smaller initiatives add up & the success compounds on itself.

I’ve seen many brands that are super aggressive with it and have “talkable” on their sites, however, we simply use Loyalty Lion and encourage our customers to share their referral code with them.

35. Be Ready to Answer Every Objection Your Customers Have

Your customers have many objections and your job as a marketer is to answer them all.

Simply ask your customers: “What doubts/hesitations did you have before buying our product?” or “What almost stopped you from buying our product?” and list these objections down.

One way we’re able to collect this data is by using Hotjar’s ‘Poll’ feature.

Once you have a full list of them, try to answer each one of them by the level of importance.

Use this copy in your email marketing, SMS marketing, and social media ads.

Even better – answer them before they get onto your page. This could be done by having a long-form copy on the ad itself, video, or in your advertorial.

Obviously, testing is important here to see what your customers prioritize. 

In the case of the above product (protein coffee), we tested different angles to experiment with the website’s conversion rate, including:

• Nutrition facts.
• Product benefits.
• Social proof.
• Easier checkout interface to select 1 bag if they wanted to.
• The price calculator and the exact amount they’d be paying (and saving) before going to the checkout page.

Check out the full landing page conversion rate breakdown for that product and other marketing strategies we used to grow it to 0-7 figures in 7 months here: eCommerce Growth Saga: Scaling an eCom 0-7 Figures – Part 1

36. Start Your Affiliate Marketing Program

Ok, I’m still not experienced in it, as we haven’t started our affiliate marketing program.

However, there are quite a few affiliate networks that can help you scale your marketing efforts by joining them.

The best part about affiliate marketing is that you only pay for the sales – you decide what’s the amount you’re willing to spend for each sale and pay them every 7 or 14 days.

It’s like having an army of media buyers, copywriters, and business owners working for you based on performance.

Good deal.

The reason why we didn’t want to do it just yet:  we couldn’t keep up with the demand for our products and we prioritized Youtube Ads over affiliates.

But the time will come.

37. Pinterest Advertising – Be Careful!

I was super hyped about Pinterest advertising late in 2019.

It didn’t last long.

In February 2020, we started scaling the campaigns and were spending $1-2k in daily ad spend, yet the traffic or sales were not coming.

That’s when I had to dive deep into the data, where I realized – delayed attribution for this platform is MASSIVE.

If we continued to scale, it could have caused us some serious cash-flow issues.

After talking to other Pinterest ads specialists, reps from the platform itself, I decided to stop Pinterest ads for a few months to see whether our sales are dropping or going up.

Two months have passed since, and I’m NOT looking back to advertise on Pinterest.

Although I do have a very small budget set over there for re-marketing, I only want to create an omnipresence for the brands.

This is the one I say try – BUT be very careful with it.

P.S. This photo was taken by a client of mine and even though it looks awesome on the platform – they use a 30/30/30 attribution model (30 day click, 30 day view, 30 day save). You can obviously switch it up etc., however, I’ve not seen any decrease in our revenues since we turned it off.

38. Youtube Ads – The Most Exciting Platform Right Now

I was excited about Youtube since September of 2019, however, the team I had in place did not have infrastructure to perform.

It requires quite a few ads to be tested, although media buying is not a difficult part.

This is the platform we’re going to be testing extensively in 2020 and I have high hopes we’ll be scaling to 5-10k daily budgets profitably.

The only problem with it is – it’s an expensive entry point mainly because of the video production.

It requires a certain script to pass you through the 5sec mark, however, it has to include the “disqualifiers” just before the 30 sec mark (to pay less for your ads), voiceover, and great visuals.

Quite a bit of work.

However, because the entry point is high – not many eCommerce brands are utilizing the power of Youtube ads and I encourage you to try it out.

If you do decide to tackle it yourself – here you can find the best (by far) resources on Youtube Ads by VidTao.

They also have the only Spy tool available in the market (to my knowledge), which is super useful starting out.

Pros of YouTube ads include:

• Still much cheaper compared to Facebook.
• Just as scalable as Facebook and more stable. Once you find the creative that works, you can let it run for months on end. Unlike Facebook where you constantly need to test the creatives as their shelf life is much shorter.

And cons include:

• Shooting original production and creating creatives for YouTube takes more time and expenses.

39. Include Info Products in Your Entire Funnel

When the coronavirus hit us, we started to think outside the box and were coming up with new ways to increase revenues for our businesses.

We quickly created a few emails asking people what kind of info products would our customers buy and started creating them.

We haven’t tested them yet but will do very soon.

What’s the thinking behind it?

Well, we’re paying quite a bit of $ to drive traffic to our website. Some people buy our products, some don’t.

However, it’s the same customer we’re targeting. Just that the same customer has many different reasons for not buying it.

But if we know who this customer is, why can’t we create other products they would buy?

While we do it with physical products, it takes time to develop the best ones in the industry (yes, we only want our products to be the best).

But info products? PDFs especially?

Well, noom did almost $250M in 2019 selling PDFs only. I have a friend who grew to $70M in his first year of business doing just that.

Also, by creating other Facebook and Instagram pages I’ve noticed that retargeting doesn’t cost much more running traffic from other accounts.

So we’ll be building out a funnel.

If they don’t buy our MVP, physical products – we’ll have a retargeting funnel, selling them an info product related to their pain point.

P.S. we’re in the process of trying this out, so if you want an update on it – sign up for an email newsletter from me below.

40. eCommerce Value Ladder

This hack is a much more simplified version than the one above.

The idea here is to simply have different tier products in your store.

For example, we have structured one of our stores to have some products that would be instant purchasers and that product is our MVP.

So by pricing it relatively low (at $49), in order to attract instant purchasers, we acquire a customer who comes back and buys higher priced products next time.

In addition to that – we acquire a NEW customer into our funnel!

Increase Your eCommerce Sales By Using Email Marketing + SMS Marketing

41. Change The Offer Mid-Way Email Funnel

Scenario:

You’ve got a new subscriber on your email – YEY!!!

Yet after sending 3 emails to him, he doesn’t buy anything from you…

What do you do?

Do you still try to persuade him to buy what you have to offer?

You can, but after sending 3 emails it’s very unlikely he’ll be buying from you…

Instead, what you could do is simply change your offer.

Let’s say you were promoting skincare… Change things up and sell shampoo instead.

Obviously that depends on whether you have so many products, yet for those who have them – I suggest to try it out.

42. Scrub Your Inactive Email List

Yes, I hear your ego saying “nooo, I’ve worked hard to get these emails, I’m not gonna let them go”.

I understand you, I’ve been in the exact same situation.

We had almost 110k email subscribers and I was offered to clean it up…

We lost almost 30k emails…

Yet because of this hack, our open rate shot up to 20%, click-through rate to 2-3% (depending on the email) and our revenues started climbing.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Upload your email list to kickbox.com
2. Here’s your clean list.

Enjoy massive open-rates and increasing revenue (and getting out of spam)!

43. Use These 5 Must-Have eCommerce Email Flows You Should Be Running At All Times

• Welcome sequence – Understand new subscribers are genuinely interested in your business and you’re trying to help them understand who you are and get to know you.
• Cart abandonment email sequence flow – Lowest hanging fruit. If you don’t have this email campaign set up, you’re leaving money on the table.
• Browse abandonment sequence – The mindset of a browse abandoner is that they’re on your website “window shopping” and searching for what they want to buy. You need to help them discover the right product or nudge them in the right direction toward the checkout page here. So, we dynamically insert products they previously looked at on your website into your browse abandonment emails.
• Product replenishment sequence – If you’re selling a product that runs out every 1-2 month (e.g. think about Dollar Shave Club’s monthly subscription package), you can have these sequences set up so you turn them on exactly when your customers are running out of it.
• Exit-intent pop up – As a cherry on top, you should also install an exit-intent pop up on your website along with your welcome sequence. This is activated whenever your site visitors are about to press the exit button on their browser or enter another website. So, this customer is almost lost. But thanks to the pop up, you gain another chance to get them back (usually a discount). Once the email is interested in the pop up, you immediately start to send him the automated welcome sequence. 

44. Use SMS Marketing As Your Extra Revenue Source

Even though we’ve been using SMS marketing for quite some time, we haven’t been able to use it to its max.

A few months though, we’ve switched our platforms from SMS Bump to Attentive and started to see some noticeable results.

The reason why it works better – Attentive comes together with the team (imagine Facebook reps, only 10x more competent) + it has far better functionality than any other tool on the market.

At the moment it’s generating around 3% of our total revenue.

All of the small things add up.

Other rewards for using SMS marketing in eCommerce include:

• Higher ROI with spend.
• Better reach for mobile users and faster delivery.
• Strengthens overall customer engagement on a new channel.
• Being able to integrate SMS marketing with your other types of marketing (this is important).

Fortunately, you can use some of the same email marketing flows in your SMS messaging as well.

45. Differentiate your SMS and Email Communications

Your SMS and email communication content should be different.

You need to give your customers a reason to opt in on both channels.

Otherwise – what’s the point if they’re just going to receive the exact same messaging on their mobiles as well as emails?

Since texting is more personal than email, it’s important every text message sends some value for the recipients. 

For example – if you’re going to have a one-hour flash sale, it’s better to use SMS as your customers will be more likely to open the text and shop immediately before the sale is over. With email, they’re more likely to miss the sale if they don’t check their inbox for a few hours.

Alternatively, you can also introduce some unique communication flows to your SMS only, such as:

• Product launches.
• Early access.
• Buy one, get one free.
• Best seller.
• Upcoming holiday sale.
• Anniversary or birthday SMS.
• Asking for feedback, reviews, and more.

46. Redirect From Email to Blog Post to Checkout

Not all of your emails have to be focused on sales.

You can also focus on:

• Content (blog posts).
• Infographics (educational emails).
• Surveys to learn more about your customers.
• Sales announcements.
• And more.

Instead of pushing for a “Buy now!” CTA at the end of your emails, you can capture your subscribers’ attention in your emails, and then, redirect them to your educational and entertaining blog posts.

And THEN, you can use a “Buy now!” CTA at the end of your blog post.

The order of the funnel is:

1. Email teaser.
2. Blog post.
3. Checkout page.

47. Rethink Your Email Ideation Process

When running email campaigns, everything will depend on the specific project, customers, and a whole lot of testing.

So, when coming up with your email marketing strategy for an eCommerce business, we first decide how many times we’re going to be emailing customers per week.

If it’s 3 times per week, we then take the best days for sending those emails to get the best open rate.

Note: The best email average rate differs from niche, industry, email list, and so on. For eCommerce, the average open rate is 15.68% and the average CTR is 2.01%. And the best days are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. But you can also spread your emails so there’s more time in between them. E.g. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You’ll have to test and see what works best for your personal email list.

Now, once you’ve determined your 3 days, you need to plan out different interests and email plans for those days. 

Because we have different interests for different customers, we want to engage with all of them. So, we can do something like:

• Monday – Email promoting our product (usually one specific product), giving info about it, benefits, etc. This will be the more sales-y email.
• Wednesday – We give some more information and content about the product or lifestyle behind it. Depending on the product, we might send recipes, blog posts, lifestyle tips, and other content our customers might enjoy.
• Friday – Finally, the focus of this email will be engagement. Here, we put something funny, engaging, or just entertaining. The idea here is to get the customer to associate the brand with a certain vibe or a feeling. Then, you get them excited about your Friday emails knowing it’s going to be something entertaining.

48. Take Advantage of Your Competitors’ Newsletters

If you want to never stop improving your email copywriting and want to spy on your competitors at the same time, here’s what you can do:

1. Get on as many email lists as you can. Create a burner email or a separate label in your inbox. Look up your competitors and big companies in your niche, and subscribe to their newsletter. If you see an email they’re running over and over again, chances are, the promo is a winner and they’ve kept it (add this email to your swipe folder).
2. Take advantage of cart abandonment sequences and study wipes from affiliate pages. To add to the first step, you can also add products to your cart without entering your payment info. This way, you’ll also start receiving your competitors’ cart abandonment sequence. To study affiliate product pages, you can go to ClickBank and Milled to learn from other eCommerce brands.

49. Optimize Your Email Layout Top-To-Bottom

Top to bottom, the email sections you can customize include:

• The “from” name – You can use your personal name or your brand name. In most cases, it’s better to use the brand name, unless the personal name IS the brand.
• Subject line – More people read the headline copy (subject line) than the full body copy. Few things to consider here: Subject line length, if you’re going to use emojis, capitalization, personalization, spam trigger words, and curiosity. As a rule of thumb, you should always preview your emails and send them to yourself (check on mobile and desktop) before sending to your list.
• Preheader text – This text appears next to your subject line. Think of this as a continuity to your subject line and dial up the curiosity and emotion already associated with your subject line to increase the clickthrough-rate.
• Content – This includes your email design, layout, and visual content. Check out Really Good Emails, filter for eCommerce, and see how people are structuring their email infographics for inspiration.
• Mobile compatibility – Most people are going to open your emails on their mobiles. Here’s what you need to consider in your mobile layout: Image size, design, layout, and text, button sizes, shorter subject lines, preheader text length, mobile-friendly landing page, and more.

Check out our full guide to eCommerce email marketing to learn how to optimize these sections in more detail and the exact email marketing flows we use to further boost our sales automatically.

50. Avoid the Email Spam Filter

Every email that ends up in the spam filter is a missed opportunity.

These keywords can set off the spam filter, make sure you avoid mentioning them in your email subject line:

51. Use Humor (Copy This)

Humor is one of the best ways to stand out in customers’ inboxes and increase your email sales.

People buy on emotion and justify with logic.

So, if you can get them to laugh, they’ll remember you and be more likely to part with their money.

Just check out this email marketing video from Noah Kagan about generating $9,564 in 24 hours with a single email to see what great email copywriting looks like (copy this):

Increase Your Sales by Improving Conversion Rate on The Website

52. Secret Gift After Spending $X Amount

Let’s start with the best strategy of them all – secret gifts after spending x amount of money.

Similar to the pop-up strategy, this is a curiosity driven strategy (yup, we’re very curious beings).

Here is how it works:

1. At the top of your website, have a note to the website visitors “Free Secret X On Orders Over Y”
2. Go to Shopify – discounts – create a new one. On percentage press 100%, select a product, select a specific product you want to give away and select minimum requirements according to your business.

You’ll see your conversion rate surge together with your revenues.

53. Have AfterPay Set-Up

A substantial amount of our revenue comes from AfterPay.

In fact, when we installed AfterPay on our website, we saw a 3-7% increase in the first-time customer.

It’s a simple hack to get more people into the funnel and make them buy.

For those who don’t know how it works it’s simple:

Afterpay splits your price into 4 pieces and asks your customers to pay only ¼ to begin with and allows them to pay the rest of them over time.

54. Have Paypal Set-Up

For some of you it’s a no brainer.

But for those who don’t have it yet, I can only encourage you to do it ASAP!

Lots of people are using PayPal for quick transactions (I’m among them) and if you’re not doing it – you’re missing out on sales.

55. Set-up Push-Notification App On Your Store

It can seem annoying at first, and might overwhelm your customers, but push-notifications drive quite a bit of traffic.

Although lately I’ve seen a drop in the amount of people who subscribe for it, I still highly recommend having it on the website and building another traffic source that way.

Super easy to set-up, yet brings revenue long-term.

My app of choice – PushOwl

56. Change the Wording On Your Checkout for Discounts

Shopify does not make checking out on mobile intuitive. This is a method that helps push the customer along the checkout process by reducing the friction to checkout.

All we need to do is to replace the wording. Here’s what we found works:

Instead of having ‘Expand Order Summary’, we change it to ‘Click Here To Apply Discount’

Here’s how to do it in Shopify’s back-end:

• Click ‘Online Store’ on left navigation button
• Go to Themes
• Click ‘Actions’ button
• Click ‘Edit Languages’
• Search ‘Expand Order Summary’
• Input the text ‘Click Here To Enter Your Discount Code’

57. Have a Science Back-Up

The more persuasion you can include – the better.

Here’s an example of hanacure showing stats of the studies made on their skincare to prove a point.

Yes, it costs money to book these studies with your products, yet it’s totally worth it with the increase of the conversion rate of the website and claims you can be making.

58. Add a Guarantee and Put It On Steroids!

Customers are scared of buying from a brand they have never heard of before.

“What if it doesn’t work for me?” “What if they’re gonna scam me?” and other doubts are going through their mind.

Info marketers know it better.

If you’ve ever read their sales page, at the bottom of it you can usually see an amazing guarantee.

Here’s an example by Ramith Sethi:

Pretty convincing, right?

That’s an offer it’s hard to say no to.

59. Install Live Customer Service App

We live in an instant gratification environment. When we make an order, we want it delivered NOW (Amazon – you’re to blame here!).

It’s the exact same situation with customer service.

If you have a question about a product – you want it now! There’s no time to wait!

Yes, you can use FAQs to find the answer, but who wants to waste 5mins to find the answer to the question?

Certainly not me…

That’s why having a live customer service app is crucial…

For a long time we didn’t have it, but once we installed it – we saw a conversion rate boost.

Yes, you’ll need to hire more people for your customer support, but it’s well worth it.

60. Improve Your Product Descriptions Through Clever Copywriting

Super simple hack (especially since you only need some time) is to improve your product descriptions. As mentioned above – you should try to include a unique mechanism (hack #33) into it and cram as much relevant information into it as possible. 

Here’s the formula to perfect your eCommerce product descriptions:

• Short description at the beginning (before -> agitate the problem / after -> imagine what it’d be like, having a problem solved / bridge -> your product / service)
• Benefits of using -> bullets
• How to use it
• What is in the package
• Overcome doubts
• Short story about product / founder

Is the copy simple, specific, clear, and directed to deliver sales, does it touch buyers’ EMOTIONS and REASON why they buy? (Sell a hole not a drill).

61. Don’t Ask For Users To Sign Up Before Buying!

The more steps you give them to complete – the more customers you’re going to lose at each one of the steps.

Don’t ask them to create an account. Don’t ask them for unnecessary things.

Make the process as simple as possible.

What can you get rid of in your funnel to make it easier for them to buy?

This hack is like good copywriting.

The more steps you can remove without the message getting muddy – the better.

62. Improve the Quality of Photos on The Website.

Photos are your face.

If you’re selling a high-end product, your website, your design, your branding has to tell you that.

Since we improved photos on our website, we saw an immediate uplift in our revenue.

63. Use Product Reviews To Your Advantage

Whenever I look at hotjar recordings – I usually see people go straight for the review section.

That’s one of the most powerful persuasion tools we have at our disposal.

Use them everywhere – on your product page, home page and wherever you feel necessary.

As I mentioned – even have a separate IG account dedicated to reviews, and before/afters.

Human beings need assurance and your job as a marketer is to give them that.

64. Optimize Your Site Speed

If you only have one thing to do to improve your conversion rate – this is it!

I even have a podcast episode with Oliver from the Landing Page Guys and that’s one piece of advice he gave us – simply improve your speed on the website and your conversions will go up!

Minimize your photos, make them clean, uninstall unnecessary apps!

You might need your developer’s help, but it’s well worth it.

Your website loading speed is key to increasing your conversion rate. If it’s not loading fast enough (under 3 seconds), you’re losing conversions.

65. Include Explanation On How to Use Your Products

Once again, hanacure is crushing it with their explanations.

Actually, when I was shopping for products for my balding problem – I couldn’t find an explanation on how to use their product, which would’ve been useful.

66. Include Before/Afters On Your Page

Do you have pictures that can clearly show what results your customer can expect?

Include them on your product page!

These are super convincing. In fact, last year, we found a few loopholes advertising our products and managed to include some before/afters in our videos – our revenues went up, through the roof.

67. Optimize For Mobile First

80% of our purchases happen on the phone.

It simply makes sense to optimize for phone sales first.

• Prioritize content first and color second.
• Use designs with mobile layout in mind.
• Compress your images, icons, etc (they add up! Use TinyPNG or CrushPics).
• Consider preloading images.

68. Use A/B Testing Tools

There are many options when it comes to A/B testing your website.

VWO, Google Optimize, convertize… Which one to choose?

Well, I prefer to use either VWO or Google Optimize. Why? I’m simply used to these tools and don’t see any need to go into more expensive tools like DynamicYield. Not at this point in time.

However, I do have to warn you – you need quite a bit of data to have data significance for your test.

I’m talking about tens of thousands of traffic on the page you’re testing.

That’s quite a bit of traffic.

The mistake I often see is that marketers get overwhelmed with lots of small tests that don’t make a huge difference in the business.

Even now, when we generate over $1.5M per client, I’m thinking of things that will help me generate extra $50k-300k revenue, not lift my conversions by 0.1% (although it all adds up).

I still don’t see like it’s the time to be taking care of small wins as there are so many big wins to be taking care of.

69. Use Prioritization Sheet to Prioritize CRO Tasks

There are so many things you can be focusing on growing your business.

Even this list is a massive one – over 99+ sales hacks to grow your eCommerce business! How do you not get overwhelmed and make sure to focus on the right things?

Well, here’s the secret tool we use for everything within the agency (and other businesses).

Our creative team uses a variation of it (hack #18), I use another variation for different projects, and you can adapt it to your own needs.

Click here to gain access. Then, just click ‘File’ and ‘Make a copy’.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Attach values to each one of the columns.
2. In the end you’re gonna get a sum of all of them.
3. The ones with the highest sum are the ones you should be focusing on executing first.

70. Have Badges On Your Site

There are only a few reasons why your customers buy your products… However, there are far more reasons why they would NOT buy your products…

That’s why it’s so important to eliminate every doubt in their head so the objections don’t make them leave your website.

Are your products vegan-free? Are they cruelty-free? Are they made in the US? Are they made in Europe? Are they dairy-free?

Include all of these badges on your website!

71. Play With Gamification to Encourage Sales

To increase your conversions and boost your sales, another simple eCommerce hack is to add a spin-the-wheel popup on your store.

The reason this works so well is because it’s effortless and everytime the customer spins the wheel, their brain rewards them with a rush of dopamine.

You can win prizes like discounts, free shipping, and other deals.

All they have to do is enter their email and try their luck.

72. Direct Them to Your Bestsellers

“I wonder which product should I buy?”

By showing which products are your bestsellers, you’ll reduce the mental overload your customers might be having landing on your website.

Here’s another example from Organifi’s Shop.

73. Use Your Names Wisely

What does your product do? Does it clean your skin? Does it make you lose your weight? Does it boost your collagen levels?

Name the product after it!

Here’s an example from Banish

74. Use Quizzes On Your Website

Noom did over $250M last year using quizzes alone!

This tells me something.

For the past 3 months I have been analyzing multiple quizzes, and have been writing notes about what makes a successful quiz and why they work.

According to my research, there are 2 things your quiz has to achieve.

• They’re just like sales pages – just hidden in a quiz. If you take a look at Noom’s quiz – they include social proof, before/afters, & some statistical data.
• Make your customers believe you’ll get a custom solution to your problem.

That’s it.

As I’m writing this today, we’re building quizzes for a few brands. If you want to get my updates on it, sign up for the email list below and follow my emails – I’ll include my observations there.

75. Allow More Payment Options

Apple Pay, Amazon Pay – there are multiple of them.

Figure out which options your customers want to have and provide them with these options.

However…

76. Don’t Give Them Too Many Options

One of the jobs of a marketer is to keep the balance between enough options, but not too many options.

Whenever we have too many options – we get overwhelmed and go into “paralysis-analysis” mode and risk not choosing anything.

My rule of thumb is to give people 3 options to choose from. It doesn’t matter whether it would be products or payment options.

If it’s a product – indicate which one is a bestseller as mentioned in hack #72.

If you want to dig deeper into it – here’s a book I highly recommend reading Predictability Irrational

77. Use Videos on The Product Page

Whenever your product needs more explanation, or you can show it better by utilizing video – do it!

Do it on the product page.

We once did a survey with our customers and some of them were complaining they didn’t know exactly how to use our products – so we created an explanation video on it.

We included it on the product page, as well as Facebook & IG advertising + included it into the browse abandonment sequences.

It worked wonders for us.

78. Decrease Your Shipping Cost and Time

What’s the main reason people abandon checkout?

Apart from not having their card nearby or changing their minds there are only 2 reasons:

1. Unexpected costs. It can be shipping costs, tax costs, or anything else you’re charging them
2. Shipping time. They figure out they are going to have to wait for their item for more than they would want to wait for.

Work on decreasing both of them. My advice – offer them a free shipping option after a certain amount. You’ll increase your AOV this way and decrease your checkout abandonment rate.

79. Treat Your About Us As a Sales Page

What’s the best sales page on your website?

Product page? Home page? Special landing page?

In our case it’s – About Us page. Whenever our customers visit our “about us” page, they are very likely to buy our products.

Here are the things we have included in our about us page(and we’re constantly optimizing it):

• Video explaining the story of the brand
• Copy explaining the things our founder has gone through to come to the current position
• Link to the product
• Unique differentiator (have a look at hack #33 about Unique Mechanism as we’re trying to include it everywhere we advertise on).

Here’s what Drunk Elephant has on their Philosophy page:

80. Include These 7 Psychological Triggers In Your eCommerce Sales Funnel and Website

Platform and technology change.

But human psychology is always the same.

These triggers are borrowed from Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” (must-read if you work in marketing or sales) and they are as follows:

• Reciprocity – You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. We as humans feel obligated to return the favor whenever someone extends their generosity to us. For eCommerce, you can build a product buying guide or some other free content and hide it behind an opt-in for your customers to receive it. Or set up a “buy 1, get 1 free” offer. Some businesses give away a product and only pay shipping to create interest in the product and get them to try what the company has to offer. This also boosts your customer LTV.
• Commitment and consistency – This principle states that we must align our outer actions with our inner-choices. Meaning, if we try something for free (interest, shows desire), we’re less likely to return it. To boost your website conversion rate using this, you can include a free 30-day return so that your customers’ thought process is: “If I don’t like it, I can just return it!”. In most cases, they DO like it and end up keeping it.
• Liking – We like people similar to us. So, to boost your eCommerce sales, tell your story and make sure it’s relatable. This is also where your ‘About Us’ page comes in handy (see hack #79). Show relatable models (people your customers look like) and align your core values with your customers.
• Authority – People trust when experts endorse a brand. By associating your brand with an authority figure who has similar values as you, you gain more trust. This is also why influencer marketing works so well.
• Social proof – People pay attention to others’ recommendations and trust websites more if they have higher social proof (reviews, following, community groups, etc.). Many eCommerce sites have a social proof plugin (“Gabriel A. from Nashville recently purchased this product – 12 hours ago”) using SalesPop, Live Sales Notification, or some other plugin. Another way to build social proof through Facebook ads is to start with a post engagement campaign to build likes and comments. Or you can serve product ads to existing customers who already bought the product, this will encourage them to comment about how much they loved it. Then, transfer your engagement post ID to a conversion ad campaign once you’ve collected enough social proof. 
• Scarcity – Scarcity and FOMO are timeless eCommerce tactics. People hate missing out on things that are limited. Even if it’s a never-ending sale, a lot of eCommerce stores keep re-using the scarcity sale approach because it works so well. Plenty of fashion and luxury brands have built their brands on exclusivity. This is why they often sell out within the first 24 hours.
• Risk removal – People are scared to buy online. You should eliminate each and every objection they’ll have visiting your website. One of the easiest ways to do so is to provide a free 30-day return or a “no questions asked guarantee”. This allows the customer to make a mistake and return the product if needed. As long as your product is high quality and working, most people will never ask for their money back!

Sprinkle these magical psychological triggers in your eCommerce store and funnel, and watch your sales skyrocket.

Boost Your Ecommerce Sales Using Influencer Marketing

Our Influencer Marketing team is super versatile and has quite a few roles to fill.

That’s where we’re getting massive quantities of visuals we need, to run paid social media campaigns and we’re adding additional sales from this department.

Here are some of the hacks they’re using to boost our sales and get more traffic to our website.

81. Giveaway Campaigns

We simply create prizes around our products and announce them on Instagram. Sometimes they go viral, sometimes they don’t do well.

However, we always see a slight boost in traffic to our website, as well as an increase in follower count (which is always useful pitching influencers do hack #18 with us).

The rules are usually simple:

• Tag your friend
• Follow our page
• Comment
• Join our email list

If the prizes are higher, we ask them to do a bit more, like send us a photo, share our photos or a contest etc.

We sometimes use our influencers to shout out during the contest.

Pretty easy to do, however, if you don’t have a dedicated team, I wouldn’t concentrate on it too much, as the results are insignificant and mostly result in breaking even in sales and a few thousand more followers.

82. Loop Giveaway

We haven’t participated in this one yet, but it’s something we’re going to do in the following months.

The way it works – you have 5-10 brands chipping in for the prizes. Because of that, the prize pool can be massive and the giveaway itself can actually go viral.

It’s important to choose the brands you’re going to do it with carefully.

In the end, you’re going to be sharing emails among each other and you don’t want to have emails of people who will never buy your products.

The rules can be similar to a normal giveaway, just they will have to follow all the brands participating in the giveaway.

I’m not a strong believer in these giveaways, mainly because it attracts a certain demographic, which might not be our ideal demographic to buy our products.

Last month one of the brands I work with decided to buy a shout-out from Kylie Jenner. During the first day of the shout-out, our follower count went up to 200k, however today we only have 160k followers and our engagement levels went down.

In my opinion, it’s only good if you want to have lots of random followers, which can boost your ego. It doesn’t do much for the sales, nor do I think it’s useful for the brand.

Anyhow, as I mentioned, we’re going to try loop giveaways, and if you’d like to join my email list where I’m going to update you in real-time how they worked, do it now.

83. Do Influencer Shout Outs With a Discount Code For Extra Sales

After hack #14 with influencers, this is the most useful one.

One of the brands that I work with, they make ¼ of their entire revenue from influencer shout outs, which results in almost $500k in monthly revenue.

Not bad.

The way we do it is simple – we gather the influencers we want to do a shout out with and give them 2 dates during the month.

One of them is at the beginning of the month, the other one – at the end of the month.

The mistake we were making before was that we were allowing them to do it at any time…

Which resulted in us chasing them throughout the month, also lots of tracking issues, etc.

In other words – lots of inefficiencies.

Now we always have shout outs at around the 5-10th and 20-25th of the month and the rest of the time we spend preparing for it. Gathering new influencers to work with us, negotiating with them, and getting more visuals for our social media campaigns.

84. Use UGC Review Images as Ads

Your testimonial ads don’t always have to come from high-level influencers.

Sometimes, a simple tweet or a regular post from your customer can make for a successful ad. 

Like this one:

Compared to other testimonial ads, this one seems more natural as well with a ton of engagement.

Instead of a random name review, this screenshot of a tweet is more authentic as you can see the person’s handle, profile picture, and more. And because it’s from Twitter, we expect the message to be natural and without filter – which is the case here (including the emojis).

Or, alternatively, you can go all out and book a celebrity cameo to endorse your eCommerce brand…

85. Use Cameo to Hire a Celebrity to Endorse Your Brand

Cameo is a website where you can request personalized videos from celebrities, actors, musicians, and more. 

This can cost you anywhere from $10 to $500+ and you can hire anyone from someone pretending to be Santa to all the way to Snoop Dogg and other celebrities.

This is an interesting take on influencer marketing as you have to have the Cameo watermark in your video. But you can get really creative with it and get a personalized video for your ads, depending on what you want them to say.

Established Titles is a company that sells one square foot of land on a private estate in Scotland. And by owning that land, they get a certificate that “technically” makes them a Lord or a Lady.

Here’s an ad where they got Snoop Dogg from Cameo to endorse their brand which went viral.

Booking him on Cameo supposedly costs around $900. 

How to Increase Your eCommerce Store AOV Sales

86. Add a High AOV Bundle or High Prized Product

This is the easiest hack you can do to increase your AOV – bundle up the products that make sense.

6 months ago I created a “super bundle” combining 11 products. The cost of the bundle: ~$400.

My AOV went from $105 to $110 within a day.

We were selling 3-6 super bundles per day and my AOV went from $105 to $110. Not only that, people started choosing more expensive bundles at the store, because of the contrast they were seeing.

That’s why Info Product “gurus” have products/services that cost $100k or even more – that’s because of the contrast they’re creating (and hardly ever buys their top tier products).

Once again, I recommend you reading a book, Predictably Irrational, which goes into depth of the way people choose.

Here’s an example of what I saw Josh F Elizetxe has done with Snow Teeth-Whitening.

87. Use An Upsell App

This is an easy one and you’ve probably thought about it or already have it installed.

However, there are quite a few apps to choose from.

I’ve tried the Zipify One Click Upsell app and I didn’t like it that much. The functionality wasn’t great. The revenue it was generating was really low (2-3% of my entire monthly revenue).

I was on a hunt for another upsell app and found another one that I’m using right now – Reconvert.

My revenue from an upsell went up to 5-6% (which is extra $50k compared to zipify).

It uses native Shopify checkout, so we save on fees too (with zipify we had to use stripe). Amazing, isn’t it?

Not so fast. If you’re using LoyaltyLion, you’ll run into some issues with it. Because it creates 2 orders, you have to use another one of their apps (Order Merger), which creates 3 orders in your store. Order Merger doesn’t archive previous orders, meaning customers are getting 2x the points from their purchase.

At this moment I’m trying to solve this problem by looking into other order merging apps or will be going to find some other upsell app.

With that being said, I’ve already looked into Carthook and spoke with my eCommerce entrepreneur friends, and it seems they’re not entirely happy with it, because of the tracking issues it has.

I’ll be on the hunt.

88. Add a Minimum Requirement For Free Shipping

This one is a simple one, yet super effective. Because I’ve been using it forever, I don’t know exactly what kind of increase we’re talking about now.

However, here are two places you should have it communicated:

1. At the top bar of the website

2. At the checkout and have it customized so you can clearly see how much more they need to spend to qualify for free shipping. For this one though, you’ll need to have a developer to implement.

89. Increase Your Prices

You’ll be surprised how much you can increase your AOV by simply increasing the prices of your product!

Be on the lookout for conversion rates though, as they might drop!

90. In-Cart Cross-Sell

In combination with FREE Shipping and having a bar in cart, you can have more products, so your customers can easily add more items to their cart.

Here’s an example of NativeCos.

91. Minimum Requirements For Discounts

This hack works the same way as adding minimum requirements for free shipping, but it’s for discounts.

When offering these discounts though, make sure to add a minimum spend.

For example – get $10 off when you spend $75 or more.

Some eCommerce brands take this to the next level and add volume discounts:

• Get $10 off when you spend $75 or more.
• Get $15 off when you spend $100 or more.
• Get $25 off when you spend $150 or more.

You get the point.

92. Exclusive Discount For First Purchase

Most eCommerce websites do this to encourage first purchases by offering an exclusive or above-average discount.

This is a great way to drive conversion and order value at the same time as customers will be more likely to receive a higher discount.

And then, once they’ve signed up, you can always begin to market to them regularly once they’re in your funnel.

93. Thank You Campaign

We’ve been using it for almost 2.5 years now and it works wonders.

After every purchase our customers make, the very last thing they see is the thank you video made by our founder to thank them for their purchase, remind them about her story and connect with them on an emotional level.

We use the same exact video for them on Facebook ads, which has tons of engagement.

How to Increase Retention Rate and LTV Sales for Your eCommerce Store

94. Reactivate Your Old Customers

We’ve noticed a pattern – if our customers don’t buy again within 90 days after they’ve made their first purchase, it’s very unlikely they’re going to buy from us again.

That means we have to think what of kind of campaigns we have to do with them so that we win them back.

In the beginning, we simply did an email campaign offering them a bigger discount than they previously got.

That was working pretty well on its own, however, we wanted to try something more.

For the first time last year, we tried having postcard campaigns and since then we’re using them constantly!

The very first time we used them was during Black Week. The results were astonishing & we managed to get 5x return (however, we didn’t spend much in the very beginning).

How does it work?

1. Register to PostPilot pressing here (yes, we’re going to get affiliate commissions that we’ll use for our clients – merci beaucoup for registering via the link).
2. Design your postcards and upload the design onto the platform
3. Upload your email list you want to send postcards to.

Our very last campaign did 3x in return, which we were happy about, however, before spending lots of money on it – make sure to test it and have a compelling offer for them to take.

95. Send ‘Thank You’ Or Just-Because Cards

Whether it’s receiving a free gift or a generous refund, customers love it when you take that extra step to create a memorable experience for them.

Sending handwritten ‘thank you’ cards in particular is a great way to get them to remember your brand. In a world of fully automated eCommerce with robotic support, this small gesture can stand out as a thoughtful customer service move.

When your customers feel appreciated by your brand, they’ll be more likely to buy from you again.

Other nice just-because cards you can send include:

• Birthday email – A little something extra (discount, coupon, etc.) on your customers’ birthday will make them feel special 
• Thank you email – Once in a while, you can write from the heart and thank your customers for supporting you along the journey. No discounts, upsells, or any hidden strings here. Just a simple ‘thank you’ and an update on your behind the scenes.
• Refer-a-friend – People trust word-of-mouth recommendations. They don’t have to be an influencer to provide a referral for your product to a family member or a friend. Just remember to give them a good incentive.
• Random offer or discount – Self-explanatory. No reason for this, just a random discount.

PS – With services like Postable or Thankbot this is easier than ever. You don’t even have to send the emails yourself, and your customers won’t even know the difference!

96. Feature Your Customers on Social Media By Co-creating Content Together

Every eCommerce company uses digital messaging like emails and exit-intent popups now.

Shake things up with your customers with a new method of social media engagement by co-creating content together.

Customers are the most excited the moment their package arrives.

Use this to your advantage by encouraging them to snap a picture of the product in action and share it on Instagram or Twitter.

97. Open Up a Facebook Group For Your Customers

We’ve opened up a Facebook community for most of them.

There are soooo many benefits like:

• Building a tribe around your brand who’ll be buying from you over and over again.
• Having your customers in one space where you can ask any questions and they’ll reply immediately.

And I know what you’re thinking… What da hell am I going to write there?

In the beginning I thought so too, however, I took my chances and opened it up. After the first 300 people in the group, it started to take a course of its own.

Customers started interacting between each other, asking questions and posting on their own.

The only thing we do now, is approve or disapprove posts, accept or decline people coming in to the group.

It’s very much the same as any other Facebook group.

PS – Be sure to join our private eCommerce growth hacks Facebook group (over 6.2K+ members as of now) too if you’re enjoying this guide so far.

98. Launch a New Product

When I visited one of my clients 2months ago, I showed them a unique concept I came up with – “eCommerce Growth Cycle”.

It consists of product launches, sales, and “black swans” that can catapult the business to another level.

What I’ve noticed is that every time we do a product launch or a sale, our overall revenue of the store goes up by 5-10% next month. In other words, we experience 5-10% growth.

For the sale, we attract people who are on our email list and are still waiting for a good-enough offer to buy from us.

And during the product launch – we get our loyal customers trying out new products from us, which in turn makes them stay longer with us and spend more.

So the importance of sales + product launches is massive. I make a point of having a sale every 2 months and having a product launch every 2 months too.

1 month you have a sale, another product launch and that’s how you can grow your business 5-10% every month.

Although sometimes you might hit an ad that will go viral and will skyrocket your sales 2-3x, this is not a section to talk about.

How do you know what product to develop?

Ask your customers! Ask them what kind of formula they want, ask them what they do not want and you’ll be sure to hit a jackpot with your next product launch!

99. Have a Funny Email to Send out After Purchase

I had lots of fun writing them.

Back in September 2019, I read Tim Ferriss book – Tools of Titans and in one chapter someone was sharing the funny email they’ve written for their customers (can’t remember the name) and how their customers started sharing it and it went viral.

Well, the ones we created (3 of them), did not go viral, however, from time to time, our customers are sharing them on their social media and we connect them on an emotional level.

Which means they are much more likely to come back and buy from us again.

It took me a few hours to write all of them, yet since they’re automated, the returns keep coming back again and again.

Highly recommended hack.

100. “Improved Formula” – Tide

We haven’t used this one and I don’t think we will, but I couldn’t leave it out.

Back in the day, when Tide just started their detergent business, they realized how much people like new things.

They decided to be launching new products every few months. However, instead of creating a brand new product, they would only “improve” their current product and advertise it this way.

I’m not going to go into ethical issues with it, as maybe, just maybe, they were improving the formula and, maybe, just maybe, it did work better than the previous one.

However, I can totally see it working from a marketing perspective and if you do change your formulas, even slightly, I do encourage you to try it out and let me know how it went!

101. Have a Superior Product

If you’re selling something, it has to be the best in the market.

Why else would you start a business?

And I know it’s a difficult one to achieve, yet this is the main reason why we keep getting 40-60% returning customers every month(among other hacks I shared with you in this section).

102. Hidden Cash-Flow Flood Campaign

Running low on cash, yet don’t want to do a full-on sale?

Survey your customers and at the end of the survey give them a discount!

We’ve used it time and time again – whenever we needed to get to know anything about customers (bet it a CRO survey, new product survey or any kind of other surveys we were creating), we’d give them something at the end of it. Be it a free product or a discount.

Note: you don’t want to incentivize them telling them they’ll get a discount before they fill it out. You’ll simply get the wrong data.

103. Show Your Customers EXACTLY How Much They’re Paying On Your Landing Page

There’s nothing worse than hidden fees.

We’ve managed to increase the conversion rate for one of our clients’ landing pages by experimenting with the price calculator (and a few other things) from ~4.2% to 5.5%.

The best approach with your pricing is simple: You should show your customers EXACTLY how much they’re going to be paying, how much they’re going to be saving, and if they’re getting something for free – what’s the value behind them.

Let’s analyze this pricing calculator a bit.

The default order offers the customer to buy 3 bags to start with so that they get a free shaker and free shipping included (also boosts the product AOV). And the text above checkout CTA shows exactly how much they’re saving, what they’re getting for free, and even the price per bag is calculated for them.

The crossover text and the highlighted colors are a great way to get the message across.

This is something we experimented with a lot (started with a different offer, calculations, colors, etc.) and it’s the final pricing section for the product as of now.

Though, with this product, we experimented with the conversion rate quite a lot. It went from:

• January and February – 1.9%-2%
• March – 2.5%
• April – 4.2%
• May – 5.5%
• June – 5.9%(!)
• July – 5.5%

And for the record, the average conversion rate for most eCommerce sites is around 1%-2%.

But that’s a story for another time.

You can find more information about how we scaled this product 0-7 and everything else we A/B tested here: eCommerce Growth Saga: Scaling an eCom 0-7 Figures – Part 2

104. Use Our eCommerce Product Launch Formula to Launch Sales or New Products

We’ve developed this formula over 2 years and now it’s pretty much dialed in to maximize our sales or launches.

Here are the campaigns included in it:

Pre-launch (VIP email collection) – VIP launch – regular launch – scarcity (last 24 hours).

Pre-launch.

During the pre-launch we’re collecting emails and those who register for our VIP list, they’ll get a special discount code for 24hours (we usually give 5% more than regular launch or give a free product). It also accomplishes another thing – hypes them up and prepares them for the sale.

VIP launch.

We usually create 1-2 very clear ads, 2 emails, and SMS campaigns. The reason why it works well – there is a massive scarcity play. We give them 24 hours to complete their purchase and we make them feel exclusive. At the same time, you can create even more scarcity, by limiting the amount of items you’re going to sell during the VIP launch.

Regular launch.

We usually plan our regular launch for 2-3 days as we start seeing diminishing returns after that (with an exception of black week, or black month as others do it now). We give them a very simple offer like a discount and prepare all of the usual suspects – emails, SMS and ads.

Last 24 hours.

On the 3rd day of the sale we start playing scarcity big time. We create ads that say that the sale is going to end at a certain time, as well as create SMS, emails and push notifications to inform them about it.

It’s a very simple formula, yet executed perfectly, can get you 20-30% more sales than you’d get from a regular sale.

105. Experiment With Our New Product Launch Formula

We mainly used the above product launch formula for sales rather than product launches (though it can be definitely used for both).

The new hack is a true product launch formula, without having a discount, but relying on the product itself.

This is partly based on Glossier’s strategy and the process goes something like this:

1. Know your customers and ask for specifics

The best way to come up with new products is to ask your customers directly.

Here, we focus on:

• Promotions and slowly building hype.
• Positioning the new product as THE solution.
• Raising awareness and educating current customers.

Community building (see hack #97) is also an essential part of this step as you can ask there directly and even look up what your customers are talking about.

You can ask questions like: If your product was a movie character – what would it be? Do you have any specifics you’d want to include in the product?

You can also create and send a survey to your newsletter subscribers. Ask them why they buy from you, what you can improve on, and so on.

2. Formulate

Then, once you have the customer info down, you start developing your product based on the feedback.

Keep their feedback in mind and include any ingredients, scent, fragrances, or whatever your customers wanted in the new product.

3. Real customer training

Involve the customer in your product creation and start new conversations where possible.

When speaking to your audience, make sure you reiterate your value proposition, the new product, your brand values, lifestyle, and more.

You can find your customers through your regular touch points (social media, Facebook group, emails, etc.) or you can go a step further and surprise your VIP customers by TRULY giving them something to talk about.

You can invite them to dinner or get them to use your new product exclusively.

If possible, activate your influencer base and get your loyal fans involved from here on out.

For example, Glossier has a Slack group that’s invitation only (exclusivity). They use the group to gather customer info, preferences, behavior, and facilitate meet-ups around the world. They talk about anything from Glossier products and skincare tips, to beauty trends or the books they’re reading.

4. Pre-launch

Want your customers to start talking about your new products early?

Launch it to your VIP list first and let them use it for a month or so before everyone else.

Make your new product a Purple Cow and get your VIP customers posting about it doing your marketing for you. This will build hype and intrigue around your product while you’re learning from their reactions.

5. Launch and storytelling

When launching, use storytelling elements to show how the new product was formulated.

Emotional storytelling and educational content work wonders here.

There are many examples of this on YouTube where people in the makeup industry want to launch a new product.

They start creating new content (3-5+ part blog posts, long email newsletter, few part YouTube videos, etc.) and then halfway through, they introduce the new product.

With all this emotional buildup, the product plug seems more natural and the audience is already hooked in for the ride.

Once everyone is paying attention, you bring up the new product for maximum exposure.

Check out our other eCommerce needle movers and 10+ insights from 2020 in our state of eCommerce insights for more info on this.

106. Have a Loyalty Program on The Site.

10-15% of our sales come from our loyalty program. Our software of choice – LoyaltyLion.

This is by far the best loyalty software I could recommend and their support team is just amazing.

How do you build it out?

Well, when I started, I didn’t know much about Loyalty programs and how they interact between each other.

So I started having regular meetings with LoyaltyLion reps, who gave us all the recommendations we needed and we started executing on them.

We’re still in the process of improving the entire program and we’ll be improving it over time.

My suggestion in this case is – start, maintain contact with Loyalty Lion’s staff, and be building your program.

Here’s a great example of an awesome program.

107. Offer a Subscription On Site

Subscriptions are tricky.

Once introduced to the store, they change the entire behavior of your customers.

You won’t be following the same metrics as you usually do and will rather start paying attention to churn rate and will be wondering how to increase it.

We’re still testing it with our clients, and it seems there’s a very long road ahead of us, however, companies using subscriptions are far more valuable than ones that don’t.

The only reason why I’m still hesitant about it is that once people cancel their subscription – they’re unlikely to return to your store.

That’s why when you introduce it first – start with the most loyal customer base. The ones that have bought from you 2-3x and would likely benefit from having a subscription.

Create a separate landing page and drive them there, get their feedback and start improving from there. Only when you did robust testing, and when your most loyal customers are happy with the subscription you created – put them on your main product pages.

As I told you, there’s a very interesting dynamic with subscriptions and it requires quite a bit of thinking.

108. Introduce an Ambassadors Program

The way I see it – brand ambassadors are extensions of the founders.

If we’re telling the story of the founder – ambassadors will be telling it in their own words and attract people from their circle of influence.

If you have a Facebook group or if they’re active on social media, they’ll be your best advertising partners too.

And if you decide to give them discounts and try out a new product – it will help you increase your retention rate.

Depending on how you structure your ambassadors’ program – you could be getting visuals for your ads too (which you need hundreds of when you’re scaling your business).

You can find Boom! ambassadors program here, 1st Phorm’s here.

109. Keep Your Message Consistent

You will not be able to notice it immediately, however over time, if you do NOT keep your message consistent – people will start getting confused.

Have a bank of stories you want to be telling your customers over and over so they’re ingrained in their brains.

The truth is simple – if you want to develop a strong relationship with your customers – you need them to remember your stories.

And see how I’m bolding stories – because that’s the only thing they’re going to remember about your brand.

Stories stick & marketers have to be great storytellers.

Here’s a great book about it by Seth Godin.

And if you’re wondering why some messages survive while others die, also read Made to Stick by Chip Heath

110. Have Your Email Marketing + SMS Marketing Dialed In

There are quite a few campaigns we do to retain customers. I’ve already mentioned a few of them in this article; in #73 (win-back) and #72 (thank you), but there’s a lot more you can do.

Education campaigns, funny emails, “Weekend” emails, emails about new products, new features, ambassadors program, loyalty programs and soooo much more!

Don’t forget to do the same with your SMS Marketing game!

111. Under-Promise and Over-Deliver

What does this mean?

Essentially, by including small things like a handwritten thank you note, or a surprise gift with the first order (without telling them) because you value the most important customer, you’re more likely to boost your retention rate and keep the customer hooked to your brand.

You don’t want to surprise your audience every time though (as they’ll start expecting bigger things every time – unrealistic expectations), but small things that make them feel appreciated builds serotonin and dopamine.

For your VIP customers, you can go all out – like a bottle of champagne. That’s how you get someone hooked on your brand forever.

112. Highlight Your Corporate Social Responsibility

There’s a recent trend towards social responsibility.

If your brand is ethical and green, try to show how your company is giving back to the community. This can be in the form of working with charities, your policies, and so on.

Don’t be afraid to show off your core values as a business.

So… What Do You Think?

And that’s a wrap!

99+ sales hacks and 100+ pages of eCommerce goodness to boost your 4 main metrics: Customer acquisition, conversion rate, AOV & LTV.

We will most likely be updating this with even more hacks and strategies in 6-7 months or so once we have something now (also be sure to stay tuned for Q4 of 2021 as we have a lot planned for the next Black Friday too)…

NOW – Did I miss any tools, campaigns, or sales hacks that I should include in the list?

Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Until then – if you enjoyed this guide, feel free to give it a share.

Be sure to join our private Facebook group to follow our journey and learn all the insights we’re sharing along the way here: eCommerce Growth Hacks | Facebook Ads, Creatives, Email & More | by Sugatan

See you soon!