Among our list of eCommerce partners, the central focus of nearly all of their growth marketing strategies is the same: grow revenue. So, in order to do this, channel selection and tactics are primarily focused on driving customers to their websites who convert the most efficiently. That way, we’ll be able to scale their businesses and put marketing dollars towards the channels with the highest return. Winning.

While there are many metrics to keep track of and many ways to measure the success of revenue-driving campaigns, at Tuff, we cut through the noise and hone in on last-click attribution. This is the best way to quickly learn which channels are most effective and deserve the most attention from our paid ad budgets. 

9 times out of 10, last click is a great performance indicator for growing a brand, But what about the other 10% of the time? What’s the right strategic approach for eCommerce brands that have longer customer journeys? We most often see these longer journeys associated with luxury items that are higher priced—here, the customers spend more time in the consideration phase, making sure their decision to buy is right before they pay the high ticket price.

In those scenarios, we still keep last click as our preferred attribution model, but instead of locking in on just revenue as our main goal, we add leads into the equation as well.

Here’s how we do it: 

eCommerce Lead Generation: is it right for me?

For eCommerce lead generation to be a smart tactic for your brand to employ, you need a dedicated email marketing funnel—one that you’re managing relatively hands-on and improving on a regular basis. You also need some sort of sales strategy designed to convert your leads. You also need a way to qualify leads and have a measurable way to determine their value or potential value. Without these two mechanisms, lead generation will not work for your eCommerce brand. 

I have an eCommerce popup, does that count as lead generation?

To get super pointed with a definition: lead generation is defined as the initiation of consumer interest into products or services of a business. 

While eCommerce website popups are one proven way to grab website visitors’ emails in exchange for a free shipping or percentage offer discount, they can limit the consumer experience and hurt your perception (blame this on their overuse in the last decade). 

Our new favorite eCommerce Trend for lead generation is to develop a standout quiz or poll to capture contact information and provide you with the following: 

• A way to prove your industry expertise.
• A non-aggressive tactic to grab consumer insight.

Can you show me an example of an eCommerce Lead Generation Strategy?

Why yes, we can!

One of our partners, Canoe Club, is a high-end fashion retailer based in Boulder, CO. 

From a marketing standpoint their products differ from traditional eCommerce brands in two distinct ways: 

1. Their inventory is ever-changing. Products from their brands are purchased in low quantities so what might be available one day won’t necessarily be available the next day.
2. They’re a retail brand store, so they are selling other brands’ products. These products are on the higher end and have a higher barrier to entry. 

Due to these distinctions, Canoe Club’s customer lifetime value is higher than average, but finding individuals who meet their criteria doesn’t happen at a mass scale. 

Many people need time to find their Canoe Club fit and often times that won’t be on their first, second, or even third visit to the store. 

Additionally, even if Canoe Club has something a new visitor likes, they might not necessarily have it in their size. Their product lineup is based on buying seasons and quantities are limited per size. 

So instead of paying expensive costs to keep customers in an advertising funnel’s consideration phase, we worked with Canoe Club to develop a lead generation machine that captured leads at a high rate. We originally spotted this opportunity when we noticed the high traffic to email conversion rate. 

While we drove much of the strategy that laid the foundation for this successful tactic, we couldn’t have done it without the Canoe Club team. They developed a highly addicting, user-friendly quiz that drives prospective customers to sign up with their email. 

Appropriately called the Style Compass Quiz, this interactive quiz uses sophisticated TypeForm logic to assign users one of four style archetypes. 

We fell in love with the Style Compass Quiz the minute we laid eyes on it at Tuff. It’s far from stuffy and spammy, and is so unique that our Growth Marketer, Kristin said:

And she wasn’t wrong. On Instagram, Facebook, and even Reddit – the quiz has done insanely well at generating leads for Canoe Club. Here are our Campaign Results to date: 

With this style quiz, we’ve been able to increase Canoe Club’s email list size significantly and provide a way for them to capture people in the awareness and consideration phase at a low cost. 

From here, Canoe Club can do what they do best, which is to provide their subscribers with email marketing updates on their ever-changing lineup of fits and seasonal brand drops.

And we can keep doing what we do best, driving qualified traffic from established and niche ad channels that take action. In this case, the action is subscribing with an email address.

We are currently using Facebook to hone in on luxury audiences that may not convert on the first few website visits, but are great consumers to have in an email marketing flow. 

The other channel we are using is Reddit. Often left out of most Growth Marketing Strategies, Reddit presents a unique opportunity for brands to leverage their extensive collection of niche communities on topics ranging from fashion and style to bitcoin to sports (to name a few). 

Reddit advertising allows you to get in front of these niche communities with an offer. In this case, it’s for our style compass quiz: 

While generating revenue from Redditors isn’t the easiest, we’ve been fairly successful at generating email leads from these communities. 

To conclude, finding a piece of content, quiz, or poll that your potential customers can interact with and leave their contact information is a great way for you to grow your email list, prove your expertise in your industry, and learn about your consumer. 

Finding the right channels and audiences to market this to is the challenge, but when done correctly can diversify your business’s revenue streams and provide an opportunity for you to grow other parts of your business aside from daily revenue.