11 Tips to Nurture Leads in eCommerce and Supercharge Sales

To nurture leads in eCommerce, you stay in touch with shoppers who showed interest but did not buy yet, and you give them good reasons to come back until they do. That means helpful content, retargeting, email, push notifications and offers that match what each shopper already looked at.

Have you ever bought the first thing you laid your eyes on? Sure, you may have liked or even loved it, but your first instinct is, "let's explore options and other brands." Most online store visitors think the same. They are not ready to buy on the first visit, so most of your leads sit at the top or in the middle of your sales funnel. If you want them to buy from your brand, you have to nurture them.

A generic newsletter or a few social posts will not do it. You need a lead nurturing plan. Here are 11 eCommerce lead nurturing tips, grouped by the job they do, to help you land more sales-qualified leads and drive sales.

What is eCommerce lead nurturing?

A lead in eCommerce is anyone who has shown interest: a visitor who browsed several product pages, a newsletter subscriber, a social media follower or a shopper who left a full cart. Nurturing turns that interest into a first purchase.

Nurturing works hard in the consideration stage, which we cover in depth in our guide to middle-of-funnel (MOFU) marketing. This article is more hands-on. It lists the tactics an online store can use at every stage, from getting found to closing the sale.

Is it worth the effort? Business.com, citing Zendesk research, reports that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower cost. That research comes mostly from B2B sales, but the principle carries over: a shopper you stay in touch with is cheaper to convert than a new one you have to find.

The 11 lead nurturing tips at a glance

Tips 1-3: Get found by the right shoppers

1. Optimize your store for search (eCommerce SEO)

If you don't optimize your eCommerce website for search, nobody will find it. While nurturing leads, you do not have to hold their hands at every step down the funnel. But you need visitors to get to your website in the first place. Push notifications, discounts and great content are useless without visitors.

A big benefit of eCommerce SEO is that you don't necessarily need long-form guides, ebooks or whitepapers to rank. In many other industries, those are a prerequisite for lead generation. An online store can do well by optimizing product descriptions, category pages, metadata and blog posts for targeted keywords.

Best for: stores that depend on paid traffic and want a steady, lower-cost source of relevant visitors.

2. Create valuable content

Shoppers research before they buy. Use this to your advantage: find out what people want to know about your products and create content that helps them choose the right one.

How do you find what your audience is looking for? Look at competitors, Google autocomplete and relevant forums and communities to spot content gaps. Once you have the questions, use a keyword research tool such as RankWatch for competitor analysis and keyword research, then create different kinds of content around each topic.

Why spend time, energy and resources on content? Because valuable content helps more people discover your website. When you are the best-informed brand in your niche, you build trust, and people are more likely to buy from you. Content formats that work for eCommerce include:

• Blog posts and buying guides
• FAQs on product and category pages
• Videos and how-to tutorials
• Infographics, ebooks and podcasts
• Calculators and other interactive tools

Repurpose the same content across formats to get in front of more people.

A good example is Northern Brewer, which sells home brewing beer kits, recipe kits and equipment. Homebrewing can be complicated for first-time users, so the brand built expert advice around its products: a section devoted to homebrewing, a video library, a forum and a priming sugar calculator. It also puts relevant products inside the content, so readers find the equipment they need.

Best for: products that need explanation, comparison or a little education before the first purchase. Start with a data-driven buyer persona and write for their pain points.

3. Increase visibility with Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns

SEO and content take time to show results. PPC does not. Search ads appear above the organic results, and you only pay when a lead clicks. That is why targeting the right keywords matters so much.

For Google Shopping, connect Google Merchant Center to Google Ads, group your products and bid more on your most profitable groups. Then Google shows your ads for the most relevant queries.

To perform well in PPC campaigns, make sure that:

• Your product information is complete and contains every detail
• Your ad has an enticing title, a clear description and high-quality images
• The landing page offers a seamless experience

Best for: new stores, product launches and high-intent searches you cannot yet rank for organically.

Tips 4-6: Capture and understand the lead

4. Leverage cookies and push notifications

Cookies are one of the most important lead nurturing tools for an online store. A cookie holds a unique ID that your website places on the lead's device. Once a lead accepts cookies, you can see which pages they visited and how much time they spent on each. This data helps you retarget potential customers on Instagram, Facebook and Google Ads.

Many shoppers decline cookies, and privacy laws such as the GDPR require their consent first. Even so, cookies remain a key nurturing tool because they help you:

• Understand how a visitor landed on your website
• Know which pages a visitor spends time on
• See how many times a visitor comes back
• Get real-time signals when leads visit the site

Push notifications are another powerful tool. Once a shopper opts in, you can send them timely, customized messages on desktop and mobile, even when they are not browsing your website. You can use push notifications to:

• Promote discounts and announce a price drop
• Announce newly added products
• Send personalized product recommendations based on on-page behavior
• Cross-sell products
• Recover abandoned carts

Best for: stores with frequent product drops, price changes or time-sensitive offers.

5. Nurture leads with freebies

Customers, including you and me, love free stuff. We are simply not good at resisting a giveaway, and you can use that in your favor. Many online stores offer free shipping or a discount in exchange for an email address. Once the shopper opts in, you can send member-only offers at regular intervals, and while they browse your website, show them your premium range too.

Furniture and homeware brand MADE.com once did this well. Its website showed two offers side by side: a discount on lighting for visitors ready to buy now, and money off the first order for leads who were not ready yet. Getting those leads to sign up for the newsletter gave MADE a chance to nurture them until they were ready to buy.

Effective freebie ideas for eCommerce lead nurturing:

• Launch new collections with a discount
• Create urgency by combining low-stock status with a discount on instant purchase
• Offer freebies to customers who pick up products in store
• Give exclusive freebies to members

Best for: turning anonymous first-time visitors into email subscribers you can reach again.

6. Deliver a seamless user experience on your website

With so many online stores selling similar products, shoppers never run out of options. Your website must look trustworthy and appealing for people to even consider your brand. Here is how to get it ready:

• Reduce page loading time
• Add search functionality for easier navigation
• Write engaging product descriptions
• Add high-quality images and, where useful, videos and a 360-degree view of your products
• Show reviews and ratings on the home page and product pages as social proof
• Include payment trust signals so leads know their payment information is safe
• Research and gather feedback using an online survey tool

Take a look at Sephora's website. Each product shows ingredients, how to use it and the shipping and return policy. Next to ratings and reviews, it shows photos of customers using the product. When you see real customers using a product, you trust it more, and trust is what nurturing is built on.

Best for: every store. A poor experience wastes every other nurturing tactic that sends leads back to your site.

Tips 7-9: Stay in touch when leads leave

7. Nurture leads with strategic retargeting

Have you ever seen Facebook ads showing the exact product you were just looking at on a website? Those are retargeting (or remarketing) ads, the next piece of the puzzle. You often need paid promotion to get in front of new, similar and past audiences.

If a lead doesn't buy today, that is not the end of it. Retargeting lets you persuade them throughout the buying cycle. It plays on the fear of missing out and nudges leads toward a decision. Even when an ad does not send the lead straight back to your website, it builds awareness. Next time they need a similar product, they remember your brand.

Whether you sell fashion or homeware, you compete with many companies targeting the same audience. Every time a lead sees your logo, your USP and your products, you increase your chances of:

• Generating sales in the coming days
• Reaching shoppers genuinely interested in your products
• Building brand awareness and trust among your leads

Retargeting works best when audiences are built from real customer data, not only page views. Nexus by Omniconvert pushes RFM segments directly to Meta Ads, Google Ads and Klaviyo, so you can show different ads to new customers, loyal customers and those about to leave.

Best for: leads who viewed products or added items to their cart and then left.

8. Pitch the right product at the right time with social media

Why use social media for eCommerce lead nurturing? Because followers, like website visitors, have shown interest in your brand and want to hear from you. For an online store, the distance between a follower and a sale is short: a few clicks. That is something many traditional industries simply cannot offer.

Instead of spreading yourself thin across every platform, focus on the ones your audience uses most. Add links to your social media profiles in your newsletters and email campaigns, so subscribers know they can reach you there too.

Facebook ads are a good channel to target lookalike audiences and open a direct line of communication with them. Instagram's visual formats and lead ads let you show products at their best and collect customer information you can use in later nurturing campaigns.

Best for: visual products and brands with an engaged community.

9. Run email marketing campaigns

Has it ever happened that you didn't buy a product because the price was too high? Would you buy it if a discount coupon landed in your inbox the next morning? Probably, yes. That is what eCommerce lead nurturing looks like with B2C email marketing. Customized email journeys help you qualify leads, boost awareness and build your brand with prospects.

Excel at email marketing with these tips:

• Segment prospects based on their position in the sales funnel
• Create automated campaigns based on the buyer journey and geography
• Personalize emails with dynamic content
• Define and automate triggers for customer journeys, such as abandoned cart or re-engagement
• Place one clear, eye-catching CTA

Sleep products brand Casper sent a cleverly designed abandoned cart email. The copy was to the point: it asked the reader if they wanted to revisit their cart, showed what they had been shopping for and offered two CTAs. For more ideas, see these email marketing campaign examples.

Best for: every store with a subscriber list. Email is the one nurturing channel you fully own.

Tips 10-11: Scale the work and make it personal

10. Use marketing automation

Whether you run email campaigns or post on social media, doing everything by hand takes a lot of time. That is where marketing automation comes in. Tools like EngageBay help you with lead scoring, lead segmentation and task automation.

Use marketing automation at every stage of lead nurturing:

• Segment contact lists by demographics, events and customer behavior
• Run automated email marketing campaigns
• Create landing pages that renew the interest of cold leads
• Send SMS and push notifications for promotions

Best for: stores whose list has outgrown one-off, manual campaigns.

11. Convert faster with personalized offerings

The journey from first visit to first purchase is longer than it seems. Personalization is one of the most effective ways to shorten it, in retargeting ads, in email campaigns and on your website. Ideas for personalizing the way you nurture eCommerce leads:

• Catch shoppers' attention with personalized product recommendations on your website
• Show a personalized range of products in social media retargeting ads
• Talk to shoppers one-on-one using live chat or a chatbot
• Work with influencers to promote different products to different demographics

On your own website, web personalization in Omniconvert Explore lets you adapt page content by visitor type, behavior, device and location, recommend products based on the pages a shopper visited and show personalized overlays on-load, on-scroll or on-exit.

Best for: stores with enough traffic and catalog variety that different shoppers want different things.

How to build an eCommerce lead nurturing plan

1. Find your biggest leak

   Check where shoppers drop off: too little traffic, visitors who leave without a trace, or subscribers who never buy. Fix that stage first.
2. Set up lead capture

   Get cookie and marketing consent, and offer a freebie in exchange for an email address or push opt-in.
3. Segment leads by stage

   Separate new subscribers, product browsers, cart abandoners and past customers. Each group needs a different message.
4. Map a message and channel to each segment

   For example, a welcome email for new subscribers, retargeting ads for browsers and an abandoned cart email plus push notification for cart abandoners.
5. Automate and personalize

   Turn the map into automated flows, and use dynamic content and product recommendations so each lead sees what is relevant to them.
6. Test and improve

   A/B test offers, overlays, subject lines and landing pages. Keep what lifts first purchases and drop what does not.

How Omniconvert Explore helps you nurture leads

Most of the tips above send leads back to your website. What they see when they arrive decides whether they buy. With Omniconvert Explore you can:

• Show different content, offers and recommendations to new and returning visitors, by behavior, device or location
• Capture leads with personalized overlays triggered on-load, on-scroll or on-exit
• Ask shoppers what holds them back with on-site surveys
• A/B test offers, product pages and landing pages before you roll them out

Explore draws on experience from 7,000+ websites in 15+ industries and 70,000+ experiments, with a 23.2% average uplift. When your nurtured leads come back, make sure your store is ready for them.

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