8 cost-effective ecommerce customer acquisition strategies

Tell me if you’ve ever noticed any of the following while shopping online.

Have you seen online stores ask you to join their newsletter in exchange for a coupon code or discount? Something similar to this. 

Have you encountered a brand that said you and your friend could get 10% off or $20 off your next order, and all you have to do is refer a friend and have them place their first order? 

These are not random acts of kindness. They are strategic customer acquisition strategies that ecommerce brands use to lower their customer acquisition costs (CAC) while attracting new customers.

In this article, I will show you how these and other strategies work and why you should use them if you want sustainable growth without relying on paid advertising. Let’s get started. 

1. Run hyper-personalized email campaigns 

The reason ecommerce businesses would offer discounts just to get a customer’s email address is because they’ve realized email marketing is a cost-effective customer acquisition strategy. With the average customer acquisition cost ranging from $59 to $91, depending on your ecommerce industry, a small upfront incentive to capture an email address can quickly pay for itself down the line.

Email is also an owned channel.
That means you control the audience, the message, and the timing. You can decide which customer you want to reach, at what time, and with what message. 

Email provides a reliable and direct line of communication with your target customers. You never have to worry about algorithmic changes that could impact your reach, something that happens a lot with social media and search engines. 

The best part? Email helps you build a relationship with your customers. Successful businesses like Casper and Allbirds use email marketing to boost loyalty and increase customer lifetime value. 

Casper, for example, sends this educational email to their customers. 

These emails show customers that the brand is interested in more than just a transactional relationship. They signal they care beyond a transaction by sending genuinely helpful content.

Not every email campaign can be a success, though. Having worked with multiple ecommerce brands, our team has learned that the difference between successful ecommerce email marketing campaigns and those that flop comes down to three things:

• Relevance
• Value
• Timing

How relevant is the email to the specific customer you’re sending it to? Customers want messages that speak to them individually. They don’t want to be treated like a generic group. A customer whose purchase history revolves around a specific product category is more likely to respond positively to a Black Friday email related to their favorite product category, and not something random.

The second thing is value. Do your emails consistently provide value? If not, customers will slowly stop engaging with them. 

Finally, your emails must be timely. This involves understanding your customer’s seasonal needs, purchase cycles, and even the days and times when they’re most likely to engage with emails.

Automation has proven to be the best approach to meet all three requirements. Automation platforms help you personalize your email campaigns at scale. These solutions can analyze each customer’s purchase history and patterns to determine their favorite products and purchase cycles. 

Automation also lets you create personalized emails that respond to specific customer actions. For example, a customer just joined your email list. An automated welcome email workflow responds immediately by sending a welcome email and any additional follow-up emails you may want. 

Our experts have worked closely with several ecommerce brands, helping them build their automation campaigns. We’ve seen firsthand the impact of automated hyper-personalized email campaigns.

Poko Lorente used GetResponse MAX (our ecommerce automation solution). This store ran an automated product recommendations campaign, which saw an impressive conversion rate of 14.29%! $49,000 worth of product recommendations were added to cart after this one campaign. 

Email automation is a broad topic, but this guide covers the essentials. Check out the guide here to learn about the ecommerce automation workflows you need and the best tools to use. 

2. Use targeted paid ads 

Paid advertising remains a proven acquisition channel. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and TikTok offer powerful tools to help you target a specific audience with your ads. 

The problem here is that these campaigns are pretty expensive. According to a report by Wordstream, the average Google Ads cost per lead increased by 24% from 2023 to 2024 and by another 5% from 2024 to 2025. The cost has been going up for several years now and is likely to continue doing so.

The same trend has been noted on other paid ad platforms. Facebook ad costs increased by 89% according to a report by Forbes. TikTok and Snapchat CPMs also increased by 92% and 64%, respectively. 

So, what can you do to make sure your ad spend attracts high-value customers to maximize customer lifetime value and lower your average CAC over time? 

First, use lookalike audiences to target potential customers who share characteristics with your best customers. Your best customers have a high average order value as well as a high lifetime value. Using them to inform your paid ad strategy will help you target and attract customers who are likely to generate the highest revenue that can offset the rising CPMs.

Creatives are also super important, especially when you’re doing paid social media campaigns. Make sure your social ads feel native to the platform. You can use UGC videos on TikTok and Instagram, for example. Browse through the TikTok ad library and you’ll see plenty of these ads.

Refresh creative every 3–4 weeks to prevent ad fatigue.

Use one clear economic goal. You can pick Max CPA (the most you’ll pay per new customer), target ROAS (dollars back per $1 spent), or an LTV:CAC payback target. 

That goal sets your bids and pause rules. For the best results, start with Maximize Conversion Value so the algorithm can find buyers. The customers acquired with this goal will give you sufficient sales data to inform the next part of your strategy, which is to switch to Target ROAS.

The new goal will favor higher-value purchases. This ensures your sales and marketing efforts attract customers who will generate more revenue for your business.

3. Retarget browse and cart abandoners

Paid advertising is generally expensive, as I pointed out above. However, if a customer has already entered your funnel, it’s worth paying to bring them back and make sure they convert. That is the goal of browse and cart abandonment recovery campaigns.

These campaigns are specifically designed to target users who’ve performed high-intent actions on your website. For example, one potential customer might have browsed a specific product page, viewed your sizing guide, and read a few product reviews. Another customer may have gone a step further to add products to the cart, but they abandoned your site before checking out. 

In both cases, the customers have shown interest in your product, so they’re worth targeting with remarketing campaigns to bring them back to your store. You’ll have a higher likelihood of converting them than chasing cold traffic. 

In fact, research by Invesp shows retargeting campaigns get a CTR of 0.7% compared to 0.07% for display ads. That’s a 10x difference.

Source

The first obvious way to retarget these website visitors is through paid advertising. Installing a tracking pixel on your website can help you reach these potential customers on Google and Meta platforms. 

Once you reach those customers, what you say to them through your creative will be crucial in determining whether they come back. Don’t assume a 10% off discount is all they need. Reinforce the value of the product and display social proof to win the shopper’s trust. 

That’s why you need sequential advertising campaigns. 

Sequential advertising will help you address customer objections with several planned ad creatives displayed over several days. The first creative reminds the customer of the item they left in the cart and shows some UGC photos, reviews, and testimonials. 

The second creative can display your money-back guarantee and return policy alongside the abandoned cart reminder. A discount can be the last incentive you use to win the customer if they have yet to convert after the first two creatives.

This approach reduces your reliance on price cuts to convert customers, which is crucial when you want to maintain a good customer acquisition cost and keep high profit margins.

Besides paid ads, you can retarget customers through email marketing. These campaigns can be automated using an ecommerce email automation solution like GetResponse. The solution will track customer actions on your website. The retargeting will be deployed when customers perform specific actions you’ve set as triggers. 

These triggers could be abandoning a cart, adding an item to the wish list, and viewing specific product pages.

OluKai uses email to retarget browse abandoners, for example. 

Unfortunately, this campaign only works for potential customers who are already on your email list. That means you must have an effective email list-building strategy in place to take advantage of this. 

4. Partner with affiliates and content creators

Another cost-effective ecommerce customer acquisition strategy is affiliate and creator partnerships. Affiliates earn a commission every time they refer a customer who places an order. That’s unlike paid advertising, where you pay per click, regardless of whether those clicks convert or not. There’s also no upfront marketing costs.

Meanwhile, the best content creators will require some upfront payment + ongoing commissions from the sales generated through their unique links or codes. But the beauty of working with creators is that you get access to niche audiences that already trust the creator, so they’re more likely to convert. 

Creators also produce high-quality content like unboxing videos, get-ready-with-me videos, demos, and how-to videos. This type of content feels native to social platforms, so it generates high engagement rates. You can also reuse that content in your marketing assets for paid ads and email campaigns with their permission. 

Creator partnerships have been blowing up on TikTok Shop, in particular. Take a look at the revenue creators have driven for this supplement, for example. One creator generates revenue worth half a million dollars within 30 days.

TikTok tools like Kalodata can show you the top creators in your niche and the performance of those specific creators. You can see their conversion performance, for instance. Targeting smaller creators with growing conversion performance is a great way to launch a cost-effective TikTok campaign. 

Focus on finding the right creators whose audience matches your target market. You also want creators with high and growing engagement rates. Then, build long-term relationships with these creators to compound your ROI.

5. Use strategic brand partnerships

Strategic brand partnerships can help you attract customers at a fraction of the cost of standard marketing campaigns like paid advertising. This strategy essentially lets you borrow the trust and authority of another brand. It also gives you access to an engaged, pre-qualified audience. 

The result is reduced acquisition costs and shorter sales cycles. 

Brand partnership can involve collaborating or co-hosting events. You can also do joint giveaways and contests on social media. Partnering in email campaigns can also be super effective. 

Find a brand you share a target market with, but whose products do not compete with yours. 

6. Create a referral program 

A referral program is an excellent way to fuel growth while keeping your customer acquisition costs low. Referral programs allow you to use existing customers to reach new potential customers. These programs are extremely effective when executed well, as 88% consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than they do brand endorsements.

What does an effective referral program look like, though?

First, you must provide an excellent customer experience with quality products. Customers will only go an extra mile to tell their friends about your brand if they love the experience. You can give them a remarkable experience through good customer service, personalized interactions, and exceeding their expectations through clever campaigns like this one from Harry’s.

Harry’s uses this campaign to surprise customers with additional products. The campaign can also be a clever marketing strategy for introducing customers to premium products, which can increase their LTV in the future. Think of it like a free product sample, but presented in a more exciting manner.

A great program also has a simple double-sided incentive. Reward both the customer and the new prospect. This incentivizes the customer to tell their friends about you. It also encourages the leads to take advantage of the incentive and place their first order. Something similar to what Casper does.

Your program should be easy to join and share with others. A simple code or link should be all a customer needs to tell their friends about your store. Most brands implement a referral campaign alongside a customer loyalty program to boost the average customer lifespan and value. You should do the same.

Don’t forget to promote your program across all your key marketing channels, including email, social media, and website. Mention the program in your post-purchase emails, on order confirmation pages, and at other key customer touchpoints.

7. Consider marketplaces

Marketplaces might be a good option for up-and-coming online stores. The idea here is to list your products on existing marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, and eBay. This gives you access to the traffic these platforms generate. Most marketplaces have also built customer trust, which is helpful when your brand is still not very well known. 

Another advantage of marketplaces is that you may get lots of product reviews and testimonials. These can help with refining your product and messaging. 

That said, you must pay fees when you list and sell your products through a marketplace. This strategy will also put you side by side with your competitors. 

But perhaps the worst part is that you will never really own your customers. You’ve made the sale, but the platform still controls the customer relationship. They keep the customer data, which makes it difficult for you to build long-term relationships with your customers.

As such, marketplaces are only worth considering for the initial stages of your business if you don’t have the budget to build awareness and trust from scratch. Even then, you should have a strategy for transitioning from the marketplace to your own ecosystem. Something similar to what the gadgets brand Anker did. 

8. Experiment with live shopping

Live shopping is a growing ecommerce customer acquisition trend you can take advantage of before it becomes too saturated and ineffective. For some context, data from China, where live shopping is extremely popular, shows that $682.5 billion in sales was generated from livestream commerce in 2023. The trend is slowly catching on in the West. 

Live shopping essentially involves a host, who can be an influencer, content creator, or a representative from your brand, conducting a livestream from which customers can purchase products in real-time. The livestream can be a demo, and the products are shoppable within the stream. 

For example, Nordstrom hosts live virtual events where customers can shop along with the hosts. 

Live shopping can be a super cost-effective way to attract new customers, especially if you partner with a creator to host the livestream. Use this marketing campaign to promote new products, clear inventory, or for a flash sale event.

In closing

Paid acquisition costs have been rising with each passing year. Platforms like Google, Facebook, and even LLMs like ChatGPT are making it increasingly difficult for brands to get reach and customers to interact with brands directly. 

This has made customer acquisition expensive and challenging, but opportunities still exist for marketers who are savvy enough. I’ve covered eight creative ways to acquire customers without shrinking your margins or blowing up your marketing spend. 

That said, my recommendation is investing in owned channels. That means building an email list, a mobile app, an SMS contact list, implementing push notifications, and creating a private community. 

Besides being cost-effective, these channels allow you to build long-term customer relationships. That means higher customer lifetime value. Also, this shields you from the unpredictability of third-party platforms like Google and Facebook, where you basically rent their audiences.