8 Marketing Tactics (And Apps) That Turn Shoppers Into Buyers

As an online store owner, you're always looking for more traffic and sales. With so many ways of achieving these goals it can sometimes be difficult to determine the best place to start. Previously, we shared 13 actionable marketing tactics with you and today we have eight more.

In this post, we will showcase a variety of tactics that you can implement immediately, along with an app for each one. Everything from automated email marketing to implementing referral marketing campaigns effortlessly and a bunch in-between. 

Let's find out how to increase traffic and sales.

1. Build An Automated Email Marketing Campaign

When it comes to driving conversions, one channel continues to outperform all others: email. In fact, according to recent research, email has a return-on-investment of around 4,300%. If that's not enough to get you excited about email marketing, consider this: 

• 80% of people say they receive marketing messages alongside their personal emails on a daily basis.
• 70% of people make use of coupons or discounts they learn about from email.
• 60% of people say that receiving special offers is the top reason they subscribe to an email list from a business.

If you haven't taken the time to develop a email marketing campaign, you're almost certainly leaving money on the table.

App: Klaviyo
Klaviyo allows you to send beautiful newsletters and automated emails to segments of your list using their completely customizable templates. Want to automatically send a thank you coupon to loyal customers after their second purchase from your store? Klaviyo can do it. Want to send out automatic emails to anyone that hasn't purchased from your store in six months? Klaviyo can do that. The best part? Klaviyo will also automatically track all sales relating from your email campaigns, so you'll know exactly how well it's working.

2. Add An Email Popup

If you looked at the first tactic and tool and thought, "But I don't have anyone to email yet" then this next tactic and app is for you. You likely see them on your favorite blogs, they may even annoy you a bit, however, email popups have proven time and time again to increase you number of email subscribers with very little negative impact.

Adding an email collecting popup to your site can help you to build your email list so you can start using email marketing effectively to make more sales.

App: Pop-Up Window
Pop-Up Window is a simple, yet powerful app that will allow you to add a fully customizable popup to your site to capture customer emails.

3. Persistent Cart

Let's say someone comes to your store and after browsing around for a while, finds several products they want to buy. They add them to the cart but don't complete the purchase. Later when they get home they open their laptop only to find their cart is empty and they have to re-add all the items.

This can be a frustration for your customers and a source of lost sales for your business. In fact, the National Mail Order Association, found that nearly 35% of shoppers took more than 12 hours to complete their purchase, and 21% took greater than three days.

App: Persistent Cart
Persistent Cart is a simple and free app that will save all items in the cart when your customer is logged in. When they switch to a different computer or logout and log back into their account, all their previously added products will be right there, waiting for them to checkout.

4. Feature a Strong Call-To-Action

Call-to-Actions (CTAs) are a powerful tactic yet they're often overlooked. Theres nothing quite so simple and effective than pointing out the next logical step in a users journey towards conversion. The effect of adding CTAs in the right places really can make all the difference in generating leads.

A call-to-action can be any wording or graphic that provides an obvious link to the next clear action. This can be to highlight a sale or promo, or even just to subscribe to your newsletter. Regardless, a CTA should be obvious and simple, with one clear action you want your visitors to take.

App: Hello Bar
The popular Hello Bar is a simple notification bar for your store that allows you to easily feature and change a primary call-to-action. You can use Hello Bar to create a notification bar at the top of your store telling visitors about your new or featured products or use it to promote whatever you like. Easily update your call-to-action whenever you like without having to edit any code.

5. Run a Contest

A great contest can not only increase engagement from your current subscribers and customers, but it can also effectively help you reach new customers. In fact, BeardBrand was able to grow their social presence by 300% and doubled their email list in less than one week with a well thought out online contest.

App: Gleam

Gleam is a contest platform that help you run campaigns that help you grow your audience and engage with your community. Using Gleam, you can set up contests that allows your customers and visitors multiple entries based on pre-determined actions they take, like signing up to your newsletter, sharing the contest on their various social networks or following your brand on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

6. Encourage Referrals

Referral marketing, simply put, is word-of-mouth marketing from your customers and it’s one of the most powerful and influential forms of marketing there is. In fact, according to Nielsen, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family, over all other forms of marketing and 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family.

App: Forewards
Tap into the power of referral marketing with Forewards. This nifty little apps makes it easy to set up a automated referral campaign, encouraging your customers to share your store with their friends. Forewards even has pre-written the referral emails and will automatically A/B test them on autopilot to get the best possible conversion rate.

7. Introduce Live Chat

Studies suggest that 21% of online shoppers prefer live chat over other communication methods, like phone and social media, and of that 21%, 79% said they liked it because they could get answers to their questions immediately. That’s important because in the world of ecommerce, answering customers questions and handling objections before they leave your site, significantly increases your chances of making a sale.


App: Tidio Live Chat
Tidio is a simple and easy to use live chat widget for your store that will help you engage and connect better than ever with your visitors. With features like support for mobile devices, offline contact form and automatics replies, this app should meet the requirements of event the most demanding users.

8. Write Great Product Descriptions

Writing great product descriptions is an art. Not only is it an art, but it's extremely important for ecommerce businesses to have unique and compelling product descriptions not only to help sell the product, but product descriptions also help your search engine optimization. Unfortunately, most people tend to neglect this aspect of their store, opting to just write a few lines or even copying and pasting manufacturer descriptions.


App: Content Sumo
The Content Sumo app gives you access to an experienced team of professional writers, translators and proofreaders. Use Content Sumo to help you create unique and compelling product descriptions for each of your products. Content Sumo writers provide a quick turnaround and unique content using your predefined keywords.

There you have it. Eight tactics and eights apps to help you increase your conversions and sales for your online store. For more marketing tactics make sure to check out the "How To Sell Online" section of the Shopify blog and more more apps check out the Shopify App Store.

Tell us in the comments what tactics you have recently tried and how they worked for you.