Ecommerce Sales Funnel example: How Boom’s Badass Conversion Funnel Generates $20 Million Every Year

Bonus Material: Get the PDF of Boom’s Entire Funnel Visualized &
the tech that powers Boom’s site

In 2016 Boom did about $17.8 million dollars in revenue selling cosmetics to older women.
In 2018 revenue was over $20 million dollars.

Today I’m going to show you exactly how Boom sold over $1,422,500.15 of makeup in one month so you can copy EXACT ecommerce sales funnel to grow your sales and take customer satisfaction to the next level.

Not too shabby for a company that almost never existed.

If you don’t know

When Ezra Firestone, the CMO approached the now CEO, Cindy with the idea to partner up about starting an ecommerce company and makeup line, Cindy a former model and makeup artist to the stars responded :

“Does this world really need another tube of lipstick.”

Undeterred, Ezra convinced Cindy that the world needed her take on makeup for older women and that with his marketing prowess they could spread that message and create a successful brand.

Boom has sold over 20 Million dollars this year.

Table of Contents

[Tip #1] Sell more by being ultra clear about your customer

[Tip #2] Develop a pillar idea and use it throughout your funnel

[Tip #3] Base your Facebook ads on high performing organic posts.  Then amp up the color scheme and copy.

[Tip #4] Use Facebook video ads for top of funnel and to set the stage for your retargeting

[Tip #5] Remember the golden rule for ecommerce success: Retarget, Retarget, Retarget

[Tip #6] Create Youtube TrueView ads and TrueView for shopping to increase your ROAS

[Tip #7] Start a bought X but not Y campaign to increase your ROI from loyal customers

[Tip #8] Use exit-intent popups on site and push notifications to get people into the funnel

[Tip #9] Stay top of mind by sending engaging Facebook Messenger content (stories, testimonials)

[Tip #10] The six email abandoned cart method to capture more revenue

[Tip #11] Leverage upsells on the cart page and post-purchase to increase revenue by 10%-15%

[Tip #12] Use a Facebook Messenger Chatbot to do abandoned cart and post-purchase follow-up to create a better shopping experience and increase revenue.

This article is written specifically for ecommerece businesses that are generating 10MM – 50MM per year. Though parts will work for smaller or larger companies.

Quick note:
We have never worked with or for Ezra or Boom. Everything in this article was created from our experiences and research on Boom. What I describe below is what Boom is doing today, which may change in the future.

Boom’s E-commerce Sales Funnel Reverse-Engineered

Boom’s ecommerce sales funnel is no secret. Ezra has publicly shared this funnel in quite a few live calls.

But, it’s nearly impossible to cover a whole ecommerce sales funnel in a one hour call. It’s an intricate process and what you see below is the high-level overview. And it is missing pieces.

Not to worry, we’ve found all the components, compiled analyzed and distilled them into this blog post.

By the end, you’ll know exactly how to implement a Boom style funnel for your business.

Now here’s exactly how to do it.

 A big reason that Boom’s marketing/sales funnel works so well is because they are hyper-clear about who the customer is.

One glance at the Boom site and you know who their product is for.

Images, copy, site feel, even the banner declare:

• Women
• Over 50
• Subverting beauty norms for an “honest and realistic approach”

This clarity allows the whole funnel to work like well-oiled machine.  Messaging is super tight and targeted, the story resonates, the images, models, content, ads etc… everything hits home.

Boom’s Content Is The Engine For The Funnel: The Pre-sell Page

Booms content is crucial to it’s funnel, but not in the way you think.

Boom doesn’t treat content like most companies.

Ezra doesn’t use content to generate traffic.

Nearly all of Boom’s 30k per month SEO traffic comes from brand related search terms, not it’s blog.

The company’s top traffic generating blog post tops out at paltry 200 visits per month.  

From a pure search engine optimization perspective, Boom’s content is unremarkable and frankly not worth writing about.

Here’s where Ezra’s genius kicks in.

Rather than a traffic play, Boom relies on a few honed pieces of content to create a connection with the customer.  

The pieces and concepts that hit home, become integral parts of the funnel.You may have heard of pillar content.

Develop A Pillar Idea And Use It Throughout Your Ecommerce Funnel

One example from Ezra of a foundational winning idea is: 
Top 5 Beauty/Makeup tips for older women

This one pillar idea has become:

• A Top performing blog post
• A presales page
• Foundation for a lead capture on site
• The basis for many ads (lead and retargeting)

Top Performing Blog Post

Here’s Boom’s top blog post for social interaction from the past year: A Realistic Approach to Beauty: 5 Tips for Women Over 50 – BOOM by Cindy Joseph Blog

This post garnered 4,100 facebook engagements and has outperformed any other content by more than 2x.

Presales Content Page For The Ecommerce Funnel

Ezra uses a variation of this content as a pre-sell page in his funnel. The title of which is: 
5 Makeup Tips For Older Women By Boom’s original founder (and makeup artist turned  silver-haired supermodel), Cindy Joseph.

A version of the page is a template in Ezra’s landing page builder software (Zipify) (affiliate link) for Shopify.  

This template for content has been serving boom since a page titled: 5 Tips For Embracing Natural Hair was published July 6, 2011.

For comparison sake here’s the Zipify version and the current live presell version.

Here’s the current pre-sell version:

Lest you think that this page isn’t popular, check out these social metrics:

If you’re interested in an awesome breakdown of Ezra’s pre-sell page take a look at this  (affiliate link) article courtesy of Chris Von Wilpert, copy chief for sumo.com.

On-Site Lead Capture And Ads

This same pillar idea is used throughout Boom’s Facebook ads and for on-site lead capture.

 We’ll explore the ads and on-site tactics in the following sections.

Takeaways:

• Base your landing pages/presell pages on a pillar idea that resonates with your audience.
• You don’t need to pump out content. Advertise and promote key pieces content that get customers into the funnel.

Now, for a quick overview of Boom’s traffic sources before we go one step back in the funnel and analyze the ads that lead to this pre-sell page.

Top Of The Ecommerce Marketing Funnel: How Boom Generates Traffic And Gets People Into Their Funnel

Here’s a quick overview of Boom’s sources of traffic:

1. On-site content (SEO)
2. Facebook (ads)
3. Adwords

Reviewing the Data From (affiliate Link) SEM Rush we see that search, direct and social seem to be the biggest sources of traffic.

Let’s break it down.

Direct: 

People are aware of Boom and directly typing in boombycindyjosheph.com.  And Boom’s links are being shared over “Dark Social” ie. privately shared links via email, sms, facebook messenger etc..

Search:

Mostly brand related terms (we break it down below).

Social:

Social is tricker. SEM Rush only measures PPC data from Google.  So any social traffic even from Fb ads, that Boom is running falls under social.

While we’ll go over some of Boom’s organic social, it’s a safe bet that most of the social traffic is from paid sources

Paid:

Boom does in fact run quite a few ads on Google. Though, the SEM Rush graph doesn’t reflect it because they aren’t traditional search ads. Most of it is display, a fair amount of product list ads 

Ecommerce Funnel Traffic Source #1: Facebook Ads [Breakdown]

We examined Boom’s last 24 Facebook ads.  This is what we found and what we suggest that you copy.

Ad Mix: Emphasize Video

Ezra uses a mix of static image ads, video and carousel ads.

We found the video-heavy mix interesting.  

So, we kept exploring and came across a training where Ezra was going over a Facebook ads case study using Boom as an example.

Ezra uses video in much the same way as a pre-sale page.

They introduce the brand, make a promise about the products and result for the customer.

And they allow Boom to retarget visitors who have viewed the video.

We’ll show you how to setup a Video Ad like Ezra, in a minute.

Takeaways:

• Test video and use view times to retarget customers who have not yet purchased
• Segment viewers for retargeting based on view percentages.

Examining Ad Destinations: Use a Pre-sell page

9 out of 24 Facebook ads point directly to the pre-sell page.

The remainder go to a mix of product pages and category pages, the most common product being the Boom Stick Trio.

And Finally, one ad goes to Facebook Messenger.

After clicking through on the video ads, we found that about half were set up to send traffic to product pages, while the other half sends traffic to the pre-sell page.

Boom Facebook Ad Style [Examples]

Here are six recent examples featuring different ad types.  

What strikes you right away?

Boom features their ideal customer in the advertisements and making her the star. No matter the content or creative for the ad Boom maintains a consistent brand feel.

There’s a marked consistency between Boom’s best performing organic posts its ads. The ads seem to be “amped up” versions of organic posts, in that they use brighter colors and are bolder so that they’ll stand out in the news feed.  

Compare the ads to Boom’s top posts from Jan 2018 – Jan 2019

Data from (affiliate link)  Socialinsider.io

Takeaways:

• Feature your ideal customer in your ads
• Use your best performing organic Facebook posts as inspiration for your ads
• Send traffic to a presell page or product page depending on where they are in the funnel

How To Set Up Your Facebook Campaign According To Ezra

45.8% of Boom’s Facebook ads are video ads. 

There are three HUGE reasons why you should use videos for your top of funnel ads

1. They let you gauge interest based on view time
2. You can segment your audience based on interest
3. Hearing and seeing are worth 100 words.

That’s all well and good but, it’s hard to create video right?

Not the way Boom does it.

Boom turns customer testimonial videos into ads.  Almost zero editing needed.  
And the ad creative?  Taken almost directly from the customer’s mouth.  

They start with a quote on the first line.  Then a bit of follow-up info about the brand.

EXPERT TIP:  Use captions just like Boom.

Facebook video starts out silent.  People have to proactively turn on sound. Since a lot of Facebook browsing happens at work, the sound will likely stay off.  

To engage those people and capture attention ALWAYS include captions…

There are services that will transcribe your video cheaply.

Costs about a buck a minute for human transcription.

And you can get down to about 10 cents a min for AI transcription.

Or you can even get the whole-shebang, captions inserted into the video on (affiliate link) Fiverr

Search: video captions

Later you’re going to target at least three different segments of people based on percentage viewed.

This ability to segment is tremendous. It allows your retargeting to be laser focused and will help your funnel produce a better ROI.  We’ll talk about this more in the retargeting section.

Boom does create other types of videos including product videos, sales vids etc…

The most popular types are:

1. Testimonials
2. How To (makeup tips/demos)

How-tos don’t fit every business.  Testimonials do and they work at every stage of the funnel :)

Facebook Ad Objectives To Use With Video

Ezra reveals the objectives he uses for Boom’s ads:

• Top of funnel, cold traffic, and awareness/ acquisition stage prospects use:
  The conversion objective

  Ezra’s reasoning – Facebook will target the most likely buyers for you.  While your reach may not be as broad, your conversion rate and return on ad spend (ROAS) will be higher, making the conversion objective the right choice.

   

• (Video only) Warm/ Hot Leads, People who have watched a majority of a video, most retargeting use:
  Video views

  Ezra’s reasoning –  Because it will get wider exposure.

Facebook Ads, Top of Funnel Takeaways:

• Test video ads at the top of your funnel
• Turn customer testimonials into videos
• Create custom audiences based on percentage viewed

Side Benefit Of Boom’s Facebook Advertising: Organic Reach

Boom creates lots of engagement on the Facebook platform because of Ads.

Not only do people engage with Boom’s ads, but they become business page fans who interact with booms content.  This helps Ezra stay top of mind and ultimately sell more.

While Facebook accounts for a good amount of Boom’s traffic.  Ezra runs a lot of ads on the Google network, text, display, and even Youtube ads.

How To Rule Google Ads For Ecommerce The Boom Way.

Let’s get this right, Ezra runs a ton of ads on Google.  

These vary between display, text, and video.

As far as we can tell, all of them are directed to the pre-sales page

Boom runs 486 display ads using 251 different publishers.
However, Boom runs very few (1-3) search ads.  

PPC Keywords

Trigger Keyword: boom products

Boom’s top 3 ads in Google according to SpyFu:

In terms of ads, it looks like Boom simply wants to own their own Brand searches and prevent competitors from showing ads based on a search for Boom.

Display Ads To Presale Page:

Here’s a sampling of creatives that show up across the Google network:

The traffic generated from these display ads is fairly evenly distributed among mobile and desktop.

And although Boom does have quite a bit of creative, the majority of their ads are simple text ads.

They may be running some of the display ads as awareness, I can’t tell.  But what I am certain about is that Boom will retarget the hell out of a people who interact with their site or content.

After visiting various pages I started seeing ads for Boom (and I’m a Mid 30’s Guy)  

Boom’s Golden Rule For Ecommerce Success: Retarget, Retarget, Retarget

Ezra retargets EVERYONE who drops out of any step of the funnel.

What ads they are served and the destination depend on where they dropped off.

Retargeting Facebook Video Viewers

Ezra’s Formula is to create three separate audiences based on video view percentage. The longer the view time the higher the purchase intent.

Just to emphasize what we mentioned above, here’s how and where to retarget video ad views based on percentage viewed: 

Retarget Presales Page Viewers

Visitors who only view the presales page then bounce should be retargeted with more presales content.  

Think blog content or soft sell pages like those Ezra uses

Retarget with more pre-sales content/ videos

Consider using customer testimonials here

Retarget Category Page Visitors

Send ‘em back to the category page

Retarget Product Offer (Detail) Page Visitors

Retarget with dynamic product ads back to the product page

Shopping Cart Abandoners

Ezra retargets people who abandon with multiple offers and reminders.

Ezra leverages small discounts to motivate purchase behavior. So he retargets Boom cart abandoners across multiple platforms with small incentives.  I.e. 10% off like in the Messenger ad below

Messenger Ads For Cart Abandonment

Ezra’s secret weapon…

In 2018 he began testing ads for cart abandonment that didn’t go directly back to a product page.

Instead, the ad sends the prospect into facebook messenger to claim a discount.

Just below we’ll briefly show you how to set this up.

Before we get to the ad, you should know that this is most effective if you have a Facebook Messenger Chatbot like Ezra has set up for Boom.

Here’s what the ad looks like:

Once someone clicks on the ad they are sent to Facebook Messenger and get this message:

Then the person is sent to Boom’s website to finish purchasing.

Why not just give the coupon right away?

Because Ezra is using a Facebook Messenger Chatbot.  Only when the person interacts in some way in messenger (clicks a button, clicks a quick reply or types) do they become a subscriber on his Messenger List.

So the Flow is: 
Ad —> Messenger initial message to get the click (lead subscribed to list) —> Deliver coupon —> Back to website

How effective was the messenger for Boom?

Shortly after implementing, Messenger was responsible for $20,669 worth of revenue.

Youtube Ads That Increase Your ROAS

If you think that Youtube ads are too complicated to produce or aren’t a natural fit for an ecommerce store… You’d be wrong.

From Youtube ads, Brett Curry of OMG Commerce was able to recover 2,328 carts for Boom at a cost per conversion “50% below [their] Cost Per Acquisition”.

There are two ways you can implement abandoned cart retargeting in Youtube like Boom does:

• TrueView ads.  
  This ad is a pre-roll ad that plays right before the video that a viewer wants to watch.
• TrueView for Shopping 
  (aka Google Product Listing Ads for Youtube)

You will have produce video. So this type of campaign isn’t for everyone.

But there are ways to produce a compelling video ad without breaking the bank. Using video testimonials with a bit of editing can work wonders.  

In the end, Brett says that the video just needs to “show why your product is awesome and make people want to take action.”

I’ll give you an overview of how to set this up.  But Brett’s article is killer and goes into detail if you’re struggling with the details.

Prompt Repeat Purchases From Customers: Loyalty Campaigns

It’s much easier and more cost effective to sell to people who already like you and your products.

Loyal customers can make or break a business.  But, even people who love you often need prompting, albeit less,  to make another purchase.  

The best part is that loyalty campaigns tend to produce one of the best ROIs for your business.

The Bought X But Not Y Ad Campaign Type

Your customer bought your most popular product but not your second most popular product.  

What do you advertise to him or her?

Yep, you guessed it.  

This of course also works for those who bought the second most popular product, but not the most popular.

Ezra runs these campaigns on Facebook.

But, Brett started running them for Boom on Youtube as well, having similar success.

On-site Mechanisms To Get Leads Into The Boom Ecommerce Sales Funnel

Ezra leaves very little to chance.  On top of being retargeted by ads, Boom tries to bring site visitors into the fold by getting them to sign up to their email list.

Join The Club: Enter The Boom Ecommerce Funnel

Because Ezra puts such an emphasis on encouraging repeat purchases and having “loyal” customers, it’s no surprise that Boom has a “club.”  The club is essentially a loyalty program.

There are multiple spots on each page to “Join the Boom Club.”  In order to do so, a customer has to enter their email address.

One spot in the header, and a second spot at the bottom of every page.

Exit Intent Popups

Should someone try to exit the site, Boom has two different exit-intent popups.  Each seems to trigger based on the page on which you try to exit.

Exiting the Loyalty program page prior to signing up triggers this popup which offers an additional bonus lead magnet in return for signing up for the club.

On a product page, Ezra wants to save the sale and collect your email address.  So he offers a small incentive in order to get your email and hopefully give you enough impetus to complete your purchase.

To do this boom uses OptiMonk to deliver these exit intent messages.  The on-site messages performed so well that Optimonk wrote a case study about Boom’s success.

The gist is this:

212,874 exit intent messages were triggered.  Meaning about 20% of site visitors saw them.

.9% of visitors signed up and became subscribers, gaining boom 8,997 new email subs in a month.

A total of 1,876 visitors used the offered coupon. Generating $148,297 in additional revenue for Boom.

Push Notifications

Boom uses tech from Push Crew to send browser notifications to customers who opt-in. 

Though I’ve only subscribed to the push notifications for about two weeks, it seems that the majority of notifications sent by Boom are about blog posts and other informative content, rather than about coupons or sales.  

In large part, the content mirrors what we’ll show you in Boom’s Messenger.

Messenger Content to stay top of mind.

Oddly, given how much money Boom has made from Messenger, there’s no option to sign up for Boom’s bot on the website.

The only two entry points I could find are from the Messenger ad that I showed you above and from the send message button on the Facebook page.

Once you sign up most of the messages beyond an initial coupon are based on the facebook posts that boom creates, most of which are story/testimonial based with a smattering of messages that are more sales oriented.

Here’s a representative sample of messages that boom sends:

After which you’re sent to the Facebook post with the story and of course a link to the store page to purchase.

Abandoned Cart Emails

Boom sends 6 abandoned cart emails.

Here’s what the emails collective look like.  They go in order left to right, top to bottom.

Their abandonment campaign is explored in detail in this blog post by Digital Marketer

Low pressure upsells on the checkout page

Ezra doesn’t let his customers leave without presenting a fairly low pressure upsell on the cart page

On a different occasion when we had multiple products in the cart we were offered an even bigger Boom bag upgrade.

Takeaway:

Don’t let your customers buy less when they’d be happy with a higher priced item or package.  Offer a small discount on the checkout page to make the low-pressure upsell.

Post-purchase one-click upsell: Increase your revenue by 10-15%

Ezra has sold over (affiliate link) $1,000,000 dollars in upsell revenue for Boom.

In fact, it’s worked so well that he created an app that any Shopify merchant can use.

Here’s how Ezra upsells.

The customer goes to check out and fills out all their info.  Before they get to the shipping page, the customer sees the time sensitive (urgency) upsell offer.

Upsell #1

Offer the customer more of what they just ordered (at a slight discount)

If they say no you can show a downsell or just complete the transaction.

If they say yes…

Upsell #2

Here Ezra hits the buyer with one more related offer at a discount.

The Boom Cleanser upsells (above) converted at 28%!

Overall, 10% of Boom’s total store revenue comes from using his one-click upsell app Zipify

Takeaway:

Don’t let the customer leave without presenting an offer to upgrade, a bundle, or more of what they just bought at a small discount.

How I would Improve Boom’s Ecommerce Sales Funnel

Use Boom’s Facebook Messenger Bot To Create A Better Shopping Experience And Drive Revenue

Ezra makes a good amount of $$ through his messenger abandoned cart retargeting ads. 

However, Boom’s bot, which is built using (affiliate link)  ManyChat is capable of much more.

I’d expand the use case.  

We’d make seven main improvements in Messenger: 

1. On-site Cart Abandonment Reminders Via Messenger
2. Transactional messages, shipping notifications, and post-purchase follow-up through the bot
3. Craft a better user experience in the bot.  Make the messaging more compelling, tell more stories inside the bot and use more visuals.
4. Incorporate better customer service options. Possibly even use DialogFlow for Natural language processing to make the bot more helpful to customers.
5. Create personalized user journeys that help the customer find the exact right product for them.
6. Ask more questions to collect marketing data points about customers for future segmentation
7. Send targeted messaging based user preferences, answers and order values etc…

Use Messenger Cart Abandonment And Post-purchase Follow Up

Cart abandonment messages delivered via Facebook Messenger generate 4x-10x more revenue than email.

Our Swoon-worthy Ecommerce app connects brings the power of ManyChat to Shopify stores. We make it easy to:

Craft A More Compelling Shopper Experience Inside Facebook Messenger

We recorded and broke down the experience inside Boom’s bot, along with our suggestions.

(Ezra, keep in mind that we love ya while you listen to the breakdown)

Incorporate More Helpful Customer Service Options

One of the shortcomings of live chat is that someone needs to manning the chat for it to be effective. Otherwise, you can’t reach the company and barriers to sale can be left unanswered.

Plus there is a time delay between attempting to get a live person and actually receiving a response.

Boom’s live chat is only available during certain hours.

The live support team seems good but, busy.  We tested the live chat and here’s what we found:

(Our first message is non-sensical.  This interaction may or may not be representative of the average.  But, we weren’t going to clog live support with fake requests.)

So I’d replace the current live chat solution in favor of Messenger.  

But to do so, we’d also have to upgrade the bot to use Natural Language Processing (NLP).  

(NOTE: This option is more expensive and only right if your business gets a lot of customer service request through your website or Messenger. )

Basic ManyChat responses are fine for marketing focused bots.  But fall well short if we try to perform a higher level of customer service.  And NLP still will fall short in some cases, so we will need the ability to escalate to a live person.

For a business like Boom, the bot should be able to handle most FAQ type questions, like:

• Where’s my package?
• Should I try Boom if I have sensitive skin?

This functionality alone should take a big load off the live support team.

Create Personalized User Journeys With Product Finders

One of the most powerful use cases for ecommerce Messenger bots is a “Product Finder.”

Like the one we outlined in an article we published on ShopifyPlus:

Why a product finder… Why are there people to help behind the makeup counter?  

Because makeup can be complicated.  

People need guidance to find the right product.  Demos of how to correctly choose and apply the product.

Boom does provide a makeup demo.  But it’s fairly untargeted and just billed as “Cindy’s Demo.”

However, a visitor can watch more if they go to the Boom store.

Why not guide the user to the exact right makeup demo first.  Then let them either purchase or explore more after?

In our experience, this is a better more profitable approach via Messenger.

The other step we’d take that goes hand in hand with a personalized experience is asking the customer/ potential customer more about what they are looking for.

Ask More Questions In Messenger To Collect Marketing Data Points And Better Help Customers

The more data you have about your customer the better you can serve them by sending relevant info and offers.

The best part is that in Messenger you don’t have to be sneaky about or even touch on privacy concerns.  

You ask questions and a vast majority of people will answer.  

• Ask question
• Get answer
• Segment audience

12 Key Takeaways From Boom’s Multi-million Dollar Ecommerce Marketing Funnel

[Tip #1] Sell more by being ultra clear about your customer

[Tip #2] Develop a pillar idea and use it throughout your funnel

[Tip #3] Base your Facebook ads on high performing organic posts.  Then amp up the color scheme and copy.

[Tip #4] Use Facebook video ads for top of funnel and to set the stage for your retargeting

[Tip #5] Remember the golden rule for ecommerce success: Retarget, Retarget, Retarget

[Tip #6] Create Youtube TrueView ads and TrueView for shopping to increase your ROAS

[Tip #7] Start a bought X but not Y campaign to increase your ROI from loyal customers

[Tip #8] Use exit-intent popups on site and push notifications to get people into the funnel

[Tip #9] Stay top of mind by sending engaging Facebook Messenger content (stories, testimonials)

[Tip #10] The six email abandoned cart method to capture more revenue

[Tip #11] Leverage upsells on the cart page and post-purchase to increase revenue by 10%-15%

[Tip #12] Use a Facebook Messenger Chatbot to do abandoned cart and post-purchase follow-up to create a better shopping experience and increase revenue.