White-label ecommerce for marketing agencies: adding stores to ads, SEO and email

Marketing agencies send traffic to shops they don’t control. Adding a white-label store to your ads, SEO and email work puts the whole journey, from first click to checkout, under your brand and on a monthly fee.

Why should a marketing agency offer online stores?

Every marketing agency knows this conversation. The ads are working, the clicks are cheap, the emails are opened, and yet sales are flat. Then you look at the shop: a slow product page, a checkout that asks for too much, a discount code that doesn’t work on phones. The shop was built by someone else, and you can’t change it.

When the client judges your work by sales, the store is part of your work whether you run it or not. Offering the store yourself puts the last step of the journey, the one that turns a click into an order, in your hands. It also turns a campaign retainer into something stickier: a client who runs their shop on your platform is far less likely to move their marketing elsewhere.

This is what a white-label ecommerce platform is for. If the idea is new to you, start with White-label ecommerce: what it is and how agencies use it. In short, the platform company runs the software and hosting, and you offer the store builder to clients under your own name, logo and prices.

What does white-label ecommerce mean for a marketing agency?

For a marketing agency, white-label ecommerce means you can add “we run your online store” to your services without hiring developers. Your client signs in to a portal with your brand, adds products and takes orders. You set the monthly price and keep the difference between it and the platform’s wholesale fee.

It is different from recommending a store builder and earning a referral fee, where the client becomes the platform’s customer. We compare the three models in White-label vs reseller vs affiliate programmes, and explain who owns the software, the brand and the client relationship in White-label SaaS for agencies.

How does a store fit with ads, SEO and email?

The store is not a separate product. It is where your channels meet. Here is how each part of a typical marketing retainer connects to a DripFunnel shop.

Paid ads and social

• Offers per campaign. Shops can create discounts that work with a code the shopper types, or apply by themselves at checkout. See Create an offer.
• A code per channel. Give each campaign its own code. On plans with reports, the shop’s Top offers report shows how many orders used each code and the sales with it, which gives you and the client a simple, honest read on which channel sold.
• Landing pages. Extra pages, such as a lookbook or a seasonal collection page, are built in the portal, block by block. See Add pages and journal posts.

SEO and content

• Titles and descriptions. Each shop sets the title, description and share picture for its home page, and its own search text for every product and page. See How your shop looks in Google.
• A blog. The Journal is the shop’s own blog, written in the portal, on some plans.

Google’s own guidance is worth sharing with clients: it asks for a distinct, descriptive title on every page, and warns that identical descriptions across pages aren’t helpful. Google may still choose its own title or snippet, so write for people first.

Email and retention

• Cart reminders. Emails that bring shoppers back to a checkout they left. The shop chooses when they go and what they say, and on some plans whether they include a discount. See Cart reminders.
• Customer groups. Lists such as VIP or Wholesale, so an offer can go to some customers only. See Customer groups.

Be clear with clients about measurement. A DripFunnel shop’s reports show orders, money, best sellers, markets and which offers worked. They don’t show which website or ad a visitor came from: that needs a separate analytics tool. Agree how you will measure campaigns before you sell a package.

How should you package stores with marketing?

Most marketing agencies sell retainers already. The store simply becomes one more line in it. Three packages cover most clients:

Price the store part as a monthly plan, not a one-off build. Our hub on how to charge clients monthly for an online store explains what to include, and agency margin maths shows how the wholesale fee, your price and what you keep fit together.

Which clients are a good fit?

• Retailers already spending on ads whose shop is holding back results.
• Brands selling only on marketplaces or social media that want a shop of their own.
• Local businesses starting to sell online, who already trust you with their marketing.

Check the basics too. Today, card and online payments and couriers are available to DripFunnel shops in India and the United States; shops in the UAE can’t take payments yet. Not sure your agency is ready? Read Is white-label ecommerce right for your agency?

How DripFunnel handles this for marketing agencies

DripFunnel’s white-label partner programme is built for exactly this: an agency that already looks after a client’s growth, adding the shop under its own brand. More than 75 partners across the globe run client stores on it.

• Your brand on the portal. Your clients sign in at your own address, such as store.youragency.com, and see your product name, logo, colours and support contact. Emails to them go out in your name. See Brand your merchant portal.
• Your plans and prices. You decide what each plan includes and set monthly and yearly prices. For each price, the console shows DripFunnel’s fee and what you keep. See Create your plans.
• Stores built from a description. The AI builds the storefront from a description in plain words; the client previews it on desktop, tablet and phone and publishes it.
• No fee on orders. DripFunnel takes no fee on your clients’ orders. Shoppers pay the shop through the shop’s own payment account.
• One console for every client. Each store’s plan, status and last month’s sales in one list, so you can see which clients are growing. Read How to run dozens of client stores from one console.
• Account managers with the right access. Give your account managers the Support role: they can see every store and, with the client’s permission, open a read-only support session. See Your partner team.

You see each store’s account and totals, never its orders, customers or products, unless the client lets you look in a support session. That matters to clients who trust you with their marketing but not with their customer list. More on this in Who owns a client’s store on a white-label platform?

How to get started

1. Pick three clients whose shop is holding back your campaigns.
2. Decide your packages and what each store plan includes.
3. Choose the name and look of your store product. Our guide to launching your own store builder brand walks through it.
4. Tell us about the clients and shops you run. We agree your wholesale fee, you set up your brand and plans, and we review your setup, usually within 2 business days.

Questions