It's not necessarily essential to focus too much on your ecommerce site's total conversion rate, but you should certainly devote some attention to first-time visitors, particularly those who arrive via low-intent channels—they'll require the most convincing on their road to completing a purchase. That's where email marketing as a channel may be really beneficial. Build an Email List.
An email has great conversion rates across numerous sectors, in addition to being the go-to technique to rescue this otherwise lost business. According to data, firms may earn $44 for every dollar spent on email marketing, with a 6.05% average conversion rate for landing page visitors generated by email.
It's simpler to persuade someone to give you their email address during their first visit to your ecommerce site than it is to persuade them to make a purchase—free, it's and you can even add incentives like discounts or a free gift.
You'll need a list of subscribers to start reaping these benefits and unlocking the full potential of email marketing. You'll start building your list as soon as you start making sales, but why wait? Before you sell your first product, there are measures you can take right now to start developing your email list. Learn more about subscription-based email marketing if you operate a subscription-based business.
Effective email marketing starts with a targeted list
An email list is the foundation of any successful campaign. The easiest way to get started is to create segmented and targeted email lists. If your lists aren't properly managed, it's pointless to spend time creating attractive email campaigns with smart design, compelling language, and exclusive offers. The following are three critical goals for creating a valuable email list:
- Quality: Get real information from people—and never buy email lists.
- Relevance: People that are truly interested in your items should be your target audience.
- Quantity: After you've completed the first two tasks, you can begin focusing on volume and expanding your list.
4 Ways to Start Building Your Email List
Your website, like your email list, is a valuable asset that you have total control over. And, because some of your most valuable subscribers will be curious customers who didn't commit to a purchase on their first visit, it makes sense to start developing your list with your online store.
1- Add a pop-up offer to your homepage
You don't want to teach customers to anticipate or wait for discounts, but there are times during the customer journey when discounts are helpful, such as when a visitor is about to click the back button. This is your first chance to rescue a potentially profitable deal.
Email pop-ups can be beneficial. Pop-ups may be disliked by certain customers, but test after test has proven that, when presented with the correct offer to the appropriate audience, they can drastically boost email sign-ups. You may also conduct testing to improve and tailor your offers while reducing the perceived inconvenience of a pop-up.
To begin, test an exit intent pop-up on your website. These will only appear if a visitor moves their mouse away from the website, indicating that they want to go someplace else. You may be able to block these pop-ups for anyone who has been a past client or is already on your list, depending on your tool's targeting choices. This allows you to tailor your text only for new clients.
I received a 10% discount on my first purchase after seeing a “How It's Made” piece from the Grovemade newsletter.
Because a visitor who leaves before making their first purchase might be difficult to reclaim, you should consider offering a discount—as long as the arithmetic makes sense. The overall pricing of your goods, profit margins, and possible offer will all influence the viability of various discounts for your company.
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2- Try an email sign-up form in your website’s navigation or footer
Small incentives should be tested in areas of your website where customers are likely to search for more information about your company.
Although the conversion rate for these places is likely to be low, the contribution they make to growing your list over time can mount up. What kind of material can attract a shopper's eye and urge them to subscribe as they make their way down to your site's footer to discover more about your brand?
Beardbrand presents the value of its newsletter in terms of what the reader may expect. It's not simply a place to get product updates; it's also a place to learn about grooming.
3- Collect email addresses at your next pop-up event
Emerging companies may use temporary pop-up and pop-in stores to raise visibility, get product feedback, and give customers a hands-on, tactile experience with a new product. They are, nevertheless, a clever approach to growing your email list.
Remember that forms used for email marketing and lead creation may simply be converted from URL to IRL with only a pen and paper. You may bring a clipboard and ask people to jot down their names and email address, or you can provide an iPad so people can enter their addresses immediately to better sync with your email marketing platform of choice.
Consider providing a unique offer to get customers to join up in your store. “Join our mailing list to win a $25 gift card“, for example, or “Enter to win 25% off your first online purchase“.
It's a good idea to separate these lists by event so that you can follow up with targeted emails.
4- Use a sign-up button on social media channels
People follow businesses on social media for a variety of reasons, but the most common reason mentioned in most studies is that they want to be informed about new items. It makes sense to advertise your email list as another alternative on your social media platforms because it may also assist support that goal.
Although not all platforms support linking, there are general solutions. You may use Linktree to insert numerous links in your Instagram bio. This allows you to create a single link that directs visitors to an email sign-up form. You might want to keep track of the subscribers you get from Instagram separately so you can see how effectively it's affecting your list's growth.
You may also use a call-to-action button on your Facebook business page to encourage people to join your email list.
6 Ways to Accelerate Email List Growth
After you've established a strong foundation and begun adding new members to your email list, it's time to consider more advanced strategies, such as unusual ways that might result in dramatic increases in subscriber growth. You'll even discover a few out-of-the-box ideas in the list below to help you put a fresh concept into action.
1- Use a chatbot to engage with potential customers
Chatbots, a technology that is only beginning to realize its full potential, currently provide a few practical methods to incorporate automation into your messaging-focused channels, saving you time and effort in customer care.
MobileMonkey, for example, lets you create marketing campaigns within a bespoke chatbot to broaden your message options. You can use your chatbot campaign to post a unique offer that encourages people to submit their email addresses in exchange for a special discount from your shop—similar it's to a conventional form, but it's more beneficial because it's an automated prompt and natural to a popular channel.
2- Test third-party list growth tools
There are a plethora of simple-to-use apps available to assist you in growing your email list, some of which offer ingenious twists to tried-and-true methods. Even better, many of them work with your Shopify store. Here are a few to think about:
Spin to Win is a Wheel of Fortune-style tool that can be used to collect email addresses on your website. By providing their email address, consumers may win different rewards (such as discounts) that you set, in an unusual, well, twist on the traditional pop-up offer. Just think about what it may imply if buyers “fail” this game and miss out on a great deal.
Personizely provides a number of options for prompting visitors with a just-in-time pop-up. The built-in flexibility to utilize a regular form or the Facebook Messenger connection, which allows you to contact Messenger users the same way you'd contact a subscriber on an email list, making it appealing to businesses trying to develop their newsletter.
Many pop-up systems, such as Personizely, provide a choice of options for converting casual readers into subscribers, including email and chat applications.
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3- Run ads to drive traffic to a landing page
Landing pages are great for growing your email list since they're generally designed with a specific goal or conversion point in mind. Not only will you be able to construct a customized offer on a distraction-free page, but you'll also be able to track your progress far more easily.
As a result, landing pages are an excellent way to direct people to your website. For instance, you may use Facebook advertisements to direct consumers to a downloadable guide related to your product (such as a recipe handbook if you sell food.) With today's targeting tools, you may create an offer with a specific target group in mind, then fine-tune factors like location, age, gender, occupation, hobbies, and more to reach the appropriate individuals.
4- Create a questionnaire to engage with your target audience and collect email addresses
To connect with your target audience, you may use Google Forms or Typeform to construct a survey.
This survey may be used for market research or even to create crowdsourced blog material. You may include a field to collect email addresses and either provide a note informing users that they will be added to your list if they complete the form or include a question at the end asking if they want to be included.
Send your form to friends and family, post it to Facebook groups, tweet about it, and add a special incentive for those who complete it. “After completing our brief questionnaire, you'll receive a special offer for 10% off your first online purchase”, for example.
You may even try sending out a survey before launching your product. This is a fantastic method to establish your email list and invite friends, family, and potential clients to join you on your entrepreneurial adventure.
5- Offer something for free in exchange for email addresses
Email lists typically rely on the exchange of value to entice people to subscribe, but because readers won't “receive” anything until your first broadcast, freebies are frequently utilized to give a more immediate incentive.
Freebies and downloadable how-to information are tried-and-true methods, but you may also look into forming relationships with similar firms to diversify your offerings and obtain a promotional partner. If you offer cooking tools, for example, you might tempt members with a $20 Thrive Market gift card.
When you sign up for Tortuga's newsletter, you'll receive a free packing list as well as regular travel suggestions.
If you don't know how much an average subscriber is worth to your company, you could wish to invest in an offer with an upfront fee but no recurring expenditures once it's completed.
A free guide, often in the form of additional tips and tricks related to your product category, is an excellent example. You may give a big incentive to join your newsletter after the cost of your time (and yes, your time is quite precious!) or the accompanying writing and design expenses, and you won't have any recurrent expenditures, other than hosting the guide itself.
6- Hold contests or giveaways on social media
By making the process of subscribing into a sharing event, content and giveaways may assist speed list growth. When your list of subscribers is limited and you don't have any current traffic to exploit, the extra momentum of a contest might be extremely beneficial.
Partnering with other ecommerce firms that offer comparable clientele is one method to expand this technique. Your items will complement each other with the proper partner, making the offer more appealing than if you conducted the contest alone.
Another method is to seek out influencers who already have a following of your prospective consumers. You might be able to justify the expense of offering your goods in return for their capacity to initiate your giveaway campaign because influencers frequently utilize giveaways for their purposes—typically, to break through the noise and expand their following.
You may use tools like ShortStack or ConvertFlow to build a separate landing page for your giveaway so that it has a single destination and traffic can be tracked more easily.
Building an email list is not one size fits all
Because no two businesses are the same, it's crucial to experiment with different techniques for growing your email list to see what works best. Your investment in expanding your list may fluctuate depending on how valuable email marketing is as a channel for your firm. In any event, we hope these pointers inspired you and helped you get started on developing a high-quality email list for your ecommerce store.
What list-building strategies did you use to grow your email list? Please let us know in the comments section below.
