How to Build an Email List for Your Ecommerce Business

September 05, 2023

You don’t always need to focus on the overall conversion rate of your ecommerce site, but you should invest time in first-time visitors, especially low-intent channels. Visitors need to be persuaded along the way to purchase. This is where email marketing can provide exceptional value as a channel.

Not only does email help reduce lost sales, it also has strong conversion rates across many industries. According to data, businesses can earn an average of $44 for every dollar spent on email marketing, and the average conversion rate for landing page traffic sent via email is 6.05%.

It's easier to convince someone who's visiting your e-commerce site for the first time to give you their email address than it is to convince them to make a purchase. It doesn't cost you anything, and you may even get an incentive like a discount or free gift.

To start reaping these benefits and unlock the potential of email marketing, you first need a subscriber list. Your list will grow as you start selling, so why wait? There are steps you can take to build your email list before you sell your first product.

Email marketing is about targeting your list.

A successful campaign starts with an email list. The best way to do this is to build a segmented and targeted email list. If your list isn’t properly structured, you won’t have time to spend building beautiful email campaigns with elaborate designs, compelling copy, and special offers. Here are three important priorities for building your email list:

1. Quality: Get real information from people, never buy email lists.

2. Relevance: Target people who are genuinely interested in your brand and products.

3. Quantity: After you have identified your first two priorities, you can focus on capacity and increasing your list.

Increase Your Turnover: 5 Ways to Start Building Your Email List

Like your email list, your website is a valuable asset that is entirely under your control. And since some of your most valuable subscribers will be interested customers who don’t make a purchase on their first visit, it makes sense to look at your online store as the first place to build your list.

1. Post a pop-up on your homepage

You don’t want to make your customers wait or expect a discount, but one useful point is when your visitors are heading towards the back button. The pop-up is your first opportunity to save a potential sale.

Email pop-ups can help. They may be laughed at by some customers, but tests have shown that pop-ups, when targeted to the right audience and with the right offer, can significantly increase email sign-ups. There are also tests you can run to maximize and personalize your offer while minimizing the annoyance of pop-ups.

First, let’s try an exit intop-up in your store. This will only show a pop-up when a visitor moves their mouse away from the page. Depending on the targeting options in your tool, you can disable this pop-up for all users who are previous customers or already on your list. This will allow you to focus your copy on new customers only.

"After visiting the "How It's Made" post in the Grovemade newsletter, I was offered 10% off my first purchase."

Customers who haven't made their first purchase may be reluctant to return. If it makes sense to do so, you should consider including a discount. The overall price of your product, your profit margins, and your potential offer will determine how feasible a discount is for your business.

2. Try using an email signup form in your website's navigation or footer.

For sites where customers tend to look for more information about a business, this is a good place to test small offers.

Conversion rates may be low overall, but your contribution to building a list can add up over time. For example, when a customer goes to the footer of your site to learn more about your brand, what kind of copy would grab their attention and encourage them to sign up?

Breadbrand describes the newsletter in terms of the value subscribers can expect: not just product updates, but also a place to learn about grooming techniques.

3. Collecting email addresses in pop-up events

Temporary pop-ups and pop-up stores are a great way for emerging brands to build awareness, get product feedback, and give customers a hands-on, tactile experience with new products. But they’re also a smart way to build your email list.

Conversion rates may be low overall, but your contribution to building a list can increase over time. For example, when a customer goes to the footer of your site to learn more about your brand, what kind of copy would grab their attention and encourage them to sign up?

Forms related to email marketing and lead generation can easily transition from URL to IRL with just pen and paper. You can bring a clipboard and ask users to record their name and email address, or provide an iPad where users can submit their address directly to sync with your chosen email marketing tool.

Consider offering a special offer to encourage visitors to sign up. For example, “Sign up with our emails and get a $25 gift card” or “Enter to get 25% off your first purchase.”

It's a good idea to segment these lists by event so you can send personalized emails later.

4. Use the Register button on social media

There are many reasons why people follow brands on social media, but the most common reason is to stay up to date with new products. Email lists can also help support this outcome, so it’s a good idea to highlight them as another option on your social channels.

Not all platforms are easy to link to, but there are common workarounds. On Instagram, you can use Linktree to include multiple links in your bio. This way, you can set up a single link that directs visitors to a form to sign up for your email list. You can also track how much of an impact Instagram adds on your list growth by separating subscribers.

Similarly, you can add a call-to-action button to your Facebook business page to encourage your followers to sign up for your email list.

6 Ways to Grow Your Email List

After you have established a solid foundation and started adding new subscribers to your email list, it’s time to look at more advanced tactics, or radical approaches that can dramatically change your subscriber growth. Below is a list of some basic solutions to help you implement new ideas.

1. Communicate with potential customers using chatbots

Chatbots are a technology that is still realizing its full potential, but they already offer several effective ways to introduce automation into messaging-centric channels, saving valuable time and effort in customer support.

For example, MobileMonkey lets you create marketing campaigns within your custom chatbot to expand your messaging opportunities. Sharing a special offer through a chatbot campaign can encourage users to submit their email address in exchange for a special discount from your store, as it’s built-in to a popular channel and has automated prompts, unlike traditional forms.

2. Testing third-party list extension tools

There are many easy-to-use apps that can help you build your email list, and some add clever twists to proven approaches. Even better, they integrate with your Shopify store. Here’s what to consider:

- Spin to Win is a Wheel of Fortune-style app that you can use to collect email addresses. Interestingly, if your customers enter their email address in a typical pop-up, they can receive various prizes (discount coupons, etc.) that you set. Be careful what you mean if your customers miss this game and their requests are not fully processed.

- Personizely has a number of features that help you display timely pop-up messages to your visitors. For merchants looking to create a newsletter, the built-in feature that allows you to use existing forms or the Facebook Messenger integration, which allows you to contact Messenger users in the same way you would contact subscribers to your email list.

Many pop-up tools, like Personizely, offer a variety of ways to convert passersby into subscribers via email or messaging apps.

3. Run ads to drive traffic to your landing page

Landing pages are great for building your email list because they are usually built with a single outcome or conversion point in mind. Not only can you create a specific offer on a page that doesn’t distract, but it’s also much easier to measure results.

This makes landing pages a great place to send page traffic. For example, you can create targeted ads on Facebook that direct people to a downloadable guide that links to your product (e.g., a recipe handbook for food sellers). With the targeting options available today, you can build your offering to the audience you already have in mind, then adjust attributes like location, age, gender, occupation, interests, etc. to reach the right people.

4. Interact with target customers and collect email addresses by completing a questionnaire.

You can engage with your target audience by conducting a survey using Google Forms or Typeform.

A questionnaire can be used to collect market research and crowdsourced blog content. It can include a field to collect email addresses, or a question at the end that asks if users can add a note or add a comment letting them know that they will be added to your list if they fill out the form.

Send the form to your friends and family, post it in Facebook groups, mention it on social media, and include a special offer for people who fill it out. For example, “Fill out our short questionnaire and you’ll receive a special code for 10% off your first purchase.”

Sending out a survey before your product launches is also a great way to start an email list and get friends, family, and potential customers involved in your startup.

5. Get a free gift in exchange for your email address

Email lists typically rely on an exchange of value to encourage people to subscribe, but since subscribers don't get any value until the first notification, freebies are typically used to provide a more immediate reward.

Freebies and downloadable how-to content are a practical approach, but you can also explore partnerships with complementary brands to mix up your offer and secure promotional partners. For example, if you sell cookware, you could entice subscribers with a $20 gift card to Thrive Market .

Tortuga Backpacks offers a free packing list with ongoing tips for travelers when you sign up for their newsletter.

If you don't have a good idea of how much value the average subscriber brings to your business, you may want to invest in an offer that has an initial cost but no ongoing costs once the offer is complete.

A great example is a free guide, usually in the form of additional tips and tricks for a product category. After paying for your time or the associated writing and design costs, you can offer a strong incentive to sign up for your newsletter, and you don’t have any recurring costs other than hosting the guide itself.

6. Host a contest or giveaway on social media

Contests and giveaways can help accelerate your list growth by turning subscriptions into shareable events. The added momentum can be especially useful in the early days when you have a small subscriber base and can’t leverage existing traffic.

One way to increase this strategy is to partner with other ecommerce brands that sell to similar customers. With the right partner, your products will complement each other, making your offer more compelling than if you were to run a contest on your own.

Another option is to find influencers who are already promoting to your ideal customers. Influencers often use giveaways for their own purposes to generate buzz, so you can justify the cost of giving away your product instead of launching a giveaway campaign.

To create a dedicated page for your giveaway and easily track single-target traffic, you can try a solution like ShortStack or ConverFlow .