How to Build an Email List to Boost Your eCommerce Sales

Email marketing is a powerhouse when it comes to generating eCommerce sales. This is an indisputable fact.

In the digital era, which provides consumers with endless shopping options, sellers who are not actively building their email lists are missing out on tons of potential profits. This is particularly true when one realizes that email databases decay at a rate of more than 20 percent annually.

Therefore, in an effort to ensure that retailers are getting the most out of their email marketing efforts, today, we will be covering some of the most effective strategies for building an eCommerce email list.

Let’s get started.

Newsletter Popups

While it is true that many people are not a fan of popups, the reality of the matter is that they are a useful tool for collecting email addresses. As is stated in Sumo’s popups analysis of over two billion popups:

“The average conversion rate of the very best pop-ups was 9.28 percent. To put that into perspective, if you get even 150 visitors per day to your site, you’d have 418 signups in a month… The average pop-up conversion rate is 3.09 percent. Most pop-ups fall into this category… So, while 3.09 percent might seem small, imagine you have 100,000 visitors on your site. That turns into over 3,000 subscribers. That makes the 3.09 percent average seem alright in retrospect.”

Ultimately, popups work and if merchants are looking to harvest contact info, they should absolutely be using them.

Offer Discounts

Discounts are a tried and true lead magnet that have proven extremely effective in the pursuit of email addresses.

Retailers can include a line on prominent pages of their store offering customers a code for free shipping or 15 percent off their next order in exchange for their email. Many customers will be happy to fork over their contact info to reduce the cost of their purchase.

Run a Giveaway

Another prevalent method of adding new subscribers to a brand’s email database and cultivating awareness is to run a social media giveaway.

By creating alluring graphics and linking to a dedicated landing page on the retailer’s site, sellers can excite potential winners to enter their email address for a chance to win a handful of prizes.

Moreover, giveaways help to keep a business top-of-mind with consumers and make them feel like they are a part of something bigger.

Include a Signup Option at Checkout

Every online retailer has an excellent opportunity to collect their customers’ email addresses during the checkout process. Those who fail to do so are missing out on a massive opportunity to get in front of a highly engaged segment of their audience.

Therefore, by integrating a seller’s cart with an email service provider such as Omnisend, retailers can automate the collection and enrollment in automated email campaigns like the welcome email series.

Leverage Social Media

Social media websites, as some of the most popular destinations online, can be a great way to build an email database. For instance, retailers can add links to sign up directly on their Facebook business page.

Alternatively, retailers can also employ Facebook ads to grow their email database by promoting a lead magnet such as a discount (as mentioned earlier), eBook, an offer of free shipping or a variety of other enticing promotions.

Since sites like Facebook and Instagram supply sellers with incredibly sophisticated targeting tools and options such as Lookalike Audiences, retailers can target users who are highly likely to be interested in the offer and the store’s products.

Place CTAs Prominently

Calls-to-action are a prolific thing in the eCommerce industry. While most businesses utilize this tool as a means to get folks to add items to their cart and complete purchases, they can be employed just as effectively to collect email addresses.

Retailers can deploy CTAs across their website, urging visitors to sign up for their email list. However, if merchants opt to utilize this strategy, it is critical to remember that relevance is key. Spamming visitors to join their email list is a great way to get folks to leave a site without giving up their email or making a purchase.

Generate Dedicated Landing Pages

Building effective landing pages is a core tenet of eCommerce effectiveness. After all, landing pages are utilized to highlight specific product categories, showcase current sales, celebrate special occasions like holidays and the like.

Understanding this, retailers can also build a landing page dedicated to harvesting email addresses. By generating a particular page for this, retailers can highlight all the great things that consumers are to gain from signing up, which could include things such as:

• Special product offers
• Early access to sales
• Gated content
• Discounts and promotions
• News updates

Ask Email Recipients to Share It

When merchants are sending out emails that contain genuinely good content, it is in their best interest to ask their subscribers to share the message with their friends and family members.

In order for this to work, retailers must consistently and reliably ask audiences to forward the email to someone who will also enjoy its contents. If merchants make a request here or there at the bottom of the email, people are most likely going to ignore the ask.

Instead, sellers should treat this request like YouTubers do when asking their audience to “like, share, and subscribe for more content like this.”

Understanding this, by including social media sharing buttons, merchants can increase the likelihood that their subscribers will agree to the appeal and help amplify the message.

Final Thoughts

Growing an email list as a means to increase sales is a critical strategy for merchants to engender online success. Between the immense profits that can be gained from eCommerce email marketing and the rate at which email lists deteriorate, it is imperative that sellers engage in this activity all year long.