8 Ways to Build Up Your Email List for Ecommerce

There’s no doubt that email marketing can help you build a better brand, establish credibility and gain more customers.

If your ecommerce business doesn’t have an email list to market to, however, then all of these benefits are irrelevant. That’s because you will be missing out on one of the most effective customer touch points available to online retailers today.

In this article, I will cover eight different ways ecommerce businesses can build up their email list to help your online store reach its full potential.

Email Marketing for Amazon Sellers

Before we get started, a quick word on the relevance of email marketing for ecommerce businesses that sell primarily on Amazon.

Even though online retailers typically use email marketing to generate traffic for their own websites, the argument can also be made for using the email list to send traffic to their Amazon store.

As many of us know, visibility on Amazon is heavily influenced by sales velocity. The A9 algorithm loves seeing frequent transactions during a given month. The more transactions you can generate, the better your products will rank on the Amazon search engine.

This means that any tactic you can use to drive up sales will benefit your bottom line directly as well as indirectly by boosting your product’s visibility.

By sending out a couple of emails every month promoting some of your newer products, or those whose sales figures have dipped, your seller account’s overall visibility will benefit.

How to Grow Your Online Store’s Email Subscriber List

Let’s check out some proven and time-tested tactics to help you build an email list for your ecommerce business.

1. Implement an Exit-Intent Pop-up

Exit-intent pop-ups are one of the most effective tools for increasing the number of email subscribers on your ecommerce website.

These pop-ups are triggered by visitor behavior and typically appear during a visitor’s last moments before they leave your website. 

Using Javascript, websites are able to spot when a visitor is on the verge of clicking the “back” or “close tab” buttons.

Upon logging this, an exit-intent pop-up appears and offers visitors a great reason to stay on your website and sign up for your newsletter.

A great motivation to one (or both) of these two things will have many potential customers stopping in their tracks and reconsidering heading over to one of your competitors.

Check out fabric and craft retailer, Joann, to see a great example of an exit-intent pop-up at work.

source: joann.com

2. Offer a Referral Program

To build a decently sized email subscriber list, you need to offer great incentives. And few incentives are as powerful as one that benefits two parties: the existing customer and the prospective customer.

Your referral program can come in many different forms, depending on the type of your ecommerce business and the kind of products you sell. 

Some businesses offer a discount for both new subscribers and the existing customer that refers them. Others provide both parties with perks such as free shipping, access to exclusive content, or even cash back.

Whatever you decide to offer as an incentive for your referral program, make sure it’s something that’s valuable enough to compel visitors to share their and their friend’s email addresses.

Transparent Labs is a great example of an ecommerce business that has a referral program on its website. 

The referral process is triggered by an attractive, enticing call to action: a highly visible button in the site’s bottom-left corner that reads simply: “Get 15$ Free.”

Once the user clicks on the button and submits their email address, a second pop-up window appears, asking them to provide the contact details of a friend.

Both parties involved in this program benefit from the sharing of new email addresses. For existing customers, it is an easy way to get a discount on future purchases. For prospective customers, it is an easy way to get a $20 discount on their first purchase.

source: transparentlabs.com

3. Include a Signup Page Link in Your Product Inserts

Product inserts are a great way to communicate with customers who have just purchased your goods.

They’re typically used to motivate customers to leave a review for the product they’ve just purchased.

Many ecommerce businesses also use them to provide customers with an introduction of the kind of materials used in their products and how these can be properly cared for.

Not so widely known, however, is the fact that you can also include a link to an email signup page in these inserts.

This signup page link will allow you to capture new email addresses from customers who may have just purchased your products. In doing so, you can turn them into loyal subscribers and, eventually, long-term customers. 

Landing Cube offers a brand new “email signup page” feature that enables ecommerce businesses to create signup landing pages quickly and easily.

4. Make Newsletter Signup Part of the Checkout or Registration Process

When a new customer completes their first purchase or registers as a user on your site, they’re pretty much always going to provide you with an email address.

Smart store owners use this opportunity to add the newly provided email address to their list of subscribers.

What’s important here is to let your customers know that they’re subscribing to your newsletter and to give them the opportunity to opt out. The last thing you want is to get a bad reputation for spamming your customers, and sending them unsolicited emails is a surefire way to do this.

Fantasy Jocks lets new customers know that they’re automatically subscribing to a newsletter by inserting this message into the opt-out field label.

The trophy retailer also uses the opt-out checkbox label to communicate the value that a subscriber will get from the newsletter by using the term “special offers.”

The purpose of this approach is to make new customers reluctant to opt out because most customers are quite interested in special offers like discounts or flash sales. 

source: fantasyjocks.com

5. Get Clever With Your Denial Triggers

A tactic that many online retailers are using when communicating the value of their newsletter is to make it clear what users will be missing out on by not signing up.

They draw attention to this message by making it part of the link or button that the user needs to click in order to close the pop-up.

There’s no way a person is going to completely overlook a message reading, “No thanks, I don’t want to learn about special offers!” It’s far more visible and meaningful than a simple “x” close icon.

By clicking on this link, the customer admits that they’re going to miss out on something that could benefit them in the future.

One of my favorite examples of this tactic in action comes to us via Brook Linen. 

The online retailer motivates newsletter signups by offering free shipping in their exit-intent pop-up.

The only way for a user to close the site’s exit-intent pop-up is to click on a link reading: “No thanks, paying for shipping is my fave.”

This link text is smart, witty, and extremely effective at communicating the newsletter’s value.

source: brooklinen.com

6. Create Special Offers for First Orders

Many of your store’s first-time visitors will leave without adding a product to their checkout basket. Even more of them will leave without completing a purchase.

What can you do to turn these visitors into future customers?

Easy: offer them a discount or special promotion if they subscribe to your newsletter.

This way, you’re not only increasing the chances of converting a first-time visitor into a customer, but you’re also giving them an incentive to sign up.

Here’s how Mannequin Mall does it.

Close to their site footer on each product page, a large section of real estate is devoted to a super-simple email signup form. 

All the prospective customer needs to do to enjoy a $20 discount on their first purchase is complete one field and part with their email address.

This is a powerful incentive for prospective customers to not only provide their email addresses but also go through with that all-important first purchase.

source: mannequinmall.com

7. Give Your Subscribers Something for Free

A monthly giveaway is a tried-and-true tactic for increasing newsletter subscriptions.

Many of your customers are likely to sign up for a newsletter without hesitation if they know that, in exchange, they’re going to get something useful and valuable from you.

This could be something as small as a $5 coupon, or it could be a free product with a value of $50 or more.

So effective is the notion of “something for nothing” that some online retailers find that it’s not even necessary to specify the details of the giveaway. 

Simply communicating the concept “you’re entering a monthly contest to win something for free” is often reason enough to sign up.

That’s how Gili have managed to grow their subscriber list simply by using the text: “ENTER OUR MONTHLY GIVEAWAY” above the email address input field.

source: gilisports.com

8. Create Coupon Landing Pages

What’s an email address worth to you? Can you attach a monetary value to each new newsletter signup?

This isn’t a rhetorical question.

By working out what percentage of subscribers become customers and the profit each new customer represents, many ecommerce businesses are able to say exactly what they’d be willing to spend on a new email address.

Once you’ve established this figure, don’t hesitate to spend money on a new signup by offering a discount coupon that acts as a lead magnet. 

Just make sure that you don’t pay more than a new email address is worth, or your customer acquisition cost will shoot through the roof.

Each coupon can be delivered to the new customer via a custom landing page dedicated to a specific discounted product. You can then promote each of these landing pages on your website, social media, or any other digital channel where you frequently interact with prospective customers.

Landing Cube’s Amazon Landing Page feature enables store owners to set these pages up without much hassle. Check out our demos here.

In Closing

Most ecommerce store owners know that building up an email list is one of the best ways to acquire more customers, increase revenue, and boost Amazon sales velocity.

Email marketing is a powerful, highly effective way to communicate directly with your prospective customers as well as those who have already purchased from your store.

A well-crafted email marketing campaign empowered by a giant list of subscribers can be the difference between a successful online business and one that struggles to make ends meet.

By following the tips in this guide, you’ll be well on the way to building up your own powerful email list – the first step towards running killer email marketing campaigns.