81% of businesses are using email marketing to drive traffic and increase sales. It’s one of the best and most high-converting marketing strategies and that’s why you should implement it in your business.
Email marketing involves many processes and the first and most important step is building an email list. By providing incentives, customers’ emails can be collected and used for promotional, transactional, and educational purposes to drive sales and build community. Now, let’s get started on how to build an email list for your ecommerce store.
Setting Up The Infrastructure
Building your email marketing infrastructure is not complicated. But, there are some boxes you have to tick.
Here’s the setup checklist:
- ESP Integration: Make sure it connects properly with your store platform
- Form Builders: Set up both exit-intent and timed pop-ups
- Analytics: Connect Google Analytics 4 for tracking
- Double opt-in setup (required in some countries )
Almost all ESP will have a pop-up feature included, if the one you choose happens to not have it, you can install pop-up software to ensure that you have all the features you need.
Apart from that, you should make sure that you are compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR). GPDR is an EU law that aims to protect EU residents’ information and privacy and can result in serious penalties if you don’t comply with the law.
Most EPS will assist users in complying with GPDR. The key thing is to make sure that you get customers’ consent when collecting their personal information and before marketing emails are sent. Using a double opt-in setup is a good protective measure.
Optimize Your Signup Forms
Simple and Straightforward
Don’t include excessive information and words on your email form. It should be as simple and short as possible.
The only sections you should include in your email form.
- Headlines
- Short Description
- Names
- Emails
- CTA
- Privacy Polic
Optimizing for Mobile Devices
Since many are likely to be visiting your website on their mobile, you should optimize your email sign-up form for a great user experience. Compare the appearance of your sign-up forms on desktop, mobile, and tablets and alter them to suit each device mode if needed.
Create Compelling Lead Magnets
Collecting emails from your customers often requires more than just asking, especially if your customers have yet to be passionate about your brand. You will have to provide value and incentives for them to agree to receive potential spam emails from you in the future.
Here are some lead magnets examples:
- Free shipping
- Get [X]% off your first order
- ebook/guide on [topic]
- Early access to all sales + new products
- Exclusive bundle offers for subscribers
- Free [product] with your first purchase over [amount]
Performing A/B testing is crucial in order to figure out the best version that gives you the highest conversion rates. Therefore, you should always be testing not just different offers, but also headlines and CTA. But it’s important to only make one change at a time so you know what’s working and what’s not.
Where to put your email sign-up forms?
Placing email forms in different locations on your website increases visibility and sign-up rate. Having just one pop-up form on your homepage or in the footer is simply not enough since different visitors may respond to different types of opt-in forms at different times.
Exit-Intent Popups
Exit-intent popups are triggered when visitors have the intention to leave your website. By providing an irresistible offer, they are more likely to make a purchase and you can convert up to 7% of non-converting visitors into email subscribers.
Timed and Scrolled Popups
Timed and scrolled popups
When visitors show some interest in your products and have purchase intent, you can provide them with offers to incentivize them to make a purchase. Timed or scrolled popups are effective in encouraging them to take action.
Set the right time for the popup to appear and make sure that it doesn’t appear too quickly since it can be annoying for your visitors. When implemented together with exit-intent popups, you can be confident that your visitors will uncover what your website has to offer.
Product Page
Embedding email collection directly into product pages is another strategy to collect visitors’ emails. Add a “Back in Stock” notification option or “Get notified when they are back in stock” option to collect their emails. So when the product is restocked, you are ready to notify to make a purchase.
They should also be in places such as headers and footers where it seems appropriate so visitors can see them.
Set Up Your Welcome Series
Manually sending emails is time-consuming. Fortunately, email service providers offer automation features to streamline your efforts.
Welcome series is a series of emails you send to your subscribers once they have signed up to your email list. In Welcome Series, you can include various content on different time frames for your subscribers, here is an example of how you can do it:
Day 1: Brand story + bestsellers
Day 3: Customer testimonials + social proof
Day 5: Educational content about products
The reason why a Welcome Series is important is because they receive 5 times more clicks than other email marketing campaigns. By including educational and promotional content in your Welcome Series, you can capture their interest early on and convert them into loyal customers.
Summary
Here is the summary of how to build your email list for your e-commerce store:
- Setting Up The Infrastructure
- Optimize Your Signup Forms
- Create A Compelling Lead Magnets
- Set up your welcome series
Building an email list is the first step in employing email marketing in your business. Your email list will become one of the most valuable business assets. Once it’s set up, you can start leveraging your email list to bring your ecommerce store to a higher level.
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