Building an email list is a crucial step for retailers looking to establish a strong online presence and drive customer engagement. However, achieving success in email list building can be challenging, especially with the multitude of tasks involved in running an e-commerce store.
In this blog post, Dolma will explore the best practices and tactics that retailers can implement to create an effective email list and see tangible results within a short period.
What is an Email List?
Before diving into the strategies, it’s important to understand what an email list entails. An email list is a collection of email addresses that a business or individual has gathered from their customers, prospects, or website visitors.
These email addresses are utilized to send targeted and personalized marketing messages, newsletters, promotions, or updates directly to the recipient’s inboxes.
Building an email list is essential for retailers as it allows them to:
- Build and maintain relationships with their audience
- Drive customer engagement
- Increase sales or conversions
Segmentation is a key aspect of email lists, enabling retailers to divide their audience based on demographics, interests, or purchasing behavior.
Why You Should Build an Email List
Building an email list should be your top priority if you’re just starting in e-commerce. The benefits of having a strong email list are manifold, making it an invaluable asset for your business.
Here are some key reasons why you should invest in building an email list:
- Affordability: In an era where digital ad costs are skyrocketing and their effectiveness is dwindling, sending regular emails to your email list is a much more cost-effective alternative.
- Precise Audience Targeting: Targeting on ad platforms like Facebook is becoming less effective. However, with email marketing, you can target your subscribers based on specific factors such as demographics or behavior, resulting in more relevant and impactful campaigns.
- Personalization: Email automation allows for targeted messaging based on customer behavior, which is impossible on social media platforms, unlike ads.
- Relationship Building: Email marketing enables you to build relationships with your audience through personalized and automated emails that accompany customers along their journey. This level of personalization is not possible with traditional ads.
- Ownership: Building an email list has the advantage of being completely yours. You don’t have to rely on any other company or platform, making your email list a valuable asset.
Best Practices: The Do’s and Don’ts of Building an Email List
Before delving into the specific tactics for building an email list, it’s crucial to establish some best practices. These guidelines will ensure that your email list is of high quality, engaged, and effective at driving sales for your business.
Get a Reliable Email Service Provider (ESP)
With an ESP, you can easily create and customize signup forms and landing pages, track the effectiveness of each form, segment your subscribers, and send automated emails to different sections of your target audience.
Get More Visitors to Your Site
Increasing website traffic is essential for building an email list. Here are some proven methods for driving more traffic to your website:
- Create Engaging Content: Share great content on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Include a clear call to action and a link that directs users to your store.
- Use Ads: Facebook ads, in particular, are cost-effective and allow you to target your ideal audience. Many e-commerce businesses use Facebook ads for email list building as they can scale with your needs and business growth.
- Create Engaging Content via SEO: Invest in search engine optimization to improve your website’s organic traffic. Although it takes time, organic traffic is free and platform-agnostic.
Keep Your List Healthy
Maintaining a healthy email list is crucial for achieving high conversion rates and generating strong marketing results.
Here are some practices to ensure a healthy email list:
- Regularly Clean Your List: Remove inactive subscribers, duplicates, and email addresses that bounce to avoid wasting resources on disinterested individuals.
- Use Confirmation Emails: Send confirmation emails to new subscribers to verify their email addresses and confirm their subscriptions. This ensures that your list only includes legitimate email addresses.
- Remove Inactive Subscribers: Regularly remove subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails in a while to keep your list active and prevent emails from being marked as spam.
- Segment Your Audience: Divide your email list into smaller groups based on demographics, behavior, or preferences to create personalized and effective email campaigns.
- Assign Tags to Contacts: Use tags to categorize your subscribers based on their interests, behaviors, and preferences. This allows for more targeted and relevant email campaigns.
Never, Ever Buy an Email List
Buying an email list may seem like a quick solution to fast-track your list-building efforts, but it is not a recommended practice.
Here’s why:
- Spam Trap Risk: Email lists purchased from unreliable sources may contain spam traps, leading to your sender’s email address and IP address being blacklisted as spam.
- Lack of Originality: Many purchased email lists are sold to multiple buyers, resulting in a lack of originality and uniqueness.
- Potential ESP Blockage: Excessive spam complaints can lead to your email service provider terminating your account, effectively killing your email list-building efforts.
- Low-Quality Contacts: Contacts from purchased lists are often low-quality leads that can mark your emails as spam. This can severely damage your sender’s reputation.
- Wasted Money: Acquiring an email list and sending campaigns to contacts on that list can be costly. However, instead of generating sales, you may face negative consequences.
- GDPR Violations: If the purchased contacts reside in the EU, you risk violating GDPR and facing heavy penalties.
Email List Building Tactics
Now that we’ve covered the best practices, let’s explore 12 effective tactics for building an email list:
Use a Standard Opt-In Form
It is essential to have a standard opt-in form for any e-commerce site. Typically, it is placed at the bottom or middle of the screen for easy visibility.
For platforms like WooCommerce, sticky sign-up forms are available at the bottom or sides of the screen. An opt-in form is crucial for capturing email addresses, so it shouldn’t be underestimated.
Offer Incentives
Some popular incentives include offering discounts, running exclusive sales for email subscribers, or providing free shipping for new subscribers or those who reach a certain purchase threshold. Incentives create a sense of value and urgency, motivating visitors to join your email list.
Use a Surprise Popup Form
In addition to the standard opt-in form, surprise popup forms can significantly increase conversion rates. These dynamic forms can be timed to appear after a certain duration, number of page visits, or when the user is about to leave the site. Including a strong call to action and an incentive in the popup form can further boost sign-ups.
Create a Targeted Landing Page
A targeted landing page focuses on a specific audience or offer, making it highly effective for list building. The landing page should have a clear and compelling headline, persuasive copy that speaks to the audience’s pain points, a strong call to action, and a simple and clean design. This combination encourages visitors to enter their email addresses and join your list.
Gamify Your Signup Forms
Gamifying signup forms can make the process more engaging and increase conversion rates. This interactive approach adds an element of fun and excitement, improving the chances of visitors signing up.
Offer Giveaways
Giveaways are a popular tactic for list building as they create excitement and encourage participation. By offering enticing prizes and promoting the giveaway on social media platforms, you can attract new subscribers and generate buzz around your brand. Ensure that the prize is relevant to your target audience to attract qualified leads.
Share Lead Magnets
Lead magnets, such as PDF guides, ebooks, or stock images, offer valuable resources in exchange for email addresses. These resources should be directly related to your niche and provide value to your target audience. By offering lead magnets, you can capture email addresses and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Make a Free Interactive Tool
Creating free interactive tools like quizzes, calculators, or generators can be an effective way to engage visitors and capture email addresses.
These tools should provide value and solutions to the user’s problems, making it worthwhile for them to provide their email address. Promote your tool through various channels to maximize its reach and exposure.
Use Offline List-Building Tactics
Networking events, in-person fairs, and meetups provide opportunities to collect email addresses from potential customers.
Always carry business cards and have a registration list with an email column available at your booth or during face-to-face interactions. Building a community offline can also lead to email list growth.
Use Referral Programs
Encourage your subscribers to share your offers with their friends and family in exchange for incentives such as discounts, gift cards, or freebies. This strategy not only helps grow your email list but also strengthens customer loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.
Collaborate with Other Businesses
Collaborative marketing with complementary brands can expand your reach and attract new potential customers. You can promote your email list to the subscribers of businesses in your industry by partnering with them.
Collaborative marketing builds brand awareness and establishes your business as a trusted authority in your field.
Use a Live Chat or Chatbot
It is possible to capture email addresses using live chat and chatbots, in addition to providing customer support. By offering discounts, exclusive content, or helpful resources through live chat or chatbot interactions, you can encourage visitors to provide their email addresses and join your email list. This approach enhances customer experience while growing your list.
Conclusion
Building an email list is a vital undertaking for retailers aiming to boost customer engagement and drive sales. You can build a robust email list that serves as a valuable asset to your business by following the best practices and tactics outlined in this comprehensive guide. With the right strategies and a customer-centric approach, you can successfully build an email list that brings you closer to your business goals.
