Using the best SEO practices, tools, and techniques will earn you many visitors and your hard-earned traffic to your website is a well-deserved reward. But the question remains: How to get more email subscribers?
For your ecommerce business to make money, just having visitors is not enough. A visit is only as relevant as the term – a “VISIT”. To survive and thrive, you need your visitors to understand and buy your products as well. You would want to make the most out of every opportunity and ensure that you get more email subscribers and stay in touch with them to turn them into potential buyers.
To turn the visitors into potential buyers, you need to keep in mind that a majority of visitors would not be willing to make a purchase the very first time they come to your website. As per a recent study by Google, visitors need to come across a brand an average of 2.8 times before they’re ready to click that “Proceed to Checkout” button—and more for the items with a higher cost.
So how to make use of your hard-earned visitors? One of the most effective answers is email marketing.
In 2022, if data is gold and email addresses are polished jewelry in a silver box, then email marketing ensures that your jewelry business becomes a massive success.
Email marketing aims at converting your visitors into customers. When a visitor signs up for your email list, they’re giving you permission to show up at their doorstep frequently. This provides you with the opportunity to constantly remind them of your products or services. But for email marketing to show results, people have to make the effort of signing up. This is especially true for an ecommerce store.
While there are comparatively easy methods to grow your email list– purchasing an email list – it is surely the easiest way to annoy people, damage your reputation, and end up on the spam list.
Your best bet to get more email subscribers would be to approach only those targeted people who actually want to see you in their inbox, i.e., people who actually sign-up.
9 proven methods to get more email subscribers
Here are 9 proven methods to get more email subscribers for an Ecommerce Store
1. Offer discounts at Sign-Up
Discounts work wonders for online shoppers as no one wants to pay more than necessary for a product or service irrespective of their purchasing power. It is a tried and tested tactic for ecommerce businesses as you yourself have signed up, at least once, for better discounts before.
By offering a good discount as a sign-up bonus, you avail double benefits as you get more email subscribers and generate more sales at the same time.
You can do this via pop-ups or a box on the side of your website that pairs a form with the sign-up bonus. When visitors sign up, you send them discount codes at the provided email address and it also allows you to easily track your conversions. This whole process can also be automated to save the hassle of doing it manually.
Although the discount prompts the visitors to purchase from your website again, it can also backfire as your products may appear cheaper and of inferior quality which would lead them to devalue your brand. Also, without a discount, the visitors may be discouraged from purchasing again.
2. Place sign-up forms across your website
In the marketing world, persistence definitely pays off. The more you remind your visitors about your offer, the more likely they are to sign-up and convert.
By following this very basic trick of adding sign-up forms across your homepage and website, you can drastically increase your conversion rate and get more email subscribers. You can add sign-up forms at various locations where the visitors usually click. The intention is to inform them of the discount and not annoy them. A few target locations would be:
Between the rows of your product collections
Above your footer
Below your menu bar but above your product and/or collection page
On the left or right side in the empty spaces
For your discount offers to work better, try different variations for offering discounts. For eg: “X% OFF” or a fixed amount off on the total.
3. Use the power of social media
Your followers already trust your brand, why would they hesitate to sign up?
Your followers on social media platforms are the best target group that has the highest chance of getting converted into customers. If you have a significant following in your social media accounts, with the correct approach, you have a list of subscribers waiting to sign up.
For an ecommerce store, the most effective approach would be to add a landing page created specifically to get more email subscribers.
Promote that landing page through your social media channels with Facebook posts, tweets, LinkedIn posts, and Instagram posts and stories.
With Instagram stories, you can add swipe-ups and add links directly. Using Instagram reels is a very effective method to reach out to a wide range of viewers as reels offer a massive reach. Make sure you create quality content that clearly explains your offer, or else you will become highly prone to get brushed off along with the poor quality content available in abundance.
You can also add your link to your landing page URL in your bio URL, which every network offers.
4. Run giveaways for email addresses
More than discounts, your visitors love free stuff, well because we all do. Giveaways are a competent method to leverage your visitors’ innate love for free things.
Although the nature of giveaways might look like a loss at first, consider it as a small price you pay to get more email subscribers that will generate more revenue later.
Choose a product that is the most popular among the visitors – the bestseller or the second bestseller. For signing up or just subscribing to your newsletter, give away multiple products, a set of products or coupon codes.
Alternatively, add a form or popup around your website or homepage promoting your giveaway and then run the contests using a random name picker tool to select the winner for you. To create a sense of familiarity, send them a confirmation mail of their entry being accepted.
Communicate with the winner and send them the product(s) to gain loyal customer(s).
5. Use gated content
Creating useful content for your audience will always lead to a successful online business. In addition to the generally available information, it is always a smart strategy to provide additional information, content, offers, bonuses, coupon codes, etc. behind a form, i.e. Gated Content.
Gated Content is anything that is exclusively available to the subscribers and providing something additional exclusively would make the visitors feel privileged. Even if the content behind the form is harder to access, the visitors would happily hand over their email addresses to access it.
Make sure you provide something that is additional to the free content available for everyone and keep the contents of the sign-up form short and crisp to get more email subscribers.
6. Use exit-intent offers to convert the abandoning visitors
Understand that visitors may abandon your page as they reach the end of your web page. You can still convert the visitors and get more email subscribers at the last moment when they are about to leave.
By using exit-intent offers, you can convert the visitors that:
may have liked the site but have not found a way to sign up
may have liked the offers the site shows in its popup but closed it earlier
may already like the site but haven’t thought about signing up
As the visitor reaches the end of your website, show them the same offers you presented earlier in the form of subtle pop-ups on the sides or you can ask them to sign up for your newsletter.
Using words like “Wait,” or “Before you leave” in your pop-ups attracts the visitors’ interest.
7. Make their experience more interactive
People often like to be challenged and more so to win those challenges. Moreover, an interactive website only adds to the visitor’s delight and you may get more email subscribers.
By hosting small fun games and quizzes on your website, you not only make their experience more interactive but also establish a friendly relationship with the visitors.
By creating a personalized quiz for the visitors, you can understand their preferences and choices better. By asking for their email address to send the results, you get more email subscribers and instant access to their inbox.
The personalized product suggestions and offers based on their quiz performance will also make the visitors more likely to purchase.
8. Host webinars and sessions
If you can provide useful content in the form of webinars and live sessions, many visitors and potential customers would be willing to join by giving away their email addresses.
Webinars and live sessions help you to get more email subscribers and the opportunity to interact with them to build a more personal and long-lasting relationship.
9. Referral programs
Your existing subscribers are one of the best sources to get more email subscribers. That is when they forward your emails to their friends and colleagues.
Word-of-mouth is the most effective marketing technique and is not so difficult to implement. Given that you provide your existing customers with good stuff, you can run referral programs where both the existing users and the new subscribers get a significant discount when someone joins using their referral link.
This technique ensures you don’t lose valuable existing customers and simultaneously get new subscribers. It is widely used by popular brands across the globe to market their products and gain new consumers.
Final thoughts
Avoiding the easy method of purchasing an email list and building an email list naturally can be a slow and difficult process. To get more email subscribers that genuinely want to hear from you and value the idea of having an ongoing relationship with you and your brand is more important than just having a big email list.
The extensive work you put into growing an email list of potential customers will pay dividends over time.