Over the last ten years or so, marketers all over the globe have expressed concern that the days of email marketing are over. With the rise of social media and the amount of time that people spend online and on social media every day, it’s no wonder that marketers have turned away from some more traditional methods of marketing. While there is still a time and a place for television, radio, and direct mail, marketing dollars have undergone a shift in recent years to more modern methods. And email marketing is still receiving a strong portion of allocated marketing spend for businesses big and small.
Email marketing, when done correctly, can have a potential return and investment of over 4000%! This statistic alone demonstrates that email marketing remains a vital tool in the marketing tool belt, especially when it comes to attracting new customers and keeping existing ones.
Email marketing requires a targeted list
To execute a successful email campaign, you need to start with a targeted list of customers that align with your niche and value proposition. There are three critical priorities to consider when building your list.
- Relevance – The beauty of email marketing is that you can personalize your content to get the right messages in front of the right customers at the right time. Therefore, relevance is all about finding the people that will be most interested in the product or service that you have to offer.
- Quality – You can leverage your other marketing strategies to help gather real email addresses from real people. In the past, marketers would purchase email lists from various list providers. But today, this is really not necessary as there are so many ways to capture email addresses and ensure their accuracy. Emails can be requested directly on your website (such as when customers request access to gated content), on the bottom of sales receipts or on your Shopify site email receipts, and even at the time of purchase for an online transaction. You can also request email addresses through social media campaigns and pushes.
- Quantity – Once you have the right message to communicate to the right customers, you can then determine the frequency and cadence by which you want to go after these customers in email.
How to best build your email list
Though we provided some quick examples above on how to capture email addresses from the customers in your target audience, each approach works a bit differently. All of these strategies work, but perhaps the best way to grow your email list is directly through your Shopify store.
- One of the most important and easiest ways to capture customer email addresses is through your homepage. Email pop-ups are an excellent strategy to keep a customer engaged and to capture their information. But marketers need to ensure that they don’t generate pop-ups that can be annoying or distracting. Rather, well-timed pop-ups such as when a customer moves their mouse off the page (as though they plan to navigate away from your site), can work well.
- Many marketers add an email sign-up function in their website’s navigation footer. Locations on your business site where potential customers are more likely to seek further information about your organization can be the perfect place to start. Your website navigation footer, your Contact Us page, and even your About Us page can all be great places to include an email collection prompt.
- If you put together a pop-up store at a mall or some sort of trade show, this can be a great time and place to capture information. You can either collect email addresses via old school clipboards, or via more sophisticated options such as lead scanners, iPad collection templates, and more. Many marketers choose to offer promotions in exchange for a customer’s email address. For example, you can provide a $ off or % off type discount if a customer provides their email address and then makes a purchase within a designated period of time.
- Today’s consumers tend to spend two hours or more per day on social media. And, as customers tend to enjoy multi-channel shopping experiences, it is an excellent idea to request email addresses on your social media channels. When a customer provides their email to your organization via social media, it then provides you with an opportunity to start engaging with that customer in a more personalized manner.
Collecting those email addresses – fast!
All of the above strategies will help you to collect emails, but sometimes, these processes can take time, and you need to get your business growing quickly. When time is of the essence or when you really want to make a splash through an email address acquisition campaign, you will need some sort of call to action that results in a surprise and delight or another reward for those who bite.
Email lists thrive on the value that your business can provide a customer. If you have nothing to give them, then they are not going to be inclined to share this personal information with you. A common strategy here is to offer your customers some sort of freebie, or better yet, a value add, in exchange for their email address. And this doesn’t always need to be something completely free (though customers do love free). For example, if you are in the apparel business, offer a heavy discount on a second item in their cart in exchange for their email address.
Social media-based contests and promotions are also a great way to collect a lot of valid and meaningful email addresses in short order. If you are a fan of influencer marketing, partnering with a key influencer could be an excellent strategy for you. Influencers frequently leverage giveaways for their own purposes in growing their audiences. So, you may be able to absorb and justify the cost of providing your product at no charge in exchange for their ability to help you promote and ultimately kickstart your giveaway email acquisition campaign.
If you feel overwhelmed in trying to collect email addresses, don’t fret as you don’t have to do this on your own. Shop Style Design can partner with you to identify a strategy that will help you get the email addresses you need to affect your business and grow your revenue positively.
