According to a recent study, email accounted for 18% of orders generated for US e-commerce sites. This was actually an increase from the previous year (17%).
Even with young people email is still important. Another study found that with Millennials, 47% would prefer to communicate with retailers via email more than any other channel including in-person and social media communication.
Email is one of the trust standbys in the online marketing world. It’s not as flashy as social media, but email is still getting the job done for e-commerce companies.
Acquiring email addresses is a big challenge for e-commerce companies.
Here are some ideas to help you acquire more email addresses that should help bring you more revenue through your email marketing efforts.
1. Co-Sponsored Contests
I’m a big fan of companies working together in ways that benefit each of the companies and also their shared target customers.
In the catalog world it’s common for companies that share target customers, but sell different products to exchange names and mailing information.
It doesn’t work like this in the email world, but companies can still work together in a few ways.
The first is to run a co-sponsored contest.
I’m always on the fence about promotions and discounts. You’re bringing in customers that look for discounts and how long can you offer them discounts and will it make current customers mad if you offer the best discounts to first-time buyers?
And contests I’m kind of up in the air about too, but I think they can work really well. But instead of just doing it on your own, find another complementary company to do a contest with. Use your promotion budgets to pay for advertising to drive traffic to the signup forms.
The power of two will be greater than each company alone and you can each share the email addresses you receive.
And together you can probably offer a better prize or prizes for the winners than you could on your own.
2. Co-Sponsored Content
Your own content is great and we’ll mention a few ways to do your own content below, but co-sponsored content can be better for your target customer and more appealing to more customers.
When you work with complementary companies it’s usually a win-win-win situation.
The type of content can get creative. Maybe it’s a big guide on the new fashion trends for the coming year. Or here’s an example:
One company sells baby clothes. Another company sells baby furniture. The two companies partner up to create The Ultimate Guide To Surviving As A New Mom.
Make this thing as good as possible. Do interviews. Create guides. Make it almost like a book. You could offer it for free as a download and collect addresses it that way and co-sponsor it and promote it with ads.
3. Surveys
Surveys can work pretty well, but there has to be something in it for the people filling it out. Maybe you’re looking to gain insight into the most popular products in the industry or trends in the industry; something the target customer would be interested in seeing once the survey is completed and published.
Or you could offer them something in return for their effort. Some e-commerce companies offer discounts or free items or things like that.
4. First-Release Email Promotions
One benefit of signing up for an email list for consumers is that they get to know about new releases before others or simply before they would otherwise would.
And how you can attract these passionate consumers would be with paid ads. You could look at the products and brands you’re selling and create a landing page for first-release email notices.
The ad might say:
Do you love XYZ Brand?
Be the first to know when new products are available.
Don’t miss out!
Then have your email signup form.
You might want to partner with the brands on these so you’re not making them upset by bidding on their brand terms. And you can bid on the general terms that people might be searching for that relate to the brands they love.
Or you could do this campaign based on categories instead of brands:
Do you love running?
Be the first to know when new running products are available.
Don’t miss out!
5. Selective Pop-Up Forms
Pop-up forms get the best response for email signups, but they can be annoying especially if you see them over and over again when you visit a website and you’re already on the email list.
Now most email providers allow you to be selective with the pages you put the forms on. Look at your analytics and look for pages that are often first-visit pages or pages that new visitors often bounce from or exit the site from before they reach checkout.
Those are the pages you want to add appealing email signup forms to so you can capture their email address before they leave.
The offer, as always, will be the important part. An unappealing pop-up won’t get an email address unless you have something your target customer wants.
A piece of content like a guide might be appealing. See the one above for the idea for new mothers.
6. Blog Subscriptions
A blog is a big commitment, but many retailers are using it as a way to attract new potential clients. A blog can do this through various channels including organic search, social media and email.
It’s a long-term strategy, but if you’re willing to invest in the effort it can be a big payoff in multiple ways.
And that includes as a way to build an email list of people that subscribe to your blog content.
For a blogging strategy, look at the questions your target customers are asking and answer those questions with blog posts. Focus on the things that don’t necessarily have to do with your company, but that your target customer would be asking if they weren’t aware your company even existed.
For example, how fast does your company ship items is a question that wouldn’t make a great blog post.
The question, how often do new moms need to buy diapers is a better question to answer on a blog post.
7. Snail Mail Offers
People still use snail mail?
Yes they do.
Many people still prefer catalogs for their at-home shopping. E-commerce sites have come a long way, but a segment of the popular likes using catalogs to shop before buying online.
And they still like getting email too.
One way to get email addresses would be to use a catalog or mailing piece as the offer for potential customers. You can promote something like a Big Book Catalog. People need to provide their information to get it including their email address.
8. Virtual Suggestion Box
Finally the last method for getting new campaigns is a virtual suggestion box.
This one can be tricky, but you could pick up a few more potential customers that aren’t already on your email list.
Ask questions like:
Are we missing something you want?
How could we win your business?
You could keep this list of subscribers segmented separately and email them with different campaigns to kind of work them into your regular email offers.
Conclusion
You can put forms on your main website, but the ideas above should help you get even more email addresses. You know that email marketing is still a great channel for sales. The challenge is getting those new email addresses. The ideas above should provide you with some ways to build your list.
Image: Flickr
