7 tips to grow your email list organically

Are you looking for some quick-win tactics for building your email database and acquiring subscribers, to send regular marketing content, news and product offers to? We’ve outlined 7 great tips to grow your email list organically, including examples from top retail brands:

1. Make sure people can opt-in from all website pages

Having a feature content block on your homepage is always going to drive more subscribers, but you also need a way to capture email addresses on the majority of your web pages. We recommend capturing email addresses on all pages except for the checkout process.

Here’s how fast-fashion retail moguls, Missguided do this:

Missguided use this approach on every page template, except for their checkout.

Here’s how New Look achieve the same effect, taking it one step further and identifying the gender of the subscriber, which is really simple and very effective:

2. Make the benefits super clear

It’s so important to explain the benefits of subscribing to your email newsletters and marketing content. Otherwise, how would anyone know what’s in it for them? Our friends at Cox & Cox do this nicely, explaining the benefits in bullet form, so it’s easy to read:

3. Make the process simple

It can be tempting to ask for a lot of information in one swoop when attempting to grow your email list, but it’s always best to just collect the email address at the first step of the sign-up process. Here are some other key considerations:

• Only ask for information that you will actually use
• If you’re asking for sensitive information like date of birth, say why you’re asking for it (for example, for birthday emails)
• Ask for further information on a separate page, after you’ve collected the email address

4. Ask for more than just an email address

So, assuming you’ve followed best practice and solely asked for the subscriber’s email address in step one, it’s time to ask the subscriber for a little more information. This will help you to understand more about customer needs and profile, enabling you to offer more relevant content to subscribers.

There are two ways to do this:

• Option 1 is to ask subscribers additional questions straightaway after they sign up
• Option 2 is to have a preference centre that you link to in one of your welcome emails

The option you choose needs to feel right for your business – there are no hard and fast rules.

5. Consider using incentives

If you’re struggling to grow your database, but you’ve perhaps already implemented a lot of best practice tactics, then it might be time to offer an incentive. It doesn’t have to be as generous as this example from Nasty Gal:

25% off is a massive discount, so don’t feel the need to go that far! You could offer free delivery, 5% off or even just something little for free when they first order. This could be plenty to convince them to subscribe to your email list. It’s best to try out different options and see what’s most effective for your brand.

6. Embrace the pop-overs

We know that not everyone is a fan of pop-overs, but they are so effective at capturing more email addresses.

We love this example from Thomas Cook because it’s so simple and offers a small incentive for signing up, which is probably enough to convince visitors to subscribe:

7. Capture email addresses in stores

This is something that has been very effective in North America, for brands such as Macy’s and one of the first retailers to offer this in the UK was Apple. Capturing the email address of each customer in your stores, is a great way to provide post-sale support and aftercare, as well as further marketing. It’s a sure-fire way to grow your email database very quickly.

Summary

We hope you found these email list growth tips useful. Try implementing some of the tactics on your ecommerce website. Organic email list building is a cost-effective way to acquire new customers and nurture subscribers throughout the customer lifecycle.

Space 48 is leading UK ecommerce agency, based in Manchester. Specialising in Magento development and ecommerce website design, we create award-winning omnichannel strategies for major retailers. Get in touch with our ecommerce consultants and see how we can improve your website performance.