6 Ways to Grow Your Online Shop’s Email List
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Email List Building
Every product-based business owner dreams of orders flying in each day and that their business is a booming success. With technology rapidly growing, you’re probably wondering how you can expand your business’s online presence.
The answer is a lot more simple than you would think… email lists! These lists, once generated, will be your saving grace when it comes to promoting new items, sales and upcoming popup events for your shop.
While social media can be a great place to show off your brand and engage with your followers, those contacts do not belong to you. They belong to the platform. If Facebook crashed or Instagram banned you, you would lose your connection with that audience you worked so hard to cultivate. An email list is the way to maintain a relationship with your customers. So, how can you grow your email list?
Here are a few ideas to help get you started:
1. Facebook Groups
Many shops have a VIP group on Facebook. These groups have the ability to set up questions before accepting new members. Utilize this feature to capture these emails to be added to your email list.
Follow these steps in your Facebook group to help you set it up from the desktop browser:
—> Under admin tools on the left hand sidebar
—> Membership Questions
—> You can set up to 3 questions
One of these questions should be to get your audience to enter their email address.
An example could be- “From time to time, we like to send out emails to alert our followers about new items and sales. We’d love to include you in this, please provide us with the best email.”
2. Branded Stories
One of the most underutilized tools on social media is the stories feature. Why? Most people think that you have to physically show up on your stories but that’s not necessarily true.
Yes, it’s best to show up every now and then so that your followers can see your face and have a little interaction with you, but you can create branded content and post it in your stories using editing tools like Canva. (affiliate link)
If you create branded templates, you can easily interchange your content so that you’re consistently posting in your stories about subscribing to your shop’s email list.
3. Special Promotions
To encourage more subscriptions to your email list, you can hold a special promotion/offer for those that are subscribed to your list. For example, you could post on your social media stories that those who are subscribed will have access to a special sale or promo code on their next purchase.
4. QR Codes
If you’re out at a physical event, you can create a QR code for people to subscribe to your email list. Print these barcodes out on cards that are passed out, placed into SWAG bags or on your event table for people to scan with their phones.
Kick it up another notch and let people know that if they subscribe while they’re at the event, they can be entered into a giveaway. People love a good incentive!
5. Brand Collaborations
Brands are frequently collaborating with other brands and influencers to get the word out on their product. Find the brands that you have worked well with in the past or ones that resonate with your own brand and talk to them about collaborating with you on a giveaway.
Most collaborations will bring brands and influencers more followers, but instead of having people just follow you on social media, have them subscribe to your email list in order to be eligible for the giveaway.
6. Automatically Collect Emails at Checkout
I saved the simplest for last. Make sure to collect the emails of people who actually make purchases from you. They are your most valuable audience, since those that have previously made a purchase are more likely to do it again. In your checkout process, you can require customers to create an account with their email address. Then show a sign up option for email marketing at checkout. Be sure to preselect the sign up option. This way, if a customer does not want to join your list, they have to actively uncheck the box. You will find that few will make the effort to do this.
Once you start growing your email list, the next step is to nurture it. Remember, your audience is subscribing because they want you to share information and updates.
Need help growing and nurturing your email list? Book a free Discovery Call to see how Mama Hen Media can help you build a successful and effective email marketing strategy.
