How to build an email list for email marketing

Ways to Build an Email List for a Shopify Store

Shopify is an e-commerce platform which lets you start, grow and manage your business by creating and customizing an online store. One of the best strategies for increasing sales in your online store is email marketing.

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that is used to send relevant and personalized marketing messages via email to current and prospective customers in order to educate, build loyalty and trust, and ultimately to sell your products. 

Why is email marketing one of the keys to e-commerce success? 

Because building an email list of the people who visit your online store is building an asset for your business. An email list is considered traffic you ‘’own’’.  

That means that you can reach out to them at any time without paying more for advertising and without having to rely on an external service like Google or Facebook that can change their policies, ban your ads, and put other barriers between you and your target customers. 

Plus, since you will be capturing the emails of people who visit your store, the people in your list will be those who have already demonstrated some level of interest in your store, and are thus already ‘’warmed up’’ and if you continue to nurture your relationship with them, they will be more likely to buy in the future. 

So what is the first step to enhance your business by email marketing? Of course, building an email list of your customers. 

How to Build an Email List for your Shopify Store

To start unlocking the potential of email marketing, you need a list of subscribers. For this purpose, you need to convince visitors to your website, especially the ones who are visiting for the first time, to give you their email address. The following steps will help you build your email list even before you sell any products.

Adding Pop-Up Offers to Your Store

Pop-ups can help increase the number of sign-ups with right offers made to the right customers. You can add a welcome pop-up that appears a few seconds after visitors arrive at your site and offers them a discount code if they provide their email. You can also set up an exit intent pop-up which will only show when the visitor moves the mouse off the page. Again, it can be a simple pop-up offer them a discount in exchange for their email address or one that gamifies your store with a spin wheel that they can play to win various discounts in exchange for their email. 

Adding Email Sign-Up Option on Your Website's Footer 

You can test small offers by locating them on your website where visitors are more inclined to look for additional information. They may contribute less but are bound to prove an effective way to grow your list. When a shopper scrolls down to your website's footer, there must be something catchy to attract their attention and encourage them to subscribe. 

Using a Sign-Up Button on Your Facebook Fan Page

You can add an email sign-up button to your Facebook Fan Page to build your list. As you grow your brand on Facebook, you’ll be able to capture some of that interest and convert it from traffic you are borrowing or buying from Facebook to traffic you own by getting them onto your email list. 

Getting Emails at Your Physical Location

If you have a physical store, you should take advantage of in-person purchases and try to get your customers’ emails at checkout. You could just ask for it or you could incentivize them to provide their emails to get a discount on their next purchase. 

Creating a Questionnaire To Engage Your Target Audience 

You can create a questionnaire for market research and share it with your friends and followers on social media platforms in order to get their email address. You can even send this questionnaire to the target audience before the launch of your product in order to build awareness and confidence in your potential customers. This questionnaire may include a special offer for the ones who fill it and provide their email address such as, "Upon filling this brief questionnaire, you would get 10% off of your first online purchase with us."

Final Words

There are all kinds of Shopify stores, but no matter what you are selling, growing your email list is a winning strategy for growing your store’s revenue without having to spend more on advertising. It doesn’t get much better than that!