Simple Tips for Growing Your Email and SMS Subscriber Lists

During a year when eCommerce is thriving more than ever, you may be looking for new ways to help your online store stand out from the rest. Letting your customers know about new products and promotions through personalized email and text notifications is a simple way to communicate with a large subscriber base at once. There are several quick moves you can make to grow your email and SMS subscriber lists. Here are some steps you can take to boost your subscribers this week!

Why Should I Increase My Email and SMS Subscribers?

As an eCommerce business owner, your advertising options are somewhat more limited than those of companies with physical locations. Businesses that are run entirely online must, for the most part, depend on digital forms of advertisement to get the word out about their products and services. Although social media posts, banner ads, and other online marketing strategies can also boost your eCommerce company’s brand awareness, sending emails and text messages directly to your subscribers adds a personal touch. Approximately 17.8% of all marketing emails are opened, which results in a higher conversion rate than nearly all other types of digital advertising.

Growing Your Email Subscriber List

Growing your email subscriber list is as simple as giving visitors to your eCommerce site a reason to provide their contact information. Compiling a list of email addresses from past customers who have provided theirs during the checkout process can be a good starting point. Still, you’ll need to incorporate more strategic ways to grow your email list to increase your reach and get the most out of your email advertising campaigns.

Create Incentives for Signing Up for Your Email List

Your potential customers are more likely to sign up to receive your marketing emails if there is something immediate in it for them. Depending on your business’s nature, there are several ways in which you can encourage visitors to your eCommerce shop to provide their email address in exchange for something that benefits them. By offering your customers a discount on their first order or free access to an informational article in exchange for signing up to receive promotional emails, you provide an incentive that can convince your customers that providing their email address is to their advantage.

Run a Contest

Everyone loves to win something. By running a giveaway or other type of contest on your eCommerce website, you can pique your site visitors’ interest in connecting with your brand. You might offer a free product, service, or another unique prize to grab your potential customers’ attention and convince them to enter your contest.

Requiring them to stay on your email list until the drawing to remain eligible to win allows you to contact them several times to showcase your best-selling products for several days or weeks. This can be an incredibly useful tool for building brand awareness if your eCommerce shop is new or new to your customer. Some of eCommerce’s most lucrative contests have even boosted email subscribers by a staggering 700%.

Offer Exclusive Promotions

Although offering an initial discount is one of the most effective ways to provide an immediate reason for your customers to sign up for your marketing emails, it isn’t uncommon for new subscribers that receive emails from a company they only planned on buying one specific product from to unsubscribe after using the discount to make a purchase. Continuing to provide exclusive promotions, early access to new products, giveaways, and other exclusive perks for your subscribers throughout the year can encourage them to stick around.

Growing Your SMS Subscriber List

Not all of your potential customers are as willing to share their phone numbers as their email addresses, particularly if they do not use an unlimited cell phone plan. Also, according to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), you cannot merely send marketing texts to numbers that customers have provided for communication purposes about a specific order when checking out without the customer’s permission.

However, many companies are able to run successful SMS campaigns by having customers knowingly opt-in to receiving texts, often in exchange for a discount or other incentive. Offering simple incentives, such as a small discount or free shipping on a customer’s next purchase or a free small item, is one of the most effective strategies for growing your SMS subscriber list. According to the TCPA, you must clearly inform your customers that they consent to receive text messages when offering these promotions.

Strategies for Increasing Subscribers on Both Channels at Once

Multiple of these strategies can be used to grow both your email subscriber list and your SMS subscriber list. Many eCommerce platforms find success in building more than one type of subscriber list to reach the largest possible number of customers. Although you can ask subscribers to provide both pieces of information at once to unlock an incentive, some potential subscribers may be reluctant to do so, and this approach can result in a lower conversion rate.

Instead, Attentive Mobile recommends utilizing a two-step process to generate the most successful leads. This SMS marketing platform explains that by first having subscribers join your email list and then asking them to add their phone number later, you can obtain more new customers and a higher conversion rate than you might with other approaches. This way, you will still have subscribers’ email addresses even if they choose not to share their phone number. Asking for both pieces of information separately results in more leads and a higher overall conversion rate.

Talk to a Professional

At Future Holidays, we offer various services that help our clients optimize their eCommerce platforms to achieve the best possible results. Our email marketing experts can help you identify ways to fine-tune your email marketing strategy. We are here to help you design and build an attractive and functional website that best meets your eCommerce company’s needs. Contact us today to learn more about how working with us can benefit your business!