As one of the most widely adopted forms of advertising, email has become an expected part of most online consumers' shopping experience. Many rely on email to learn about new brands and products. E-commerce businesses, in particular, lean heavily on email marketing to connect with consumers, meaning that their ability to succeed depends on a robust email collection strategy. AdRoll's email marketing platform offers a user-friendly interface to easily manage all your email marketing campaigns. In this article, we'll explore the importance of email marketing and dig into the best ways to collect email addresses for your business.
Building an email database is one of the most critical factors in developing a brand and connecting with an audience. In short, this is because research shows that email marketing works: some 90% of consumers want to receive promotional emails from brands they like, and email outperforms social media in acquiring new customers by nearly 4000%.
But even that data doesn't tell the full story. Just as necessary to growing a business is maintaining the audience the brand has already built. Most brands lose about 22.5% of their email lists to database decay every year, which stems from factors such as closed email accounts and people unsubscribing from the database.
Some brands try to boost their email lists by purchasing collections of consumer emails. Still, this method tends to deliver vanishingly low returns — the people receiving those emails probably haven't even heard of the brand, and they are unlikely to engage.
Finding organic ways to build your email list is the best way for e-commerce companies to attract and retain customers who deliver revenue. Here are the top ten email collection tactics used by marketers.
The simplest and easiest way to collect email addresses is to create opt-in forms that allow users to enter their email and subscribe to your communications. When you create your form or signup page, make sure it's a quick process with apparent benefits to the user (promotions, exclusive content, etc.). Give your forms some visual pop to catch the eye and keep the number of fields to a minimum. It's nice to collect additional information from potential customers, but users are more likely to ignore a form that requires them to fill out several fields upfront.
Many businesses, especially B2B companies, like to create informational content that reflects their target audience's professional interests. This could be an eBook, white paper, webinar, free software trial, or anything else that provides useful information to the consumer.
There are other ways to collect email addresses besides using static opt-in pages and hoping your users find their way to the signup form. Many brands use pop-ups or modal windows that open when they complete a specific action on a brand's website. Reading a blog, exceeding a minimum browse time, or accessing a particular part of the website, can be used as triggers for opt-in pop-ups.
Some e-commerce shops have begun collecting emails by creating games that reward customers with an incentive upon opting in for an email list. Often, these take the form of wheel-of-fortune games where the user "spins" a wheel to receive a discount, and the chance of winning a great deal is often enough to capture an email address.
Live chat functionality can help you engage with customers who might be having a hard time finding the information or product they're seeking or who are hoping to speak with a customer service representative. You can either ask the user to input their email address before starting the chat or create an opt-in CTA at the end of the interaction.
Sometimes, a user may spend a significant amount of time on a brand's website or e-commerce store without making a purchase. In these cases, when the customer moves to click out of the website or close the window, you can trigger a pop-up or modal that asks the user if they'd like to sign up for exclusive content or future updates to help them find what they were looking for. Alternatively, some brands have created exit intent surveys that ask the user to answer brief questions on their shopping experience. You can offer a discount or entry for a gift card giveaway to incentivize completing the survey.
Essentially an opt-in form that appears at the start of the user's first visit to a website, a splash page allows your users to sign up for promotional emails from the very beginning.
Brands can use their business pages on Facebook to collect social media users' emails through targeted ads seeking email signups.
Interesting, authoritative blog content is an excellent way to attract email addresses from customers with a high likelihood of purchasing from your brand. Most blog platforms make it easy to add a simple opt-in form to blog posts and home pages, promising users more of the quality content they've already read on your site.
Consumers are typically likely to jump at any opportunity to win free products. Create a sweepstake or giveaway and ask users to sign up with their email addresses for a chance to win one of your products or services.
Even in a world seemingly dominated by social media, email remains the most effective marketing strategies available to brands. Get creative with your email collection tactics and find unique ways to bring consumers into your shopping experience. You'll be rewarded with strong returns on your marketing efforts and a more loyal customer base. If you currently don't use any email capturing tool, here are a few options to consider.
For more information on how to collect email addresses via email capture tools:
Last updated on May 15th, 2023.