For every $1 spent on email marketing, $44 is made in return, and consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than online shoppers who do not receive email offers.
For ecommerce businesses of all shapes and sizes, that’s tremendous. And with the number of email users worldwide forecasted to surge to 2.9 billion by 2019, it is in your interest to harness the power of email marketing for your B2B and B2C clients.
Four tips to building a strong email list
Research indicates that building your email list drives measureable top-of-funnel connections, allowing you to construct a sales funnel that nurtures email addresses into loyal customers. Priorities have therefore shifted in the direction of building a quality list of email addresses belonging to interested customers who have engaged with your website.
Clever marketers need to come up with ways of engaging website visitors as they browse through the site, so that they are compelled to leave their email addresses with the company’s CRM.
But how can you prompt online and mobile device users with email capture pop-ups, banners and windows, without disrupting the user experience on your website – and irritating your website visitors to the brink of website abandonment?
1. Create urgency with a limited-time incentive
When it comes to modern-day shoppers, especially millennials – who make up roughly 54% of the e-commerce customer-base and spend approximately $600 billion shopping each year in the U.S. alone – instant gratification is a basic requirement.
That’s why if you want users to input their email addresses, you’re going to have to incentivize them with some form of physical or monetary reward. And if you add urgency to the mix by presenting the email capture reward as a limited-time offer, a coupon, discount, advanced access to a new product, or even a chance at winning a large prize can motivate them to give up their personal information.
The high level of urgency (or scarcity) created through the utilization of simple phrases like “last day,” “today only,” or “only three left” raises the value of the product, which you can also alternate to expand the types of potential subscribers you attract. This is true, even if you find that one kind of incentive converts better than the rest.
2. Insert hooks into carefully crafted content
Great content creates value-driven engagement.
By presenting interesting information, asking provocative questions, piquing the reader’s curiosity, and luring the reader in with an “answer” pertaining to something he or she wants, you provide users with perceived value.
If you insert email capture hooks that promise further “value-first” content upon subscription, these knowledge products will be sure to opt-in. It’s as simple as embedding a straightforward email capture request form at the bottom of a blog post, accompanied by an offer to receive more content related to the post your users just read.
3. Be socially proactive
Social media is an extremely powerful lead magnet, since the user base is so high. The digital networks also enable audience segmentation to offer personalized ads, targeted according to user-groups’ age ranges, geographic locations, behaviors, online purchase histories and more.
The possibilities are near endless. You can collect emails with Twitter lead generation cards that you pin to your profile or efficiently gather contact information with a Facebook Lead ad. Or, engage a chat or messaging features on your ecommerce website.
4. Gamify the pop-up experience
Seventy percent of business transformation efforts, including marketing strategies, fail due to lack of engagement. Yet gamifying pop-ups, prompts and notifications can turn email capture requests into an engaging and interactive experience.
For marketers, gamification is a way to stand out from the competition and channel the emotional high of winning (which you will, of course, let your winners experience) to drive subscriptions and conversions.
When users click on a game button and win some form of a prize, they begin to form a relationship with your brand. Newly invested, they will be more likely to opt in and input their email addresses.
WooHoo is a list building tool that ensures your email capture practices are engaging and motivating. By adhering to the above mentioned tips, including and especially gamifying pop-up ads, you too can grow your contact lists and scale your businesses in fun and fruitful ways.
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