One of the most important elements in e-commerce is building your email list. Unlike social, unlike pay-per-click campaigns, your email list is yours. It isn’t built on rented land. Building an email list the right way ensures you have a list of people actually engaged and interested, which allows you to send personalized email campaigns that feel like you’re talking directly to a single customer. But your email list doesn’t just appear out of nowhere—and that’s where email signup forms come into play.
Email is one of the highest converting marketing channels. According to Campaign Monitor, email provides 4400% ROI and $44 for every $1 spent on the channel. You can automate it, you can personalize it, and you can turn it into a channel that feels one-to-one with customers. For that reason, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
Let’s look at a few ways you can use email signup forms to grow your list and move audiences to a channel you have the most control over.
Your Sales Channels
Every channel you sell on should feature an email signup form to turn visitors into subscribers. Granted, not all channels will allow you to have a link (Amazon, for example). But if there’s an opportunity to add a call-to-action to sign up for future sales and discounts, you may end up capturing email addresses from people who aren’t ready to buy just yet. You can then target them for email campaigns that may convert them later.
You should also have email signup forms in multiple conspicuous spots around your website. The header and footer are great locations. Look into your analytics dashboard, such as Google Analytics, and try placing calls-to-action on your most popular pages and blog posts (if you have them).
This video explains how ShippingEasy’s email signup forms work.
Transfer Audiences from Social
Most social channels will have the opportunity to host a link in your profile, at a minimum. Many e-commerce merchants will reserve this to link directly to their website or other marketplace, which is totally understandable. However, it could be equally as lucrative to use that space for your email signup form link.
Think about how much traffic you see to your site from social and how much of that doesn’t necessarily translate to a sale or a subscriber. Now think about immediately capturing the email address of anyone interested in your products and services. Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, so any social traffic you can convert to email subscribers becomes exponentially more valuable.
One of the most popular social networks, particularly with millennials and younger demographics, Instagram is a great place to build a brand identity. You only have one link in the bio and can’t post links in photo descriptions. There are services out there that allow you to have one link that hosts many other links, but let’s focus just on the Instagram platform for the moment.
When posting photos and videos of your products, you need to direct people to “Visit the link in our bio.” While there is a commerce element to Instagram, you need to follow these steps and be approved to have that feature. See below for a glimpse at what that looks like.
Either way, using that link in your Instagram bio is a great way to get signups from people who love your products or found them on the visually engaging, mobile-first platform.
The reach for Facebook pages has been in steady and stark decline for the past handful of years and has become more of a pay-to-be-seen platform. That being said, having a Facebook page is still a near-expectation for customers. The platform has put more of a focus on video but has added the ability to feature products and services right on your page, as you can see below.
Since there is already an opportunity to let customers shop from Facebook, why not use the link section to feature a link to your email signup form? Let Facebook do double duty for your customer base and take advantage of the multiple opportunities presented when someone visits your Facebook page.
You can also add a “Learn More” call-to-action button (placed where the blue “Shop Now” button is in the image above) that will live just under the cover image of your Facebook page. So there are multiple opportunities to snag a customer email address and convert them to a subscriber.
While not as popular as Instagram, Twitter still holds value, particularly for real-time events and news. You can easily share links in tweets and add your email signup form link to your profile. People don’t visit Twitter profiles quite as often, but it still may not hurt to put a mention in your profile to sign up for your newsletter and deals/coupons.
LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Tiktok are other social networks that you may be able to capitalize on, based on your industry, audience, and familiarity with each. We won’t cover them in detail here, however.
Build Word of Mouth
You may not have a specific referral or rewards program set up right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t actively encourage your customers to share the love. Whether you include a slight nudge in a newsletter or a dedicated email send asking customers to encourage friends and family to sign up, this is another opportunity to use email signup forms.
The above template comes from ShippingEasy’s Customer Marketing solution, which features dozens of prebuilt, customizable templates, email automation, customer segmentation, and we just released email Signup Forms! Click below to see all the features. Give our platform a try FREE for 30 days and start streamlining your email and e-commerce fulfillment.
Already a ShippingEasy customer? Head directly to your ShippingEasy Customer Marketing page to set up your Email Signup Forms now!
Rob Zaleski
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