Looking for easy ways to build your mailing list? All you have to do is make signing up easy and worth it for your customers.
Ask yourself if signing up to your email list is easy for your customers, and if you give them a good enough reason to do so. Every change you make to the email form on your website, or your methods of capturing this data, should always be to make the sign-up process easier and more incentivised.
We have listed 5 proven ways that build mailing lists based on making sign-up easy and simple and making it worthwhile for the customer.
An Effective Incentive
What’s in it for the customer? Offering an incentive to sign up instantly convinces the customer they’re getting a good deal and persuades them to hand over their valuable email address.
It doesn’t have to be a huge incentive, some of the most popular incentives are 10% Off, VIP access to a sale, or a free guide or e-book. It just has to be something your customers are interested in enough to sign up.
Customers know their email address is valuable to companies, so it’s hard to convince them to join your mailing list without a discount or freebie.
In short, think of it as an exchange and offer something beneficial to the customer in return for their email address – even if it’s something small.
Run a Competition
People love free stuff. Giveaways and competitions are so popular and they’re a great way to gather email addresses via sign-up forms and entries.
A good way to do this is through Facebook. You can boost a giveaway post or run an ad for your latest competition, but just include ‘Sign-Up Form’ as an entry method and include a field for email addresses.
But you don’t want to end up with a stash of email addresses from people that will never buy from you – so make sure you target relevant audiences, or make sure the giveaway is related to products or services you already sell. This will guarantee interested browsers, which make for potential buyers.
Use a Pop-up Form
After 20 seconds or so, or just before a customer hits that big ‘exit’ button and leaves your website forever, it’s handy to have an email pop-up box to convince them to stay. You could have a pop-up message that uses the incentives we spoke about earlier, something like: “Hey, Before You Go… Get 20% OFF by Signing Up to Our Mailing List”. TIP: It’s important not to show a popup immediately when a customer lands on your site though – you need to give them a chance to browse without bombarding them first.
Another good thing about this method is that it asks very little of the customer. It’s right there, in front of their mouse, a one-line form with a promise of 20% off. It’s easier for them to enter their email address, especially if they have autofill, than it is to exit the page. This non-committal, seamless way of collecting email addresses works a treat!
Keep it Simple
This follows on from how you should ask very little of your customer. Keep a sign-up form minimal. Nobody has time or patience to input data into fiddly fields, especially with the rise of mobile shoppers!
You want to cut that form down as much as possible. This goes for forms across your website by the way, not just email sign-ups. Keep that checkout minimal too!
If you have a ‘Create an Account’ section on your website (which you should), add a checkbox beside the email field to sign up for offers and updates. This makes it a one-stop for the customer and saves you convincing them to agree to marketing at another time.
Make It Stand Out
Again, you want to make it easy. But, you also want to make it stand out.
On every page of your website, your Call to Action should be clear to the customer. Don’t bet on the customer instinctively knowing what you want them to do. You really have to make it impossible to miss that big ‘Subscribe’ button and give them clear direction.
As your goal is email sign-ups, make sure this stands out on your web pages. You often see ‘Subscribe’ in tiny letters hidden on the footer of a web page (and nowhere else), which is where call to actions go to wither and die, not convert!
Make that subscribe button jump out. Make it bright and visible. Make it impossible to miss. Whatever you do, please don’t hide it in the footer.
Go For It!
We hope our 5 Ways to Build Your Mailing List has given you some advice on how to make your email sign-up form seamless and worthwhile to customers. By offering an incentive, running a competition, using a pop-up form, keeping it simple and easy and drawing attention to the ‘Subscribe’ button on your site, you will make signing up the default option for your customers.
Don’t worry if you are unsure how to implement some of these steps. We recommend consulting a professional Ecommerce Agency to take care of your website, especially if you are unsure how to add some of these features to your checkout and apply them effectively. That way, you can leave it to the professionals, while you focus on the important day-to-day running of your business!
