It’s not very polite to hang a “Give us your email” sign around your neck and keep standing in people’s way when they’re on your website. Rather than doing that, you should make them need to write their email and hit enter.
If you ask me, I’ll tell you: Enriching email list for your marketing campaign is easy, if you know how. And you can do that easily without having to get down on your knees and beg visitors for their email address.
Here, let’s hunker down and I’ll show you 5 super effective ways to acquire emails from your eCommerce website’s visitors or potential customers. ‘nuff said.
1. Utilize live chat feature to collect site visitors’ emails
No matter how large or small traffic your website has everyday, one single visitor is still worth the chance. From your website, they’ll not only see your beautiful product showcase or other bells and whistles but also get noticed of your live chat support, if you take the lead.
Be proactive and customize your live chat invitation to offer support for your visitors. They’re surely impressed that you actually care about their needs. Plus, don’t forget to make them enter their name and email address before requesting a chat with your Customer Service Department. It’s no harm here. Make sure you tell them that chat transcript will be sent to them via their email for their own good, they’ll be happy enter their email.
It’s very convenient and time saving for you to use live chat to collect emails from prospective customers. And if you’re about to find a live chat software that allows you to perform this trick, you can try Subiz – a brilliant live chat service trusted and used by thousands of businesses.
Subiz – Live Chat Solution
Spice up your subscriber email form
Before jumping into how you can make more appealing and lovable newsletter signup form, let’s spend some minutes thinking about where on your website you can place your form. There more places you can think of means the higher chance of having more emails. But, don’t overdo this tip.
Here are some possible positions to ask people for subscription:
- Signup form with email field in website’s footer
- Signup form at the sidebar of your blog
- Hello bar with newsletter signup CTA on the top of your website
- Signup form right in your main menu (with or without dropdown)
- A popup form
- …any other place that doesn’t break your website’s style.
An eye-catching “Signup for Our Newsletter” form will not only encourage visitors to opt in your list but also talk your brand’s personality out. I would recommend a short form which only requires name and email (or only email).
Long signup form is only applicable for a specific free offer’s landing page where visitors sign up for something that is really valuable for them.
Next, make the form standout to catch your website prospects’ attention – you can do the trick with custom layout for the form that goes in rhythm with overall design of the site. See how The Little Umbrella nails it:
The Little Umbrella’s eye-catching form
If it’s a popup form, you can dance with your creativity here with big images, some animations or big typography. Each time I visit QuickSprout, there’s an oversized popup inviting me to sign up for something they offer:
QuickSprout popup form
And I know the guy is doing well with this enticing popup.
Note: if using popup for your website, you can avoid disturbing your visitors by setting time for popup to appear – like after 10s when they 1st enter your website and re-appear after 7 days when they return
3. Offer freebies and give away on your website
What will make a crowd say ‘Wow’?
Well, it could be a tempting free offer like a free service or free product for the first 100 people signup to your form, or an insightful free eBook with carefully carried out researches of your industry which is extremely helpful for your customers, etc.
The ideas for freebies are borderless – think about what your potential customers really want. Everyone loves freebies and if your giveaway is really good they don’t mind sacrificing their privacy.
After deciding what you will give away, spend time on an effective landing page – and of course, a subscription form matched with your purpose. I’m a frequent free eBook advocate of HubSpot and I think how HubSpot offers their eBooks is very smart:
Giveaway’s description with its emphasized benefits + image + a long signup form
Build a super star blog land
You’ve heard it a hundred if not million times: Content is king.
To survive the eCommerce world, you must generate a good and unique content for your niche (only ‘good’ is not enough). Bring your brand closer to customers and help them tackle down their problem via a dedicated blog. With a quality and standout content, you have one more reason for customers to visit your website.
What’s next?
Place a newsletter signup form under each blog post to actively give your readers an incentive. After reading a good article, there’s a higher possibility that readers are willing to sign up to your list to get updated for the next gold.
Again, HubSpot is doing it right with a signup form under their blog post:
HubSpot signup form
Ask your potential customers
Errr, doesn’t it sound a little impolite to ask for someone’s email? Nope – if you’ve given them a 5-star customer support.
Use customer support to your advantage! Tell your live chat supporters, your support forum and ticket support techie men to ask your customers to sign up to your newsletter instead of saying “See you again” after they’ve earned a 5-star rating for their devoted support. You can track the effectiveness of this tip easily via a recorded transcript of the chat or forum/ticket support.
You can even ask customers to follow your social channels, or write a nice review on your website, etc. – this all depends on your marketing purpose.
Wrapping up
It doesn’t hurt at all when you want to grow your email marketing list right from your eCommerce website. You’ve gone through the 5 smart ways above and I believe that with a creative and customer-centric mind (and heart), you can build up a great email list on your own.
2 out of the 5 tips there can be achieved via a live chat software. To save your time, again, I strongly recommend you to use Subiz – the live chat software that helps you win over your visitors, and of course, their email address too.
Actually, there are many lessons out there, from the real, practical cases of other blogs and websites – the guys who were successful in boosting up their subscribers. This humble article surely can’t cover all the great tips out there.
So, if you have any other tips you tried and succeeded, why not share with us here?
Don’t forget to share these tips around if you find them helpful!
