How To Build Your Email List On Shopify

Today, we’re going to teach you how to build your email list fast on Shopify, and we’re going to give you the one email marketing tool to try out that we use. So stick around for that. 

The number one regret of online business owners is not collecting email addresses from day one. A key thing to know before you begin to build your email list is that you need permission to follow up with prospects and customers. Subscribers need to opt in in order to hear from you. That's why the first strategy that we’re going to talk about today involves little to almost no convincing. 

Sales and Customer Account Emails

Number one is to collect email addresses from sales and customer accounts. 

Customer accounts are valuable to businesses because they require shoppers to share relevant information, name and email address. And it makes a purchase history a little bit easier to track. The downside is that many customers find it frustrating to create an account for every single shopping destination. Now, a useful compromise is to provide the option to create an account after the customer's first order has been placed. So during that email confirmation sequence, you can potentially incentivize them to sign up to become a customer. 

On top of that, Shopify also gives you the opportunity to do a little check mark during the checkout process in order to be included into your email list and email marketing. 

Welcome! Welcome!

Welcome to the BitBranding channel. To everyone new, my name is Christian Piñon and I am one of the co-founders here at BitBranding. 

We've been helping frustrated store owners since 2015 to become impactful store owners through tutorials, tactics and strategies. If you find something of value in this blog, please check out our YouTube Channel and consider subscribing and turning on notifications. 

Opt-In Forums

The second thing that you can do is create opt-in forums. 

To grow your list you need to ask people directly to sign up. So it stands to reason that the best place to ask is where they're already engaged on relevant pages across your online store. Some locations that you can do this is the header of the homepage or every page on your website. The about page, blogs or have a blog post, during the footer, etc. The footer is actually a very high, very popular destination to do that. Then, of course, pop up forums. We recommend using smart pop ups and you can use an app like, for example, Sumo. 

We use that a lot for ourselves and our clients. With Sumo, you can have it where when the mouse is leaving the checkout page, you get a hit with a pop up to sign up for the email list or to come back for some kind of discount. 

So keep in mind that having smart pop ups, it's a must have, and if you're using an app for it, make sure that you check out Sumo.

Don’t Go Anywhere!

Stick around to the end of the blog because we’re going to show you our favorite email marketing app that we use for ourselves and our business. 

Lead Magnets

Number three is to use lead magnets. 

The idea of receiving a newsletter each week will not be a good incentive for someone to give you their email address. So marketing is about messaging and measurement and “get our weekly emails” is not really a compelling message. 

To up the ante, consider creating a real offer as an added incentive for visitors to share their email address with you. For example, offer a very specific discount, maybe a 15% for brand new customers. You can run a contest where you're maybe giving away a bunch of products or a very specific amount of product, in order to get the email address or give access to educational content. 

So depending on the products that you sell, you could create a guide on how to barbecue, for example. And in order to get that full guide or ebook, whatever it may be, they have to give you the email address, and that's a lead magnet. 

Our Favorite Marketing Tool

As promised, here is our favorite email marketing tool, Active Campaign. 

We use Active Campaign in our business and with the companies that we worked with on Shopify. So it allows us to send really sophisticated and automated email campaigns with ease. You need to check it out. 

And as a bonus, if you go to our How To video on this subject here and leave a comment that says “Automation,” we will send you our three proven automations for Active Campaign. You don't have to do anything. You just click on the link and it gives you all the automation's, free, built inside of your Active Campaign account. 

Alright you guys, thank you so much for reading. We want to hear from you. Leave a comment on the video if you have any questions, anything, literally anything. And again, make sure to hit that like button, because that will alert the YouTube algorithm mad scientists to show this video to more people. And we want that. We want to share the love and the knowledge. 

So thank you so much. See you next time.