The value of having a strong and growing email marketing list for your ecommerce store cannot be overstated. According to a survey of US marketers conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Demand Metric, the survey found that email had a median ROI of 122%.  That’s four times higher than other marketing formats including social media, direct mail and paid search.

So, given that email marketing is the best place to spend your marketing dollars to maximize your ROI, we’re interested in maximizing the number of quality emails that we have on those subscribe lists.

Most ecommerce stores have the traditional subscription options in place.  In the header and footer of ecommerce sites, you ask users for their email address if they’d like to subscribe to your newsletter or receive discounts. Then, if they hang around for a few seconds on your site….they’ll see a popup which introduces that same offering (if you don’t, put those in place as a priority).  For those who already have those methods established on your store….what else can you do to better grow those lists?

There are some user activities where you’re also collecting email addresses which can help grow those email marketing lists even more, simply by making the option to subscribe available within the process of common visitor engagements.  Let’s explore a few of those for you to consider supporting for your ecommerce store.

Wish Lists

Wish lists are a great way to engage your visitors so that if they’re not ready to purchase right now (or you don’t have the product currently in stock), they can add the product they’re viewing to their wish list and be sent notifications when the item is back in stock or if there is a deal available.

This is a great time to see if they would also like to be subscribed to your discount notifications or newsletter.  They’re already choosing to engage with your business by giving their email to add the product to their wish list, just ensure your wish list functionality gives you the ability for them to easily opt into your other email marketing lists as a natural part of that process.

Asking Product Questions

Many of your visitors have questions about the products you’re selling and you should be enabling them to ask those questions through product page Q&A. See an example of where that typically sits under the product description below, where you can fill information gaps that may be there after they read your product description.

In the process of visitors asking their questions, you need to get their email address so they’re notified when you give an answer.  This is another great opportunity for you to add the ability for them to opt in during that natural engagement, so you can continue growing those email marketing lists.

Quick Side Note: We interrupt this regular blog reading experience to inform you that if you’re not currently providing Q&A as an option on your product page, Answerbase can help with that…you can Start a Free Trial to see how your users engage with that on your product pages.  You will now be reconnected with the main point of this post…

Your Contact Form

Your traditional “contact us” form a very natural part of people engaging with your business and is a very easy place to ask that visitor if they’d like to subscribe to your newsletter or discount notifications.

They’re already providing their email in that process, so just give them the easy decision to make to take advantage of your awesome content and deals.  Take the opportunity to have a checkbox they can click on to choose to subscribe in the process of submitting their inquiry. You don’t have to make it annoying, and you likely want to have that unchecked by default…but give them the option nonetheless. If you’re providing a support email they can send to, setup an auto-reply to let them know that your team will respond soon…and of course, add a link in that auto-reply as well with another opportunity to subscribe.  After all, every email subscription counts:)

It’s all about taking advantage of the areas where your visitors are already engaging with your business, and just giving them an easy decision to make in a process that they’re going through already to provide them more value.  By implementing the above tips, you can optimize your email subscription growth, and over time you can see a notable increase in both subscribers and sales.  Happy selling:)