We’re often astonished at how, even now, many ecommerce brands are leaving money on the table when it comes to their email and SMS lists.
That’s all fine until it’s not - you’ve heard the horror stories of random ad account and group shutdowns.
And even when everything’s sunny, maximising your email and SMS lists (the turf you own) can easily add 30% to your revenue.
Use these ideas to build your ecommerce email and SMS lists:
Offer a prize each month, drawn at random, to one lucky subscriber. The more valuable you can make the prize, the faster your list will grow.
For example, think of an ecomm brand that sells sleepwear.
1. Create a guide on how to get the best night’s sleep ever.
The neat thing about this is that a good night’s sleep will include comfortable sleepwear, so of course it’ll link to your products. But it can also include affiliate links to related brands such as glasses that block out blue light, mattresses, masks, herbal concoctions … you get the idea.
If doing kids’ sleepwear, make something on how to have the best sleepover ever.
Add this to your site as an offer for signing up to your list.
You can also run ads to it using news-style headlines.
2. Create a quiz: What type of sleeper are you?
Definitely schedule these where it makes sense through the year so that you can use urgency as a motivation for people to sign up. 24-hr flash sales, plus the usual Black Friday, Christmas, New Year, Valentine’s Day, etc. For our example of a sleepwear brand, do a sale leading up to the shortest day of the year, because it’s the longest night of sleep ;)
Find micro-influencers who sit easily in your ideal customer category. Check their engagement is authentic, and take a look at whether they already do promotions for other brands.
You can either “seed” influencers by sending your products with no strings attached, and then asking permission to use their content if they post. For every 100 influencers you send product to, expect about 30 to post. Some may turn into longer-term partnerships.
Alternatively it may be easier to pay upfront for their post. If you do, make sure to give guidelines on the way you want your brand to be represented, and be clear on what they’ll produce.
Create a unique promo code for each influencer, so that you can track signups.
Find newsletters that reach your target audience, but do not compete with your products.
Well-structured newsletter owners will have a rate card ready, to let you know what they charge. Ask about their click through rates as well as their reach, because with less tracking these days, click through rates are the gold.
Offer a sneak peek for new arrivals, where people need to subscribe to the list to get the alert.
If you’re on Shopify, Social Snowball is one of the cleanest ways to run a referral program. The neat thing is that it actively encourages every customer to become an affiliate.
But there are loads of options for whichever platform you’re on.
Create a popup that is triggered when a site visitor moves their cursor to leave your website. Use it to offer a last-minute deal, and in the process of their purchase they’ll be added to your list.
Check out our article here that includes the segments we use. When you set up automations for each segment you’ll be amazed at how profitable they are, compared to general campaigns.
We look after everything from single ad copy to full campaigns.
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