Boost Email List Growth: Proven Strategies for 4x Opt-Ins

Building your email list might not sound like a huge deal when you’re in the ecommerce space, but it can have a huge impact on your sales.

According to a Marketo study, 96% of consumers who land on a website aren’t yet ready to buy.

Capturing those leads’ email addresses allows you to nurture them toward a future purchase. If you don’t bother to collect email opt-ins, those consumers might buy from a competitor instead.

Think about the last time you bought a product online.

You might have visited several stores, read only reviews, and researched feature availability. And that’s only if you were committed to purchasing something fairly soon.

But what if you heard from one particular ecommerce store once a week?

Maybe you would have followed that company on social, visited its website more than once, and remembered its name when you finally wanted to buy the product.

Still not convinced?

Believe it or not, you can calculate the value of a lead.

Simply divide the amount of money you generate from email opt-in customers by the number of emails in your database.

This makes lead generation trackable.

As you grow your opt-ins, you can track how much those leads contribute to your bottom line. Once you see those numbers, you’ll be glad you made the effort.

But how do you grow your opt-ins by 400% or more? And what mistakes should you avoid along the way?

I’m going to answer those questions (and more).

Let’s dig into my three quick lead-generation tips for building your email opt-in campaign.

Tip #1: Create an Offer That People Can’t Refuse

Starting now, think of email addresses as currency.

When you ask someone to give you their email address for marketing purposes, you’re executing a transaction.

According to the latest statistics from the Radicati Group, consumers receive 269 billion emails every day.

By 2021, that number is expected to grow to nearly 320 billion.

With all these emails flying into inboxes, you have to earn the privilege of emailing your leads. They won’t give away their addresses for free.

That’s where the offer comes in.

As I said, the lead-generation process is a transaction.

If you want something of value — an email address — you must provide something of value in return. In most cases, this is a lead magnet.

If you’re in the ecommerce field, you might consider offering a discount as your lead magnet.

Bliss, a beauty brand, incentivizes email opt-ins with a 20% discount off the subscriber’s first order.

It doesn’t just work for B2C businesses, either.

Freund Container, a B2B business that sells custom packaging and containers, collects emails by offering 10 percent off the subscriber’s first order.

Your lead magnet doesn’t have to be a discount, though. You could offer anything you want as long as it conveys real value.

To determine the best lead magnet for your audience, consider The 6 Principles of Persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini.

By better understanding human psychology, you can anticipate what your audience wants.