Do you want new and improved ways to grow your Shopify email list?
Email marketing is the most effective way to connect with your audience and turn them into lifelong customers. But first, you need to convince visitors to sign up for your marketing emails.
Thankfully, there are already tried and tested methods to do this, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
In this post, we’ll show you the best and most effective ways to convert Shopify visitors into leads and subscribers.
Let’s dive straight into our list of strategies.
Best Email Capture Methods for Shopify
The majority of your website traffic won’t be ready to purchase a product on their first visit. In fact, lots of your visitors aren’t even ready to hand over their email addresses.
Getting them to do so requires you to build trust and display highly personalized offers that your target audience will find valuable.
To overcome this challenge, you have to be creative in how you ask visitors to sign up and make it worth their while.
Today, we’ve handpicked the most creative email capture methods that are proven to improve conversions.
In some cases, the tool we recommend will depend on whether or not you’ve integrated Shopify with your WordPress site.
But any time we recommend a WordPress-specific tool, we’ll also provide an alternative for non-WordPress sites.
Let’s take a look at what these methods are, how they work, and why they’re so effective.
1. Use Exit-Intent® Popups To Recover Shoppers
Did you know that close to 70% of visitors leave your site without taking any action?
Exit-Intent® popups can change that.
They appear only when a visitor is leaving your site and gives them an option to sign up before they go.
Exit-Intent® popups are extremely powerful and are proven to work. You can check out how NeilStrauss.com grew its subscriber list by 125% using Exit-Intent® optins:
Popups like this are easy to create with OptinMonster. You simply have to select a template and turn on the Exit-Intent® rule:
Then, OptinMonster detects when a visitor is going to hit the ‘close’ or ‘back’ button and will display the popup immediately:
With popups like this, you can recover abandoning visitors and connect with them later over email.
For more on this, check out 40 ways to use Exit Intent® popups to grow your subscriber list.
2. Place an Optin Bar on Your Site
Floating bars or banners are a great way to draw a shopper’s attention to offers while they browse your content.
They are displayed across the top or bottom of your site in a non-intrusive manner so they don’t affect user experience (UX).
You can even add a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency. This is exactly what Cosmetic Capital did with their floating bar.
This campaign helped them increase leads by 300%.
You can also target customers by showing the offer on specific pages. Check out how ActiveCampaign displays a banner on their features page.
By simply making the content relevant, ActiveCampaign adds 800 signups every month with this campaign.
If you want to add a floating bar to your site right away, you can use one of OptinMonster’s beautiful templates. And you can schedule the time period for which they will appear on your site.
It takes just 5 to 10 minutes to set it up, after which, it will run automatically and bring in results.
Try out OptinMonster 100% risk-free today!
3. Present Exclusive Offers to Returning Visitors
Shoppers who come to your site a second or third time are valuable leads.
They have already shown interest in your site, so they’re more likely to join your email list. You just have to ask.
Or better yet, present them with an offer that makes it worth it.
Here too, OptinMonster is the #1 tool to create popups to target returning visitors.
Once a visitor signs up, you can make sure they don’t see the same campaign again.
Keep in mind that you may not see instant responses from returning visitors. Data shows that people need to see the offer 7 times before they take action!
OptinMonster lets you configure a number of days before the popup reappears to visitors who have already seen the campaign but haven’t signed up, yet.
This gives you full control over how you approach visitors to get them to subscribe to emails.
4. Host an Online Contest To Rapidly Grow Your List
Online contests are a great way to instantly boost subscriptions. In general, people love taking a chance to win something. And they’ll be happy to give you their email and share your brand as well.
You can create brand awareness and grow your subscriber list at the same time.
Check out how SeedProd increased sales 3x with viral contests.
This campaign saw 50,000+ contest entries and generated over 4,000+ new users. Plus, thousands of people shared SeedProd on social media creating more brand awareness.
Contests also work great around the holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s day that already have momentum and excitement in the air:
If you’re using WordPress, you could use a plugin like RafflePress to build online contests ready to go viral.
For non-WordPress users, you can create and run lead capture contests with ViralSweep Giveaway Contests. It’s easy to set up and you can launch your contest in minutes.
5. Run a Visitor Survey
Surveys are a great way to get feedback from visitors and customers. You can find out what your visitors know and feel about your product.
They’re also a creative way to capture email leads.
And if you combine a survey with an Exit-Intent® popup, you can even convert abandoning visitors here.
That’s exactly what KennedyBlue did by asking shoppers to leave feedback about their experience.
This campaign helped convert nearly 7% of abandoning customers.
WordPress users can use WPForms to build and embed survey forms in a matter of minutes. Plus, they have a totally free version to let you get started at zero risk.
For non-WordPress users, there are still plenty of options such as Formito or the free but powerful tool, Google Forms.
6. Increase Signups With Social Proof
When new visitors come to your site, they mostly have no experience with your brand. This means they also have no reason to trust your brand or sign up for your newsletters.
The best way to target these visitors is with social proof popups like this:
These popups create a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) among your site’s traffic. So when visitors see others signing up for your emails, it shows them that your content is valued.
This motivates them to also join your email list, so they don’t miss out on any benefits from your content.
You can add these social proof notifications to your site using TrustPulse:
TrustPulse is the best way to use social proof to capture email leads on your site. In fact, it’s proven to instantly lift conversions by up to 15%.
TrustPulse is easy to set up and automatically captures signup activity on your site. Then it creates eye-catching popups that are hard to miss but, at the same time, don’t disrupt the user experience (UX).
TrustPulse also lets you create action messages so you can prompt visitors to sign up for your newsletter as well.
And these popups are clickable so you can direct visitors to your email signup page. We’ll show you how to create a dedicated signup landing page next.
Get started with TrustPulse today!
7. Create a Signup Landing Page
A dedicated landing page for email signups is one of the best ways to capture emails. You can use it to showcase your product or service and give them a good reason to join your email list.
WordPress users can try SeedProd, the world’s # landing page builder plugin.
If you’ve built your store directly with Shopify, you can also use their native page builder.
Or you can rely on a Shopify page builder app like Pagefly that has ready-made templates.
8. Offer Memberships and Gated Content
People love having a sense of belonging and are more loyal to brands that create an engaged community.
By offering exclusive member benefits, you can make it very tempting to sign up for an account. You can offer early bird access, discounts, free shipping, and any other benefit that makes sense for your brand.
To create a full-fledged membership program on your site, our favorite platform is MemberPress.
It has everything you need to create irresistible membership plans. Plus, it’s easy to set up, automate, and manage your membership programs.
That said, MemberPress is only available if you’ve integrated your Shopify store on a WordPress site.
Otherwise, you’d want to use a Shopify app like Bold Memberships.
Another method for capturing emails on Shopify is to use gated content. Bloomberg does this really well by letting you see a preview of their content before asking you to subscribe.
Gated content is one of the best marketing hacks to drive subscription rates. In fact, Photowebo increased conversions 3806% by offering its members exclusive access to premium content.
You can set up these premium areas on your site with just a few clicks using OptinMonster. It has a cool Content Locking feature to control who can see your members-only content.
9. Engage Vistors With a Discount Wheel
Spinning a wheel of fortune is hard to resist, especially since you have nothing to lose!
These wheels make your site fun and exciting which drives people to sign up.
‘Spin to win’ wheels can increase conversion rates by up to 30%.
And while it looks difficult to create, you can set up a gamified wheel in minutes with OptinMonster. It has premade designs that you can fill out with your own offers and prizes to get started right away.
10. Offer Simple Discounts
We saved the classic method for last – good old fashion discounts! They’re time-tested and work wonders for growing your list.
You can present offers to customers based on their interests and actions on your site.
So, for example, if a visitor has an item in their cart but is leaving your site without completing their order, you can present them with an offer to checkout with a discount.
Simple and fun popups like this can convince visitors to subscribe to your marketing emails in exchange for a coupon.
In another scenario, when a shopper adds an item to their cart, you can offer a discount if they buy 2 or more items together.
You can even nudge new shoppers into signing up and buying your product with a discount on their first purchase.
All of these discount campaigns can be created with OptinMonster. We offer over 50+ templates so you can be creative with your designs and find plenty of opportunities to grow your email list.
Plus the drag and drop builder makes it easy to customize every element of your campaign.
With OptinMonster, you’ll get access to powerful targeting rules, so you can personalize campaigns and display them to the right time to visitors who are most likely to convert.
It even has targeting rules that are specifically designed for Shopify:
That means you can target customers based on items in their cart, the products their viewing, their cart’s subtotal, and much more.
With OptinMonster, you’ll have everything you need to grow your email list exponentially!
Ready to create stunning lead capture campaigns?
And that’s our list of the best email capture methods for Shopify. We hope you liked this article and found new ways to capture email leads on your Shopify site.
If you’re looking to increase your Shopify sales and leads, you’ll find these articles helpful:
- Shopify Email Marketing: 7 Apps to Grow and Monetize Your List
- 7 Best Cart Recovery Apps for Shopify to Increase Sales
- 33 Best Shopify Apps to Increase Sales Instantly [Most Are FREE]
These posts are packed with tips and strategies to build your list, increase sales, and grow your Shopify store.
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