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How To Build An Email List From Scratch?

You’re no doubt familiar with the effectiveness of email marketing. Consumers are comfortable with and accustomed to its unobtrusive, opt-in format, and marketers love the massive potential ROI that this affordable and versatile channel can bring. 

However, email marketing only works if you’ve got an engaged audience, and for that, you need a properly built and maintained email list. 

But how to create an email list that can deliver a personalized experience for your subscribers and the best results for your business? 

In this article, we’re going to look at some tried-and-tested tactics that can help you to capture the right kind of subscribers for your list while continuing to nurture your audience engagement as your business grows. 

But first, let’s look a little closer at what an email list actually is.

What Is An Email List?

Quite simply, an email list is a collection of people who have agreed to receive your promotions and campaigns. 

They could be followers of your blog, customers who have previously purchased a product from you, visitors to your website who liked what they saw, or even people who attended one of your events. There are many ways that subscribers come to sign up to your list, and they are all theoretically interested in what you and your business have to offer. 

Building and managing an email list is one of the most important activities in your entire marketing strategy, simply because of the potential that it holds. Get it right, and you’ll have a thriving audience of active and engaged subscribers, who are only too happy to read your emails and click through to your latest deals and products. 

On the flip side, if you get it wrong your carefully crafted campaigns will end up being sent to stale and non-existent addresses, stay forever unopened and instantly deleted by disinterested subscribers, or even worse, marked as junk and sent straight to the spam folder!

Build Your Email List in 2 Simple Steps 

Luckily, creating a high-quality list doesn’t take a great deal of technical wizardry or specific know-how. 

With the right tools, a little common sense, and some good old-fashioned patience and persistence, you can organically grow your email list from scratch without resorting to shady tactics like buying a list (never do this!) or sending emails without permission. 

Begin by implementing the following 2 steps and watch your subscriber list grow:

Step 1: Make It Easy To Subscribe

You’re essentially asking people to give up their details voluntarily, so it’s important to make the process as easy and painless as possible. Let’s check out a few handy and effective places to encourage people to sign up to your email list:

  1. Your Website

Visitors head to your website for all kinds of reasons, but they are all showing an interest in your business. You can capitalize on this interest by placing subscribe forms in visible and easily clickable places, such as: 

  • Your blog: readers of your blog are naturally more engaged with your brand—they have shown their interest by taking the time to read what you have to say. Consider placing a pop-up subscribe form that appears after a certain amount of time on your blog page, this way you can allow people to read without intrusion and ensure that you are capturing those readers who have confirmed their engagement by reading to the end.

  • Checkout: Interest in your brand is at its peak when someone is buying from you, so this is your best chance to turn a one-off buyer into a loyal customer. Simply add an easy checkbox with something like “receive special offers and the latest news” to your checkout form - people are already filling in their details anyway, so this makes an easy shortcut to signing up.

  • “Contact us” form: Another handy shortcut to signups lies in your “contact us” form. A visitor is showing interest by reaching out to you and is already entering their contact details, so you can respond to their query. Add a small tick box to the bottom of your contact form and encourage an easy and convenient sign-up opportunity.

  1. Social Media

With their widespread use and easy sharing, social media platforms are incredibly useful for attracting new audiences. 

However, while social media channels should definitely be a part of your marketing strategy, it has been proven time and time again that email marketing offers a far better return on investment—social media advertising costs much more and people are simply less inclined to engage with it. 

So rather than advertise directly on your social media channels, consider running sign-up campaigns to convert your social media followers to email subscribers. 

Leave a persuasive CTA and easy link to your sign-up forms on all of your social media posts, and promote the benefits of being on your list. You can offer special deals for social media sign-ups, or promise unique, valuable content that only email subscribers can access. 

The idea is to take advantage of social media’s popularity and reach to attract people to your more reliable and lucrative email list. Whether it’s through consistent messaging on your social posts or special social media Linkedin advertising for lead generation, adding to your email list should be a primary goal of your social media marketing strategy.

  1. Your Emails

You probably send hundreds or even thousands of emails every month to people that haven’t yet subscribed to your list. Order and shipping confirmation emails will make up a large percentage of these, as well as people contacting you with questions and any other requests. Using these emails you can build your subscriber list and send them automated email campaigns.

Transactional emails have incredibly high engagement rates, and you can take advantage of this by encouraging a sign-up to your list. 

Always add a clear and prominent CTA in your emails, directing readers to a sign-up form or landing page. Perhaps you could sweeten the deal with special content or a discount on the next purchase if the customer signs up—always try to make the process as rewarding and as easy as possible.

Step 2: Offer Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are specific incentives that you can offer to encourage people to sign up. Some people will require an extra push to give up their details voluntarily, so a valuable and carefully thought-out incentive can make all the difference when building your list from scratch. 

But what kind of lead generation strategies are the most effective? 

The answer lies in knowing your target audience and understanding what is valuable and desirable to them. 

Lead magnets are most effective when they are directly related to your brand or industry. For example, if you sell fishing products, you would offer something useful for fishing enthusiasts such as a fishing map of the local area, or a guide to the best bait. 

The trick is to find a balance between what you can afford to create or give away, and what offers the greatest reward for your new subscribers. 

For example, puzzle retailer Jiggy offers 10% off the first order, as well as the chance of winning a free puzzle.

Let’s take a look at some more good examples of lead magnets:

  1. Amazing Content

Instantly accessible, relevant, and exclusive content makes for the perfect lead magnet, particularly if it solves a particular pain point that your potential subscriber is experiencing. 

For example, you might go to popular query websites like Quora and Reddit to find common questions related to your product or service. Answer those questions with gated content like whitepapers, how-to guides, ebooks, or listicles, which people can only access by signing up to your list. Not only does this populate your list with highly engaged and interested subscribers (the kind who are most likely to eventually make a purchase), but it boosts your brand reputation as one who is an expert in your particular field. 

Alternatively, you can offer your content regularly and freely with the expectation that interested readers will sign up for updates. If your content is compelling enough, people will look forward to your next blog post and will happily subscribe to your list to receive it directly in their inboxes each week.

  1. Exclusive Offers Or Events

People like to feel part of something exclusive, so treat your email subscribers like VIPs wherever you can. 

Holding free physical or online events is a great way to do this—you can invite industry experts or influencers to speak at your event and ask for a sign-up to attend. Other valuable events include free courses and tutorials, where you can show participants how to get the most out of your product or service. 

You can create exclusivity for your subscribers by giving them special sneak previews or early-bird deals—shoppers appreciate the chance to be always at the front of the queue for the latest hot releases.

  1. Discounts Or Gifts

A simple discount is always welcome and makes an extremely attractive incentive for potential subscribers. 

Think about it - people are already showing an interest in your brand if they are perusing your website, and may need a nudge to commit to a purchase. A small discount or another offer (free shipping, for example) can be the catalyst needed to not only sign up to your list but to make a purchase too. Not bad returns for such a small investment!

Finally, you could also consider offering relevant gifts in return for a sign-up. A free sample of one of your most popular products is the obvious choice, giving new subscribers an idea of the kind of quality they can expect from your brand and wetting their appetite for more. 

Useful Tools for List Building

Now you have an idea of some tactics for encouraging people to sign up to your list, let’s see how you can bring it all together. It’s important to find an email marketing platform that’s designed specifically with the needs of ecommerce retailers in mind and provides you with the right tools for building a thriving email list.

  1. Standard Sign-up Forms

These are the classic sign-up boxes that you’ll see on most ecommerce websites. You can place these forms throughout your site with a simple text like “Sign up to our Newsletter” or “Become a Subscriber Today.” 

The standard sign-up form gives you the flexibility to add as many fields as you choose, so you can capture as much information as possible. Because a good list contains more than just an email address! 

The more information you have about your subscribers, the better you can segment your list and the more personalized your messaging will be. At the very least, you should consider adding a field for phone numbers, so you can supplement your emails with SMS marketing. 

Other field options include things like gender, age, location, preferences, and more. However, be careful not to make your form too complicated and time-consuming. We want to make signing up as easy as possible, remember? Find a balance between getting the information that you need and making the sign-up process as simple as possible.

  1. Pop-ups

Static sign-up forms are great and should always be used, but the sad truth is that they succeed in capturing a subscriber to your list at rates of just 1.28%. To boost this number, you can explore more dynamic and effective forms—the first of which is the pop-up. 

Pop-ups have gained a reputation over the years for being intrusive and annoying. However, if they are carefully timed and used in just the right situations, they can effectively capture subscribers. The exit-intent pop-up is a great example of this, being timed to appear only when the visitor has finished their business and is ready to leave the site. 

With conversion rates rising to 4.22%, it is clear that pop-ups are a very useful addition to your blog, store, or other pages when looking to collect subscribers.

  1. Interactive Sign-up Forms

To offer a fun and memorable experience, consider interactive sign-up forms like the Wheel of Fortune. 

These forms bring an element of gamification into the process by offering visitors a chance to spin the wheel and win attractive incentives. This increase in engagement is reflected in excellent conversion rates of 12.74%. 

Simply add your incentives to the wheel (percentage discounts, free shipping, gifts, etc.) and add your desired information fields (email, phone number, etc.). As people are naturally inclined to want to try their luck, you could perhaps afford to add a couple of extra fields here and maximize your collection of information.

  1. Landing Pages

Dedicated landing pages are useful for campaigns that aim to sign up as many subscribers as possible. 

The concept is simple—you create an attractive and easy-to-navigate page that’s designed specifically for capturing subscribers, and link to this page from things like your social media feeds, emails, or ads. 

Creating your landing pages based on a particular campaign or incentive (free shipping in exchange for signing up, for example), keeps things focused and the desired outcome clear. The high conversion rates reflect this—visitors who land on your page sign up an impressive  24.82% of the time.

Wrap Up

With email as a marketing channel showing no signs of slowing down (in fact, conversion rates for email marketing campaigns nearly doubled in 2020), email has firmly consolidated its role as the go-to channel for online shopping. 

Knowing how to build and nurture a thriving email list from scratch is truly one of the most valuable skills a marketer can have—a well-built email list has the potential to become your primary source of revenue. Growing and maintaining your list is a never-ending task that should be kept at the forefront of your marketing strategy. 

Luckily, it’s not an overly complicated task.

Just remember to take full advantage of the tools and features that your email marketing platform offers (a good platform will offer many), follow the 2 simple steps outlined in this article, and work at it patiently and consistently. 

Give it a little time, and soon you’ll have a thriving and lucrative list of engaged subscribers eagerly awaiting your updates and promotions!

10 Effective eCommerce Strategies to Help You Reach More Customers

What are ecommerce marketing strategies worth your time and investment? Whether you’re just starting a business or already have a well-established customer base, you need to stay updated with your business’s latest e-commerce marketing trends and strategies.

Launching a site is already a significant milestone for your brand. That’s why it’s essential to invest in a practical site website structure and marketing strategy.

In this post, we’ll walk you through the nine effective strategies to help you gain more customers in the long run:

1. Conduct a competitive analysis

It would be best never to leave out competitive analysis, no matter how effective your efforts are. Knowing who your competitors are is as vital as learning about your customers.

Why? Because by doing so, you can quickly assess their strengths and weaknesses and look for ways how you can gain a competitive advantage over them. For instance, you can study your competitors by looking at what content they produce, what keywords they’re ranking for in their SEO campaigns, what type of products they have for sale, etc.

You can look for market gaps that you can use to eventually outsmart them, even if they’re better funded than your store. For example, you can try using long-tail keywords. The more specific these keywords are, the more customers you’ll be able to attract in the long run.

2. Improve your social media strategy

A robust social media marketing campaign for your e-commerce business has many benefits. Primarily, this is to boost user engagement and drive sales. User engagement usually involves shares, likes, comments, and general interactions on your post. 

It will help you leverage your brand in people’s minds. Word-of-mouth marketing is also crucial because it’s easy for you to share information between and within platforms. 

Using various social media platforms makes it easy for your e-commerce business to create and maintain its online presence. For example, Instagram has a swipe-up link feature on stories and product stickers that, when clicked on, directs users to a product or catalog.

In the same way, Facebook has dynamic ads where owners can upload whole catalogs and then promote relevant content to its users. Since most of these platforms are visual-focused, you need to ensure that your posts and promotions have visually stimulating formats. 

3. Optimize your shopping cart functionality

To prevent customers from abandoning their shopping carts, you need to ensure that your shopping cart functions well. To spot issues, you need to analyze the performance frequently. 

Study your analytics data to see what stages customers tend to abandon your site. Then, think of ways you can improve on them. Similarly, you can also utilize A/B testing to know which solution has the highest potential to decrease shopping cart abandonment. 

4. Add eye-catching photos and quality product descriptions

To help your customers decide, provide them with the information they need. Since they cannot see or touch the product, they rely on product images and descriptions before deciding. 

Make sure that you include high-quality product images to generate attention. Then, give them a list of features and benefits to know what they’ll be getting. 

5. Use product video transcriptions and captions

Video captioning improves your SEO rankings, lets you reach more customers, and provides information in a simplified form that engages your audience, eventually leading to higher sales. 

In the same way, transcription can significantly enhance webinars and market research interviews, making sure that you get the most out of this marketing strategy. So, make sure that you get the best transcription software in the market. 

6. Increase ecommerce search usability

Do you record and analyze what your customers are looking for? If you can track this, you can effectively enhance your navigation and search capability.

To optimize the UX of your e-commerce site, you need to organize it to fit two primary groups of prospective customers:

  • Site visitors who only want to browse.
  • Visitors who know what they want to purchase.

Now, people who know exactly what they’re looking for want to find the correct information quickly. Creating a high-performing search experience is vital here. If users can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll look someplace else.

The second category is those who wanted to browse and compare items. They’ll be using navigation menus and browsing through product categories and pages. To make the entire experience smooth, organize the menu bar and categories in highly intuitive and easy-to-use sections.

Your site’s search and navigation function also need to be well-designed and user-oriented to be effective and enhance your customers’ overall experience.

7. Focus on eCommerce SEO

One of the best ways to attract more customers is to improve the SEO of your eCommerce website. You will have to do keyword research, take care of your site structure, optimize the site on-page and build backlinks. 

Besides regular SEO techniques, you should consider integrating your site with Progressive Web App (PWA) to enhance its rankings. It’s proved that PWA benefits SEO since it helps to improve the site’s load speed, mobile-friendliness, and user experience.

8. Offer a wide selection of products

The more products you’re offering, the more likely customers will find something that will interest them. Ensure that you provide several styles, brands, and price points to appeal to as many shoppers as possible. 

See to it that your product descriptions are thorough. That way, customers can make a more informed decision on their purchasing product. You can also offer free shopping once they reach a certain threshold or offer it for a limited time. 

9. Offer discounts and promotions

Another way that you can generate attention is by offering discounts and promotions. 

Provide discount codes, seasonal sales, and free shipping offers to entice customers. Make sure that they’re attractive and competitive enough.

10. Host a contest or giveaway on social media

Finally, one of the best ways to attract prospective customers is by hosting contests and giveaways on social media. 

Contests are a great way to boost online engagement and inspire more people to reach out and engage with your brand.

Over to You

So, there you have it. Hopefully, you will apply these strategies to optimize your e-commerce site. Hopefully, these tips will help you get ahead of your competitors and provide actionable insights to boost your sales in the long run. 

The key here is developing the right strategies which will work best for your e-commerce store and your customers. Good luck!

Top 7 Proven Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for Sales Growth

Source: Freepik

So you have recently developed a shiny, new eCommerce website and are looking to promote and sell your excellent range of products, but where to start? Despite what a lot of blogs and e-books might tell you, building a successful eCommerce website takes plenty of time and effort, including a fair share of trial and error.

In this article, we will look at 7 proven eCommerce marketing strategies to boost sales growth, helping to make your online store a success.

An Overview of Ecommerce Marketing

Ecommerce marketing is a range of practices and techniques that can typically be broken down into three stages:

  • The first step is to promote your products via numerous channels to help drive potential customers to your online store. 

  • Once a new user is directed to your store, the next stage is to encourage them to purchase with the help of a strong user experience

  • When a first-time purchase has been completed, the last step is to keep the customer as a long-term patron, resulting in repeat business.

Developing an eCommerce website is not covered by this guide, but there are many website builders out there that can simplify the process and create effective and functional online stores


If you prefer WordPress as your chosen content management system, Elementor, Divi and other powerful WordPress page builders might be of great interest.

7 Proven Ecommerce Marketing Strategies To Boost Sales Growth

  1. Establish Your Target Audience

Knowing exactly who your target audience is and optimizing your content around their wants and needs are vital to growing a successful online business. However, identifying your key target audience requires thorough research.

Source: Freepik

Here are some useful tips to define your primary target audience:

  • It is always a good start if you can be ‌part of your intended target audience, allowing you to apply your preferences to your strategy. If you have no interest in the products you are selling, then the task becomes much more difficult.

  • Envisage your ideal customers, determine individual profiles for each and think about how to meet their requirements. This will help you build a targeted marketing strategy. 

  • Using the profiles you have created, you can then segment your audience to create personalized campaigns. Think locations, behaviors, interests, and professions.

  • Once you are up and running, it is important to understand what you are doing successfully and where you could improve. Think of ways to gather feedback and opinions from your customer base, such as a survey that offers incentives.

  • Encourage referrals by offering incentives to your customers for promoting your store this can be achieved through social media shares in return for a discount or a prize.

  • Conduct regular competitor analysis to stay on top of new trends and products. This can help you identify new niches that may have passed you by. If your competitor’s product is good, then it is up to you to show why yours is better.

  • Finally, always be willing to change and adapt. If a campaign hasn’t produced significant results, then analyze how to improve it, or if it needs to be scrapped altogether.



  1. Use Keywords To Drive Your Marketing Strategy

When building a search engine marketing strategy, you need to know what the search intent of the user is. In our case, this is likely to be for purchasing ‌or product research. 

Product research-related search terms often contain words like “cheapest”, “best” or “newest”, while customers looking to buy a product are likely to use words such as “shop”, “discount”, and “sale”, for example.



Establishing the intent of your target audience will help you identify the correct keywords to use in your content. An old-school brainstorming session is a great way to build an excellent library of potential keywords before using a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs or Uber Suggest.

  1. Ensure Your Product Pages Are Optimized

Your product pages need to be optimized for both text and visual searches. This means high-quality, unique text, images, and video. You will also need a strong call-to-action (CTA) to encourage the user to place an order. 

Product reviews and ‘Social Proof’ are also fundamental to a successful eCommerce website, as a customer is more likely to purchase a product if there is a convincing testimonial from a fellow shopper.

Remember, you can create amazing product pages, but if your website does not function the way it should and impairs the user’s experience, then it might all count for nothing. Applying effective business process automation can turn a potential exit into a sale - assist the customer as much as possible without being invasive.



  1. Create Sensible Re-targeting Campaigns

Annoyingly, there will be times when a customer places an item in their cart, ready to buy. Then they suddenly exit the store without making a transaction. There can be many reasons for this, and it is a common occurrence, but not all is lost.

Re-targeting should be one priority of your eCommerce marketing strategy.

Using automated processes, you can send gentle reminders to these ‘nearly customers’  trying to entice them back to your store, perhaps offering a discount or an alternative product.



  1. Build a Strong Mailing List

Many unsuccessful online stores have neglected to build up their mailing list and instead have narrowed their marketing plans focusing on search engine optimization and social media. We should not underestimate the role of email marketing.

Build up your mailing list using the following methods:

  • Pop-ups asking users to sign up for your newsletter

  • Offer discounts for users that have opted-in to your mailing list

  • Product giveaways on social media

  • An opt-in option at the checkout

  • Strategically placed calls-to-action across your website

Keep in mind that when asking people to sign up for your email list, you need to offer something of value.  While coupons and discounts can work, for some brands this can be educational content as well.  

For instance, if you had a golf ecommerce brand it may make sense to create an online course that explains how to get the perfect golf swing.  

The nice thing here is that your offer isn’t selling anything, it’s just educating your audience.  So, they’re much more likely to get a free resource like this and then look at you as a thought leader, which will lead to more sales in the future. 

You can build a list of subscribers with the help of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrRiWwQ3ThI

  1. Stay Ahead of the Game With Automated Emails

For any form of marketing, it pays not to be reactive, eCommerce is certainly no exception. 

Automated email campaigns can help you inform your mailing list of a sale or special offer during key periods of the year, as well as entice back customers that have abandoned their shopping cart. This is a powerful tool and a great time saver.



  1. Focus on Effective Social Media Campaigns

Source: Freepik

Establishing a brand is vital if you want to launch an online store that generates sales, and the best place to promote your brand online is via social media. 

Platforms such as Instagram allow you to develop ad campaigns that can target specific audiences, while there are also helpful tools to help you schedule Instagram posts so your page remains active - using a range of software is key to managing each aspect of your campaign without being overwhelmed.

To achieve great social media success and high conversions, we refer you back to our first point, knowing your target audience!


Final Words


We hope our insights have been both digestible and useful, and we wish you and your online store luck with your chosen strategy. 

Remember, successful eCommerce websites are not achieved overnight, and mistakes will be made along the way, the important thing is how you adapt.

5 Ways to Naturally Grow Your Business

Success in business is not always linear. There are times when you would hit a few bumps and roads ahead.

But, one thing is for sure, you need to keep going and keep growing.

As we progress, purchase new assets, increase employees, and acquire more customers, it is important that our strategy scales and improves as well. So in order to help you, we have listed a few tips on how you can naturally and sustainably grow your business.

Explore Different Types of Growth 

An article published on the Missouri State University website suggested different alternative growth scenarios. Rather than look at growth from a general perspective, they proposed seven different ways to grow and develop a business.

Oftentimes when we think of growth, we usually think in terms of the market and income growth of our business. But according to the mentioned article, growth can also be network growth, quality growth, product growth, volume growth, and financial growth.

Market and income growth generally refers to new market entry and an increase in profitability, respectively. Whilst network growth means additional partnerships, quality growth is for research and development, product growth means innovation, volume growth is an increase in production, and financial growth means an injection of more capital.

Once you look at growth this way, you would be able to unlock more potential and opportunities for your business.

Setup an eCommerce Store

Many startups found success by setting up their own e-commerce store. Since building customer relationships from the ground up can be difficult, most e-commerce platforms simply take away this burden from you. They already have a repository or access to customer data that you never had before. Because of this, it is much easier to target customers and generate leads for your brand. 

Remember that there are tons of ways to set up an e-commerce store. You can either create your own online store or just simply set up an account on an e-commerce platform. Most startups often opt for the latter because it is much more convenient and less costly. Given that startups are still new in the industry, it is more practical to set up an account in an eCommerce platform rather than splurge their entire budget on creating their own online store. 

Startups are able to greatly benefit from their e-commerce store because they are able to generate more leads and explore new markets without having to burn a hole in their pocket. With that said, you should consider this as one of your options to grow your business. 

Find a Niche

Look for your target market and start building from there.

Think of a niche as your starting point. Since you are still new to the industry, it is much better to build credibility and reputation in a niche market first. Quickly jumping and marketing to a more general market might just lead to unfavorable results. Keep in mind that consumers are still unfamiliar with your product and they have not fully trusted you yet.  So pandering to the general audience might just be ineffective and a waste of resources.

To maximize your growth potential, you should instead gain the trust of your niche market first. Thereafter, you can then think in terms of growth and how your brand can serve other related markets. Potential customers outside your niche would be more trusting of you if they know there are other sets of people who trust you as well.

Pander to the Community

Aside from your niche market, you should also consider your local community as a target market as well. There are different ways to pander to your local community and one of which is hosting events.

If you are planning to have an actual store, then the best way to start is to host an in-store demo. Even though e-commerce is growing increasingly popular these days, in-store demos are still an effective way to bring in more loyal customers. The great thing about this type of event is that you can also do it along with your other marketing strategies as well.

For instance, in-store demos are a great source of content for your social media campaign. You can even hire an influencer from a promotional modeling agency as well. Doing so would help generate buzz around your brand.

Besides, no matter which marketing campaign you decide on, it would certainly enhance your reputation and image within the community.

Embrace Changes

As cliché as it is, the best way to achieve sustainable growth is to adapt to changes. Keep in mind that consumers’ attitudes and behavior are ever so changing. With that, your business needs to catch up as well.

For instance, most businesses today are now switching their marketing campaign from print to digital. They have noticed that consumers are spending and dedicating more of their time online. These businesses now see digital media as a crucial element in their marketing campaign.  

And this does not only apply to the marketing aspect of the business, many companies today are now starting to embrace innovative changes in tech like AI for their day-to-day work,  FinTech for their business transactions, and e-commerce for their marketplace.

Because at the end of the day, your business needs to be agile to progress and innovation. If you fail to catch up and welcome these changes, both you and your business would not be able to overcome stagnant growth.