You deploy your marketing through several channels, but if you’re in any sort of ecommerce, a strong email campaign can be your best friend.

Email marketing isn’t a grand investment, so it’s an easy avenue to find ROI because the opportunity far outweighs the cost. Granted, not everyone will open your emails, but those that do tend to be your star customers—they buy, and best of all, they come back for more (aka repeat buyers). 

The wider your email distribution, the greater the opportunity is to increase your sales. So make the most of your messaging to customers’ inboxes through some good old fashioned email list building through these three methods.

Make it easy to opt in on your site.

We don’t suggest hitting your website visitors over the head with email subscription forms, but peppering your site with quick-and-easy ways for customers to get their name on your list is a good place to start.

Place a clean, easy-to-find email address entry field in your footer. Build out calls-to-action at the bottom of web pages to elicit an email address. Incentivize joining your email list by revealing some of the helpful content you share. Consider a pop-up for a visitor who spends more than a few seconds when they arrive on your site. 

Offer essential resources that cost only an email address.

When you know your customers, you know what makes them tick, what makes them happy and what makes them angry. Creating meaningful content to answer any of their questions is a great way to add more names to your email list.

If you build a special resource—like a content marketing calendar, social media campaign template or a whitepaper about industry research findings—gate it on your site. A user needs only to submit an email address for your CRM to automatically send them the resource. It’s a win-win for you: you’ve gained an email address and a customer’s trust thanks to the helpful content you’ve mindfully put together for them to use on their own.

Who doesn’t love a good coupon?

You can guarantee to keep a customer coming back for more with a free promo code. It’s almost standard practice among ecommerce sites to offer a special coupon to a first-time site visitor at this point.

Ordinarily taking the shape of a pop-up form, this bonus offer can be anything your new customers might want. It could be free shipping on their first order, or maybe 20% off a special category of items. Or, if you’re feeling particularly generous, the buy-one-get-one-free deal. Delivering a discount off the bat is a good way to build brand affinity, too. 

And the fun doesn’t have to stop there. If you want to get extra ambitious, you can try these tactics as well:

• Run a webinar and use email addresses as the sign-up credential.
• Build landing pages for special products (even previewing ones you aren’t selling yet) and build anticipation by asking a user to join an exclusive, insider email list.
• Create a blog or e-newsletter your visitors can subscribe to. 
• Run a special giveaway to users who submit their email address—pick a lucky winner and incentivize others to stick around for future giveaways, promo codes or helpful tips.