Email remains a cornerstone of effective communication in DTC marketing. Discover data-driven insights to help improve your email list growth and optimize your program for success.
Email marketing has always been a critical channel in direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing. This direct line of communication is key for personalizing experiences, building customer loyalty, and driving repeat purchases. Not to mention, like SMS, email is your direct line to engage with both current and potential customers, keeping them updated and connected with your brand.
But what really moves the needle when it comes to growing your email lists? This guide will center on email list growth best practices, fine-tuned by experts in the email space and proven by data.
Understanding subscriber acquisition
Subscriber acquisition is all about attracting and convincing potential customers to sign up for your email list. This process includes a combination of enticing incentives, easy accessibility of sign-up forms, and the use of various platforms like social media and content marketing to pull people in.
Attracting new subscribers
Despite the adage—if you build it, they will come, it doesn’t really apply to growing your email list. The strategies you put in place to bring customers in are just as important as the beautifully constructed email campaigns and journeys you’ve spent so much time building.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can attract new customers to grow your email list.
Optimizing your website for email acquisition
To effectively capture the attention of your website visitors without interrupting their browsing experience, it's all about smart placement of email sign-up forms. Think about integrating pop-ups that appear based on specific user actions, like when someone shows signs of leaving your site.
Alternatively, tucking sign-up forms neatly into your website’s footer or sidebar keeps them accessible yet unobtrusive. The key here is simplicity and speed. Make your forms easy and quick to complete. This approach not only respects the user's time but also boosts your chances of turning casual browsers into potential subscribers.
Incorporate an email sign-up option during the online checkout process. Customers are already engaged at this point, making it a perfect moment to capture their email addresses. Offer a future discount or early notification of new products as an incentive for signing up.
We also recommend setting up a separate welcome journey for subscribers that joined via checkout to thank them for their purchase. This further personalizes their experience with your brand. Just be sure to check that your welcome series doesn't conflict with any pre-existing post-purchase journeys.
Leveraging your owned channels
Take a look at how many of your SMS subscribers aren’t also signed up for email. Message those subscribers with a link to an email sign-up form, offering exclusive incentives or early access to new products.
Don’t forget, social media is a great resource for sourcing new email subscribers. Integrating social media into your email strategy is a way to add high-intent followers to your subscriber list and learn more about those individuals through zero-party data.
There are several ways to grow your list on both Instagram and TikTok. Examples include using Stories to boost email sign-ups, or hosting contests or giveaways where entry requires an email address. Once subscribed, you can personalize their email experience using targeted campaigns and journeys, preference collection, and more.
Encourage email sign-ups alongside access to a VIP or loyalty program. Highlight all of your exclusive benefits, like special discounts, early access to sales, and points redeemable for products. This incentivizes sign-ups and also improves customer retention and value.
Driving opt-in rates with incentives that work
Offer-driven, value-added pop-ups can increase subscribers by 55%. Successful incentives for growing your email lists should also align with your audience's interests and needs.
When looking at incentive success, here’s what our data has to say:
- Discounts and Coupons: Attentive customers using a discount offer in their sign-up units are averaging a 43% CVR. Offering a percentage off a purchase or a specific dollar amount discount can be a strong motivator, especially for new customers who might be making their first purchase.
- Giveaways and Contests: Attentive customers using giveaways as an incentive for email capture see roughly an 11% CVR. Entering subscribers into a contest or giveaway in exchange for their email can be a fun and engaging way to increase sign-ups, especially if the prize is desirable and relevant to your audience.
- Free Shipping: Attentive customers using free shipping as an incentive for capturing customer emails are only seeing a 1% CVR. For many shoppers, free shipping is expected. We recommend bundling this incentive with a discount to further incentivize shoppers.
- Miscellaneous Offers: Incentivizing shoppers with free samples, a gift-with-purchase, or exclusive/early access to product drops are great ways to reduce barriers to entry. Attentive customers tapping into these types of incentives for collecting customer emails are see an average 25% CVR.
Each of these incentives has the potential to attract different segments of your target audience. The key to success lies in choosing the right incentive that not only appeals to your prospective subscribers but also aligns with your brand’s values and marketing goals.
We recommend A/B testing your incentives against other offers to see what truly resonates with your shoppers and better measure performance impact.
Finally, take the time to optimize for mobile. When we looked at our 2024 data, we found that 30% of all conversions are linked to a mobile sign-up unit that gives a % off discount as the incentive. While the desktop sign-up form only accounted for 7% of conversions.
Optimizing your sign-up forms for conversions
One of the most common questions marketers ask is what influences conversion rate. To effectively boost the conversion rates of email marketing sign-up forms, it's essential to focus on several key aspects. First, it’s important to understand what are the key factors that influence the conversion rate of sign-up forms? Is there a specific dollar amount or percentage off that moves the needle?
Second, which form designs or layouts have yielded the highest conversion rates? Have certain form placements or triggers like pop-ups, overlays, embedded forms, etc., shown better results? Let’s take a closer look.
Full-screen sign-up units
If you’re looking to maximize your subscriber growth, we recommend first showing a fullscreen sign-up unit on your website when someone navigates to it. A fullscreen sign-up unit is designed to capture your customer's complete attention, whether they are on mobile or desktop. On mobile, it occupies the entire screen, and on desktop, it appears in the center, ensuring visibility without being intrusive.
Implementing Attentive’s fullscreen sign-up units has been shown to yield high conversion rates, quickly, helping you to grow your subscriber base and accelerate your program.
When on mobile, first page views see a 6% email opt-in rate, while desktop sees a 3% email opt-in rate. The industry average sits somewhere between 3-4%.
If a full-screen sign-up unit is the right fit for you, here are a couple of best practices we recommend for implementation:
- Use fullscreen sign-up units on 1st page load on mobile and desktop sites
- Offer a discount to incentivize visitors to join
- A/B test to identify what drives the highest conversion rate for your brand
Bubble sign-up units
Bubble sign-up units are the epitome of subtlety, a compact yet inviting box that rests at the bottom of your website, yielding an unobtrusive nudge to your visitors. With the offer presented in a concise manner, it beckons with a simple message, like “Get 15% off.”
Upon interaction, the bubble expands to showcase your full-screen sign-up unit to those captivated by the promise of a discount. Think of this as your second attempt at email capture. Interested in using a bubble sign-up unit? Here are a couple of recommendations:
- Use on subsequent page views after the full-screen display has made its initial impact
- Test different discount offers to see what resonates with shoppers
Spin-To-Win sign-up units
Accelerate your email list growth with a fun, engaging, and gamified sign-up experience. This particular sign-up unit is a great way to convert more visitors into email subscribers. Attentive customers using Spin-To-Win see upwards of a 3x lift in subscriber growth.
Since implementing Attentive’s Spin-to-Win sign-up unit, we’ve seen a 60% increase in CVR from new subscribers.
- Mark Stallings, Co-Founder, Casely
When implementing Spin-To-Win, here are a few best practices we recommend:
- A/B test your new Spin-to-Win unit against your existing fullscreen units to measure performance impact
- Make your chosen incentive (the “winner”) the best option on the wheel, so that every player gets the chance to win big!
- Add up to 5 possible offers and customize the colors to match your branding
Custom sign-up units
Sometimes you need to be able to go off-script. Holidays, new product releases, and sales are a great reason to customize a sign-up unit to fit your needs.
Temporarily replacing your existing sign-up unit with one that promotes a specific campaign is a great way to switch things up and give customers something to get excited about. This could include using a countdown timer for a new product launch or a special event.
This is also an incredibly popular option heading into the holiday season. Brands can entice shoppers to sign up for emails to get first access to early BFCM deals.
No matter the sign-up unit you go with, several things will remain the same across all of them. Craft a clear and compelling call to action that resonates with your audience, using specific, action-oriented language like “Get Exclusive Deals” or “Join Our Community.”
Enhance the appeal by offering incentives, as we mentioned above. Incorporate trust signals near the sign-up area to reassure users about their privacy and the security of their data.
Implement A/B testing to continually refine the form based on user feedback and performance data. By addressing these elements, you can significantly improve the effectiveness of your sign-up forms, leading to higher conversion rates and a more engaged subscriber base.
Analyzing your growth and engagement metrics
It's important to assess your subscriber growth data to evaluate the effectiveness of your acquisition strategy over a period of time. Our Analytics dashboard enables you to easily determine the success of your strategy without the need for generated reports or spreadsheets.
If you’ve started to notice a drop in new subscriber acquisition, then it may be time to refresh your sign-up units. Try testing different discount offers, changing the form altogether, or testing new colors and copy.
Effective strategies will continue to revolve around optimizing the sign-up experience and the use of compelling incentives like discounts and exclusive access.
At Attentive, we're committed to supporting our customers' long-term growth. We work with you to build strategies that'll help you grow your email list in an intentional and sustainable way.
