Grow Your Ecommerce Brand With Your Email List

Many ecommerce brands use welcome coupons to attract new subscribers to their email list. So when someone new joins their list they offer a discount to convert them sooner.

The problem is many customers unsubscribe after redeeming their welcome offer. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to fix this problem, retain new subscribers and keep your email list happy.

How to Attract New Subscribers to Your Email List

Offering welcome coupons can be a double-edged sword. Using them as a lead magnet can be an effective strategy for getting customers to join your email list. But some customers will unsubscribe from your list soon after using the discount.

So does this mean you shouldn’t bother with welcome emails at all? Nope. In fact, 74% of consumers expect to receive a welcome email from your brand after subscribing. (1)

So, the problem isn’t sending a welcome email. Subscribers will unsubscribe from your email list for three main reasons:

Too many emails from your business
The content isn’t relevant to them
They don’t see the benefit of being on your list (2)

So, how can you make sure the content you send to your customers is relevant? Use the content on your opt-in form to attract the right customer and repel the wrong one.

Be clear about what customers should expect from you after joining your list. Make sure they know how subscribing will benefit them. Knowing your market is super important here.

The opt-in form is your first chance to hit your subscribers pain points. Do it the right way and you’ll set yourself up to have an email list filled with engaged subscribers. But how do you choose what to offer as a lead magnet in the first place?

Many ecommerce businesses offer a welcome coupon right out of the gate. This method can work well to add new subscribers to your email list. But you need to balance acquisition and retention to keep them there.

How to Keep New Subscribers On Your Email List

Let’s get to the point here, everyone wants a never-ending flow of new customers beating down their door.

But let me ask you a question, is it cheaper to acquire a new customer or retain an existing one? Unless you’re Michael Scott you know holding on to an existing customer costs way less than getting a new one.

But we all know that acquiring new customers is key to business growth. So how do you design your email marketing content strategy to appeal to both?

One good way to do this is by thinking out of the box when it comes to selecting your lead magnet. Instead of using a welcome coupon there are other ways to get subscribers to join your list.

For example, if I sold you a glass of lemonade for $1.50 today would you pay me $2.25 for it next week? Maybe if you were really thirsty! But probably not. Why? Because you got that same glass of lemonade for $1.50, why in the world would you want to pay 50% more than you did already?

Now I’m not hating on coupons/discounts. They absolutely have their place in an effective email marketing strategy.

But offering them as a lead magnet could backfire. New customers may hold off on buying your products at full price and choose to wait for the next discount.

While huge companies like J.Crew can get away with revolving discounts, most ecomm brands can’t survive like that. But how can you compete with other brands who offer revolving discounts?

There are other lead magnets you can offer to customers that still move the right buyer to join your email list. Here are a few lead magnet ideas:

Send subscribers a free guide to help them get the most out of your products
Give subscribers exclusive early bird access to new products
Send subscribers educational content related to your niche
Send customers buyer’s guides or product comparisons (bonus: use this to show how your products blow the competition out of the water)
Offer subscribers personalized product recommendations based on their needs
Promote special, limited edition or seasonal items to subscribers
Grant subscribers access to private sells, and VIP/Loyalty programs
Send customers a free sample of your product
Give subscribers access to case success stories from past customer

You can use any of these lead magnets to keep subscribers on your list. Now that your email list is filled with new subscribers it’s time to introduce them to your brand.

How to Welcome New Subscribers to Your List

The email welcome sequence is your chance to tell customers about your brand. Here you can tell your founder’s story, talk about product creation and more.

You can also use the welcome sequence to prepare new subscribers for the type of content they’ll receive. Let your new prospects know how often you’ll send emails and what sort of content they should expect.

Your welcome sequence can be as long as 7 days or as short as 1. As long as it shows subscribers who you are and what you sell, your welcome sequence is doing its job. It’s crucial to tell your subscribers about the value they will receive from your emails.

Try to think of interesting angles to “sell” your brand to your audience. The thing is, most, if not all your competition are also vying for your prospects’ attention. For all you know they could be the email right above or below yours in your subscriber’s inbox.

Ensure your email gets read by making it clear the value subscribers get from your list.

How to Get Subscribers To Read Your Emails

So, how do you stand apart from your competitors in your subscriber’s inbox? Do something different. Most of the competition will continue sending the same type of promotional content.

But you can go beyond promotional offers and really stand out in the ecommerce space. Sending promotional emails and coupons to your subscribers won’t cut it.

They’re already getting those emails from everyone else. Instead you should send emails to boost engagement without offering a discount. There are a few different ways to do this.

Provide your readers with thought-elevating insights on a specific topic unique to your industry
Have an expert, trustworthy opinion on new trends in your industry
Identify a narrator for your brand. This could be the CEO, president of the company or really anyone who represents your brand.

Choosing a narrator for your emails can give readers an inside look at the day to day life of the person. This is one of my favorite tactics to use because it gives you a goldmine of content ideas.

Using these tips can help you create valuable content your subscribers want to read.

How to Convert New Subscribers

After you’ve convinced new subscribers to read your email it’s time to convert them. The CTA (call-to-action) you use will depend on the email you’re sending.

Many of your emails will end with a soft sell, reminding customers about your products. Other times you’ll be launching a new product or running a promotion, that’s when it’s time to sell HARD.

What’s important is that each email you send has a clear CTA in it. Subscribers should know which action you want them to take and it should be easy for them to do it.

There’s no need to wait until the welcome sequence has ended to do this. You can start including CTA’s in your very first email to a new subscriber.

Another way to get customers to convert is by linking your email to helpful content on your website. Once subscribers enter your world, they’re more likely to buy your products.

Your website content should provide clear solutions to your subscriber’s pain points. Look below to see a great example of this from hims.com

Hims is a company that sells products to help people achieve better health. This page does a great job of addressing their audiences’ pain points. The option subscribers select will give the brand invaluable information they can use to personalize the emails they send.

The Right Way To Personalize Emails

How many emails do you have in your inbox that go something like this:

“Hey (your first name), check out your special offer inside”

“Time’s running out (your first name) our sale ends in 4 hours”

“Hey (your first name), check out these great deals”

I could go on, but you get the point. You likely have dozens of emails that look exactly like this in your inbox right now, and so do your subscribers.

Here’s the thing, including your customer’s name in your emails can be a helpful tool but you shouldn’t overdo it. And really, using a merge field to include your subscriber’s name in the email is only the tip of the iceberg.

There are SO many different things you can do to personalize your emails. One of the ways you can do this is with email automations. If you aren’t using email automations in your business it’s time to start.

With email automations you can segment your list based on behavior triggers. From there you can provide personalized content to specific segments of your list. This way you can make sure you’re always speaking to your target market.

An example of this is using an abandoned cart sequence to prompt customers to go back to their shopping cart. Using this targeted level of personalization can help increase conversions. (3)

For example, getting back to our hims.com example from earlier. Hims sells several types of products that solve different pain points. With email segments you can send certain emails to segment A and other emails to segment B.

So segment A could get emails aimed at their pain points and vice versa with segment B. By sending content tailored to each segment you can keep your audience engaged.

You can also give your customers personalized product recommendations this way. Like recommending biotin supplements to customers who have purchased topical finasteride.

Now I’m not saying you can’t ever cross-sell your other products to your audience (you can and should do this at times). But if you always send your ED subscribers emails about hair loss treatments your emails won’t get read.

You can still email both segments about ongoing promotions or other general content. So, you shouldn’t have to worry about running out of ideas for your emails. This is a great way to keep your emails super personal and relevant to the subscriber you’re talking to.

How to Get Subscribers to Buy More

There’s no sense in having someone subscribed to your list if they never buy anything from you. Introducing VIP or loyalty programs can raise the AOV of your best customers.

You probably already use some sort of loyalty program in your business. One common way to do this is giving points to customers so they buy more products.

These programs can help your ecomm business in three major ways:

VIP programs boost AOV
VIP programs boost brand trust and loyalty
VIP programs boost engagement with your ecomm brand

Using these programs gives your best customers “skin in the game” with your brand. So they’re more likely to stick around even if competitors have cheaper prices.

A good example of this is legion athletics. I’ve been a customer of this brand for years and it isn’t just because their products are fire. They offer an awesome loyalty program. For example, check out this discount offer they’re using for Black Friday.

Giving the customer a $10 gift card when they spend over $100, $30 in gifts if they spend over $149 and $100 in gifts if they spend over $199.

This is a great way to increase the AOV of your customers. Many of them will want to make good on the gifts you offer and buy more of your products to do it.

When they don’t have a huge Black Friday sale going on Legion uses a point system. So the more products you buy, the more points you get from each order.

You can then redeem those points for discounts on other products. This is a great way to build a community of people around your ecommerce brand that keep coming back for more.

How to Keep Subscribers Engaged

Keeping your audience engaged is easy when you know them well enough. Some of the best marketers in the industry know how powerful well-placed surveys can be.

You can use regular surveys to learn more about your subscribers. Ask subscribers what they like or dislike about your offerings. Or even ask them why they chose your products over another brand’s.

This information can be a content gold mine. Getting customers to complete the survey is easy when you make it worth their while.

You can offer a free gift or give customers points for completing the survey. Using this method gives you valuable information while incentivizing them to buy more.

So, how often should you survey your customers? Offering surveys a few times a year helps ensure you’re sending the right content.

When designing this survey it’s important to keep it simple and easy for your customers to complete. The longer or more complex your survey is, completion rates begin to drop off. Try to make a survey that takes no more than 3-5 minutes to complete.

Let's Wrap

Having a healthy email list that fuels your ecommerce brand doesn’t have to be hard. You can attract and keep profitable customers on your email list with the right strategy.

Overdoing coupons and promotional emails can be a recipe for disaster. But sending the best content to the right audience at the perfect time can lead to epic results. Use the tips in this article to create an email marketing strategy that works.

Reference list

Campaign Monitor. How effective are welcome emails? Retrieved from campaignmonitor.com
Pinkham, R. (2022). Do you know why people are unsubscribing from your emails? Retrieved from constantcontact.co
Klaviyo help center. (2023). How to use dynamic variables to personalize email and SMS flows. help.klaviyo.com