Have you ever heard the saying, “The money is in the list?”
When entrepreneurs say this, they mean that it’s very helpful to have an email list of prospects and customers who are easy to reach so you can sell things to them.
For example, if you had a very successful online store but one day lost the store and all the data but still had a list of prospects and customers, you could quickly get back in business by sending them offers again.
On the other hand, if you had a store but all of your customers’ and prospects’ information was lost, it would be much harder and take a lot longer to get your store back on track.
Even though these are broad statements, you can still see how important it is for the success of your business to have your own list or database of buyers and prospects.
Now, having said that, most businesses don’t treat their customer database as if it were a valuable asset that could lead to repeat and ongoing sales.
How do I know?
Well, let’s do a simple exercise.
Think about any businesses you’ve bought from in the past few months, like:
- Food markets
- Filling stations
- Clothes shops
- The doctor’s office at Spa
- Restaurants near the dentist office
- Things to do for fun
- Pet store
- Pool business
- Online stores
- …and I could go on.
Now that you’re thinking about the businesses you’ve recently spent money with, how many of them have sent you an email with a thank you, a discount or coupon to come back, a request for a referral, etc.?
Some may have, but I’m guessing that most haven’t kept in touch with you regularly after your first transaction.
But how many of them could have gotten more business from you if they had kept in touch, stayed in your mind, and given you a reason to do more business with them?
The most successful companies keep in touch with their customer and prospect databases on a regular basis. They let their people know about sales, coupons, special events, and other things, and as a result, they get repeat and referral business.
So, what do you think?
Are you actively adding prospects and customers to your own list?
If so, do you send them mail often to tell them about new products and services? Do you send them coupons, invite them to special events, and keep your business in the forefront of their minds?
If not, let’s look at some ways your e-commerce store can help you start building your own lists.
First, let’s look at a few ways to start building your list of prospects.
Put a pop-up coupon box on your online store
Adding a pop-up that gives first-time customers a discount in exchange for their name and email address is one of the fastest ways to build a targeted list of prospects. The name of that prospect is then sent to your email service, which sends an email with the coupon code to the email address that was given.
If your eCom store is powered by a platform like Shopify, there are dozens of free and paid pop-up apps that can help you get this up and running quickly.
To get the best results, you will need to make sure and test when to show the pop-up. For instance, you might not want the pop-up to show up right away when someone visits your site for the first time. Using what is called a “exit intent popup” is a popular method that many people choose. With an exit popup, the message is shown right before the person leaves your site.
Give away a freebie to get people to sign up.
Offering a valuable lead magnet that your prospects would like to have is a great way to get more high-quality prospects on your list.
What is a lead magnet, then?
A lead magnet is a way to get potential buyers to give you their email address or other contact information in exchange for something of value. Most lead magnets offer content that can be downloaded, like a free PDF checklist, report, eBook, whitepaper, video, etc.
Let’s say, for example, that your eCom store sells drones and parts for them.
A PDF or video guide on how to make money with your drone by taking photos and videos from the air could be a good lead magnet. The best tips and tricks for getting the most out of your drone could be another lead magnet.
For your site visitors to get the lead magnet, they would have to give you at least their name and email address. The lead magnet would then be sent to them via email, just like the coupon popup.
Again, platforms like Shopify have a lot of apps that make it easy and quick to add a lead magnet or opt-in.
Putting all of your clients on your email list
When someone buys something from you, add their email address to the list of people who have bought from you. This seems obvious, but a lot of store owners don’t do it. They just keep a list of buyers in a database and don’t add them to an email list so they can follow up with them and send them regular promotions.
Do NOT be the owner of that eCom. Instead, increase your sales and long-term success by adding them to your email list and sending them regular promotions and educational content that they look forward to.
Platforms like Shopify can add your customers’ information to your email list, so setting this up is easy.
And email systems like Klaviyo are great to use because they were made to work with e-commerce stores and make this process very easy.
What to Email to Your Customers and Potential Customers
Now that you know how easy it is to get prospects and customers of your stores to sign up for your email lists…
…what are the emails you send them?
That’s a great question, and I recently wrote a blog post called “7 Easy E-commerce Email Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using in Your Business” about this very topic. In that post, you’ll learn several quick ways to start making money from your email list, like:
- A Welcome Series that gets to know you…
- A Flash Sales Series to make money quickly from your leads…
- An Abandoned Cart Email Series helps you make money from visitors who almost bought but didn’t. They may just need a little push… and more, so be sure to read that post next.
In conclusion
At the end of the day, if you want your e-commerce business to be as successful as possible, you need to build a list of customers and potential customers and send them regular educational and promotional content to build relationships and keep sales coming in.
If you follow these easy steps and put them into action, you will soon be able to do anything you want in your business.
