5 Easy Ways to Increase Your Store's Email Opt-In Rate

Getting existing and potential customers to join your email list gives you an effective way to increase your sales and draw more attention to your services. Unfortunately, a lot of ecommerce stores find it difficult to get people to join their email lists.

Despite the rise of social media, email will continue to play a crucial role in marketing.

If you haven’t had much success increasing your store’s email opt-in rate, then you should give these strategies that have worked well for other ecommerce companies a try. Before you give up on the power of email, test the following five easy ways to increase your email opt-in rate. You should see that you get better results when you focus on tested techniques.

Write share-worthy content for social media platforms.

No one will join your email list until they become familiar with your ecommerce store. Writing share-worthy content is one of the best ways for new customers to discover your business.

Without share-worthy content, though, few people will visit your site.

We understand that writing terrific content takes time and planning. So here are some quick tips for creating awesome content that people want to share with their friends include:

• Writing catchy headlines that tell people how they will benefit from reading your post.
• Making your content emotional to make it feel more “human.”
• Finding an engaging style that your target audience enjoys.
• Proofreading and editing your content to make it more professional.

Social media lets you interact with billions of people around the world. Without share-worthy content, though, few people will visit your site. After all, it’s pretty impossible to get their contact information if they don’t come to your site.

Establish your brand as an authority.

Your blog’s content also needs to establish your brand as an industry authority. Would you rather give your email address to an amateurish company or one that promises to give you useful information about the products and services you need?

User-generated content (UGC) gives you an opportunity to publish genuine testimonials that readers will believe.

Establishing your brand as an authority doesn’t take as much effort as you might think, especially if you really are an expert in your field. You can make your brand more authoritative by:

• Publishing how-to articles that teach readers useful skills.
• Comparing products to help customers decide which options match their needs best.
• Making videos that demonstrate how to use your store’s products.
• Answering questions that customers ask on social media.
• Responding to comments on your blog posts.
• Asking other industry experts to write guest posts for your blog.

Once more people think of your ecommerce store as the best place to get reliable (and valuable) information, you should see an improvement in your email opt-in rate.

Include content from your current subscribers.

People see so many advertisements per day that, eventually, they stop paying attention to the content. No matter how hard you try to make your content relatable, some viewers will cringe because it came from a business.

User-generated content (UGC) gives you an opportunity to publish genuine testimonials that readers will believe.

According to recent research, 84 percent of Millennials say that UGC has “some” or “a lot” of influence on their purchasing decisions. You should apply a similar strategy to encourage people to join your email list.

No matter how hard you try to make your content relatable, some viewers will cringe because it came from a business.

You can pull UGC from posts on your social media accounts or you can ask your current subscribers to explain how they benefit from getting emails from your store.

Optimize your blog for mobile devices.

Mobile devices accounted for more than 51 percent of global internet traffic in April 2018. That statistic shows that you can reach more customers by optimizing your blog for mobile devices.

Perhaps even more importantly, Google penalizes websites that don’t optimize for mobile devices. If you don’t have the world’s most popular search engine on your side, then it’s unlikely that you will reach more people interested in joining your email list.

Luckily, you don’t need much technical knowledge to optimize your website for mobile users. The most important factors include:

• Using images and videos files that will load on mobile devices without using too much data.
• Choosing responsive blogging platforms that automatically adjust text size for smaller screens.
• Lowering the number of data-intensive elements, such as music and video, on your blog to improve its loading speed.
• Minimizing the number of pop-up ads that can obscure small screens and frustrate mobile users.

Google penalizes websites that don’t optimize for mobile devices.

If you aren’t sure whether you have a mobile-friendly site, then you can use this Google tool to test your blog. It only takes a minute or so to check your pages. Always test your pages individually to make sure they will reach people using Google on smartphones and tablets.

Offer great opt-in incentives.

Sometimes, even the best content and marketing strategies won’t convince some people to join your email list. These people feel like they can already benefit from your blog without handing over their contact information. Without additional incentives, why would they risk getting spammed by your store?

These no-nonsense consumers understand that their personal information has value. That means that you will have to give them something in return for their email addresses. Some great opt-in incentives include:

• Free shipping on first orders.
• Discount codes.
• Access to gated content.
• Exclusive newsletters.
• Previews about upcoming products, sales and events.

With the right opt-in incentive, you can convince just about anyone to join your email list.

Even the best content and marketing strategies won’t convince some people to join your email list.

Despite the rise of social media, email will continue to play a crucial role in marketing. Try these five easy ways to increase your store’s email opt-in rate, so you can connect with customers and encourage them to visit your site often.