An average person receives more than a hundred emails a day. So when shopping online, customers don’t necessarily want to share their email address or contact details with all the stores they visit. Reason - they don’t want to be spammed. But as a business, you need to build a Shopify email list to nurture your own audience. Sooner or later, this audience is more likely to convert through promotions and marketing campaigns.So what are the email list growth tactics for eCommerce businesses that you can apply?

Growing your Shopify email list 101 and the Shopify apps you can use

Hacks to grow your Shopify email list

1. Have an email sign-up form in the footer

The footer is one of the most obvious places where visitors look for information they’re unable to find instantly on the homepage. This makes it a key location to collect email addresses. Moreover, a visitor who has scrolled till the bottom of your page is most probably interested in your brand/site/content. That’s a good opportunity to turn them into dedicated subscribers.Offer something to the visitor - an ebook, a discount coupon, a newsletter, etc, in exchange for their email id.For example, The Modern Shop includes a simple email opt-in form. The line above it is simple and to the point - it mentions what the subscriber can expect to receive from them.

2. Add an exit intent pop-up across all your pages

Exit intent pop-ups that ask for email addresses encourage 4 to 7% of visitors to join the list. These are messages that you must’ve seen peeking out from corners of web pages when you move your cursor toward the back or close buttons on the browser. Imagine if you had a thousand or even a hundred visitors to your site. Not a bad number of additions to your email list. Right?Some cues to help you create effective pop-ups for your pages:

• Make sure you’re offering something valuable to your visitors. Discounts are good, but you could also offer ebooks, newsletters with interesting reads that can provide more value
• Offering something different and more valuable than what your competitors are offering. This will keep subscribers from unsubscribing
• Make it easy for site visitors to close the pop up, because your strategy may not work well for all visitors and you don’t want to disrupt their natural flow of shopping on your store
• Timing is key to exit intent popups. Use A/B testing to determine the best timing or action that should trigger the pop up
• Optimize your popups for mobile devices to ensure that they don’t disrupt shopping experiences on smaller screen devices

Shopify store, Biko makes visitors feel exclusive by offering them the first looks at collections and discounts for subscribing to their newsletter.

3. Collect email addresses through pre-order subscriptions

At times, you might have products yet-to-be-launched or not yet available in your store. In such a case you have an option of offering pre-orders. It’s when customers can buy your product in advance. For the same, you’ll have to collect their email addresses so you can notify them when their product arrives. This is also a good way to grow your Shopify store email list.

Here are some ways to make the most of a pre-order strategy to build an email list:

• Use FOMO (fear of missing out) to increase visitors’ urge to pre-order your product. You can have pre-order products on your website and a clear CTA that asks for email addresses
• Make your pre-order offers time-sensitive. For example, pre-orders allowed only for a specific period of time. Again, make the CTA - asking for email addresses - prominent!
• Make offers and discounts a part of your pre-order strategy. This will encourage visitors to place orders soon, growing your email list sooner
• Let visitors subscribe via a channel of their preference - it could email, SMS, web push or even Messenger. You can easily do this with an app like Pre-order Today

4. Allow visitors to subscribe for restock alerts

A stocked-out product that customers are interested in is an opportunity for you to turn their purchase into subscriptions. Allow shoppers to subscribe for restock notifications when the products are restocked on email and you’ll be surprised by how many of them are willing to do so.While you can send restock alerts via other channels as well, the chances of growing your email list faster are higher because 72% of customers prefer email as a communication channel.Here are some tips for your restock alert strategy to collect email addresses:

• Nudge visitors into sharing their email addresses with the help of FOMO; 60% of millennials make purchases as a reaction to FOMO
• Offer time-sensitive deals and discounts to create an urgency towards purchasing the product when restocked; driving in more subscriptions

5. Include a sign-up button on social media channels

One of the main reasons people follow brands on social media is because they want to stay up to date about the brand - know about new products, promotions and discounts, etc. Your email list also provides the same things that your followers expect. Thus, it makes sense to let them know on social media that they can sign up to receive updates.What are the ways in which you can include a sign-up button on different social platforms? Here are some suggestions:

• Facebook: You could include a link in the About Us section or even include a dedicated tab. See how The Good Trade does it

• Instagram: On Instagram, you could add multiple links in addition to your website URL with the help of apps that allow this feature. Or, you could create posts inviting your followers to sign-up through the link in your bio
• Twitter: Twitter is link-friendly, and hence you could have a link in your bio or make posts that invite readers to sign up with a link.

6. Leverage live chat and chatbots

How do you grow your Shopify email list with chatbots? Forrester research says bots are one of the best ways to interact with customers when they spend time on your site. You can create engaging conversations with visitors and slowly work your way towards getting their email addresses.Don’t believe it’s possible? Here’s how you can do it:

• Offer help in browsing and shopping to visitors in real-time. While chatting, you could offer them additional offers or incentives for them to share their email addresses
• If your visitors seem satisfied with your help through the chatbot, extend them the offer of adding them to your mailing list so that they can stay up to date about your brand
• Think of creative ways to urge visitors to submit their email addresses while your chatbot is engaging them

Yes, these might seem like a lot of strategies to implement to grow your Shopify email list. But here’s the good news!With some Shopify apps, implementing these strategies to grow your email list, will only take a few minutes. Here are some of the best Shopify apps to grow your email list.

The best Shopify apps to kick start your email list growth

Privy - Exit Pop Ups & Emails

Privy helps invite site visitors to subscribe to your email list. With this app, you can show pop ups with discounts at different triggers like a specific time, specific pages or even exit intent. What is more, it automatically syncs contacts to Mailchimp, Klaviyo or other email marketing apps you may be using.Get Privy

Back in Stock - Restock Alerts by Appikon

At times, visitors might like products that are out of stock on your site. You can make use of this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone - collect email addresses as well as ensure you don’t miss sales opportunities. Back in Stock - Restock Alerts will help you do so. The app helps collect email addresses for sending restock alerts to subscribers. This app also supports SMS, web push notifications, and Facebook Messenger as well.Get Back in Stock - Restock Alerts

Pre-Order Today by Appikon

Most-preferred by Shopify stores for its customizable and smart features, this app allows you to set up pre-orders for your up and coming products. It automatically switches to pre-order mode in real-time as a product gets restocked and starts collecting email addresses from interested customers. Among its other features, the app allows you to customize the pre-order button as well as goals by changing the text, visual design, messaging, quantity and time details. The app sends you detailed reports that help you predict the demand, and consumer interest in your products.Get Pre-Order Today

WooHoo ‑ Gamified email popups

Another reason why your store visitors tend to leave without making any kind of interaction, could the lack of engagement. In that case, you may want to explore gamified popups like spin the wheel, guess the gift, etc with apps like WooHoo. It nudges your visitors to participate to win discounts, store credits and other rewards by sharing their email addresses; helping you boost on-site engagement as well as grow your Shopify email list.Get WooHoo

Justuno Popups & Exit Offers by Justuno

This app helps you capture email addresses through popups, banners, bars, slide-ins, and other features. The app also helps to gain insights into your site visitors’ behavior based on activities such as their exit, page views, time spent on your site, visit frequency, cart value, order history, and more.Get JustUno

TextChat - eCommerce live chat and chatbot

As we mentioned above, asking for a consumer's email address after having a conversation with them, increases the odds of them subscribing to your email list. This is where having a live chat app like TextChat comes in. It lets you set up smart chatbots that can work on collecting email addresses along with queries of customers, and also help you manage these incoming questions on-the-go, leveraging SMS notifications.Get TextChat

Email Collection Bar by Hextom

With Email Collection Bar you can gather emails from your site’s new visitors as well as greet existing customers every time they revisit. The app displays a bar to collect emails, offers discount coupons after collecting email addresses from visitors, and can even generate unique discount codes with each realt-time sign up. The app integrates easily with Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Omnisend and Sendlane, and is pretty similar to an announcement bar.Get Email Collection Bar

MailChimp Forms by Mailmunch

Email marketing is still one of the best ways for marketers to execute their marketing strategies. And MailChimp is among the most preferred platforms by businesses small and large. MailChimp Forms allows you to create pop-ups whenever new customers visit or existing customers revisit. The pop-ups help collect email addresses. Among its other features are:Pop-ups, bars and banners triggered with exit intent, and time on siteDisplays offers and coupons at the time customers abandon cartsGet MailChimp Forms

Pop Ups & Bars by Wisepops

The app allows you to easily create well-designed pop-ups with a simple drag and drop editor. It has features such as email address capture, new product announcement, and allows you to track the performance of your pop-ups as well. The app offers pre-designed and customizable popup templates, making it much easier for you to set one up.Get Pop Ups & Bars

Free Exit Popup, Coupon Pop-ups by Poptin

The app allows you to build email pop-ups and exit intent pop-ups to help grow your Shopify email list, for free. Among its other features are announcement bars, embedded contact forms, and integration with many emailing systems such as CRM, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Zapier, HubSpot, ConvertKit and more.Get Exit Popup, Coupon Pop-ups

OptinMonster Email Popups by Retyp, llc

Another app to help you set up high-converting email popups, is OptinMonster Email Popups. The app allows you to create effective exit pop-ups, coupon pop-ups, and dynamic display rules to increase email collection with higher levels of personalization. It can even help you reduce cart abandonment and increase sales.Get OptinMonster Email Popups

Cross sell, Exit & Email Popup by Personizely

What if new visitors to your website don’t seem interested in any product? You’ll have to try to entice them with offers, discounts or product recommendations based on what interests them. That’s what this app by Personizely helps you do. It tries to grab visitors’ attention with dynamic product recommendations on a popup along with coupons that get shared on sharing email addresses.Get Cross sell, Exit & Email Popup

To sum it up, you need to focus on growing your Shopify email list

To have your own audience is more important than you thought. No matter at what stage your Shopify store business is - just starting or established - make sure you have the strategies to grow your email list implemented at all times.Owing to the increasing cost of customer acquisition of social media platforms and ever-changing dynamics of other channels, make sure you have an audience that is willing to hear from you.