Tips for Acquiring Subscribers Who Will Become Loyal Customers

With 55% of marketing professionals agreeing that email marketing is the most effective marketing tactic, it’s not surprising that it plays an integral role in successful eCommerce merchants’ overall marketing strategies. The fact that it is widely known to return more than $40 per dollar spent makes its cost effectiveness undeniable.

What is also undeniable is that any successful email marketing program begins with a sizable, healthy list of subscribers to reach out to with your marketing messages. In fact, 71% of B2C email marketers surveyed in the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey reported growing and retaining subscribers as a goal in the next 12 months to increase the ROI of their email marketing programs.

But simply growing the number of subscribers on your list – even if you are able to retain them – is not enough.

Revotas solution consultant and senior eCommerce email marketing strategist, explains, “Acquisition is hugely important in the email channel. After all, we can’t be effective in email without an audience. That being said, there are many solutions that can help to achieve the goals of list growth, subscription and customer acquisition, but they’re not created equal.”

He continues, “List growth for the sake of simply adding more numbers to your email list, while achievable, doesn’t align with your eCommerce email marketing goals. Prompting and motivating folks to subscribe may definitely get you closer to your goal, but in the end, the real desired result is acquisition coupled with purchases.”

Converting Email Subscribers to Customers

For email subscribers to become and remain customers, your email marketing campaigns must keep them interested and engaged. In fact, 71% of the B2C email marketers in MarketingSherpa’s benchmark report also stated that one of the goals for their email marketing in the next year is to increase engagement metrics.

The bottom line is that in order to have the greatest chance of converting subscribers to customers and retaining them as customers, the subscribers you acquire must be quality prospects from the start. For this reason, there is no question that organic list growth has much more value than inorganic means like list acquisition. Not to mention the fact that emailing frequently to a large number of unengaged subscribers could actually harm your reputation and negatively affect your deliverability.

So what methods should be used to acquire new subscribers who have the best chance of becoming new customers? There are many options.

1. Website Signup
2. Pop Up / Smart Widgets
3. Welcome Series
4. Preference Center
5. Sweepstakes
6. Webpush Notifications
7. CRM Ads / Social Media
8. Off-line Channels

The best email marketing program is nothing without a healthy list of subscribers to market to. While acquiring as many subscribers as possible may seem to be the logical approach for maximizing all metrics, acquiring the wrong email addresses can actually be detrimental. Acquiring subscribers who are most likely to remain engaged with your brand – beginning with modal acquisition and a welcome series – and then using the valuable information they share with you to reach out to them with the right messages at the right time is the key to turning those subscribers into loyal customers with optimum lifetime value.