Grow SMS & Email Subscribers at Scale

Planning for the 2022 holiday season can be quite challenging. With uncertain economic indicators, changing consumer confidence, and sky-high inflation, eCommerce brands are searching for a way to stand out from the crowd, offer captivating customer experiences, and get more bang for their buck. And as over half of customers prefer to communicate directly to their favorite brands by texting, SMS is the go-to choice if you want your brand to capitalize on this growing trend.

But do you know how to build an engaged audience?

Our #1 advice? Start ASAP! For your SMS and email campaigns to succeed, you need to have a list of subscribers you can later target with tailored offers and discounts. Investing time and effort into growing your audience will ensure you are well prepared.

How to build a solid growth strategy? Walk in your customers' shoes!

To grow your audience, you need to understand your customers – what channels are they most active on?

Focus on mapping their journey so that you know where your audience is – only then you can start optimizing for subscriber collection.

 

Following the ever-changing consumer behavior, we've developed the most innovative subscriber collection tools suitable for all parts of the customer journey. They will help you engage with shoppers from the very first time they spot your brand on social media, all the way through their visit to your store, and will help you grow your lists at scale.

Each of our tools comes with an easy-to-navigate editor, a set of templates to choose from, and an additional bonus: built-in verbiage that will ensure you comply with TCPA & GDPR guidelines.

Now, as the holiday season is already upon us, it is time for you to start prepping, and don’t miss the amazing opportunities to generate sales and maximize value from each and every visitor.

 

Collect Subscribers on Your Website

So you’ve set up your eCommerce store and are ready to start planning for BFCM. The first step – build a dedicated audience. Where to begin? Look no further and start by engaging your website visitors. They are already there, looking for sweet deals.

Grab their attention with an engaging pop-up, оr approach them right at the moment of purchase. Make sure to leverage your website and have them subscribe to receive promotional text messages or emails from you while they are still scrolling.

 

  Personalized onsite subscriber collection tools generate over 40% of the subscribers for eCommerce brands. Capturing your existing traffic is the perfect opportunity to convert and collect new opt-ins. 

 

Checkout Subscription 

One of the easiest ways to start collecting subscribers is right at the checkout section of your store. When filling in their details at the moment of purchase, it is only natural for customers to provide their phone numbers so they can further interact with your brand in the future. Why? Because they already got familiar with your store, showed interest in your products, and have decided to trust you enough to hit the Purchase button. 

Brands that leverage an SMS opt-in directly at checkout see over 45% mobile number capture rates.

 

    Incentivize shoppers to sign up for SMS messages while finalizing their purchase with an appealing offer and clever copy. 

“Unlock 10% of your next order when your sign via text.” or
“Sign me up for SMS updates to unlock 20% off my next order”.

 

SMS checkout

Checkout subscription is very easy to set up, highly effective and opens the door to repeat purchases for your brand. Enabling it is the quickest and most convenient way to start growing your list of subscribers in no time. 

 

Subscription Forms 

Forms are some of the most popular features brands can use to collect subscribers. They are a true attention-grabber, and apart from building your lists, they may prevent visitors from leaving your site altogether.

Leverage Yotpo SMSBump subscription forms to capture site traffic, simultaneously collect phone numbers and emails from one engaging touchpoint, and maximize the results of each shopper interaction

Subscription forms

You can choose between pop-ups, floating buttons, embedded forms, and footer forms. All four are responsive, intuitive, and fully customizable. Use the editor to set up fonts and colors, upload your brand logo and tweak the copy to your liking in just a few clicks, or simply use one of the many built-in templates. Whatsmore, all Yotpo SMSBump subscription forms come with embedded legal verbiage, so you can rest assured your SMS marketing is in full compliance.  

 

    Pop-up subscribers are considered one of the most valuable types of SMS audience, with a 76% higher conversion rate and a 38% higher LTV than other subscribers.

 

To attract the attention of your visitors, make sure you use a captivating headline, an appealing offer, and a clear call to action. Especially with pop-ups, good timing and placement are crucial. For best results, set your form to appear after visitors have scrolled through 60% of your website. It can be displayed on your home page or a specific product or collection page. 

Yotpo SMSBump’s dynamic pop-ups can turn into a non-intrusive floating button at the bottom corner of the page website visitors can get back to at all times. 

 

Dynamic pop-up

While your main homepage pop-up can be super effective, one of the most impactful ways to collect subscribers is at the time of abandonment. Add an exit-intent pop-up to your site to improve bounce rates and maximize the value of every visitor. 

And another growth hack – enable a post-purchase pop-up to capture shoppers who skipped the opt-in at checkout and offer them to receive shipping updates via SMS. Yotpo SMSBump is the only SMS marketing app recommended by Shopify to send transactional text messages and ensure excellent post-purchase care.

 

  Pop-up Best Practice Tips:

1. Create an on-brand first impression. Create your first pop-up to be triggered on your homepage, and utilize templates and design elements to create an on-brand look & feel. 

2. Add an incentive. Provide an incentive as a small nudge to grab your prospects' attention. Test a few options to see what performs best and will boost your CVR. 

3.  Use Smart Capture. Understand customer intent by using the Smart Capture feature. It allows new and existing subscribers to sign up for what matters to them the most, i.e., exclusive BFCM deals. 

4. Collect both SMS and email. Grow your SMS and email marketing audience from a single touchpoint. Set up your pop-up to collect phone numbers and email addresses and use those later for targeted SMS and email campaigns. 

 

Check out our gallery of 10 actionable pop-ups to help you maximize subscriber collection this BFCM.

Forms are highly effective and can help you transform your website visitors into SMS and email marketing subscribers with a single click. But leveraging your website for more than just sales is only one way to generate a base of followers. For a truly successful approach, don’t wait for your target audience to visit your online store but reach out to them on their preferred channels.

 

Collect Subscribers Everywhere

With the help of our omnichannel subscriber collection tools, such as keywords, social opt-in, QR codes, and sign-up pages, you’ll be able to approach your customers and prospects on a channel of their choice, catching them where they are most likely to engage with your brand.

 

    Our recommendation? Instagram. 90% of consumers follow their favorite brands on Instagram and the channel sees a 10x higher engagement rate compared to other social channels. How successful is this? 5,000+ new subscribers for every 1 million followers on a single story.

Another great opportunity is TikTok, with over 1 billion people actively using the platform. The stats are impressive – 61% of TikTok users have engaged in eCommerce behaviors on the platform. And another interesting fact – 60% of total users belong to GenZ.

 

Keywords 

Keywords can be promoted across multiple marketing channels: Facebook Ads, Instagram Stories, TikTok, email, and even print advertising. 

They are an amazing tool for collecting new subscribers because they are short, memorable, and extremely easy to set up and use. All shoppers need to do to become subscribers is text you the keyword. It’s that easy!

When choosing the right keyword for your next subscriber collection campaign, remember to make it easy to type and easy to remember, but also make sure it matches your brand identity and grabs attention.

 

keywords

 

For best results, give potential subscribers a special incentive they will receive after opting in and prompt them to act on it with a strong call to action

 

QR Codes 

QR codes combine traditional and modern marketing to provide consumers with fun and engaging shopping experiences. An evergreen tool that is now experiencing a major comeback.

QR codes are very easy to set up and highly customizable. You can use them to reach audiences and collect subscribers everywhere. Businesses can include QR codes in their catalogs, brochures, and other print materials. They can add them in their online forms of communication, like emails, website banners, and even print them on products. QR codes are the ideal tool for outdoor advertisement as well – think subway stations, bus stops, car stickers, store windows, etc. 

QR codes

 

To make your subscription even more attractive, pair your QR code with an enticing incentive – use it in a giveaway or to grant exclusive access to pre-sale deals. Add a cool CTA and let your audience subscribe with just a scan. 

 

Social Opt-in 

The social opt-in is the perfect subscriber collection solution for any brand with a strong, established social media presence that is also looking for ways to connect with the audience in a more targeted and direct way. 

It allows you to add a direct subscription link to your social media posts so your followers will be one tap away from joining your SMS lists from an Instagram story. You can use your links on other channels, such as YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok too.

Social opt-in

Create a unique link for each channel to track the effectiveness of each of your social media campaigns, but more importantly – segment subscribers based on where they came from: was it a Facebook giveaway, a witty Tweet, or a truly engaging Instagram post. We’ve seen businesses taking it a step further, partnering with influencers and using their reach to engage with new communities.

All these capabilities of the social opt-in make it one of the best tools to engage with audiences (even those that aren’t yet following you), interactively collect subscribers, and continue the relationship with targeted promotions. 

 

Sign-up Page

With the help of a sign-up page, you can send shoppers to a section of your online store to collect SMS and email subscribers. Add the sign-up link to the header, footer, or a special menu on your website and grow a dedicated audience in no time.

Use email campaigns, social media posts, or ads to promote the sign-up link and drive traffic to your store.   

Signup page

Bonus Tip

Let shoppers subscribe to your SMS offers directly at the checkout of your live store. How? A customer comes to the counter and a staff member offers them a 10% discount on their purchase if they sign up for your text marketing services. It's that simple!

All you need is a mobile device (a phone or a tablet) equipped with the Shopify Point of Sale (POS) app and Yotpo SMSBump!

Remember to display posters of your text club throughout the store to encourage visitors to opt in.

POS

  Subscriber Collection Best Practice Tips: 

1. Let your subscribers know what types of engagements they will get. What types of updates and announcements will you send them? Will they get exclusive opportunities via SMS? 

2. Explain how SMS provides a new way to communicate. From now on, shoppers will be able to text you and have real 1:1 conversations: ask questions, get personalized recommendations, and more. 

3. Throw in a benefit. Customers love benefits. Make sure you provide a clear call to action with a benefit for signing up to engage with you on another channel. 

 

Start Growing 

With our engaging subscriber collection tools, you can reach potential subscribers no matter where they are – scrolling through your website or Facebook news feed, checking emails, or reading a magazine. Experiment with various strategies and test different approaches to see what works best for your brand and followers. 

Don't forget to visit our Black Friday Cyber Monday Knowledge Hub for more valuable tips and tactics for the most successful BFCM yet! 

 

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