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10 Tips for Increasing Email, SMS & Push Subscribers

February 16, 2021

You have a fantastic suite of customer recovery tools at your fingertips. They’re ready to record customer contact information in real-time and use it to send email, SMS, and push notifications to recover leads lost through cart and browse abandonment. 

To do this, you need email, SMS, and web push notification subscribers, so you have the contact details to target. 

And when you hear the average email subscription rate is a teeny tiny 1.95%, suddenly this sounds a lot harder than you initially thought. 

But is it?

Email, SMS, and push notification opt-in rates are notoriously low. In a world where cybercrime is rife and unsolicited marketing emails are plentiful – the want to share personal information is decreasing. 

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t grow your email, SMS, and web push notification opt-in rates and use this information in your remarketing campaign and visitor retention tools. In fact, with the right tactics, it means your subscription rates can rocket alongside your conversion rates – and we’re about to tell you how. 

The Reasons Behind Low Email, SMS, & Push Subscribers

Before growing your email, SMS, and web push notification subscribers, it’s good to know the reasons behind low opt-in rates. 

From our experience, there are three primary reasons eCommerce stores struggle to get customer contact information to use in a remarketing campaign:

1. You’re not asking for contact information

The most obvious barrier to getting a customer’s email address or telephone number is not asking for it. 

Too many sellers wait until the checkout form before asking a website visitor to enter their contact details. And when 90% of website visitors don’t make it to the checkout, you’re missing out on a lot of potential opt-ins. 

2. Customers don’t want to share contact information

We’ve touched upon this briefly, but another barrier to securing contact details is that customers are becoming increasingly cautious about sharing personal information online. Especially with a business they haven’t bought from or heard of before. 

You could sell their details, bombard them with marketing emails, steal their information, or worse. It’s understandably risky to share contact information, which is why many customers don’t. 

3. You’re not giving customers a reason to share their information

You wouldn’t give your email address to someone running up to you in the street shouting, “Hey, can I have your email address?” It’s the same online. 

Some sellers ask for a customer’s contact information without giving them a reason to share, what is, pretty personal stuff. 

However, in the right circumstances, customers are willing to share their email address, enter their telephone number, and opt-in to mobile and web push notifications. It’s up to you to create those circumstances. 

10 Tips For Growing Your Email, SMS, and Web Push Notification Opt-in Rates

So, in true CartStack style, we’re going to teach you the best methods for growing your email, SMS, and push notification opt-in rates so you can fuel your customer recovery remarketing campaigns with the information vital for success. 

1. Add a sign-up box to your header or footer

Every customer clicking onto your website has a different bar that needs meeting before sharing their personal information. Some will be ready right off the bat, and others won’t be ready until the checkout page. 

Cater to every visitor’s preference by adding a permanent sign-up box to your website’s header or footer, allowing customers to opt-in when they feel comfortable doing so – just as Yellow Leaf Hammocks have done:

2. Make contact information a precursor to certain actions

While gated content (content that requires an email address or telephone number to unlock) is risky, there are specific actions that customers expect to enter their contact information for. 

In particular, it’s standard practice to enter a name, email address, and telephone number for:

• Commencing a live chat
• Submitting an inquiry via your contact form
• Gaining access to a VIP area or rewards program.

Take advantage by making contact information a precursor to completing these actions on your website. 

3. Establish trust with policies and timing

Customers need to trust your brand before they trust you with their personal information. There are a couple of quick ways to boost your moral standing:

First, always include a link to your privacy policy and opt-out procedure under any opt-in box. This tells customers exactly how you safeguard and use their personal information, and reassures them it’s easy to unsubscribe in the future. 

Second, consider the timing of your opt-in message. Asking customers to subscribe to your email list the second they click onto your website gives them zero time to establish your trustworthiness. They’ll likely click “no.” Allow them time to familiarize themselves and build an initial connection before jumping the gun. 

4. Incentivize opting-in

Nothing comes for free – or so the famous saying goes. This means you must incentivize customers to opt-in to your push, SMS, or email notifications. 

Popular and effective ways to incentivize subscriptions include:

• Deals and discounts: Subscribe to our newsletter for $5 off your first order. 

• Early access sales: Sign up for our SMS alerts for early access to our mid-season sale.

• Promotional alerts: Never miss out on a deal by opting-in to our mobile and web push notifications. 

• Competitions: Spin the wheel and enter your contact details to win 1 of 10 prizes.

• Save my Cart: Enter your contact information to save your cart until your next visit. 

5. Create multiple opt-in opportunities throughout the customer journey

Peppering your checkout flow with numerous opportunities to subscribe to your communications gives you more chances of securing contact information. 

Ways to achieve this include:

Delayed on-site offers

Using delayed on-site offers to encourage subscriptions part-way through the customer journey. 

Manual web push notification sign-up

Allowing customers to manually opt-in to your web push notifications if they inadvertently dismissed the original opt-in message. 

Relevant reading: 12 Examples of High-Converting Abandoned Push Notifications

Exit intent offers

Taking one last shot at obtaining contact information using an exit intent offer as a visitor’s cursor heads towards the browse exit button, and you begin your remarketing campaign. 

6. Add contact fields to the top of your checkout form

If you’re using CartStack as your customer recovery tool of choice, you have access to a neat little tool that captures email addresses, phone numbers, and other contact data as it’s typed on any page. This means you don’t have to wait until someone submits the checkout form before recording their contact information. It also means you shouldn’t. 

Add required contact information to the top of your checkout form to ensure you record this information before a customer abandons the checkout – which they commonly do. 

7. Optimize your subscription landing page and pop-ups

A great tip we give CartStack customers is to sell your opt-in. What does this mean?

Well, in the same way you optimize product pages to secure a conversion, optimize your opt-in landing pages and pop-ups to secure contact information. This includes using:

• An attention-grabbing headline
• Clear, concise benefits of subscribing
• A strong call to action. 

8. Sprinkle multi-channel touch points throughout your visitor’s journey

You want to spread out your attempts to gather subscribers by targeting customers depending on their familiarity with your brand and stage in the customer journey.

Think about it – asking a visitor just clicking onto your website for their email address, telephone number, Facebook profile, and daily movements isn’t going to win many subscribers.  

Start softly with a push notification opt in at the awareness stage – push notifications are less threatening to shoppers and requires zero information, making new shoppers more likely to subscribe. Then, as more trust is built and the customer moves into the consideration stage, begin gently pushing for more in-depth contact information, such as an email address or telephone number.

Further resource: Recovering Lost SMS Sales with Abandoned Cart Text Messages 

9. Use a back in stock notification

While out of stock products are a nightmare for you (and your customers), they’re also an excellent opportunity to gain email, SMS, and web push notification subscribers. 

Add a back in stock notification to your out of stock product pages. This allows customers to sign up via email, telephone, or both to receive a back in stock notification upon re-stock. Not only do back in stock notifications add a subscriber to your contact list, but they also allow customers to take a positive step towards obtaining the product, which could stop them from seeking your competition. 

10. Test, test, and test again

Finally, if your subscription numbers are dwindling, use A/B testing to test two different versions of your sign-up message to see what wording, format, colors, and CTA works best for your customers. 

Conclusion

You can’t run a successful remarketing campaign without an email address, telephone number, or push opt-in to reach lost customers. And you can’t get these without putting in a little extra effort to grow your subscriptions and give customers a reason, a want, and a need to hear from you. 

By combining these top tips for growing email, SMS, and web push notification subscribers with your CartStack suite of recovery tools, you’ll be recovering conversion in no time. 
Want to see how we can turn your subscribers into profit? Sign up for a free 14-day trial or CartStack