Level Up Your List Growth With Creative Strategies That Customers Love

As an ecommerce marketer, you know subscriber list growth is essential. Continually and strategically growing your list is how email and SMS become key revenue drivers for your business. So how do you start building a list or make real progress on expanding your reach? In this article, we’re sharing creative, engaging ways to attract customers that will convert. Let’s go! 

More method, less mystery.

What makes your marketing magnetic and leads to list growth comes down to a few straightforward tactics:  

1. Know your customers: an Ideal Customer Profile is a great place to start and will guide your content and marketing efforts. 

2. Offer products that solve your customers’ problems, aka nail your product-market fit. Something 

3. Create high-value offerings that attract customers to join your inner circle (aka become email and SMS subscribers). 

That last part is our focus for this article, and reaching the customers who need and want you most is key to building a thriving business. Thoughtful, relevant product experiences, referral programs, customer and retail service as quizzes, and lead magnets all give your customers a way to engage and motivate them to subscribe. Let’s get into the details and inspiration. 

Secure your foundation and the sky is the limit.

First, every online store needs to have a few essentials for successful list growth. We’ve outlined it all here so that you can get your pop-ups, forms, offers, footers, checkout flow, and socials on board with your efforts. 

SMS focused? We’ve got a strategy for that, too, so get the full scoop here. 

Customer-first always wins.

Be a customer-first business, prioritizing customers’ needs as the motivation behind every decision. When this is your guiding light, you build a business that your customers don’t want to live without. 

A customer-first approach to marketing will help you dream up offerings that provide real value to your customers. List growth strategies depend on this because they then attract the kind of customers that will convert and eventually become your VIPs. When you are speaking to customers squarely in the realm of your ICP, you’ll communicate your product value in the ways that matter to them while building their trust and enthusiasm. 

Let’s get into a few brands that are using creative ways to do exactly that, so you can get inspired to try out initiatives that will grow your lists with the help of high-value offerings.

Setup your boxes then start thinking outside. 

We’re taking pop-up and forms, to be clear. They are essential best practices that will ensure no customer get’s left out from your lists. 

Once that’s ready, look to each of these approaches for a different perspective on what it means to attract customers with offerings that highlight your product, remove barriers to entry, and establish you as a trusted resource and expert. 

Warby Parker’s try-before-you-buy experience. 

DTC darling Warby Parker gets potential customers into the sales funnel with a tactic that eases their concerns or unfamiliarity with online eyeglass shopping and lets them find their perfect fit in the process. Their home try-on gives customers a low-risk way to fall in love with their products and the ease of shopping with the brand. 

When a customer signs up for a free home try-on with Warby Parker, the brand gathers info that lets them make astute recommendations and follow up with personalized email and text messages. The Warby team can utilize the info they’ve collected to help customers through the sales process and ultimately land on a purchase they’ll love. 

Image source.

Low-risk ways to test a long-commitment or big-ticket product help customers move beyond their reservations in trying out a new brand. You can apply this concept with “trial size” products, fabric swatches, or extended return windows. Knowing your customer’s purchase hesitations will shape creating a “try before you buy” program. Regardless, the information you gather will allow you to email and text them with content that seamlessly ushers them through checkout flow. 

Versed’s Skin Decoder Quiz.

Without the help of retail associates, ecommerce businesses have gotten creative in finding ways to help their customers select the right items for their specific needs. Quizzes are one such tool that fills this need and builds customer trust and purchase confidence. Plus, they collect a wealth of information that brands can use for advanced customer segmentation strategies in their marketing. With quiz data, you can send personalized texts and emails that speak directly to your customer needs, preferences, and problems: all the makings for a powerful send campaign. 

Versed provides a great example of using a quiz to collect potential customer information and upsell or cross-sell products based on individual responses. 

Skincare can be incredibly daunting, so Versed uses the insights gathered from their Skin Decoder Quiz to make personalized product recommendations and create bundles for skin types or concerns (hello, AOV happy dance). 

The quiz walks users through several questions about their skin, current care regimen, and lifestyle choices and creates a tailored bundle with a special discount for first-time customers. This example provides immediate value to the customer because they have info about their skin, and at the same time, make suggestions that will help them meet their goals. 

Quizzes are particularly helpful for brands with extensive product offerings, very specialized products, or whose customers have specific needs or clear preferences. They are an excellent option for any company that needs to explain the differences between products in their collection, especially when each offers specific benefits. 

Parade’s send-a-pair, get-a-pair referral program.

Parade’s rise to success was meteoric; during a few weeks in 2020, the brand flooded their target channels with underwear content highlighting their brand values and differences. They’ve continued to make a name for themselves by fostering an inclusive community.

Parade let their enthusiastic community spread the word by knowing the value of referrals and the need for a product that was otherwise alienating for many (undergarments). 

Parade invited customers to send as many free pairs of underwear to friends as they’d like, AND get a free pair for themselves. Parade was surprising and delighting throngs of potential new customers with a memorable experience and immediate brand and product awareness. 

At the same time, they built up their customer data to include customer geographical locations, preferred product size, and email addresses. That’s the makings for a perfectly personalized and targeted email and SMS campaign (or you might say, a marketing goldmine). 

Referral programs most often fail because they don’t offer real value to customers, either those referring or referred, and require a lot of work and risk. 

What is excellent about the Parade referral campaign is that it is fun and gives social currency to those referring others; who doesn’t love to surprise their friend with a fun (full size, real deal) gift? 

When building your own referral programs, make sure the reward is motivating enough to make up for the effort involved and minimizes the risk of sharing their friends’ data.

Bring your customers into the fold.

Any program you create needs the support of a capture form, which is why Drip makes it simple (and dare we say… fun?) to bring your ideas to life with easy-to-use, customizable forms that draw sign-ups and add new contacts directly to your CRM. 

Whether you’re creating downloadable content, exclusive case studies, or an informative quiz, Drip has everything you need to attract new customers in and turn them into VIPs.

Learn more about the capabilities of our sign-up form generator and our pre-built workflows that set you up for success. 

Plus, you can try us out for free and get started today.