Tried and tested strategies to build your email list for the BFCM and holiday season sale

One of the smartest ways to start building your email list before BFCM and the holiday season sale goes live, is offering early access to offers. Most online shoppers miss out on deals and discounts owing to the rush and surge in product demand; giving them early access is like giving them a chance to secure their BFCM purchases before the products start to run out. This also helps create a sense of exclusivity for the online shoppers that do sign up for email alerts!

Another way to supercharge the interest your store visitors have in the BFCM and holiday season sale is to create a buzz. Use your popups to display a countdown to when the sale goes live or give glimpses of the brands and products that will go up on discount. Nudge them to subscribe to not miss a notification!

As you come closer to the sale season, you can also use popups with page-level targeting to offer price drop alerts. If someone is abandoning a product, target them with a popup messaging that promises to notify them of the price drop during BFCM and holiday season if they subscribe.

Pro tip: We recommend starting with the above strategies at least two weeks prior to the scheduled BFCM and holiday season sale.

Now if you’ve run into this article ‘during’ the sale or want to schedule popup campaigns early on, let’s look at the next set of strategies.

You’re already offering the best deals and discounts across all the products in your store; what more can you do? Well, make the deal sweeter by offering an additional discount or benefits to your email subscribers. This could include things like offering discounted shipping, free shipping or even express delivery of orders in lieu of their email address.

A stocked-out product that customers are interested in is an excellent opportunity to turn their purchase intent into email subscriptions. Set up an exit intent popup on out of stock products, offering to send restock alerts to the subscribers. You’ll be surprised how many of them convert to be able to bag the same deal!

One up your popup strategy by offering to send personalized recommendations on email during BFCM so that the shopper does not miss out on similar deals and discounts. No one wants to miss offers on products that add value to them, and browsing through websites manually, in a rush, can be time consuming.

Create FOMO using popups to prevent store visitors from abandoning a purchase. The idea is to let them know the discounts may not be available the next time they visit, or how the product may actually run out of stock. You can use live sales notifications on the popup – number of items sold, discounts availed and similar.

Statistically, pop-ups with a countdown timer have a 14.41% conversion rate, whereas the traditional ones without a timer have about 9.86%. Integrating a countdown timer into your pop-ups will create a sense of urgency in those exiting your website without making a purchase; give them a chance to secure the deal in lieu of their email address.

Pro tip: Remember to not exhaust the visitors by targeting them with the same popup. Make sure you use page-level and behavioral targeting to prevent visitors from feeling spammed. Also, frequently update your popup copy for new and returning visitors.

Now that you know how to use popups during the BFCM and holiday season sale, let’s look into how you can make the most of them ‘after’ the sale too – because we think there’s still an opportunity to grow your email list and get more sales during the lull period.

Got a few items from the sale inventory left? Use your email popup to offer these products at the same price as a ‘last chance’ to the visitors; the idea is to get their email in lieu of reserving the item for them.

Similar to the access to remaining inventory, you can also offer to give the BFCM discounts and deals for a limited period to those who subscribe after the sale is over. But make sure it feels like a win to them to get maximum conversions.

Use your popups smartly to request reviews from returning visitors after the sale is over. Make sure you’re targeting them based on the purchase they’ve made to increase the chances of a conversion. While it should be easy for them to submit reviews, you can add in a step to enter an email address to get credits for the review they submit.

Another effective tactic is to promote your loyalty program after the BFCM and holiday season sale to get email subscribers. Let store visitors know how they can get similar discounts, deals and benefits as during the sale if they sign up for the program.

• Different types of triggers to be covered here
• Double check triggers available in AIT

But before you start implementing any of the strategies above, let’s look into how you can make popups non-intrusive.

Making your pop-ups trigger too soon can get in the way of user experience. On the other hand, triggering it too late can make it absolutely useless.

Pointing out the ideal time to trigger pop-ups for the best optimization is the key. For that, you have to keep certain factors in mind, such as average time spent on a page, distance scrolled on a page, etc.

Some important pop-ups based on triggers are described below:

Exit intent: Such popups prevent users from leaving the website and incentivize them to subscribe to emails. These types of pop-ups can be triggered on both mobile and desktop devices.

Time on page: The time on page trigger brings a pop-up when a particular visitor has browsed your web page for a specific amount of time. The time frame here is usually under a minute. The unique part about such popups is that they only appear when a visitor has shown interest by spending more time on the page. It portrays that they’re most probably interested in your content. As a result, these visitors are more likely to click on the popup.

Scroll trigger: These will only show pop ups once a viewer has scrolled down the page. Such triggers have a much higher conversion rate as these don’t interrupt their scrolling until the very end. For such pop-ups to work, you need to synchronize the trigger with your website’s content to ensure that the pop-up turns up at exactly the right time.

Location-based: Such pop-ups are hugely influential for location-specific products. These target visitors of a particular location and incentivize them with local offers, services, and discounts. Such triggers will be especially helpful if you have a global customer base and want to appeal to a visitor to a specific place with relevant offers.

Cookie-based: Such triggers will help you personalize the pop-ups based on the information you already have on your audience. Cookie-based pop-up triggers retarget your campaign on the basis of your site traffic and their preferences.

Review pop-ups: Such pop-ups are designed to target returning visitors to request product reviews and customer feedback. This is a great way to engage existing customers.

So far, we have broken down the specific process of optimizing pop-ups to grow your email list before, during, and after the BFCM and holiday season sale. However, there are a few best practices we recommend following to drive more conversions:

Keep it simple: You don’t need complicated targeting and jargon-laden offers Avoid triggering pop-ups with a lot of complicated designs. Keep it of moderate size, easy on the eyes, and target-oriented. Simple pop-ups will not hinder the user experience and appeal to your customers more to subscribe to emails.

Giveaways: Make limited period giveaways for subscribers during BFCM a part of your reward-driven marketing strategy. There is no better motivator for your customer than a free gift.

Keep collecting data: Whether it’s the holiday season or BFMC sale, keep collecting data about your audiences’ spending habits and shopping preferences. This will help you to constantly improve and customize your pop-up campaign.

Maintain a balanced pop-up frequency: Pop-ups are necessary, but you don’t want them to overwhelm or annoy your users. Too many pop-ups in a short amount of scrolling time will negatively impact the user experience and bring down your conversion rate. Identify what triggers work for your brand the best and stick to them as long as it works.

New versus returning visitor trigger: Your chosen pop-up trigger should identify whether the visitor is new or is a returning user. That way, the triggered pop-ups will be more personalized and appealing to your users and drive them to click on them. Pop-ups will generate poor opt-ins if they are not relatable.

Pop-ups, however annoying they might seem, are a very efficient tool to grab an online shopper’s attention. If you crack the right strategy, pop-ups will generate a great conversion rate and bring you many email subscribers who can be nurtured into making purchases.

If you ask us, to grow your email list, pop-ups are essential.

But identifying the right triggers and optimizing them to their full potential can prove to be tricky as there is a risk of hampering user experience.

That’s where AiTrillion comes in.

AiTrillion popup builder is created keeping in mind the various use cases for an ecommerce business, as well as the expectations of online shoppers. From customizable templates to triggers to enable your strategy and scheduling of campaigns, AiTrillion helps you with it all.

Sign up today to set up your popup campaigns.

Additional read: Want to leverage web push notifications during the BFCM and holiday season sale? Here’s how to get more opt-ins from online shoppers.