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Holiday is around the corner and your ad spend is about to go through the roof. Now is the time to build your owned audience so you can maximize profit through BFCM. That’s why the number of issues I see with onsite email and SMS capture is so alarming. Some tips, dear reader...
This should go without saying but TEST YOUR INTEGRATIONS! I’ve audited 2 accounts this week where email addresses were not flowing into the ESP or the trigger for Welcome flows wasn’t capturing all sign-ups. Don't miss out on a ton of $$ and the opp to build relationships.
Be careful with giveaways. I know it’s enticing to attract thousands of sign-ups and only have to give away a few free products per month, but you’re likely attracting low intent leads; your list size could become a vanity metric. A conservative discount can be just as effective.
If you must do a giveaway, segment these contacts and watch engagement / run through a more aggressive re-engagement/offboarding flow to maintain a clean and healthy list. This will help ensure you make it into the inbox (not the spam folder) when you ramp up cadence for holiday.
Don’t switch your mobile capture to SMS only. The vast majority of retailers are seeing mobile sessions account for 60-70% of all traffic, so you’d effectively be leaving your email program to rot.
SMS is great (I love it, I swear) but its more expensive to send and your subscribers have a lower tolerance for frequent messages on this channel. Email capture should remain a priority so you can maintain reach while leveraging each channel for their respective strengths.
Another 101 tip: exclude your pop-ups from firing when someone clicks through an email or text (usually using utm_medium parameters). Don't interrupt your customers’ shopping experience by asking them to sign up to get something you should know they’re already getting.
Putting extra energy into capture now will pay dividends come November. Test your creative, incentive, trigger rules and targeting, and switch up your creative or pop-up types (lightbox vs. banner vs. exit intent) for new vs. returning visitors. It’s worth the effort, I promise.
