19 Ways to Build Your Email List on Shopify

Email list (customer list) building is incredibly important for commerce marketing. A high-quality email list provides tremendous stability for any commerce business.

Naturally, Shopify has plenty of useful apps for list building, as well as growth hacking techniques you can leverage on the platform.

In this article, we introduce 19 email list building methods you can use on Shopify, along with apps and real-world examples.

Additionally, StoreHero leverages its proprietary growth platform to support business growth through granular operations that manual efforts cannot achieve, along with large-scale execution of growth initiatives. If you're struggling to increase sales on Shopify, feel free to reach out. =>Download our free service introduction materials here

What to Offer in Exchange

The most important factor for email sign-ups is creating an attractive incentive. When the reward is compelling, your email list will grow very quickly.

You don't need to give away something expensive. As we'll show below, a PDF file or a Google Spreadsheet is perfectly fine — as long as your customers find value in it.

The key is to create an incentive that your customers genuinely value.

Campaigns, Coupons, and Points

Offering campaigns, coupons, or points to email subscribers is a commonly used approach.

There are loyalty point apps on the Shopify App Store that include sign-up bonus features. Bold Loyalty Points is one of them.

Bold Loyalty Points settings screen

Using apps like this, you can easily offer points to email subscribers.

Additionally, email marketing apps like Klaviyo and Privy allow you to send coupons to email subscribers, making it easy to implement subscriber campaigns and coupon promotions.

Klaviyo settings screen

Sample Products and Gifts

Another approach is to give free samples or novelty items to customers who sign up for your email list.

Alternatively, even without something free, you can offer pre-order products or exclusive items only available to email subscribers.

Hide Collection

Using the Shopify app Hide Collection, you can create collections that aren't accessible through normal browsing and offer exclusive products only to email subscribers.

Content

Customers may also register their email address in exchange for content they're interested in.

Formats vary widely — email newsletters, tips collections, how-to guidebooks, and more. The key is whether customers perceive value in what you're offering.

There are also Shopify apps that let you create digital catalogs and similar content. Retail/Wholesale Catalog Maker is one such app that lets you create not just digital catalogs but also print catalogs.

Retail/Wholesale Catalog Maker

Where and When to Prompt Sign-Ups

Where you prompt email sign-ups also matters. Prompting on a product consideration page can interrupt the browsing experience.

Timing is equally important. Too early and you'll annoy visitors; too late and you'll miss the opportunity.

Finding the right place and timing to present your email sign-up prompt is crucial.

Header and Footer

In unobtrusive areas of the header or footer, visitors won't be bothered, so it's perfectly fine to have a persistent email sign-up link there.

Footer of Koala Mattress

Popup Forms

When used carefully, popup forms are still effective for email list building.

While they shouldn't interfere with site browsing, displaying them after a visitor has spent sufficient time on the site — like the Death Wish Coffee Shopify store shown below — increases the likelihood of a sign-up.

Death Wish Coffee

There are many popup apps available on Shopify.

The app below, Privy, lets you configure detailed popup triggers — such as when a visitor is about to leave, when they scroll to the bottom of the page, or after a set number of seconds have passed.

Privy

Popups come in various formats and designs. Choose one that suits your store. With Privy, you can even run A/B tests to determine the best design and display timing.

Privy A/B test settings screen

Blog Article Pages

Blog article pages are a great place to encourage email sign-ups. In particular, the moment a reader finishes an article they found satisfying or inspiring is a perfect opportunity — engagement is high, lowering the barrier to sign up.

PUTCHIPUU, a store specializing in handmade goods, displays a slide-in popup prompting email sign-up when visitors reach the end of a blog post.

PUTCHIPUU

A slide-in popup appears from the side when a reader reaches the bottom of the blog.

PUTCHIPUU popup

Since blog articles attract traffic from a wide range of keywords via search engines, you can use Google Search Console to analyze incoming search terms and determine what incentive would most likely encourage sign-ups.

Thank You Page (Order Confirmation Page)

Right after a purchase, customers are at their most excited, making the order confirmation page an excellent moment to encourage email sign-ups.

When a visitor reaches the thank you page, displaying a specially designed popup — different from your standard ones — to prompt email registration is a great approach.

With Shopify apps like Privy, it's easy to configure a special popup that only appears on the thank you page.

Privy settings screen

Incidentally, the thank you page is not only great for encouraging email sign-ups — it's also an ideal page for promoting additional purchases or encouraging social media shares.

There are also dedicated Shopify apps for customizing the thank you page, such as ReConvert Upsell & Cross Sell and Thank You Page Customizer.

Thank You Page Customizer

Order Confirmation Email

For the same reason as the thank you page, the order confirmation email is also a great moment to encourage email sign-ups.

Using Klaviyo or Privy, you can customize the order confirmation email to include an email opt-in prompt — give it a try.

Klaviyo in particular offers highly flexible email template customization, allowing you to freely design your customer communication.

Klaviyo email editor

Gamification

Right after an interactive action — such as a quiz or game — engagement spikes and visitors are more receptive to prompts.

Flashy, game-style popups like the ones commonly seen on international stores (shown below) can be easily implemented with Shopify apps like WooHoo.

WooHoo

One example I personally think is brilliant is the "beard quiz" by Beardbrand, a beard oil retailer.

After answering 10 beard-related questions like the ones shown below,

Beardbrand

users are required to opt in with their email address to view their results. After answering 10 questions, you naturally want to see your results.

Beardbrand email sign-up

The quiz results are delivered with humor and include product recommendations based on the results.

Beardbrand quiz results

By the way, Beardbrand uses Typeform, a form-building SaaS (Software as a Service) tool. Typeform is a powerful solution for creating beautiful forms, and it can integrate quiz results with Shopify via Zapier or Google Spreadsheets.

Typeform integration settings

Loyalty Program

If you run a loyalty program, prompting email sign-ups right after program enrollment — in exchange for points — tends to yield very high conversion rates.

Bold Loyalty Points, introduced above, allows you to configure a setting within its custom rewards feature to award points when a subscriber signs up for emails.

Bold Loyalty Points custom rewards feature settings

Favorites (Wishlist)

Right after a customer adds an item to their wishlist, engagement is high while purchase intent hasn't been interrupted — making it an ideal moment to prompt sign-ups.

Wishlist Plus

Using Google Tag Manager to trigger an email sign-up popup when an item is wishlisted — with messaging like "We'll send you regular product updates" — could be very effective.

Shopify also has apps like Wishlist Plus that make it easy to set up a wishlist feature.

Physical Store

If you operate a brick-and-mortar store or a pop-up shop, you can also encourage email sign-ups in person.

For example, you can offer an online coupon in exchange for an email sign-up right after a purchase. Customers are in a particularly good mood right after an in-store purchase, making it a great opportunity to make your pitch.

Adding QR codes to product leaflets, receipts, and packaging is another effective way to drive sign-ups.

QR codes on product leaflets, receipts, and packaging

Facebook Page

If you manage a Facebook Page, consider adding an email sign-up button. If you have a large fan base, it can steadily grow your email list over time.

You can add an email sign-up button via the "Add a Button" option on your Facebook Page.

Facebook Page

Customer Support

When a customer reaches out via chat or phone, a well-known technique is to ask: "Could you provide your email address so we can follow up via email?"

After resolving a support issue via email — once the customer is satisfied — proposing an email opt-in tends to be received more favorably than asking over chat or phone.

Prompt after delivering customer satisfaction through support

How to Spread the Word

Promoting your email sign-up offer accelerates list building.

Here are several traffic acquisition methods that pair well with email sign-up campaigns.

Facebook Lead Generation Ads

Facebook's lead generation ads are perfectly matched for list building. Since sign-ups happen directly within Facebook, the low-friction experience tends to produce higher conversion rates.

Leads acquired through Facebook lead generation ads can be integrated using Zapier.

Zapier

I've used this method several times myself, and the results for lead generation were outstanding. If your store targets Facebook users, definitely give it a try.

Referral Program

A referral program is also effective. If your newsletter or email content is genuinely valuable, subscribers will want to share it with friends — creating viral potential. Consider introducing a referral program.

Bold Loyalty Points referral program feature

Bold Loyalty Points also supports referral programs, and Smile.io offers this feature within its free plan for smaller-scale implementations.

Remarketing Ads

Another approach is to run remarketing ads targeting past visitors to your store who have not yet signed up for your email list.

With remarketing ads, you can upload your existing email subscriber list and exclude those users from your targeting, focusing only on non-subscribers.

Google Remarketing Ads

Cross-Promotion with Other Stores

You can also arrange cross-promotions with other stores that share a similar customer base (non-competing stores, of course).

Have the other store promote your email sign-up in their newsletter, while you do the same for them.

Cross-promotion with other stores

Email Signature

It may seem subtle, but adding a URL link to your email sign-up form in your everyday email signature quietly and steadily drives results. Since it requires almost no effort, it's worth setting up for every team member.

Driving CRM Execution with StoreHero

StoreHero supports Shopify merchants who want to grow their sales through thorough execution of growth initiatives.

For CRM initiatives, we leverage our proprietary growth platform StoreHero to utilize customer purchase history, attribute data, and product/SKU performance and inventory data — enabling granular execution of product recommendations and offers via email, LINE, and customer account pages that would be impossible to achieve manually, along with large-scale initiative deployment to deliver continuous business growth.

We currently offer a free store diagnosis. If you have challenges with CRM or growth initiatives in general, please feel free to reach out. Learn more about the free store diagnosis here

Summary

We've introduced 19 representative email list building methods you can implement on your Shopify store.

For customers, receiving timely and useful emails and messages is genuinely appreciated.

We hope you'll design initiatives suited to your store, run experiments while reviewing the data, and build a system that efficiently acquires a high-quality email list.