How to Build an Email List Fast: 18 Winning Strategies in 2026

Barbara Bartucz
November 21, 2025
Marketing

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Want to turn your store visitors into engaged subscribers and do it fast? Thought so.

If you’re running an ecommerce store, building an email list from scratch isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s mission-critical. It’s your direct line to potential customers, repeat buyers, and higher revenue without relying on paid ads 24/7.

That’s why we’ve rounded up the most effective email list-building tactics tailored for ecommerce brands.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this article:

Why email list building is a game-changer for your store
The biggest dos and don’ts (so you don’t waste time or leads)
18 winning strategies to build a high-quality email list from zero

Let’s get into it.

Why is email list building important?

Email marketing is a relatively affordable yet powerful method to reach and engage your customers.

By using a well-crafted email sign-up form to collect your visitors’ email addresses, you can significantly boost your sales over time and encourage more sign ups.

Email marketing delivers an outstanding return on investment: for every $1 spent on marketing, the average ROI is $44.

That’s impressive, but there’s even more to gain from building an email list:

It helps establish a personal connection with your new subscribers through a direct communication channel.
You can cultivate a loyal customer base of individuals who are genuinely invested in your brand.
It enables you to market effortlessly to people who already have a positive perception of your business.

Now, let’s explore some general best practices to keep in mind while you collect email addresses.

Dos and don'ts when building an email list

Following these dos and don’ts will help you create high-converting email signup forms and gather tons of new subscribers the right way.

1. DO give a good reason to subscribe

Make sure to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” for your website visitors.

You need to offer a compelling reason for them to subscribe, as you’re asking them to invest time in filling out a sign-up form and sharing their email address.

What qualifies as a good reason?

Coupons
Free gifts
Valuable resources
Exclusive content
Unique “subscribers-only” incentives

2. DO follow GDPR and basic email marketing rules

In email marketing, it’s critical that you follow all applicable regulations, like only sending your campaigns to people who have chosen to receive them.

Online businesses that buy pre-built email lists end up sending email campaigns to people who have not opted in, which results in high unsubscribe rates. Plus, buying an email list violates GDPR rules.

When you create marketing campaigns for people who have opted in and are interested in your product or service, you’ll get much better results.

3. DO use a trustworthy email marketing software

Not all email marketing tools are created equal. It’s important to use one that’s trustworthy and reputable.

Using excellent email marketing software has several benefits:

It will help ensure your email campaigns land in your subscribers’ inboxes, rather than their spam folders. This means a higher open rate.
You’ll get access to robust security and privacy features to stay compliant with GDPR laws and keep your subscribers’ data protected.
You’ll be able to track the performance of your marketing emails with advanced analytics.
You’ll improve your email campaign efforts with automation, triggering, segmentation, and personalization.

4. DO maintain a healthy email list

Since the main purpose of an email list is to maintain a direct line of communication with your audience, it’s essential to maintain a healthy list of engaged, genuinely interested subscribers.

This is a crucial part of any effective email marketing strategy and significantly impacts the success of your email marketing efforts.

Here are a couple of tips to help you keep your email list healthy:

Remove duplicate addresses and inactive subscribers regularly.
Use double opt-in processes to ensure your email subscribers are enthusiastic and committed to being on your list.

5. DON’T buy lists

As we discussed already, purchasing email addresses violates GDPR rules, and it can damage your reputation.

Most email addresses on these lists are outdated or fake, which means that you’ll see a high bounce rate. Not to mention that spam complaints can ultimately lead to your email domain being blacklisted.

6. DON’T forget email personalization

Personalization is becoming more and more important in ecommerce, and this goes for email marketing, too. When you personalize your emails, your subscribers will be more likely to find them valuable.

Make sure to gather data about your customers’ interests and preferences when building your list so that you can use that information to personalize your emails.

7. DON’T spam your list

We all receive plenty of emails every day. Don’t be that email sender who constantly bombards their audience with irrelevant emails. This can overwhelm and annoy your subscribers, causing them to unsubscribe.

Segmenting your list based on interest or past interactions with your emails can help you send fewer emails with more impact.

How to build an email list from scratch?

Now that you’ve got the dos and don’ts down, let’s go over some effective lead generation strategies.

Implementing these lead generation campaigns on your high-traffic pages is a great way to capture email addresses.

Hopefully, you’ll find a few ideas that will work for your ecommerce business below!

1. Offer a powerful incentive

A strong incentive is the first step if you want to encourage sign ups.

Discounts are a great option, but they’re not the only one. Exclusivity and informative content are also great incentives if you don’t want to offer a discount.

Pop-up forms are the best ways to promote your incentive. Check out this example from Brand Growth Experts where they highlight the value proposition of their newsletter to get people excited about becoming new subscribers.

You can also use:

Coupon codes
Free gifts
Free shipping offers
Samples
Early access

to boost your email list growth. Here’s an example of a pop-up form offering a mystery discount:

For some great lead magnet ideas, check out this article.

2. Run seasonal campaigns

Running seasonal campaigns is a great way to build your email list and keep your email opt in forms fresh at the same time.

Instead of offering a generic 10% discount for new customers, you can promote a seasonal sale or offer. This will make it clear that your discount offer is only available for a limited time, which will create a sense of urgency.

For example, during the holiday season, you could use a Christmas-themed design for your pop-up forms:

Then, you can switch to a New Year’s theme:

Then, switch to Valentine’s Day:

And so on…

OptiMonk has a variety of pre-made seasonal email signup form templates that make it easy to set up seasonally-specific campaigns. You can keep your website pop-ups fresh and boost your conversion rates (by up to 40%) in just a few minutes!

3. Personalize your list-building campaigns based on interest

If you want visitors to pay attention to your list-building pop-ups, try tailoring them based on their interests. This is a great way to boost your opt-in conversion rates, since your offers will be relevant to each user who sees them.

To segment your visitors based on interests, you can use their browsing behavior, the ads they’ve clicked on, or a survey form to ask them what types of products they prefer.

For example, if someone clicked on an ad about weight loss, then they’re probably interested in products that will help them lose weight:

But if someone clicked on an ad promoting sleep recovery, then they’re probably interested in that:

Personalizing your pop-up messaging based on information like this can increase the conversion rates on your lead generation sign-up forms by 30-50%.

4. Run a giveaway

People love free stuff, which is why giveaways are such an effective way to capture visitors’ email addresses. Influencers on social media often use this tactic to get more followers, but it can work just as well for your email list.

A giveaway can be a great lead magnet, bringing in a huge number of new subscribers. Just make sure that you’re clear about the terms and conditions of your contest, as well as what people need to do to enter.

Using a pop-up is the best way to promote your giveaway. Check out how Magic Spoon Cereal does it:

5. Use country-specific welcome pop-ups

Ecommerce stores that have a lot of customers from all over the world should consider using country-specific lead generation pop-ups to increase sign-up conversion rates and collect more email subscribers.

Mentioning the name of your visitor’s country in your welcome pop-ups is a powerful tool as it creates a memorable user experience and instantly answers their top question: “do they ship to my country?”

With OptiMonk’s Smart Tags, it’s easy to personalize your pop-ups based on geographic location without needing to create separate messages for each country.

6. Use conversational popups

Conversational popups are like a mashup between a classic welcome pop-up and an engaging quiz. They’re an excellent way to build your list and segment your contacts based on interest.

First, you can ask a question about your visitor’s interests or which problem(s) led them to your ecommerce website. This can help you learn what your potential customers are interested in and what types of products you should feature in personalized recommendations for them.

Then, you ask for their email address in exchange for a discount:

And finally, you display relevant product recommendations based on their answers to your question. This improves the user experience by getting your customers to the products they’re interested in more quickly than if they had to find the products themselves.

This will naturally increase your conversion rates!

And as an added bonus, you can use this valuable data to create personalized emails for your new subscribers down the line.

7. Use gamification

When you’re developing your list-building strategy, you should always try to think outside the box. After all, online shoppers are so used to seeing email list signup forms that in many cases, they simply tune them out.

That’s why gamified popups can really boost your conversion rates. Rather than offering a specific discount, you can give your website visitors a chance to try their luck and win something (several different discount levels, free shipping, etc.).

Lucky wheels, scratch cards, and pick-a-gift popups are great interactive sign-up forms.

Check out these gamified pop-up templates from OptiMonk:

8. Use quizzes

Quiz funnels are another way to enhance your sign-up form and gather more information about your customers.

The key to creating a high-converting quiz is finding a question that your website visitors will be interested to find out the answer to.

Here are two effective types of quizzes:

Knowledge tests: These quizzes test your audience’s knowledge about a topic that’s relevant to your ecommerce business. For example, a women’s footwear company might have a quiz that features questions like: “Which Italian Designer released this shocking boot in 2012?”
Personality quizzes: These quizzes promise to reveal something about the person taking the quiz, such as their hair or skin type. They can be a great sales tool because you can use the answers that a user gives to send them tailored product recommendations.

Quizzes are fantastic because your visitor gets the immediate satisfaction of knowing their quiz results, while you get an excited person on your email list. Win-win.

Here’s a great quiz example from WWF:

9. Show your sign-up form on exit intent

Exit-intent popups are a great way to capture new subscribers by targeting visitors who are about to leave your website.

You can offer any of the incentives we discussed above, but the key here is that you want to do it at the precise moment right before a user leaves your site. You can detect this moment by using software that tracks user behavior to sense when they’re about to leave.

Another benefit of exit-intent opt-in forms is that they allow you to build an email list without interrupting your visitors’ browsing experience.

Here’s a great exit-intent popup example from BlendJet:

If you’d like to get started with an exit-intent popup, check out our pre-made templates:

10. Create cheat sheets

Cheat sheets are short, concise packets of information that introduce a reader to a topic. Instead of writing a detailed blog post about your niche, you could offer a cheat sheet as a lead magnet.

Make sure that you organize the information in a clear, concise format like a list or a step-by-step guide. You’ll also want to make it visually appealing.

Here’s an example from Curbly that promotes their cheat sheets on a popup:

11. Offer case studies

When you’re working on your content marketing strategy, you should always try to provide content that your audience will be interested in.

Some audiences prefer longer-form content (like case studies) rather than shorter articles.

Case studies not only work as great lead magnets, but they also demonstrate how your product or service can solve a specific problem using real-world examples.

This makes case studies an exceptionally persuasive type of social proof and an important part of your overall content creation efforts.

12. Offer access to webinars

You can also use webinars as a lead magnet for customers who prefer video content.

And they’re incredibly effective: over 73% of sales and marketing leaders say that webinars are among the best lead magnets in ecommerce.

Hosting a webinar is a great way to reach a large audience and provide them with engaging, valuable content.

But remember that you’ll need to put resources into it, like building your webinar landing page, preparing for the event, and so on.

Here’s a webinar landing page example from Neil Patel:

13. Use social media channels

Think you can only run email list-building campaigns on your website? Think again! You can also leverage your reach on social media platforms to collect email addresses.

Twitter’s lead generation cards, for example, can convert extremely well.

You can use your social media accounts to create simple subscription opportunities, such as a sign-up link in your bio. Here’s an example of how to build an email list on Pinterest:

14. Referral marketing

Referral programs are one of the most effective ways to build an email list, since they leverage the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

When you incentivize your paying customers to spread the word about your products or services to their friends and family, you’ll be able to attract leads that already have a high degree of trust in your brand.

Plus, referral programs can help increase customer loyalty by making your existing customers feel more invested in your brand. If you’re offering a discount as an incentive for making referrals, then you can also boost sales.

It’s crucial that the terms of your referral program are clear and easy to follow. And don’t forget to make the rewards worthwhile for your customers.

15. Use paid marketing campaigns

If you have the budget to invest in paid marketing, it’s a great way to grow your email list from scratch and do it quickly.

Paid marketing channels, like social media ads, search engine ads, and display ads, can help you target the specific audience that will be most interested in your brand. This ensures that your ads will reach the right people and be well-received.

There’s also the option of using retargeting ads to target people who have already visited your online store but haven’t subscribed to your list.

16. Give out product samples

Offering free samples for your new subscribers is a great way to get them excited about joining your list.

You can choose a popular product as your free sample, or maybe a new product that you’re trying to spread the word about.

This can help you introduce your visitors to your products and convert more of them into paying customers.

17. A/B test list-building tactics

It’s hard to know which list-building strategies will get you the most email subscribers, which is why testing is so essential.

A/B testing can help you discover which list-building strategies and incentives work best for your target audience. And by using OptiMonk’s Experiments feature, you can easily test any campaign type against any other.

Making decisions based on real data (not gut instincts) means you’ll be able to increase your conversion rates quickly and confidently.

18. Build your email and SMS list at the same time

Given how important mobile shopping is in ecommerce, you should definitely consider collecting phone numbers for SMS marketing.

Text-based marketing boasts extremely high open and click-through rates, which leads to a lot of extra revenue.

With the Trojan Horse method, you can easily collect both email addresses and phone numbers without hurting your email opt-in conversion rates.

First, you start by asking for an email like you would with any normal welcome popup. Then, you offer an extra incentive in exchange for a phone number. You can expect between 30-80% of your email subscribers to become SMS subscribers, depending on the value of your extra offer.

Here are a couple of pre-made Trojan Horse popup templates:

Watch this video for a detailed, step-by-step guide on using the Trojan Horse popup strategy to increase your email and SMS subscribers.

The best email list-building platforms

Now, let’s take a quick look at some of the best email list building tools that will help you grow your subscriber list using embedded signup forms, popups, and more.

1. OptiMonk

The best email list-building tool you can use is OptiMonk. Whether you need a simple signup form for your landing page or you want to spice things up with a fun gamified popup, OptiMonk has a template for you.

And it has a range of other optimization tools that can help you raise your conversion rates without needing to write a single line of code.

Let’s see the main benefits of using OptiMonk:

A huge template library: 300+ beautiful, mobile-optimized templates at no additional cost.
An easy-to-use drag & drop editor: creating beautiful list-building forms has never been easier. No coding skills needed.
Customizable form fields: gather information beyond email addresses (like birth date, gender, address, etc.).
30+ targeting & triggering options: target different audience segments with personalized messages using URL targeting, cart value, & more. Trigger your campaigns at precisely the right moment.
Google, AdBlock, and GDPR compliant: OptiMonk campaigns are Google friendly and fully GDPR compliant, so there are no security worries for you or your customers.
Detailed analytics & insights: get a better understanding of how your list building campaigns are performing and why.
30+ email, CMS, and ecommerce integrations: including popular services like MailChimp, Klaviyo, and HubSpot.
A/B testing: compare alternate versions of your campaigns to find out what works best and boost your conversion rates.

2. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the best email marketing platforms on the internet. They have an email list-building tool, as well as features that make segmenting, advertising, customization, and analyzing the results from an email marketing campaign a breeze.

MailChimp has been able to perfect email marketing, and they’ve created an indispensable tool for any list-building strategy.

3. Drip

Drip is another email marketing service that can help you collect emails, segment your list, and personalize your email campaigns. It’s built for small- to medium-sized ecommerce businesses and offers a variety of integrations with other tools.

4. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is another popular option in the email marketing space. The tool specializes in creating personalized customer journeys by splitting your target audience into smarter segments. They also have a suite of custom sign-up forms that you can use to rapidly build your email list and create an engaged audience.

5. ActiveCampagin

ActiveCampaign is another all-in-one marketing platform with a strong focus on automation. They have advanced tools that marketers can use to dive deep into advanced reporting stats and automation goals.

6. GetResponse

GetResponse is a reliable option for running your email marketing. They boast an impressive 99% email delivery rate, meaning more eyes on your emails.

7. HubSpot

HubSpot is a leader in the digital marketing space, offering an astounding number of features for ecommerce stores. And luckily, their email marketing software is free to use without committing to their all-in-one marketing suite.

FAQ

How long does it take to build an email list “fast” in ecommerce?

Building an email list quickly can take a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on factors like traffic volume and the strength of your offers.

Focus on quality over quantity to ensure engagement with your subscribers for better long-term email campaign results.

What’s the ideal conversion rate from visitor to email subscriber?

A typical conversion rate for visitors to subscribers is 1-5%, though it can be higher with compelling offers. Optimizing your email sign-up form and marketing strategies can help improve these rates.

Can you build a strong email list without offering a discount or coupon?

Absolutely! While discounts are a popular tactic, you can still grow a strong email list using value-driven marketing strategies.

Offering exclusive content, webinars, or educational resources as incentives for signing up can attract subscribers who are more interested in your brand.

A well-crafted email sign-up form with a compelling offer without discounts can still convert.

Wrapping up

By following the advice from this article, you’ll be able to supercharge your list-building strategy and collect more emails than ever before. Even if you’re just starting to build an email list, you can have a healthy subscriber database in no time!

OptiMonk can help you implement any of the strategies we’ve covered in this article quickly and easily.

Creating a free account will get you access to all the email popup templates that OptiMonk has to offer, as well as customizable sign-up forms. Give it a try today!

To explore more tips on building your list, take a look at this video:

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