There are 2 pieces of news: bad and good. The bad news is that your subscriber base is degraded by about 22.5% per year. People may unsubscribe, lose interest in your content, and stop opening emails, changing jobs, or changing their email address. And the good news is that if you constantly take care not only of saving, but also of replenishing the database, you can change these statistics to your advantage. Julia Eliasberg, Head of Development at Retail Rocket, shares her recommendations for working with your subscriber base.

Together with our customers, we are changing the world of e-commerce. Our goal is to make your company's marketing personal based on big data and machine learning, so that every customer gets their own version of the store.

To do this, we have built a single email marketing control center for retail, which includes all the usual tools, which we have significantly strengthened with the best personalization technologies that we have been developing and applying for more than 5 years around the world (we have offices in 6 countries). The accumulated experience allows us to provide an average of 30% growth in the email channel for our customers when switching to the Retail Rocket platform.

If you're not already working on building your email database or don't know how to do it, this in-depth guide with best practices for working with your email database will be a useful guide for you.

How to collect URLs on a website
A website is your territory. If a user comes, it means that they already have some interest in your brand or products, so it is important to try to keep their attention and get the opportunity to communicate with them further. We have already written about some aspects of collecting a subscriber base in the article "Collecting a subscriber base in an online store: what to choose Single Opt-In or Double Opt-In", and now let's take a closer look at the ways to replenish the base.

Pop-up windows
The good old pop-up on the site will allow you not only to get the coveted email of the subscriber, but also to find out his name. To display a pop-up window, use site engine plugins or connect third-party services. A block with a subscription form can appear in the center or at the top of the screen, shifting all the content of the page down by its width or overlapping it. A block can dynamically appear or load at the same time as the rest of the content. The block should not be large, and it should always be possible to hide it. Ideally, one user should show such a block no more than 1 time.

To involve the user in communication, you can give a small gift for registration, for example, a discount coupon.

Newsletter or content newsletter subscription form
As a rule, such forms are located in the footer of the site and do not distract the user. Use in the block header the benefits for the user that he purchased by leaving you his contact. You can also add a name form and social proof to the block.

Private club
Invite a guest to a private club or community, whose members will have access to special purchase conditions, useful materials, and limited quantities of goods. You can do this through the form on the website or using the referral program.

Subscription on the product page
A user who is on a product page is likely already interested in buying, so it's easy to engage them by linking the transfer of an email address, for example, to signing up for a product in stock or tracking the price of an item.

Retargeting Form
When the user decides to close the site page, he can be motivated to leave his address if he offers not just a subscription to the newsletter, but, for example, saves his products in an email so that he can return to them at any time.

Registration on the site and placing an order
When you register on the site and place an order, you automatically receive a user address, but this does not mean that you can start sending mailings to the client without additional consent. Perhaps the user registers just to save products in favorites, or makes a one-time purchase, and a forced subscription in this case can cause negativity.

But you should definitely not miss the opportunity to make a user a subscriber. To do this, when registering, just place a checkbox to confirm consent to the subscription.

Do not forget to update the data if you did not start accumulating the database immediately. When registering and authorizing on the site, be sure to take into account the logged in users - most likely they will be your most active subscribers.

How to collect off-site URLs
If the store's website has not yet been launched (for example, a large retail chain has decided to launch online sales) or you are preparing a promo page for a new collection, then you can safely make a stub with a form for collecting email addresses to inform about the launch of the site or place a pre-order.
Using the blog subscription form. If a user is interested in your content, there is a high probability that they will subscribe to the mailing list of useful materials, and you will be able to attract their attention to your products.
From the questionnaires of loyalty programs. Do not forget to process the questionnaires that your customers fill out in offline outlets, receiving loyalty cards.
Subscription via social networks. If your users are actively using social networks, you can motivate them not only to go to the site, but also to immediately subscribe to the newsletter in a space that is comfortable for them.

Export from CRM. If you have ever collected emails and have not worked with them, make an upload and form a separate mailing list.
You need to interact with all collected emails at once, and not accumulate for years.

If you forget about communication with a subscriber for 2-3 months, it is very likely that he will forget about you. If for some reason this still happens, it is necessary to reactivate the database. Here are some recommendations:

if the addresses are collected illegally, it is better not to do anything;
It is impossible to simply send information about a promotion or a selection of products to such a database. Be sure to ask the user in the first email if they mind receiving emails from you;
re-validate the database and send it in small parts (remind you who you are and where you are from, do not offer to buy something), delete those who did not open emails;
If you do decide to ignore these recommendations, be prepared for a high spam rate, a damaged reputation, or even a domain block.
How to work with the subscriber base
A few important recommendations for working with the collected database:

Wherever you collect email addresses, ask for explicit consent to send emails. It doesn't matter if you use a subscription form or collect the addresses of those who placed an order. And it's a good idea to keep a record of such permits in case you ever come across a complaint.

Send emails from your shop's domain. This increases the Open Rate due to a higher level of trust in the company name in the email.
When forming the content of an email or a chain of letters, take into account the method where you received this email, be sure to mention everything you know about the addressee, if it is relevant, and try to show him what he will be interested in most likely, announce how your mailings will be useful to the user.
Invite the user to leave reviews on the site, so you will kill 2 birds with one stone – you will involve the user in interacting with you and improve the site's SEO position by increasing UGC.
Segment your subscriber base by various parameters, from socio-demographic to real-time product and category interests.

Control the load per 1 subscriber, do not send emails several or even once a day – this way you will "burn" your database very quickly
Send exactly as many emails as you promised in the subscription form
Monitor the quality of your content if you don't want people to unsubscribe from your newsletters. If they are interested, they will wait for your letters.
Reactivate those users who have stopped opening your emails and offer them something interesting. If it doesn't work on the third try, it's better to stop writing to them and focus on the active part of the database.
Encourage your subscribers to invite friends to subscribe to your newsletters. You can give discounts for the purchases of friends who subscribe at their invitation.
Be sure to use a return address for those times when the user wants to contact you by clicking the "Reply" button in the email – Reply To.
Where not to get addresses
We will not dwell on this point in detail, we will only remind you once again that the illegal collection of addresses can threaten with serious consequences.

purchase, parsing or other illegal borrowing of a database
exchange of databases (it doesn't matter with whom - friends, partners from related or different industries, or even several own businesses)
Collection of contacts from open sources
add emails to the mailing list of customers who wrote to the information service with questions and/or stamps
How to work with those who want to unfollow
If, despite all your efforts, the user decides to pee, you do not need to hold him with all your might. Firstly, it is unlikely that the client will remain loyal if, after a couple of attempts to unsubscribe from the mailing list, he will still receive emails from you. Secondly, if it is impossible to unsubscribe, the client will start adding emails to spam, which will negatively affect the reputation of the domain.

We recommend adhering to a few rules:

Separate unsubscribes for regular, triggered, and transactional emails – users expect these emails differently
Collect statistics on the reasons for unsubscribing and analyze it
If you use different platforms to send different types of emails, sync unsubscribes
Be sure to form blacklists and do not ignore unsubscribes, otherwise the consequences will be the same as when working with an inactive database
Monitor the dynamics of the base
To understand the effectiveness of all the actions described above, it is important to understand what is happening with your base: how many subscribers subscribe and unsubscribe, what results each channel gives, etc.

We have developed a special tool for this purpose, which allows you to monitor the dynamics of the subscriber base and their reaction to different types of email campaigns.

Key findings
Use pop-up windows to collect email addresses. A pop-up helps you quickly get user contacts by offering a discount or bonus. The main thing is not to overload the interface and show the window no more than once.
Place the subscription form in the footer. This is an unobtrusive way to offer the user to subscribe to news or newsletters, attracting them with the help of a description of benefits.
Create a private club or referral program. Offer exclusive terms and limited merchandise for members to encourage users to leave their contacts.
Offer subscriptions on the product page. It is easier for a user interested in buying to leave an email for notifications about the availability of goods or price changes.
Use retargeting forms. When the user leaves the site, offer to save the cart via email so that they can return to shopping.
Collect addresses when registering and placing an order. When registering, offer consent to the mailing through the checkbox, but do not automatically sign without permission.
Implement off-site address collection. Use stubs on inaccessible pages, blogs, social media, and CRM to collect contacts.
Work with the assembled database immediately. Don't hoard addresses — send welcome emails as soon as you collect a contact.
Reactivate inactive followers. If the user doesn't open emails for several months, remind them of yourself by offering something interesting.
Avoid illegal methods of collecting email addresses. Buying, exchanging databases, or scraping can damage the brand's reputation and lead to domain blocking.
Provide an easy unsubscribe process. Respect the user's decision, don't try to hold it back. Offer options to unsubscribe from different types of emails and collect feedback for analysis.