Email marketers, listen up: Santa knew what he was talking about when he said he was making a list and checking it twice.
Much in the same way Santa double-checks who’s been naughty or nice before delivering his gifts, running a successful ecommerce email marketing campaign involves fine-tuning, segmenting, and appropriately tagging lists to ensure your messaging reaches its target audience.
When done right, email marketing provides some of the best bang for your buck. “Email is so powerful because it’s a much cheaper delivery platform than other forms, including paid ads,” says Jacob Sappington, director of email strategy at growth agency Homestead Studio, on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast.
Ready to learn how to crush the art of email list management? Read on.
What is an email list?
An email list is a collection of customer email addresses used to support your company’s marketing efforts. You can collect these email addresses from various sources, such as a contact list or a sign-up form on your company website, through targeted social media campaigns, or other lead generation tactics designed to identify prospective customers. The better organized your email lists are, the easier it is to connect to your audience and boost your email conversion rate.
Email list management best practices
- Welcome new subscribers
- Include opt-in features
- Don’t spam your subscribers
- Segment your lists
- Use contact tags
- Regularly clean and update your lists
There are several email list management best practices you can use to maintain a successful email marketing strategy, including:
Welcome new subscribers
Once you’ve added active subscribers to your email list, send a welcome email that provides key information about your company, outlines your value proposition, and maybe even offers a discount on their first purchase. This sets the tone for your email relationship with new subscribers and gives them an idea of what they can expect from your correspondence.
Include opt-in features
Once new email subscribers are added to your email list, allow them to opt in to specific communication. Email verification tools like EmailMarker and EmailVerify allow subscribers to confirm their contact information and give explicit permission to participate in whatever frequency of email marketing they prefer. This also helps protect you from wasting time and emails on fake email addresses and bots.
To build trust with your customers, give them the opportunity to set their content preferences, including the frequency of marketing emails and the types of content they want to receive. For example, while your most loyal customers may be keen to receive daily updates, new contacts may want to hear from you less frequently or choose to opt in only for promotional content. Giving consumers the option to engage with you at their own pace can help build goodwill and make recipients more likely to engage with your emails.
Don’t spam your subscribers
Remember, less is more. Be strategic about how often you reach out to your email lists and avoid constant contact—unless subscribers have specifically opted in for daily updates. Today, there are policies in place to prevent spamming, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the US. This act ensures that followers can opt out and imposes harsh penalties for violations, so it's essential to stay compliant.
Segment your lists
Once you have a master subscriber list, segment your audience into smaller lists based on customer preferences and behavior. For example, an online apparel company that sells clothing across a wide array of demographics can create segmented groups based on gender, age, or shopping history to better reach customers and facilitate engagement with emails that are more relevant for those specific groups of customers.
While segmentation can help narrow the scope of your marketing campaigns, Jacob Sappington of Homestead Studio said it can also be used conversely to avoid getting too granular. For big shopping holidays like Cyber Monday, for example, he recommended expanding your usual approach of targeting users who have been engaged in the past 30 days to 60 or even 90 days to cast a wider net.
Use contact tags
Contact tags help you track how members on an email list interact with your content, allowing you to better target them for future email campaigns. For example, email recipients who use a discount code can be tagged in a specific way to identify groups of subscribers who are more likely to engage with promotional emails and thus help you better tailor your email strategy.
Regularly clean and update your lists
Even in email list marketing, quality is still better than quantity. Regularly hold audits to remove invalid email addresses, inactive subscribers, and redundant email addresses—all of which can prove costly in the long run. Many email marketing tools charge by the number of emails sent, so focusing on email deliverability and culling your list to remove unengaged subscribers will ultimately save you money and connect you with people who are more likely to convert.
Popular email list management software programs
There are a variety of email management tools that can support your email marketing efforts, including managing your email list. Here are a few popular options to explore:
Shopify Email
Shopify Email is a user-friendly email marketing platform for basic email marketing, offering features like seamless automatic branding applied across emails, prebuilt templates, and campaign performance tracking. While it doesn’t directly feature built-in tools for email list building, you can easily tie in the Shopify Forms app to assist with list-making needs.
Pricing: Shopify Email is free for up to 10,000 emails per month. After that, you pay for what you use at $1 per 1,000 emails, with dynamic pricing that decreases the more emails you send.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email marketing service used to craft emails, create lists, design landing pages, and create email marketing campaigns, with over 100 prebuilt templates. It has robust automation and segmentation features, as well as advanced analytic tracking for important metrics, which makes it a good option for both beginners and experienced email marketers.
Pricing: Mailchimp offers a free plan; paid, Shopify-integrated plans start at $13/month.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an email service provider for ecommerce brands seeking automated solutions, offering advanced personalization, robust real-time analytics, and a wide slate of AI features. Klaviyo is best known for its suite of AI-powered predictive analytics tools, which you can use to generate workflows, send emails, boost campaigns, and run A/B tests.
Pricing: Klaviyo is free to install and use for up to 250 contacts; paid, Shopify-integrated plans start at $15/month.
Brevo
Brevo is a cost-friendly email marketing software platform that features a drag-and-drop editor and preset options for designing emails and campaigns. While Brevo doesn’t boast as many templates as its competitors, it makes up for it with its straightforward approach to setting up lists and segmenting contacts.
Pricing: Brevo offers a free monthly plan and paid, Shopify-integrated plans start at $5/month.
Omnisend
Omnisend is an email service provider that offers email templates, a drag-and-drop email builder, and dynamic discount codes via clean, responsive designs that are customizable for your marketing campaigns. The platform is designed to help with everything from welcome messages and personalized emails to cart recovery using an array of specialized automation tools.
Pricing: Omnisend has a free plan that supports up to 500 emails a month; paid, Shopify-integrated plans start at $16/month.
Email list management FAQ
What is email list management?
Email list management is the process of organizing and maintaining the customer email addresses you use to support your company’s marketing efforts. It involves identifying the right leads, segmenting them into the appropriate lists with the correct tags, and keeping information current. The more organized you are in your email list management, the easier it is to connect to shoppers and ultimately drive engagement and sales.
What is the best mailing list service?
There are several mailing list management tools available; most offer customizable templates, list and segmentation builders, and analytics. Popular options include Shopify Email, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Brevo, and Omnisend.
Is email management complex?
Email management may seem cumbersome, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right tools, you can simplify the process by following best practices, such as welcoming new subscribers, allowing users to set content preferences, avoiding spam triggers, using contact tags, and regularly cleaning and updating your lists.
