How to Build an Email List: Tips and Tools (2025)

For direct-to-consumer brands, email marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI) of any marketing tactic, according to the Hubspot’s 2025 State of Marketing report. That means it’s likely worth investing in a robust email marketing strategy for your ecommerce brand. Of course, to unlock the full potential of email marketing, you first need to build an email list from scratch.

The power of email marketing is nothing new to product marketer Desirae Odjick, who works on Shopify’s marketing automation tools like Shopify Email and Shopify Forms. Keep reading to get tips from Desirae on how to build an email list that will help you reach new customers and grow your small business.

If you can get three to five people who weren’t ready to buy to instead give you their email addresses, that’s three to five people you’re now able to reach.

How to build an email list

1. Create your email sign-up form
2. Feature an email sign-up incentive
3. Set up an automated welcome email
4. Promote your email list
5. Send valuable content
6. Consider email segmentation
7. Test and iterate

“You put a lot of effort into getting people to your website,” Desirae says. “If 100 people show up on your site and two to five of them buy something, that’s a really good conversion rate. But that also means 95 or more website visitors are leaving without doing anything. That’s why you offer the opportunity to join your email list. If you can get three to five people who weren’t ready to buy to instead give you their email addresses, that’s three to five people you’re now able to reach.”

Here are the seven steps you can take to collect email addresses and kick off email campaigns.

1. Create your email sign-up form

In order to collect contact information from potential customers, you need to have an easily accessible email sign-up form. If you use Shopify as your ecommerce website builder, the simplest and most cost effective way to start collecting email sign-ups is with Shopify Forms. It’s a free first-party app that allows you to create branded website pop-ups and inline opt-in forms for collecting email addresses from your website visitors—and more.

“You can actually collect any customer data you need by creating custom fields,” Desirae says. “So you can ask things like ‘What’s your birthday?’ or ‘What’s your favorite color?’ and that information will be added to your email list.” You can use this data later to send personalized messages like birthday emails, for example.

To get started with your first email marketing sign-up forms, first download the free Shopify Forms app. Then head to your Shopify admin, navigate to Apps > Forms, and select “Create form.” Follow the prompts to customize and save your pop-up forms. You can then add any of your sign-up forms to your website or create landing pages where your opt-in forms can capture email addresses.

There should always be some kind of offer for signing up for your email list.

2. Feature an email sign-up incentive

“There should always be some kind of offer for signing up for your email list,” Desirae says. “Discounts are one option, but there are other ways to show the value of joining your email list.”

For example, brands often use email marketing signup forms to offer exclusive content relevant to their target audience’s needs or interests. “You could offer a free guide, you could offer exclusive access, you could offer expert tips and tricks,” Desirae says.

If your business operates on a limited drop model, being the first to know about upcoming drops can be a powerful incentive. “Some of our most effective forms are for brands that do very limited-time drops,” Desirae says.

Take sustainable beauty brand Fluff. Fluff operates on a quarterly drop model, so the full shop isn’t open at all times. Instead of a discount, Fluff offers “first access to new products” to subscribers.

Whatever your incentive is, make its value clear when setting up your sign-up form. Later on, you can test different incentives to see which one generates the most new subscribers.

Make sure that when someone decides to take that step and gives you their email address, you’re ready to welcome them.

3. Set up an automated welcome email

After creating your opt-in forms, the next thing you should do is set up a welcome email automation. “These are some of the most-opened emails,” Desirae says. “People just took action, they’re expecting to see your email, they’re more likely to open it.”

Skin and makeup brand Tower28, for example, sends a welcome email that includes a 10% off discount followed by a founder’s note, a favorite product roundup, and a product quiz.

Shopify Email offers two different welcome email series automations—plus other automations like thank you and abandoned cart emails. But the welcome series is one Desirae recommends every merchant start with: “Make sure that when someone decides to take that step and gives you their email address, you’re ready to welcome them,” she says.

Sending automated emails like welcome messages can save you time while also allowing you to send personalized communications to your customers: When a customer takes a specific action (like signing up for your newsletter or adding a product to their cart), you can send them a message explicitly acknowledging the action they took. You can set up these automations quickly with Shopify Email templates, or you set them up from scratch with Shopify Flow.

4. Promote your email list

Visibility is a key part of building an email list. Now that you have your email sign-up form and a welcome automation to greet new subscribers, it’s time to promote your email list beyond the pop-up form on your storefront.

Desirae recommends creating a dedicated landing page that you can link out to from your social media channels: “It’s one of the easiest, lowest-investment ways for someone to take the next step from the other places that they’re finding out about you.”

In addition to landing pages, share the link on your social media accounts (like from your Instagram bio), provide a QR code customers can scan at in-person events or your brick-and-mortar store, and drop the link before a product release or other big news. Make sure your target audience knows the best way to stay up to date on your brand is by subscribing to your email list.

“Even if you only get a couple of sign-ups, that’s a couple more people you don’t have to pay for ads to reach,” Desirae says. “Once they’re on your list, you can build a relationship with them and eventually sell to them.”

You can also try gamifying your sign-up methods. You might experiment with spin-to-win website pop-ups, or you might run giveaways that require an email sign-up to enter. For example, you could run a giveaway for a new product on Instagram and require participants to subscribe to your newsletter in order to be considered.

5. Send valuable content

Once you have email subscribers, you need to keep them engaged with high-quality content and personalized emails. “Don’t just rely on automations,” Desirae says. “Make sure that you’re reaching out to people.”

If you use Shopify Email, Desirae recommends looking through the provided templates for inspiration. “The big thing that I know merchants struggle with is, ‘What do I send?’” Desirae says. “All the templates are built for ecommerce, so they’re all emails that businesses like yours have sent.”

As a small business owner, you know better than anyone else what kind of content your audience wants to see. Make sure that your email list building strategy includes content that speaks directly to your target audience.

You might use your email campaigns or newsletters to:

• Promote a new or restocked product or collection
• Share examples of how real customers use your product
• Share behind-the-scenes or making-of stories
• Send emails relevant to seasonal changes, holidays, and events
• Share product education
• Interview team members, customers, or brand ambassadors
• Give a peek into your brick and mortar store

Shopify Email templates span categories including promotions, product highlights, and holidays, and you’ll have multiple template options for whichever type of email you decide to send.

6. Consider email segmentation

As your email list grows, start thinking about email segmentation. Desirae suggests starting by creating a segment of your most engaged subscribers: “Focus on the people who are most likely to take action from your email,” Desirae says. “If someone hasn’t opened your email in three to six months, this isn’t going to be the magic one they do open.”

If you create an email list segment omitting anyone who hasn’t opened an email in the past three to six months, you’ll get better data regarding which types of emails your subscribers engage with. As your list grows, your segments can become more granular.

“You can create segments based on basically any customer data that you have in Shopify,” Desirae says. This includes the exact product purchased and when it was purchased. “Think about what would make sense for your segments based on what you’re selling and what your audience cares about.”

Desirae shares a real example of a beauty business that sells both premade shampoo and the ingredients to make your own shampoo: “If they launch a new bottle of premade shampoo, they will get the best results by only emailing the people who bought premade shampoo before and excluding the people who bought raw ingredients because it’s just not what they’re shopping for.”

Focus on the people who are most likely to take action from your email.

7. Test and iterate

As your email list grows, you can iterate on your list-building strategies. For example, you might test out different sign-up form designs and welcome offers, or try promoting your list across additional channels, like Instagram and TikTok.

You can also experiment with the emails themselves. Try out different content types, customer segments, offers, and promotions in your email marketing efforts to find what works for your small business. Keep track of email marketing metrics like unsubscribe rate and conversion rate to make sure you’re always improving. A platform like Shopify Email tracks this data for you and compiles it into an easy-to-navigate dashboard.

If you find an area for improvement, you can use testing to find a solution. For example, Desirae recommends focusing on a specific audience segment to see if you can get better click-through rates. If you want to get even more granular, you can use email A/B testing to compare subject lines and content blocks. The important thing is to continuously test and iterate.

You’ll also want to make sure you’re following email marketing best practices. For example, regularly clean your email list and set up one-click unsubscribe. Properly managing your email list will improve your email deliverability and keep your messages out of spam folders.

Best email marketing software for managing your email list

1. Shopify Email
2. MailChimp
3. Zapier
4. Seguno
5. Omnisend

As you grow your email list from a few new subscribers to a few thousand email subscribers, it’s important to invest in tools and platforms to help you manage, organize, and leverage your data.

Here are a few popular email marketing software options to get you started:

1. Shopify Email

If you have a Shopify store, start your email marketing journey with Shopify Email. Your first 10,000 emails each month are free to send, and the app has access to your store’s data. “Any segment that you have set up in Shopify, you can add to the ‘To’ field in Shopify Email,” Desirae says. “You can create a segment based on any data you have in Shopify.”

Shopify Email has more than 100 predesigned email templates to choose from, including automated email series and one-time email marketing campaigns—and they’re all included for free.

To level up your email marketing, you can also use AI email marketing tools. For example, Shopify Magic and Shopify Sidekick can optimize send times and help you draft subject lines and body copy.

Who it’s for

Shopify merchants

Pricing

Shopify Email is free with Shopify Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus plans. Your first 10,000 emails per month are free, then you’ll pay per message. Abandoned checkout emails are always free to send.

The amount you pay for additional messages depends on how many emails you’ve already sent:

• Up to 10,000 emails: Free
• 10,000–300,000 emails: $1 per 1,000 emails
• 300,000–750,000 emails: $0.65 per 1,000 emails
• 750,000+ emails: $0.55 per 1,000 emails

Features

• AI tools
• More than 100 free, customizable templates
• Seamlessly import customer data for effective segmentation
• Create automations with templates or from scratch with Shopify Forms
• 24/7 customer support

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing software that includes additional marketing features like social media and SMS marketing tools. The free plan offers basic email templates, but it limits you to 500 contacts and restricts customer support after 30 days. With a paid subscription, you’ll have access to more premium email templates, detailed analytics, and more advanced tools like AI-driven segmentation.

If you’re on Shopify, you can sync Mailchimp to your Shopify store with the Mailchimp app, letting you import customer data for optimized segmentation and order related automations.

Who it’s for

Larger small businesses

Pricing

Mailchimp has four different pricing plans, and the cost of those plans depends on how many contacts you have.

If you pay more for more contacts, you’ll also be able to send more emails, since each plan includes an email cap tied to the number of contacts you have. For example, the number of emails you can send on the Essentials plan is 10 times the number of contacts you have: If you have 500 contacts, that means you can send 5,000 emails.

• Free. Up to 500 contacts and 1,000 emails per month, with restrictions like no automations and no customer support after 30 days
• Essentials. Starts at $13/month for 500 contacts and 10 emails per contact; features include 24/7 customer support and automations with up to four automation flow steps
• Standard. Starts at $20/month for 500 contacts and 12 emails per contact; features include generative AI tools and up to 200 automation flow steps
• Premium. Starts at $350/month for 10,000 contacts and 15 emails per contact; features include dedicated onboarding assistance and premium support

Features

• More than 130 free and paid templates
• AI tools
• SMS marketing tools
• 24/7 customer support

3. Zapier

Zapier is a workforce automation software that has an email marketing tool called Email by Zapier. The platform allows you to create automated workflows that close the gaps between your various third-party tools without the need for a software developer.

Note that Zapier is not primarily an email marketing company, and its Email by Zapier product isn’t intended to replace a robust email marketing software. Instead, Email by Zapier can help you with tasks like clearing out your inbox and sending and routine responses.

With Zapier’s workflows, however, you can automatically pull new email subscribers from social media, landing pages, survey tools, or live event registrations—and funnel all of those new subscribers into your email list database. This automation eliminates the manual labor of organizing your lists. You can further streamline your workflows by integrating Zapier with Shopify with the Zapier app.

Who it’s for

Companies looking to organize their tech stacks

Pricing

• Free. Two-step automations and up to 100 tasks per month
• Pro. $29.99/month; multi-step automations, premium apps, and customer support
• Team. $103.50/month; up to 25 users and premium customer support
• Enterprise. Price upon request; unlimited users and support from a technical account manager

Features

• AI tools
• Advanced automation
• Shopify integration
• 24/7 customer support

4. Seguno

Seguno is an email marketing software specifically designed for Shopify. After you add the Seguno app to your storefront, you can manage Seguno campaigns from within your Shopify admin, letting you oversee your entire email marketing strategy from a single hub.

Seguno has more than 200 templates, and it offers additional features like restock notifications and pop-ups to gather email sign-ups. The platform also has an automation series for collecting customer feedback, which it can autopublish on your site.

Who it’s for

Shopify merchants looking for product reviews and restock notifications

Pricing

All Seguno plans include unlimited emails, but they carry restrictions on the number of subscribers you can have:

• Starter. Free; up to 250 subscribers
• Standard. $35/month; up to 2,500 subscribers; create pop-ups, banners, back in stock notifications, and ask for reviews
• Professional. $215/month; 25,000 subscribers; customer success manager, priority support, and more

Features

• More than 200 templates
• Restock notifications
• Product review collection
• Shopify integration
• 24/7 customer support

5. Omnisend

Omnisend is an email and SMS marketing software with more than 100,000 customers. The company lets you create push notifications and sign-up forms, too. Plus, it has AI tools that can draft email body text, subject lines, and preheaders. A large library of templates and prebuilt automations can help you get up and running quickly.

Omnisend integrates with Shopify via the Omnisend app, which allows you to use your own automations in Shopify Flow. Note that unlike the built-for-Shopify platform Segundo, you’ll need to navigate to the Omnisend platform to manage your campaigns.

Who it’s for

Merchants looking for SMS and push notifications

Pricing

• Free. Up to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month
• Standard. Up to 500 contacts and 6,000 emails per month
• Pro. Up to 2,500 contacts and unlimited emails

Features

• More than 250 templates
• AI tools
• SMS marketing and push notifications
• 24/7 customer support