How to grow your email and SMS lists

00:00 Why Existing Website Traffic Is a Growth Opportunity

Dakota: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this Listrak Spark session on how to turn more browsers into engaged customers. My name is Dakota Brazil-Arrington, and I’m a Client Success Manager at Listrak.

Megan: And I’m Megan Holloway, Senior Digital Marketing Specialist.

Dakota: Think about the last significant purchase you made. Chances are, you didn’t buy the first time you landed on the product page. You probably visited the product multiple times, compared options, read reviews, and came back before finally making a decision. I’m doing the exact same thing right now with a ridiculously expensive infant car seat. My wife and I are expecting, and I keep returning to the same products over and over before feeling confident enough to buy. That’s important because it reflects how most shoppers behave today.

So, as we spend the next several minutes together, I want to reframe how we think about audience growth. Most conversations start with the question, “How do we get more people to our website?” But for many retailers, the bigger opportunity isn’t just driving more traffic. It’s doing a better job of capturing, identifying, and converting the traffic that’s already there.

01:09 The Challenge of Anonymous Shoppers

Megan: Let’s introduce you to a shopper who might look familiar because someone just like her is probably on your website right now.

Meet Sarah. She’s shopping online for a new pair of jeans. She saw an Instagram ad for a pair she liked and clicked through to check them out. Since then, she’s been seeing more ads and has returned to the website several times over the past week, but she still hasn’t made a purchase.

Sound familiar? It’s not because Sarah isn’t interested. She’s actually very interested, but she has a few concerns holding her back. Will the jeans fit? Are they worth the price? Is this a good-quality brand? The retailer has answers to all these questions, including helpful fit guides, great customer reviews, and an easy return policy.

But Sarah is on her own because, to this retailer, she’s still anonymous traffic. They know someone keeps returning to look at those jeans, but because she hasn’t identified herself, they can’t send her the information that might help answer her questions and give her the confidence to purchase.

This is a common challenge retailers face today. Brands invest heavily in getting shoppers like Sarah to their websites, but most visitors leave before a two-way relationship can begin. The problem isn’t necessarily a lack of interest. It’s that without identifying who those shoppers are, you lose the ability to continue the conversation.

And that lost opportunity is becoming more expensive. Retailers invest across paid search, social media, SEO, affiliates, and marketplaces to attract shoppers, and those channels are increasingly competitive. Recent benchmarks show average ecommerce customer acquisition costs ranging from $53 to $91 across industries, with acquisition costs rising by as much as 60% over a five-year period.

Now consider what happens when those shoppers arrive. Out of 10 million anonymous website visitors, roughly 250,000 become known subscribers on average. That leaves 9.75 million visitors, nearly 98%, who leave without identifying themselves and without giving the retailer a way to follow up.

03:31 Why Shopper Identification Matters

Dakota: And this isn’t a media problem. The media worked. Those shoppers showed up. But every anonymous visitor represents a relationship you’ve invested in starting and can’t continue. The opportunity is to identify shoppers while their intent is highest, turning anonymous website activity into known customers you can personalize for, nurture, and reengage across email, SMS, push, and onsite experiences.

Even small improvements at the top of the funnel can create significant opportunities throughout the customer journey. And that’s why identification matters. It’s easy to focus on the wrong metric here. An email signup or SMS signup isn’t the ultimate goal. If you’re only reporting on subscriber counts, you’re measuring the starting point rather than the full opportunity.

Once a shopper is identified, you can begin delivering more personalized experiences, including welcome journeys, browse and cart abandonment messages, onsite personalization, and post-purchase loyalty campaigns. These are opportunities that weren’t available in the same way before identification.

This is especially important for first-time buyers, who represent a significant opportunity for future revenue. Whether those relationships grow or disappear often depends on your ability to identify shoppers and continue engaging them after their first visit.

The real value isn’t simply adding another subscriber to your list. It’s the ongoing, personalized relationship that identifying that shopper makes possible, long after their initial website visit ends.

04:59 Three Ways to Capture More Subscribers

Megan: So how do successful retailers identify more shoppers? It starts with a robust acquisition strategy. Today, it’s no longer about having just one popup. It’s about creating a connected experience with at least three opportunities to capture subscribers throughout their visit.

The first is an entry popup that gives shoppers an opportunity to subscribe when they arrive on your website. The second is a persistent button that remains available for shoppers who weren’t ready to sign up immediately but may be interested after browsing a few pages. The third is an exit-intent popup that reaches shoppers as they’re about to leave, or even when they’re moving to another tab to compare products.

Most brands already have an entry popup, although some delay when it appears. That delay can mean missing potential subscribers with every second that passes. Each of these three experiences reaches shoppers at a different moment, which is why using them together can be more effective than relying on a single tactic.

There are two additional opportunities worth considering. First, your mobile entry popup will typically be your largest source of subscriber acquisition because so many shoppers are browsing on their phones. If you’re going to optimize one experience, start there. Make the message clear, compelling, and easy to engage with.

Second, think about how frequently you’re giving shoppers the opportunity to subscribe. Many retailers suppress their popups for two weeks or even 30 days after someone initially declines. But shoppers who return frequently may actually be demonstrating greater purchase intent than they did on their first visit. Those return visits can be valuable opportunities to reconnect and capture first-party data.

And remember, these experiences aren’t only for brand-new shoppers. Sometimes they help you reconnect with customers you’ve known for years who may be visiting from a new device. Once that connection is reestablished, you can begin delivering the personalized experiences Dakota discussed earlier.

06:53 What to Test to Improve Opt-In Rates

Megan: Now that we’ve talked about the importance of having multiple opt-in experiences, let’s look at the factors that can have the biggest impact on opt-in rates. The details of your popups matter, so why not give them the same attention you give the rest of your marketing?

Through years of testing different variations, we’ve found that nearly every element of a signup experience can influence how many shoppers subscribe. If you’re not continually testing and optimizing, you could be missing opportunities to grow your audience and drive additional revenue.

We typically see an opt-in rate of around 2.5%, but testing individual elements can lead to meaningful improvements. We’ve seen acquisition lifts of 10% from one test, 24% from another, and even 180% from a recent test I ran. Those improvements can add up over time.

So, what should you test? Start with design and layout, including colors, copy, placement, and movement. Then look at timing and frequency. When does your popup appear, and how often do shoppers see it? You want to capture attention without disrupting the shopping experience, while also giving returning visitors another opportunity to subscribe.

Offer types are another important area to test. Some audiences may respond better to a percentage discount, while others prefer free shipping. You can also experiment with engagement tactics, such as gamification, to see whether they make an offer more compelling.

Finally, consider your audience. Who is seeing your popups? Where are those shoppers coming from, and what do you already know about them based on their traffic source? Understanding those differences can help you create more relevant acquisition experiences and identify which approaches work best for your customers.

08:32 Client Example: Sportsman’s Warehouse

Dakota: Let’s make this real with Sportsman’s Warehouse, a major outdoor retailer that was preparing for a busy 2025 holiday season. They already had high-intent website traffic, but there was an opportunity to identify more of those shoppers and turn them into subscribers.

Here’s where they started. Sportsman’s Warehouse had a single lightbox entry popup that collected both email and SMS subscribers, but it didn’t appear until the second page of a shopper’s visit. Think about what that means. Anyone who landed on the website, viewed one page, and left never had an opportunity to subscribe through that experience. That’s a significant number of potential subscribers leaving without being identified.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad popup. It was an opportunity to expand the acquisition strategy and improve what they were already doing. We started by rebuilding the entry experience around what we call micro-commitments. Instead of asking shoppers for everything at once, we introduced a series of smaller steps. First, a teaser screen with a simple, low-friction invitation to engage. Then an email signup step, followed by an SMS signup step. Each screen asks for one small commitment rather than presenting the entire form upfront.

We also added an interest selection to the email step, allowing Sportsman’s Warehouse to collect valuable zero-party data from new subscribers right away. That means the brand can begin personalizing its messaging from the very first send, rather than waiting to learn more about each shopper over time.

Next, we changed when the popup appeared. Instead of waiting until page two, the new experience appeared on the first page of the visit. In this implementation, we didn’t see a negative impact on site speed or Core Web Vitals. We also removed the image from the popup to reduce the potential performance impact of loading a large visual asset.

The interesting part is that we added more steps and asked shoppers for more information, yet acquisition rates actually improved. And the new entry popup wasn’t the only change. We also introduced a persistent button so shoppers who dismissed the initial popup could subscribe later, along with an exit-intent popup to capture interest before they left.

That gave shoppers three opportunities to subscribe instead of just one: entry, persistent button, and exit intent. The updated strategy launched on November 20, 2025, just ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, giving us an opportunity to measure its impact during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year.

11:44 The Results: More Subscribers and Revenue

Dakota: So, what did these changes actually produce? Let’s look at the results year over year, comparing the same holiday shopping period.

As a reminder, Sportsman’s Warehouse originally had one lightbox entry popup that appeared on the second page of a shopper’s visit. With the new strategy, they had an entry popup on page one, a persistent button, and an exit-intent popup.

At launch, we also ran an A/B test comparing the new teaser-style entry popup against the original lightbox experience, with both appearing on page one. This allowed us to isolate the impact of the new design and see whether the micro-commitment approach improved subscriber acquisition. The results showed a 35% lift in acquisition rates with the new teaser experience.

Looking at the full strategy rollout, email signups increased 52% year over year, SMS signups increased 120%, and welcome series revenue grew 66%. We also saw revenue increases across key automated campaigns, including cart abandonment, product browse abandonment, and alerts. By identifying more shoppers, Sportsman’s Warehouse was able to reach those customers with relevant communications and bring more of them into its automated marketing programs.

And here’s what makes these results especially meaningful: website sessions were actually down 1% during the measurement period. Sportsman’s Warehouse generated more subscribers and more revenue without increasing website traffic. The growth came from making better use of the shoppers who were already visiting the site.

That’s the opportunity we’ve been discussing throughout this session. By testing, optimizing, and expanding your acquisition strategy, you can identify more shoppers and create more opportunities to engage them throughout their customer journey. And we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

Megan: Thanks, Dakota. I love a good before-and-after example, and what stands out to me is that these results started with a willingness to try something new. Sometimes we launch a popup and leave it in place for a long time without revisiting it. But even relatively small changes can lead to impressive improvements.

Sportsman’s Warehouse also let its audience show them what worked. When you’re unsure which approach will resonate, test it and let the data guide your decisions. That’s how you continue improving the experience and finding new opportunities for growth.

14:06 Experience Builder and What’s Next

Megan: If you’ve been thinking about trying something new with your popups or testing different elements of your acquisition strategy, we have some exciting news. We’ve launched a new tool in the Listrak platform called Experience Builder, which supports opt-in experiences as well as other onsite conversion strategies.

Whether your goal is to increase subscribers, improve identity resolution, or encourage repeat purchases, Experience Builder gives you more ways to create relevant onsite experiences that support those goals. And it’s important to think about these capabilities as part of a thoughtful, coordinated strategy rather than a collection of individual tools. Bringing these experiences together within one platform means fewer vendors to manage and a more connected experience for your shoppers.

Hopefully, you’re feeling inspired to take another look at your acquisition strategy. But before we wrap up, let’s check back in with Sarah, the shopper we introduced earlier.

Remember, Sarah didn’t necessarily need another ad. She needed answers to her questions, reassurance about the products she was considering, and a reason to take the next step. With a more robust, optimized acquisition strategy, the retailer has a better opportunity to turn Sarah into a known subscriber and provide the relevant information she needs to feel confident about making a purchase.

I recently came across an article that described browsing as the beginning of a relationship, and I think that’s a great way to look at it. This is about much more than adding email addresses and phone numbers to your lists. It’s about creating opportunities to connect with shoppers, earn that first purchase, encourage a second purchase, and ultimately build trust and loyalty.

Dakota: Thanks, Megan. Well said. The brands finding success today aren’t just investing in more website traffic. They’re capturing more value from the traffic they already have. Thank you for joining us for this Spark session on turning more browsers into engaged customers.