The Three Ways You Actually Build an Email List
The core element of any serious ecommerce email marketing strategy is having an engaged audience to speak to in the first place. You cannot generate revenue from empty lists. The larger and cleaner your subscriber base, the more predictable your sales become.
In standard ecommerce setups, you grow an email list through three main touchpoints:
Placed order syncs: Customers who opt in during the checkout flow when making a purchase.
Footer forms: Passive sign-up boxes sitting at the bottom of your website pages.
Sign-up forms and pop-ups: Active, timed on-site prompts offering an incentive for an email address.
To make the first two work in Omnisend, head into your store settings, go to the bottom, and confirm your store is connected. That ensures placed order events and footer submissions sync straight to your main list. For active growth, though, relying on footer forms alone is useless. You need a dedicated, behavioural sign-up form architecture.
The Core Pop-Up: Two-Step Capture and the Discount Rule
I build sign-up forms natively within the platform rather than paying for bloated third-party tools. Many tools push list growth for the sake of list growth without focusing on customer intent. Keep it clean and build inside your ESP (email service provider).
Your primary form should follow a strict three-screen flow:
Step 1: Offer a compelling incentive (such as 10% off) and collect the email address.
Step 2: Ask a single zero-party data question about their product interests or preferences.
Step 3: Present the discount code directly on the success screen with a click-to-apply button.
Here is what you must never do: do not ask for an SMS number on step two of an email pop-up. Adding an SMS field to your primary email form causes roughly a 25% to 45% drop-off rate. If a visitor drops off before reaching the success screen, they never see their coupon code.
Forcing a potential buyer to abandon your site and open their cluttered inbox just to copy a discount code is terrible user experience. Keep them on the page, show the code immediately on the final screen, and let them complete their purchase.
Primary Pop-Up Targeting Settings
You do not want your pop-up slapping visitors in the face the second your homepage loads. Give them time to browse your catalogue first.
In Omnisend, configure your primary pop-up with the following behaviour rules:
Timing: Display after an 8-second delay.
URL exclusions: Set the form to not appear on URLs containing cart, checkout, product, order, or thank you.
Excluding high-intent pages prevents annoying shoppers who are already deep in the buying process or customers who just finished an order. Those pages are reserved for secondary capture methods.
The Secondary 45-Second Flyout for High-Intent Pages
When a visitor closes your initial 8-second pop-up, they have not necessarily rejected your brand. They might simply want to view your products first before handing over personal data.
To capture these shoppers, duplicate your main form and convert it into a subtle flyout with these rules:
Timing: Display after a 45-second delay.
URL targeting: Only show on URLs containing product, cart, or checkout.
This gives visitors a second opportunity to claim their discount at the exact moment they are demonstrating high purchase intent. It recovers lost subscribers without interrupting their initial browsing session.
The Non-Buyer Discount Reminder Flyout
A sign-up form does not always need to collect new emails. You can also use targeted flyouts to lift on-site conversion rates for people who are already on your list.
Subscribers often opt in, receive a discount code, and then forget to use it. To fix this, create a slide-in banner that displays the discount code to existing subscribers who have never placed an order.
Set the display timing to 20 seconds, then create a dynamic segment in Omnisend with the following criteria:
Subscription status is subscribed to email.
Placed order equals zero times overall time.
Date of list addition is not in the last 3 days.
The 3-day buffer is critical. You do not want new subscribers seeing a discount reminder within minutes of closing the initial pop-up. This flyout serves as an automated on-site nudge for warm leads who need an extra push to make their first purchase.
How to Capture SMS Numbers Separately
If you want to build an SMS marketing list alongside your email list, separate the acquisition channels. Asking for both up front damages your email conversion rates.
Instead, create a dedicated SMS sign-up form that targets only existing email subscribers. Build a segment of contacts who are subscribed to email, cannot receive SMS marketing, and joined your list more than 3 days ago.
Target this specific segment with an SMS opt-in prompt offering an exclusive perk, such as early VIP access to product drops or flash sales. You protect your email sign-up conversion rate while systematically upgrading your warmest subscribers into two-way marketing channels.
Final Thoughts
List growth is not about throwing a generic pop-up onto every page of your store. By combining an 8-second email form, a 45-second high-intent flyout, and an automated discount reminder, you build a list acquisition engine that captures leads and protects your conversion rate at the same time.
If you want our team to audit your current capture strategy and build high-converting forms for your store, check out our Sign-up Forms service.
