Jack Saville, Author at Yieldify

How to Collect Email Addresses in 21 Simple Ways

14th October 2022 (updated 17th November 2022) | By Jack Saville | 0 Comments

If you’re under pressure to increase your lead generation rate, you’re certainly not alone. Most email inboxes are flooded from years of signups, so it’s harder for ecommerce brands to drive new subscribers into their databases.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you get more leads. If you’re looking for a list building tool, then check out our post on 12 B2C Lead Generation Tools. But if you need strategic advice on how to optimize your current strategy, you’re in the right place.

I’m here to help you collect more emails with 21 tried-and-tested strategies – all of which fit into three key categories:

Use a full-funnel strategy
Incentivize your customers
Customize opt-in forms

Why you need to build your email list

Email marketing is an exceptionally effective way for ecommerce marketers to reduce abandonment, increase repeat orders and ultimately generate more revenue.

For example, the average open rate for a cart abandonment email sits at an impressive 45% and increases to 69% with a follow-up email. This is a huge but often missed opportunity for brands to convince customers to complete their orders. In a market where 69% of shopping carts go abandoned, building an email database to remarket your traffic helps you re-engage lost website visitors and convert interest into increased sales.

Email remarketing is also a significant driver for recurring business. If you collect email addresses and send post-purchase email remarketing flows, you’ll bring customers back to your site, foster brand loyalty and increase repeat orders.

The takeaway: email pays substantial dividends. 1 in 4 people check their emails more than 5 times a day and 59% of consumers state their purchase decisions are influenced by marketing emails. In fact, the data shows you can expect a return of up to $36 for every $1 you spend on email marketing campaigns – that’s an ROI of 3600%.

21 ways to collect email addresses from website visitors

Use a full-funnel strategy (1-9): To maximize your chances of getting a new subscriber, you need to target customers at every stage in their journey. Show opt-in forms from website entry through to exit with these 8 strategies.
Incentivize your customers (10-17): Customers rarely provide their email address without receiving something in return. Give customers a reason to sign up with these incentives.
Customize opt-in forms (18-21): Generic opt-in forms will limit the number of email addresses you can collect. Make your brand stand out with these 4 customization options.

Use a full-funnel strategy

1. Layered lead capture

Why give yourself just one chance to collect your visitors’ email addresses? With layered lead capture, your opt-in forms carefully accompany customers on their entire journey, giving them the option to sign up at different stages in the purchase funnel.

A typical layered lead capture strategy looks like this:

Entrance overlay
Floating button or toaster
Embedded messaging on product page
Opt-in CTA at checkout

Yieldify pioneered the layered lead capture strategy and has helped thousands of brands collect more email addresses with it, including:

New Balance: 3x higher lead capture vs industry average
Spongelle: 131% increase in lead generation
BYLT Basics: 30% increase in lead-to-customer conversions

2. Overlays on entry

On-entry overlays have long been the bedrock of email collection strategies. Ask customers for their email when they land on your website with a large, eye-catching opt-in overlay. To drive the maximum number of signups, you’ll also want to A/B test the copy, design and placement of your forms.

3. Display a floating action button

If a customer closes your on-entry overlay, it doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t subscribe. If they’re a first-time visitor, they’ll likely want to learn more about your brand before signing up. Show a subtle floating action button in the corner of the page to quietly remind visitors that joining your mailing list is still an option.

Not only can this strategy earn you more subscribers, it can also generate more sales too. For example, leading D2C houseplant retailer The Sill worked with Yieldify to improve their lead-to-customer conversion rate by 126% by using floating buttons in their email collection strategy.

4. Display a sticky bar

A sticky bar is a page element fixed to the top, bottom or side of your page. They help you to keep your signup form visible without compromising the user experience. You can use a variety of triggering rules – from website entry to page depth – to display a sticky bar.

Check out the sticky bar California-based fashion brand BYLT Basics used to collect email addresses with Yieldify.

5. Display a slide-out (aka toaster)

A slide-out form – or toaster – sits on one of the edges of your site and expands when you tap on it. They’re similar to floating buttons but even more discreet, helping you keep your signup form tucked away but still in your visitors’ field of view. For example, home furniture store Heal’s used a toaster to drive more signups with Yieldify.

6. Embed on product pages

When visitors click through to one of your product pages, it’s a good sign of interest – and a great opportunity to collect their email address.

Use a discount code or another incentive to draw attention to your email opt-in form. The allure of a discount at this stage in the purchase funnel will typically increase your chances of gaining a new lead – as well as your chances of driving a conversion.

7. Embed at checkout

Your checkout flow is the most delicate stage in the purchase funnel, so don’t distract your customers with anything that could get in the way of them placing their order.

With that in mind, embed a subtle opt-in CTA to get customers into your database. For example, offering a discount code in exchange for an email address could be the extra incentive they need to finalize their purchase.

8. Display an overlay on inactivity

Your customers get distracted by the smallest thing when shopping online – but don’t let that damage your email collection strategy. Recapture their attention with an eye-catching email overlay that triggers after a set period of inactivity e.g. after 10 seconds.

Make sure you choose a time period that matches the page and device your customers are on. For example, customers reading blog posts will likely be inactive for longer periods of time – particularly on desktop – compared to a customer browsing a product page.

9. Display an overlay on exit

No matter how engaging you make your website, visitors will inevitably exit – whether from your homepage, your product pages or your checkout. There’s a high chance they won’t return once they leave – so this is often your last chance to collect an email address.

Whether your customer has just entered your site, spent time getting to know your brand or reached the checkout, you need to show them an opt-in form before they exit. For desktop users, the overlay should trigger when your customer moves their mouse over the toolbar. For mobile and tablet users, you can trigger an on-exit overlay when they change tabs – they’ll see it when they return to your site.

Incentivize your customers

10. Get a discount

Ecommerce websites have given away discounts in exchange for email addresses since online shopping began – and they’re still the go-to incentive if you want to build your database.

Because so many brands offer discounts in exchange for signups, you need to match the competition to stay competitive. You’ll have to sacrifice margin on your customer’s first order, but that’s a small price to pay to add them to your email remarketing flows.

11. Get back-in-stock reminders

Your most popular products are bound to sell out from time to time – but you can still turn a lack of stock to your advantage.

Give customers the opportunity to join your email database and find out when a product they’re interested in is back in stock. That way you can add a new subscriber to your list and increase your chances of converting.

12. Save your cart

When your visitors find the products they’re looking for and add them to cart, it’s likely they won’t check out straight away, but that doesn’t mean they won’t convert later on. If they show exit intent at this point, show an email opt-in form offering to save their cart contents, then send them a basket reminder email. For example, Ariat ran this save your cart experience using Yieldify’s technology as part of a lead generation strategy that drove 10X more email signups.

13. Win a reward

Gamification is a hot marketing tactic right now. Many brands run lead capture campaigns asking customers to submit their email for the chance to win a reward – such as a gift card, discount code or free gift. Some popular gamification incentives you can try include:

Spin to win
Click to win
Lotteries

14. Get a free download

Offering your customers downloadable content is a great alternative to discount codes. Not only do downloads help you get more subscribers, they also help you grow brand awareness.

If you’re going to offer downloadable content, remember it’s important to provide something genuinely useful. For example, CJ Wildlife offered their audience a wildlife guide in exchange for an email signup as part of a strategy that drove 58% more leads with Yieldify.

Meanwhile, Philips ran a similar campaign with Yieldify to offer their customers a beard guide.

15. Get a free sample/gift on next order

Gaining trials is a big problem for many brands – particularly those in the beauty industry. Unlike browsing a brick-and-mortar store, customers often struggle to gauge quality and suitability when shopping for new products online. You can remove some of their doubts by offering to add free samples to their next order in exchange for their email address.

You may lose out on a small amount of margin but the increased product exposure could win you a long-term customer. Check out how Kiehl’s, the global health and beauty brand, incentivized signups with Yieldify.

16. Be the first to hear about promotions

Shoppers are always hunting for discounts but they don’t necessarily know when your next sale season starts. Email remarketing is the most effective way to tell customers about your sale periods, so drive new subscribers by telling them they’ll be the first to know when you drop prices.

17. Find your perfect product

Incentivize customers to complete a product quiz and submit their email in exchange for personalized product recommendations. Many ecommerce brands that Yieldify partners with – particularly in health, wellness and beauty – use quizzes or questionnaires to guide customers to the products that most suit their needs.

Customize opt-in forms

18. Personalize forms to your visitors’ browsing behavior

You’re even more likely to collect email addresses if you personalize your opt-in forms to your customers’ browsing behavior. Segment your audience and serve up campaigns that make your customers feel like they were made just for them.

Test the following personalization strategies – and watch your email list grow:

Segment new vs returning users: change your opt-in form copy to reflect your customers’ position in the funnel

Pull images from product pages: embed images of customers’ recently browsed products into your opt-in forms

Category interest: use messaging related to the category page your customer is viewing – e.g. a beauty brand could ask a customer to “subscribe to see more skincare products”

Acknowledge your customers’ referral source: personalize your opt-in form copy for customers arriving from paid social ads

You can use these strategies to give your brand the edge over generic opt-in forms. Using Yieldify’s technology, Petal & Pup personalized their opt-in forms for customers landing from Facebook ads as part of a strategy that increased email leads by 116%.

Petal & Pup's form for Facebook customers

If you’re interested in personalizing customer journeys beyond lead capture, check out our post on the 10 best personalization tools for ecommerce brands.

19. Display device-responsive forms

Whether it’s a laptop, mobile or tablet, your customers use a variety of devices when shopping online – so your opt-in forms need to adapt. Create device-specific forms to drive the maximum number of signups.

20. Run forms with on-brand design and copy

Your email opt-in forms should match your brand identity. That means your copy should reflect your tone of voice and your designs should follow your visual guidelines.

Lacoste ran this on-brand email sign-up with Yieldify, including their products in the design and a brand reference in the copy.

21. Run page-specific forms

Go one step further with customization by creating page-specific forms. With Yieldify, tailor your opt-in form to the category page your customer is viewing. For example, Philips worked with Yieldify to display lead generation forms including beard trimming imagery on pages featuring shaving products.

How to time your lead capture forms?

Timing is key to your lead generation strategy – the goal is to present the right message, to the right customer, at the right time. But when is the optimal time? The best way to find out is to A/B test different triggering rules on your website.

Check out these 6 triggering rules you can test to grow your email database. You can use all these triggers (and more) with Yieldify lead capture:

1. On inactivity

Set your lead capture campaign to trigger after a period of user inactivity, e.g. after 15 seconds. That way you can re-engage visitors who might have switched to another tab or put their device down.

When they return to your site, you can collect their email address with an attention-grabbing form.

2. On timer

If you show an opt-in form the moment someone lands on your website, especially their first interaction with your brand, you interrupt their natural browsing flow.

Trigger your campaign when your visitors have been on the page for a set amount of time, e.g. after 30 seconds, so they have time to get to know your brand – they’ll be a warmer lead and more likely to share their details.

3. On exit

Set your campaign to trigger when your visitors move their mouse off the page i.e. when they show exit intent. They might be about to type a new URL, close your tab or click ‘Back’ to a different site.

On-exit strategies catch customers just before they end their session so they’re usually your final chance to collect an email address – encouraging them to ‘Save Your Cart’ or offering a discount can be particularly effective.

4. On scroll

Similar to time spent on page, an on-page click (or a tap on mobile) is a positive customer engagement with your site, whether it’s to play a video, view a product or open a menu.

Set your campaign to trigger after your customers interact with your page – then you’ll increase your chances of collecting their email address.

5. On click

Similar to time spent on page, an on-page click (or a tap on mobile) is a positive customer engagement with your site, whether it’s to play a video, view a product or open a menu.

Set your campaign to trigger after your customers interact with your page – then you’ll increase your chances of collecting their email address.

6. On hover

When your visitors hover over elements on the page, they may be considering their options or they may be unsure of something – it will often depend what kind of page they’re on.

For example, hovering on a category page might point to customers being indecisive about which product to choose. At that point you could display an email capture form to get their email address in exchange for a product questionnaire or a free product guide.

Capture email addresses with Yieldify

I hope this blog post has provided you with some actionable tips to help you collect more email addresses. You can use all 21 strategies with Yieldify’s personalization technology, which hundreds of brands rely on to increase their lead generation rates and optimize their CRO strategy.

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your email capture strategy with Yieldify’s fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

FAQs

What is the best way to collect email addresses?

The best way to collect email addresses is by asking customers to subscribe using opt-in forms. To collect the maximum number of emails, use a layered, full funnel strategy to target customers throughout their journey. If you need a tool to help you drive more email subscribers into your database, check out our post on the 12 best B2C Lead Generation Tools.

How do I collect email addresses from customers?

Collect email addresses from customers using strategic signup forms throughout the customer journey. There are many ways to increase your email database, but a core strategy will typically include:

– Entrance overlay
– Floating button or toaster
– Embedded messaging on product page
– Lead capture at checkout

A/B test your designs, copy, placement, triggering rules and targeting rules to ensure you’re driving the maximum number of signups.

17 Top Ecommerce Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Tips

1st October 2022 (updated 30th June 2023) | By Jack Saville | 0 Comments

All good ecommerce marketers know even the smallest conversion rate uplift can be worth its weight in gold. It’s a game of marginal gains, and I’m here to help you increase your CVR, hit your targets and get ahead of your competitors with 17 CRO tips.

These 17 tips fit into four key categories:

Gold standard CRO
Brand-building CRO
Customer re-engagement CRO
Discount-centric CRO

All of the tips below will help you turn more website visits into sales. But if you’re looking to convert more visitors into email and SMS subscribers, then check out our post on the 12 B2C Lead Generation Tools. Otherwise, let’s get started with CRO.

How is ecommerce conversion rate calculated?

Calculating your website conversion rate is fairly straightforward. Go to your website analytics platform, take the total number of conversions, divide it by the total number of visitors and multiply it by 100.

Conversion rate = conversions/number of visitors × 100

For example, if you have 10 conversions from 100 visitors, your conversion rate is 10%.

17 CRO tips

Gold standard CRO (1 & 2): Two absolute must-action tips. By helping you gather audience insights and streamline customer journeys, these strategies drive conversions as well as build stronger relationships with your customers.
Brand-building CRO (3-8): These five tips will bring customers closer to your brand. With ecommerce businesses struggling to generate a healthy ROI from paid advertising, brand building for long-term growth has never been so important.
Customer re-engagement CRO (9-15): Short attention spans are a major problem for ecommerce brands. Use these seven tips to keep customers engaged at every stage in the purchase funnel. Regardless of how established your brand is, your customers get distracted browsing online.
Discount-focused CRO (16 & 17): I’d always recommend you start with strategies that don’t eat into your margins. But there’s a time and a place for a discount. My final two tips will help you drive more sales during promotional periods.

Personalize customer journeys
Start A/B testing
Highlight your brand’s USPs
Embed social proof
Use trust badges
Leverage customer reviews and testimonials
Improve your website navigation
Highlight your payment options, shipping prices and returns policy
Tackle browse abandonment
Stop cart abandonment
Re-engage inactive users
Incorporate welcome back campaigns
Show recently viewed products
Use anti-price comparison technology
Use tab copy change messaging
Countdown timers
Progress bars

Gold standard CRO

1. Personalize customer journeys

It takes more than a good product to convince customers to buy from you. You also need to build relationships with visitors to drive conversions – and you can’t do that without personalizing customer journeys. Indeed, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember and provide relevant offers and recommendations.

To give your website visitors personalized customer journeys, turn to a personalization platform. The best personalization tools reveal insights on your audience behavior – so you can understand how your visitors navigate your site and what they’re looking for – and help you adapt your website so you can respond with relevant content.

Think of personalization as a way of replicating in-store experiences online. For example, Pureology, the world’s leading professional color care brand, worked with Yieldify to guide visitors to a haircare quiz on their site, asking them to share their hair type, color and texture. They then recommended products and sent remarketing content that was personalized to match their responses – and increased their conversion rate by 27%.

2. Start A/B testing

If you’re not using A/B testing and A/B/n testing to optimize your website content, then you’re likely missing out on conversions, losing revenue and falling behind your competitors. For example, something as subtle as the placement, design or triggering of a call-to-action (CTA) could be costing you hundreds, if not thousands, of sales every month.

By testing different website changes against each other, you can sense-check assumptions and guarantee you’re converting the maximum number of browsers into customers.

Take it from someone who knows a thing or two about growing a business, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

“If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”

With Yieldify, you can run A/B tests at every stage in the customer journey to optimize your conversion rates. If you’re driving significant levels of traffic to your site, then Yieldify also offers A/B/n testing – which allows you to test five variants at the same time and gather more customer insights more quickly.

Brand-Building CRO

3. Highlight your brand’s unique selling points

As the cost of digital advertising rises and the competition for paid ad space intensifies, it’s harder for ecommerce brands to generate the same ad spend ROI they could a few years ago. At the same time, consumers increasingly prefer to buy from brands that share their values.

Together, these shifts mean ecommerce brands have to invest more in brand building. Those who don’t adapt accordingly will eventually need to slash prices and sacrifice margins to keep up with the competition.

To build brand affinity and customer loyalty, make sure your website visitors are aware of your value proposition. Deploy USP banners to build brand prestige, show your key values and provide information about your products and services.

For example, Brunehilde Mancino, E-Merchandising Manager at Made in Design, worked with Yieldify to show USP messaging on their ecommerce site, increasing Pay-Per-Click conversion rates by 7%.

Social proof is one of the most powerful tools in an ecommerce marketer’s armory. When we see our friends, peers and idols do something, it gives us confidence to follow suit.

Just look at the rise of New Balance. Suddenly, the formerly dorky dad brand is all around us – and it’s not only because they have a leading product and inventive marketing campaigns. A-list celebrities like Timothy Chalamet, Rhianna and, Leonardo DiCaprio have been pictured in their sneakers, inspiring fans to get their own – a prime example of social proof in action.

For ecommerce brands, you can leverage social proof in different ways. For example, you can drive urgency, validate your customers’ choices and ease their concerns.

Try these social proof strategies to boost your website conversion rates:

Highlight product popularity
Spotlight stock scarcity
Display review platform ratings

Many Yieldify clients have achieved major conversion rate uplifts by adding social proof to their websites, including:

5. Use trust badges

Like social proof, trust badges also remove customers’ doubts about your brand or product. The key difference is you typically use trust badges to give customers confidence in your payment systems, data security and shipping & returns policies.

Use these trust badges to give customers key information about your brand:

Free shipping and returns trust badge
Guaranteed Safe & Secure checkout badge
Third-party endorsements
Accepted payment methods
Money-back guarantee

6. Leverage customer reviews and testimonials

Customer testimonials fall under the social proof umbrella too – and they’re a highly effective conversion-driving tool. They build confidence in your brand and provide a credible insight into your product – website visitors are more likely to trust customer reviews than your own marketing material.

Show customer reviews and testimonials on your site to win new customers, strengthen loyalty with existing customers and increase conversion rates.

Take this example from Spongelle, an up-and-coming international personal care brand. By embedding a rotating GIF with rave customer reviews into their site, they increased conversion rates by 14%.

7. Improve your website navigation

We’ve touched on this already: your visitors’ attention spans are short. So, if they can’t easily navigate to the product they’re searching for, it won’t be long before they move on.

To combat this problem, you need to guide visitors seamlessly through the purchase funnel.

For example, Clarins worked with Yieldify to guide visitors on their category and product pages to a virtual skin consultation, before recommending them products that met their skincare needs. This strategy increased conversion rates by 11%.

Instead of leaving customers to sift through hundreds of options looking for a suitable product, Clarins replicated the in-store experience by listening to the customer’s needs and bringing the right products to them.

8. Highlight your payment options, shipping prices and returns policy

When potential customers (particularly first-time visitors) land on your site, they’ll likely have a number of questions:

How much does delivery cost?
Can I use a buy now, pay later option?
What is your returns policy?

These questions are a barrier to conversions – so provide the answers early in the customer’s journey.
For example, HSTV, a serial award-winning multichannel retailer, lifted conversion rates by 15% by surfacing an overlay on product pages to tell customers they can check out using Klarna.

Customer re-engagement CRO

9. Tackle browse abandonment

According to Zenreach, 70% of first-time visitors never return once they leave your website. Browse abandonment is a nuanced problem for ecommerce marketers, but most customers don’t return for one of these reasons:

Your product didn’t meet their needs
Your brand was unconvincing
Your website was difficult to navigate
They were comparing prices
Your products were out of their price range

People make snap decisions while browsing online – and closing a browser tab is easier than walking out of a brick-and-mortar store – so you need to respond faster to stop potential customers leaving your site.

For example, use eye-catching overlays that trigger when a customer shows exit intent. Leveraging Yieldify’s technology, Skinny Tan does this well with an overlay that guides customers to category pages before they exit, increasing conversion rates by 4%.

10. Stop cart abandonment

Getting customers to stay on your site, browse through your products and add something to basket is a battle in itself. Once you’ve won that, you face a new challenge: cart abandonment. Across all industries, the average cart abandonment rate is as high as 70%. That means just 3 in 10 customers will complete their order after adding an item to the basket.

The good news is that these customers are already engaged and very likely to buy. In most cases, it’s simply a matter of when, not if, they’re going to convert. But how do you reduce your cart abandonment rate?

Drive your customers to check out using these strategies:

Send basket reminders
Spotlight buy now, pay later options
Send discount reminders
Use delivery incentives
Dynamically scrape images from cart

11. Re-engage inactive users

Tackling website inactivity requires a more strategic approach than browse and cart abandonment. Inactivity often tells you customers are browsing multiple tabs at the same time. The chances are they’re considering your brand alongside your competitors, so you need to recapture their attention as soon as they return.

Convert inactive browsers with:

eye-catching overlays,
basket reminders and
discount incentives

Sometimes all you need is to give the customer a subtle nudge in the right direction, as Philips did with this basket reminder.

12. Incorporate welcome back campaigns

If a visitor comes back to your site, you can safely assume they’re interested in your products. Build brand affinity and lift conversion rates among your returning visitors by acknowledging them with ‘welcome back’ strategies.

You can adapt these strategies depending on where your visitors are in the purchase funnel. For example:

Offer discounts after a set number of website visits
Surface email & SMS optin forms
Show basket reminder messaging
Drive urgency through stock scarcity messaging

13. Show recently viewed products

Finding a product you want to buy can be time consuming when shopping online. Once a customer finds what they’re looking for, it’s unlikely they’ll check out straight away – but that doesn’t mean they won’t convert later on.

By spotlighting your customer’s recently viewed items, you can streamline the path to checkout and drive significant uplifts in conversion rates.

For example, embed a “Recently Viewed” carousel into your site to keep your customer’s favored items top of mind.

14. Use anti-price comparison technology

We’ve all been there. You’ve found a great product on one website but you’re sure other retailers probably stock the same one cheaper. So you copy the product name, switch tabs and paste it into Google search. Bingo: it’s on sale at a better price elsewhere.

Almost every ecommerce brand faces this problem and, aside from eating into your margins by price-matching competitors, you might not think there’s an obvious fix. But with Yieldify, you can combat this problem by identifying when a visitor is comparing your prices and triggering your USPs.

15. Use tab copy change messaging

Most customers compare products and prices before making a purchase, typically jumping between websites on their hunt for the best product.

Your brand will often get buried in a sea of tabs during this consideration phase, but it’s possible to bring visitors back to your site with Yieldify’s tab copy change technology.

When a customer browses another site, you can set the tab copy for your website brand to alternate between the original tab title and dynamic copy. The alternating messages will draw attention back to your tab and keep your brand front-of-mind.

For example, if a customer browsed away from your website with two items in their cart, the tab title would read “You have (2) items in cart!”.

Discount-centric CRO

16. Countdown timers

Everyone loves a discount, but slashing your prices during promotional and holiday periods isn’t always enough to guarantee conversions. You’ll naturally see an increase in sales, but you’ll still have hesitant customers who need a nudge in the right direction.

To maximize sales, use countdown timers that display how long a customer has before the promotional period ends. The premise is simple: the closer it gets towards the deadline, the more likely the customer is to purchase.

Away from promotional periods, countdown timers can also be used to incentivize sales by counting down towards other deadlines. For example, Laithwaites use a countdown timer to show customers the time remaining to secure next-day delivery.

17. Progress bars

During promotional periods, it’s typical to offer free gifts, delivery incentives or discounts once a customer’s basket value passes a certain threshold. To get the most out of these offers, you need to show customers how close they are to the minimum spend – and that’s where progress bars come into play.

Not only will progress bars lift your conversion rate, they’ll boost average order values by encouraging customers to add more to cart.

Like countdown timers, progress bars aren’t limited to promotional periods. For example, Carte ZERO, a no-fee credit card owned by Advanzia Bank, used progress bars to incentivize customers to complete their on-site credit application form, resulting in a 10% uplift in new customer acquisition.

Increase Ecommerce Conversion Rate with Yieldify

I hope this blog has given you actionable tips on how to increase conversion rate on your ecommerce website. If you’re lacking the time or resources to optimize your ecommerce site, Yieldify is an excellent fully managed platform – with all the capabilities detailed above – that can help you drive major uplifts in conversion rates.

If you’d like a preview of how you can optimize your CRO strategy with Yieldify fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

1. What is ecommerce CRO?

Ecommerce conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of generating more sales through website optimizations. Most ecommerce marketers use CRO tools to convert more website visitors into sales and revenue. Though every tool has its own distinct set of USPs, a good tool will provide these core features:

– Fully managed service
– A/B testing
– Personalization features
– Data analytics
– Lead generation

2. What is a good ecommerce conversion rate?

According to data from BigCommerce, average ecommerce conversion rates hover around 2.5-3%. Any website above the 3% threshold is performing very well. If you want to improve your conversion rate, consider one of the 12 best CRO tools on the market right now.

3. What is an ecommerce CRO strategy?

An ecommerce CRO strategy is a set of optimizations that marketers use to convert more visitors into sales. A/B testing and data analytics form the foundation of successful CRO strategies. By gleaning insights into how website visitors respond to different experiences, marketers can confidently make changes that streamline journeys and increase conversion rates. Most ecommerce brands will use a CRO tool to refine their strategy.

12 Best B2C Lead Generation Tools You Need to Use in 2023

1st August 2022 (updated 27th June 2023) | By Jack Saville | 0 Comments

If you’re reading this blog, I’ll venture to say you’d like to upgrade your current approach to lead gen.

Perhaps you don’t have the time or expertise to manage a lead generation tool yourself. Maybe you’re tired of running generic, intrusive pop-up forms – and your visitors are tired of seeing them too.

Perhaps you’re in a different boat altogether: you’re with a basic email service provider (ESP), and you want to make your first move to a specialist lead generation tool. Or maybe your next promotion depends on you getting more subscribers into your database.

Whatever your reason for seeking out a B2C lead generation tool, I’m here to help you choose the right one.

Which B2C lead gen tool should you choose?

Broadly speaking, all B2C lead generation tools aim to help you increase the size of your customer database – though each one has its own set of features. For example, Trustmary increases customer sign-ups by embedding testimonials and customer reviews into opt-in forms.

The best tool for your business will depend on your goals, ideal customer profile and budget.

To help whittle down your options, we’ve chosen 14 of the best lead gen tools on the market and placed them into three categories:

Email and SMS marketing lead generation tools
Email marketing lead generation tools
SMS marketing lead generation tools

If you’re looking for a tool with the power to capture leads and optimize the entire customer journey, then check out our post on personalization tools. Otherwise, let’s get stuck in.

What To Look For In A B2C Lead Gen Tool

A good lead generation tool will typically provide these features:

Dedicated account management
Audience segmentation
Triggering rules
Targeting rules
A/B testing
Layered lead forms
Personalized journeys
Integrates with your tech stack
GDPR & CCPA compliant
Enhances subscriber profiles

When a lead generation tool ticks these boxes, you’re almost guaranteed to capture more leads, improve user experiences, increase engagement, build a stronger remarketing database, make data-driven decisions and maximize your return on ad spend.

We know what makes a great tool on paper, but what should you be looking for in a lead gen tool? Well, it all depends on your budget, goals and in-house capacity.

If you don’t have the expertise or time and need a sophisticated solution with advanced audience segmentation and targeting capabilities, Yieldify’s fully managed service is a great option to consider.

“Yieldify helped us achieve our target subscriber numbers with strategic suggestions – an increase of more than 60,000 new subscribers in 6 months.”

Ayoung Shin

Senior Digital Marketing Specialist

But if you have the capacity to run a self-service tool and simply want to drive more SMS signups and engagement, EZ Texting may be the ideal solution for you.

We’ll take a closer look at Yieldify and EZ Texting in this blog, and run through 10 more of the best lead gen tools on the market today.

Disclaimer: Yieldify is our product. We’ve done our best to present the information fairly because we want to help you make an educated decision but we’re also especially proud of what we offer. We’ve seen it transform conversion rates, lead generation and revenue for so many brands – large and small – all over the world. You may have seen we use the Yieldify platform and services on our own website too. Learn more here and schedule a call with an advisor.

12 Best B2C Lead Gen Tools

Email and SMS lead generation tools: Specialize in capturing email addresses and phone numbers
Email lead generation tools: Specialize in capturing email addresses – getting phone numbers is a secondary feature in some cases
SMS lead generation tools: Specialize in capturing phone numbers – getting email opt-ins is a secondary feature in some cases

Yieldify
Klaviyo
Sleeknote
Sender
Trustmary
OptinMonster
Unbounce
Mailmunch
MaxTraffic
Thrive Leads
Attentive
SlickText

Email and SMS Lead Generation Tools

1. Yieldify

Yieldify is a fully managed personalization platform that helps ecommerce businesses generate more revenue by engaging their customers with personalized experiences. One highly rated feature in the Yieldify suite is its excellent lead generation tool.

When it comes to capturing new email and SMS leads, Yieldify offers a distinct advantage: layered lead capture. With Yieldify’s layered lead capture your lead forms adapt to the different stages in your customer journeys. That means they’re more engaging, less intrusive and can increase lead capture rates by as much as 116%.

Yieldify is also recognized as an industry-leading conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool. If you want to increase your website’s conversion rates, check out our post covering 12 of the best CRO Tools.

What is Yieldify layered lead capture?

Yieldify was the first provider to offer a multi-stage lead generation approach. Although Yieldify has inspired many other companies to offer their own version, it’s still the frontrunner among fully managed online lead generation tools.

Example of Yieldify's 4-step lead generation strategy

With layered lead capture, your opt-in forms appear at four key stages in the customer journey depending on how deep visitors are in the funnel.

Yieldify’s layered lead gen formats

Typically, opt-in forms are large on website entry and become more subtle as the customer moves through the site.

Here’s how the four stages look:

1. Lead form on website entry
(Lacoste)

2. Floating or slide-out style
(Umbra)

3. Embedded, native-looking messaging
on product page, exclusive to Yieldify
(Alabama Outdoors)

4. Embedded messaging at checkout,
exclusive to Yieldify
(The Sill)

Yieldify layered lead form examples

There’s no one-size-fits-all opt-in form. In the early days of lead generation, the allure of a “20% Off Your First Order” voucher was enough to entice new subscribers.

But consumers today see a lot of opt-in forms (74% of companies use lead gen forms) – and even though there’s still a place for a discount code in a lead capture form, the appeal is not what it used to be.

What’s an ecommerce marketer to do? You need to get a bit more creative to turn your users into email and SMS subscribers.

Here’s how Yieldify can help:

Opt-in form with a sign-up CTA
(BirdFood)

Opt-in form with a discount offer
(Rockport)

Opt-in form for “Back in Stock”
reminders
(Code8)

Opt-in form with “Save your Bag”
reminder
(Ariat)

Opt-in form with gamification
(Blue Illusion)

Opt-in form offering a free download
(Gillette)

Opt-in form with a surveys
or questionnaire
(Ariat)

Opt-in form offering a free sample
(Kiehl’s)

How Yieldify measures lead generation success

You’ve set up your layered opt-in forms. You’re capturing new leads. But how can you be sure your new lead gen strategy is working?

Screenshot of Yieledify's lead gen report — *Yieldify’s lead gen reporting metrics*

Most Yieldify clients focus on two core metrics: the total number of leads captured and lead conversion rate. But you can track up to six different metrics to analyze performance:

Total leads captured
Lead conversion rate: the percentage of customers who purchased/converted after signing up
Total lead revenue: the total revenue generated from all leads
Lead generation rate: the percentage of customers who signed up after seeing any experience
Incremental lead revenue: all revenue generated from customers who signed up from the second lead form onwards vs revenue generated from on-entry sign up forms
Lead value: the average of how much each lead is worth in revenue

Your account manager will send you detailed performance reports with the metrics you want to focus on at a cadence that suits you – whether daily, weekly or monthly.

Key features of Yieldify online lead generation

Fully managed service

If you don’t have the time or expertise to manage a self-service lead generation platform yourself, Yieldify’s fully managed service means you can set your lead generation goals and let the Yieldify team handle practically everything for you: that includes strategy, ideation, design, quality assurance, execution, testing, analysis and optimization.

With the Yieldify team, you get to work with:

Your account manager

Also called a Client Services Manager, they’re your lead gen strategist, personalization expert and main point of contact. They’ll help you ideate, execute, test and analyze your online lead generation campaigns.

Graphic designers

Yieldify’s designers are available around the clock to design custom opt-in forms. If you need lead gen designs to match your brand identity or if you need suggestions on what will work with your website, they’ve got you covered.

Technical Account Managers (TAM)

Our technical account managers (TAMs) will help you integrate the Yieldify platform with your website, your ESP and the rest of your tech stack, as well as helping you set up advanced lead gen campaigns.

Technical Solutions Engineers (TSE)

If you want to build a custom lead form that requires complex coding, one of Yieldify’s technical solutions engineers will complete the development work for you.

Quality Assurance specialists

Whether you use your own platform, Shopify Plus, Magento or BigCommerce, lead gen forms can sit differently. The Yieldify Quality Assurance team will test your opt-in forms for you across device types to make sure they don’t compromise your user experience.

The Yieldify team are passionate about quality of service and so are our customers: with a 9.7 G2 rating for quality of support, you won’t find our market-leading service anywhere else.

Custom forms

On-brand designs

Say goodbye to generic lead forms and increase customer engagement with Yieldify’s custom forms. With our graphic design team, you can customize your lead forms to include on-brand creative and copy.

Custom form fields, including questionnaires & surveys

To understand your audiences better, build more detailed subscriber profiles and make your remarketing campaigns more personalized, you can tailor Yieldify lead gen forms with custom fields to ask for any demographic data, such as:

name
email address
phone number
birthday
gender
preferred products
clothing sizes
hobbies
or anything else you’d like to store

For example, if you’re a beauty brand like Kiehl’s, you could ask new subscribers to share their

skin type,
skin sensitivity and
main skin concern

Dynamic & personalized forms

Personalize your lead gen forms by dynamically pulling images from your product pages and embedding them into your email signup forms.

Auto-apply coupon codes

When a visitor submits their email address for a discount code, they typically need to get the code from their inbox. With Yieldify, you can reduce checkout friction and increase conversions by auto-applying the code from the form to a customer’s basket as soon as they submit their email or SMS details.

Code8's personalized discount reminder — *Lead gen form auto-applying coupon code to cart*

Audience segmentation

If you’ve ever wanted to show your lead forms to specific types of visitor but not others, many tools lack the audience segmentation settings, targeting rules and triggering rules to let you.

With Yieldify, you can set a variety of pre-built and custom targeting rules to show different audience segments different lead forms.

And don’t worry about Safari’s 7-day limit on third-party cookie storage. With Yieldify’s GDPR compliant server-side cookies, you can track your website visitors for 365 days from their first session.

Segment new visitors vs returning visitors

With Yieldify you can segment your lead gen messaging for new visitors and returning visitors. You can even segment returning visitors by their session number too.

For example, Kerastase

asked new users to “Sign up to receive 10% off”
reminded returning users’ previous visits that “Your exclusive discount awaits – sign up to receive 10% off your first purchase”

Lead capture for new visitors

Lead capture for returning visitors

Segment visitors by referral source e.g. Google Shopping, Instagram or Facebook

With Yieldify you can run different sign-up forms by segmenting your visitors arriving on your site from specific websites e.g. from:

one of your Facebook ads
a Google shopping results page
one of your Instagram ads

For example, Petal & Pup personalized lead capture messaging to respond to visitors from Facebook.

You can read more about Petal & Pup’s lead gen and personalization strategy in their success story.

A/B testing and A/B/n testing

A/B testing is a must-have for any lead capture tool. If you don’t test which of your lead forms perform best, you won’t optimize your forms and you’ll miss out on opt-ins.

Many ecommerce marketers don’t have the time or expertise to run a testing strategy in-house. If you want to improve your B2C lead generation strategy without managing the tests yourself, Yieldify’s fully managed service means you can hand over the entire A/B testing process to your account manager to run for you.

With Yieldify A/B/n testing, you can test up to five different lead gen form variants against each other at the same time. That way you could A/B/n test any of the following:

Copy
Design
Placement
Audience segmentation
Incentive

Integrations

Al good online lead generation tools should make your other tools work harder too. You can integrate Yieldify with almost any provider in your tech stack. Let’s look at the most important for lead gen:

Email Service Providers (ESPs)

You can integrate Yieldify with all major email service providers (ESPs), including

Klaviyo (see more on this below)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Bluecore
Drip
Mailchimp
Ometria
and many more – see the full list of Yieldify’s ESP integrations here

Advanced Klaviyo integration

If you’re already a Klaviyo user, Yieldify offers an advanced integration with the Klaviyo platform. Using the advanced integration, you can track any subscriber behavior on your site and send it to your Klaviyo profiles. That includes a subscriber:

adding items to their cart
viewing their cart
starting checkout
abandoning checkout
exiting a page
or any custom behavior important to your remarketing segmentation

Yieldify's advanced Klaviyo integration dashboard — *Integrate Klaviyo with Yieldify’s advanced Klaviyo integration*

Yieldify’s advanced Klaviyo integration helped Busbud’s Chief Marketing Officer, Richard Cohene, increase revenues from email marketing by 46%.

And don’t worry about your level of technical expertise – Yieldify’s team of technical account managers will handle the integration for you.

What clients say about working with Yieldify

World-leading running brand increased leads by 3x the industry average

“Yieldify’s flexibility and breadth means we can rapidly turn ideas into action and deliver revenue growth across consumer journey touchpoints. Our account manager is a valued partner and extension of our team.”

Sheena McNamara

Head of Ecommerce

Internationally renowned equestrian brand generated 10x more email leads per month

“Yieldify allows us to launch data acquisition campaigns quickly and easily with great results. The strategies we’ve put in place for new visitors have enhanced their customer experience to drive confidence and conversions.”

Steph Ridley

Ecommerce Manager

Trailblazing footwear brand increased email leads by 11%

“Yieldify’s platform and analytics take our ecommerce sales to the next level by making it easy to optimize the customer journey – increasing lead generation, conversion rates, and overall new customer revenue.”

Casey Sneath

Director of Ecommerce

Aggregator for intercity bus tickets generated a 46% revenue increase from email marketing

“Yieldify’s native integration with Klaviyo enables us to unify our customer experience strategy. By combining Yieldify’s personalization capabilities and Klaviyo’s email marketing, we have not only grown our CRM but also improved lead quality.”

Richard Cohene

Chief Marketing Officer

D2C Food Subscription Service Boosted Email Leads by 700%

“We needed an easy-to-integrate personalization platform to help our site perform and grow. Yieldify enables us to better identify and address current customers and new segments that has unlocked unlimited revenue potential.”

Ben Mohl

Online Sales Marketing Manager

Leading CBD company increased email database by 39%

“Yieldify is extremely data-driven and their recommended approaches clearly perform – increasing opt-in rates, revenue per lead, conversion rates and AOV. If I had to do it again, I would have onboarded them years sooner.”

Grant Rogers

Marketing Manager

Want to find out more about Yieldify?

If you’d like a preview of how you can increase conversions on your website with Yieldify’s fully-managed, all-in-one personalization platform, feel free to schedule a discovery call here. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

2. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a self-service growth marketing platform that helps customers deliver more personalized experiences across owned marketing channels including email, SMS, web and in-app notifications. Brands typically use Klaviyo for their advanced email marketing capabilities rather than lead generation, but they do offer useful tools for email and SMS capture including targeting and triggering rules.

With Klaviyo, customers get access to a library of templated, easily customizable signup forms, A/B testing and a user-friendly analytics dashboard. While Klaviyo is a self-service tool, there is a help center and plenty of video tutorials and written guides to educate customers on the platform.

3. Sleeknote

Made by marketers, for marketers, Sleeknote positions itself as more than your average pop-up builder. Sleeknote is a self-service platform that drives more leads for businesses with highly targeted pop-ups designed with user experiences in mind.

Unlike outdated and intrusive lead generation forms that aim to acquire sign-ups on website entry, Sleeknote drives users to subscriber lists with subtle and engaging techniques – such as gamification, sidebars, exit intent overlays, product giveaways and gated content. With over 1200 integrations, A/B testing and lots of pre designed templates, Sleeknote is a useful lead generation tool for scaling businesses.

4. Sender

Sender is an affordable and user-friendly email and SMS marketing tool for ecommerce businesses and bloggers. As with most lead gen tools, Sender customers have access to an extensive library of pop-ups and forms to drive sign ups, and the option to create your own from scratch with no coding required.

Customers on the free, standard and professional packages are completely self-service. As well as their website help center, customers can get to grips with the platform by watching training videos on their YouTube channel. For larger businesses requiring full account management, Sender’s Enterprise package gives customers access to a dedicated customer success manager.

5. Trustmary

Trustmary leverages the power of social proof and customer testimonials to improve online lead generation. By consolidating all reviews and testimonials into a single platform, Trustmary customers can seamlessly embed both written and video reviews from customers into their email and SMS opt-in forms.

The Trustmary library of lead generation forms have already been tested and optimized on other websites. Customers can set triggering rules based on page URLs, acquisition source and UTM tags, and A/B test different reviews for maximum impact.

6. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a leading self-service lead generation and CRO tool which helps companies grow their email and SMS lists and increase conversions. There are more than 400 opt-in form templates available in the OptinMonster platform, and a drag-and-drop builder for customers to create sign up forms from scratch – no code required.

Every OptinMonster customer gets enrolled into OptinMonster University, which provides access to online courses, webinars, downloadable cheat sheets and more to help businesses owners, marketers and entrepreneurs grow email databases and increase conversions.

Email Lead Generation Tools

7. Unbounce

Unbounce uses AI to create engaging landing pages that help businesses turn visitors into new email leads and long-lasting customers. With landing page solutions for PPC campaigns, social media, email marketing and more, Unbounce is a versatile tool.

The Unbounce library is full of fully customizable and testable landing pages templates so customers don’t have to build from scratch. Unbounce is a self-service solution but existing customers can receive customer support through live chat by logging in to the platform.

8. Mailmunch

Mailmunch is a lead growth and email marketing service for bloggers, solopreneurs, startups, and enterprises. With hundreds of free opt-in and landing page templates to choose from, an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, and quick-to-launch campaigns, Mailmunch positions itself as a tool suited to all industries and verticals.

Mailmunch customers can create a variety of forms and pop-ups to drive email sign ups, including exit pop-ups, embed forms, fullscreen covers, sidebar widgets as well as scroll box and top-bar experiences.

9. MaxTraffic

MaxTraffic is an onsite marketing solution that uses overlays, promo bars and web push notifications to grow email lists, increase average order values, drive website engagement and more.

MaxTraffic can be integrated with any email service provider and its features include a drag and drop editor, GEO and URL targeting, A/B testing, scheduling and analytics. A limited version of MaxTraffic is available for free, and prices for the business package start at $49 per month.

10. Thrive Leads

For anyone looking to turn their WordPress website into a fully fledged business, Thrive Leads is a strong tool to consider. Available at an affordable price point for new companies, Thrive Leads customers can access a range of opt-in forms by adding a Javascript snippet to their site.

In addition to opt-in forms, Thrive Leads has a library of 290+ landing page templates to help customers drive more leads. With an extensive knowledge base, training and webinars covering their drag and drop editor, A/B testing and analytics, Thrive Leads has plenty of content to support self-service customers.

SMS Lead Generation Tools

11. Attentive

Attentive is a leading SMS marketing solution that empowers brands to build strong customer relationships with personalized text messaging. To drive more SMS subscribers for brands, Attentive can build opt-in forms for mobile, desktop, at checkout, on social media, email and even in-person.

Attentive is a fully managed platform mainly serving US-based clients, providing support in strategy, design and engineering. For businesses looking to increase the size of their SMS database and remarket to subscribers with engaging, data-driven messaging, Attentive is a robust tool.

12. SlickText

Another trusted leader in SMS marketing, SlickText helps create valuable connections with customers through targeted, action-driven text messages. By adding just one piece of code to their site, SlickText customers can grow their SMS database with website pop-ups, landing pages, social media opt-in links and more.

SlickText pop-up templates can be easily customized to align with your brand and acquire specific customer information, while targeting rules drive more leads by presenting forms to customers at exactly the right time.

Which lead generation platform should I choose?

I hope this blog narrows your search for a lead generation tool that helps you hit your new subscriber goals and increase revenue from email and SMS remarketing.

If you’re in the market for a plug-and-play solution to drive more email sign-ups, tools like OptinMonster or Sender are a great option. But if you’re looking for a platform with more sophisticated features, Yieldify’s all-in-one personalization platform is likely to be the ideal solution for your business.

If you’d like a preview of how you can increase lead capture on your website with Yieldify’s personalization platform, schedule a discovery call now. One of our advisors will be delighted to share more.

B2C Lead Generation Tool FAQs

How do you generate leads in B2C?

Most B2C companies use their ESP provider’s opt-in forms and pop-ups as a starting point for lead capture. But these forms aren’t sophisticated enough to meet new subscriber targets, so many brands turn to a B2C lead gen tool to drive more customers into their sales funnel.

Every B2C lead gen tool is different, but a good one will help you to:

– Increase new subscribers
– Enrich email remarketing flows
– Gather data on your audience

Picking the right tool for your business depends entirely on your budget, expertise and goals.

What is a B2C lead generation tool?

B2C lead generation tools help ecommerce brands drive more email and SMS subscribers into their databases – primarily using on-site signup forms. From audience segmentation to A/B testing and customizable forms, every B2C lead generation tool offers its own range of features to increase customer engagement and signups.