One of the cheapest, most cost effective ways to reach your customers and increase sales is through email. Before you can do that you need to build up a mailing list and that can take some time. Here’s a simple way to increase subscribers to your store mailing list that your customers will love.

Offer a free download to new mailing list subscribers

Everybody loves free stuff. Offering a free download to your new subscribers is a great way to reward customers (and future customers!) for signing up.

A free download can be anything, but ideally related to your products.

  • Selling a espresso coffee machines? Try offering a PDF of ten tips for better espresso.
  • Offering a range of fashion accessories? How about a short styling video featuring your products?
  • Boutique clothing? Try a lookbook for next season.

It doesn’t have to be long – in fact, short and to the point is better. Focus on offering a few key pieces of valuable information.

Upload your content to your store

Once you’ve created your free download you need to upload it to your store. Shopify has a a Files section which is ideal. Upload your file and copy the URL.

Upload your free content to Shopify Files

If you’re using another platform, such as Tictail, you could use Dropbox or a WordPress blog to host the content.

You’ll need the URL in the next step so your new subscribers can download the content.

Add the URL to your welcome email

Most mailing list systems will let you show a welcome message when a new customer signs up. You can use that to include the free download URL so subscribers receive it after signing up.

This example uses MailChimp but most of the popular systems have a similar setup.

Login to MailChimp and edit your mailing list. Choose Signup Forms and then Confirmation “thank you” page. This page is shown to your subscribers after the email address has been confirmed. It’s the perfect time to offer a link to the downloadable content.

Add the link along with a friendly welcome message.

Mailing list confirmation

__Tip__: You can add a link with by clicking the anchor button in the MailChimp content editor toolbar.

Once a customer confirms their subscription they will receive the welcome email with the link to the downloadable content.

Attract subscribers with your free content

Your downloadable content is now available to new subscribers. Make the most of it by promoting it in the call to action for your newsletter signup.

Promote the free download in mailing list signup form

Next steps

You can easily follow the steps above to update your content periodically. Keeping it fresh keeps it relevant to new subscribers. Don’t forget to update the URL in your welcome email after you’ve replaced the uploaded file.

If you’re interested in other ways to grow your MailChimp list you might enjoy these previous posts

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