Best Ways to Collect Email Addresses During the Holidays: 7 Tips

The holiday season -- roughly October through December -- accounts for a huge percentage of sales for many businesses, but especially for retailers. If you're looking for ideas that will help you collect leads in the form of email addresses you can use for year-round marketing, you'll find a nice roundup here.(By the way, it's possible to do all the things mentioned below using ShortStack, so if you don't already have a free account, set one up -- it takes less than a minute.)

Offer Discounts

"The holidays are the most expensive time of the year, and people will do literally anything to save money on their purchases. This is the perfect opportunity to start building an email list, as you can encourage customers to subscribe by promising exclusive discounts and offers if they sign up. Works for us!" ~ Max Robinson, CBDiablo

Entice with Interactive Content

"An interesting way to collect emails that convert into sales during the holidays is through interactive content. One way you can do this is by building something like an interesting quiz to help them determine what kind of gift giver they are or what kind of gift their friends and family would like and add a prompt to collect their email address before they get the quiz results. You can put something together like this quickly, and you'll have all the emails and trust you will need by the holidays." ~ Ashli Norton, Kuia

Ask Engaging Questions

"With a survey, you have the added benefit of being able to survey visitors on your website who may be about to leave your page without purchasing, in addition to collecting their email address. This allows you to make improvements to your website/product/service while simultaneously capturing the email address of a visitor who could eventually be a customer. Most surveys offer the ability to accept free-form text entry from survey respondents. This form field can be utilized to collect email addresses." ~ Patrick Chukwura, Survey 55

Host Contests and Promotions

"Contests provide an incentive to share demographic information with company. A simple enter-to-win sweepstakes can increase customer access exponentially and provide the basis for a strong marketing outreach for future campaigns and product launches. The other strategy based on product type is refer-a friend bonus or prize. This opens the door to new users and customers, who might not ordinarily be in the pool of marketshare. Refer-a-friend works for both customer retention and customer acquisition, a twofer during a time when there is strong competition for buyers'/customers' attention and loyalty. If there is pent-up demand for your product during the holiday season it's important to harness that demand with the most effective strategies that get the customer closest to the buying action. A coupon also drives sales. Again this is a twofer: demographic info for further customer engagement and a possible immediate sale." ~ Donna Lubrano, Professor of Business Management and Marketing at Northeastern University College of Professional Studies

Offer Something that Makes Your Customers' Lives Easier

"Collecting email addresses can often feel spammy, which is why so many business owners are reluctant to prioritize growing their email list. I suggest that business owners focus on creating content that is valuable and timely for their audience, which means it's a resource that they are providing their audience in exchange for an invitation to their inbox. The holidays offer a perfect opportunity to provide valuable content. People are busy, they are running around in preparation for the holidays, so a business owner should consider what kind of information or service would help their customer feel more at ease during the business of the season. Perhaps this looks like developing an opt-in or content upgrade that outlines "10 Ways to Save Time During the Holidays," or a coupon for free shipping and gift-wrapping for product-based businesses. The goal is to make your customer's life a little easier and more manageable so that they positively associate your brand during a usually stressful and busy time ofyear." ~ Shelly Jackson, Fairwind Creative

Use Popups

"My favorite strategy to collect emails during the Holiday season is to offer a pop-up coupon as people enter a business' site. Make the coupon seasonally specific combined with a limited time offer to encourage immediate action. For example, when someone visits a clothing website, they see a popup that says, 'Save 15% on all Halloween purchases you make today'." ~ Stacy Caprio, Accelerated Growth Marketing