List Growth Strategies & Consent

7 min read

This is Part 5 of a 7-part series. Check out the full series below.

Welcome back.

I hope you’re still excited about the potential of text marketing.

In this post, I want to start with list-growth strategies and consent because it’s usually the first barrier you run into when you decide you want to set up text marketing for your health or beauty brand.

In order to send text marketing messages, you need a list of subscribers to send to, right?

So, let’s get into how to build them effectively and legally.

Go beyond legal. Provide a great experience.

I need to begin this section with the usual advice that this shouldn’t be considered legal advice.

You should consult a lawyer for that.

What I AM going to tell you is you shouldn’t be aiming for the bare minimum when it comes to getting legal consent to build your list.

While you may be able to get away with specific unsavory behaviors within the current guidelines, I would strongly advise against it.

My advice here is to go beyond making the government happy and aim to make your customers happy!

Practically speaking, this means building your list by using means that reflect clear intent from the consumer.

You can read about the finer points of compliance elsewhere for more best practices on how to make sure you’re compliant.

The bottom line is that when your customers get a message from you, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Test which offers your target audience values most

Now that we’ve established that you want clear consent from your audience, here’s how we recommend approaching that.

Start with a relevant offer. Think about various ways you can deliver value to your audience.

Your offer doesn’t always have to be a discount either (though it can be).

For example, Tortuga backpacks learned that their customers liked using their bags as a carry-on for travel so they created a unique ‘Carry On Packing list’ that has been their highest performing offer.

The key element here is to understand the transformation your consumers are looking for and how your products fit into that.

If, for example, you discover that your customers most often use your backpacks when traveling, then it makes perfect sense to use a ‘Carry On’ packing list as a valuable offer.

If, on the other hand, you sold hiking backpacks, a camping checklist might be a better fit for your audience.

If you’re not sure what type of offer will resonate best with your audience, test a few different ones out and see which converts higher and brings in higher quality subscribers.

If you’re unsure where to start, one approach we’ve found works well is a viral giveaway. In short, you reward the subscribers who tell the most friends about you with the most entries.

These offers require giving away actual products, but in many cases, this can come out to being less expensive than offering discounts to every visitor in order to get them to subscribe.

Set up a bunch of fishing lines.

Now that you’ve settled on a relevant offer, it’s time to share it widely.

Many brands will stick a pop-up on the homepage and stop there, but this leaves so much opportunity behind.

It’s essential to have an omnichannel approach to your list growth.

Think about the various places you can invite your audience to opt-in. Here are a few starting points that we’ve found work well.

1. Bring over subscribers from your email list. 

Text is a more personal channel than email. Invite your existing audience who are only getting emails from you to go deeper with the brand. This will also help ensure that those who didn’t see your email campaigns yet, will be given another touchpoint and opportunity to purchase.


A great way to do this is to add a prominent link at the bottom of your emails with your offer.

2. Turn your social followers into subscribers.

If you’ve built a community of followers on a social platform like Instagram, consider how you can turn those followers into subscribers.

Some of our favorite methods for Instagram include signup links in your bio, and swipe-up opt-ins as part of your stories.

Each social platform will have its own methods that will allow you to link off-site. The key thing to do is to make sure you are driving to a landing page with your offer whenever you can on these sites.

Turn your rented audience on social into an owned audience in your database.

3. Hook more of your on-site visitors

When it comes to getting more subscribers on your list from your website, many brands leave out some good opportunities.

The most common opt-in you see on health and beauty websites is the classic homepage pop-up.

You’ve seen them. The % off coupon when you first arrive.

But that isn’t the only place where you can collect opt-ins.

In fact, if a consumer hasn’t visited before and wants to browse the store a bit before deciding whether you join your list, it’s good to give them some secondary opportunities to do so.

Here are a few additional places to consider adding secondary opt-ins on site.

  • Announcement bars: Adding the option to opt-in in your announcement bar will ensure it is visible regardless of which page your visitors are on.
  • Homepage footer: Many visitors will use your footer when looking for contact info or customer service details. It’s a great place to invite your visitors to engage with you.
  • Cart page: It’s not uncommon for the cart page on an ecommerce site to have a higher than average bound rate. When you include a opt-in here, it can help you recapture lost sales due to cart abandonment while building your list at the same time.

Here’s a great way that verb energy likes to approach it.

4. Let them opt-in when they want to ask questions

When your customers have questions, it’s a great opportunity to invite them to text them directly to you. This can be both a great opt-in opportunity as well as a way to save some potential lost sales.

If you go this route, just make sure that you have a support plan in place. Many of our clients have integrated their SMS platforms with their support software so that new text messages automatically open a new ticket.

This is a great way to both build your list and build a trusted relationship with your visitors.

When you go this route, you can also add these opt-ins pretty much anywhere you might include a ‘contact support’ button.

That means anywhere from your homepage to your product pages to your FAQ pages and more.

5. Add fuel to the fire with paid advertising

Now, after you’ve scattered a healthy number of opt-ins across various channels, you may still want to accelerate the speed that you’re growing your list.

Another great way to do that is with your paid advertising.

Many brands will use paid advertising to drive traffic to their website, but the reality is, if you’re doing that, you’re likely getting only about 2% of that traffic to convert into customers.

Not only that but you won’t have an inexpensive way to market to those visitors again.

That’s where combining paid ads with a text marketing opt-in can be powerful.

If you can convert your paid traffic to subscribers at a higher percentage than you can to customers, then you can market to them again later at a far lower cost, increasing the chances of conversion and boosting your ROI.

Now what?

Has this given you some ideas about the next steps for your DTC brand?

I hope this has been helpful.

If you have any questions, just hit reply and let me know.

In the next post, I’ll cover segmentation strategies. You won’t want to miss it

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David Hoos

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