Convert your Email List to SMS Subscribers

Drive meaningful SMS list growth with your most loyal contacts.

Whether you’re just starting out with SMS, or you’re just looking to see a boost in your SMS List growth, your email list is one of the best places to turn. As you know, you’re required to collect written consent for SMS Marketing, so in this article we’re going to walk through the most direct way to gather SMS Consent from your email subscribers, as well as the top three strategies that we’ve seen work the best.

Create a Landing Page

The most direct way to collect SMS consent from your email list is by sending a Campaign with a Call-To-Action that leads them to an SMS Landing Page.

A Landing Page is a signup form that lives on its own URL; this is crucial for this strategy because it allows you to capture your SMS signups with zero distractions.

Need step-by-step instructions on how to create a Landing Page? Check out this resource.

For this strategy, we recommend your Landing Page follows a similar structure to the example below:

Logo + approachable headline

Include your logo and a short, snappy headline at the top of your Landing Page so that it feels aligned with your brand.

Set expectations

Include a sentence that explains what your SMS Program will include. We recommend setting expectations around things like…

• How often you will send them messages.
• What message content will be like (sale announcements, sharing recipes, limited-time offers, new collection previews, etc.).
• What kind of perks your SMS program has to offer (early access, exclusive deals, etc.).

Form Fields

• (Optional) Email field.
• (Required) Phone number field.

SMS Opt-In

Your SMS Opt-In language is required, and it falls between your phone number field and your form submission button.

Call-To-Action

Your CTA should be actionable, and align with your brand voice and colors.

Set up your After Signup Text

Make sure that you’ve customized and activated an After Signup Text in our Landing Page’s Follow-Up step so that your new SMS Signups get confirmation that they’ve made it on your list. 

Grab your Landing Page URL

Before you send your email campaign leading to your SMS Landing Page, you’ll need to:

• Publish your Landing Page
• Copy the Landing Page’s URL

Your Landing Page’s URL will be present in the Create step of your display, under the Design step. It will only appear here after you’ve published the display.

Create an Email Campaign

Once you’ve created and launched your Landing Page, go ahead and start a new Campaign.

If you need step-by-step instructions on creating an email campaign, you can find them here.

For the most impact, we recommend following this example from Everlane:

Keep it focused.

Dedicate this email to the sole purpose of asking subscribers to sign up for SMS.

Throwing this CTA into an email that is also announcing a sale, new product, giveaway, etc. will be too distracting and you’ll see a much smaller impact.

Include a quality image.

Don’t underestimate the power of including this! Feature an image that will keep your recipients’ attention and drive them to click through to your Landing Page.

Set expectations.

Similar to when you built out your Landing Page, include a short blurb about why someone should join your SMS Program — what kinds of messages will they receive, and how often?

For example, a subscriber might be interested in getting previews of new collections before they drop. Another subscriber might be interested, but only if they know how many messages they will receive each week or month.

Campaign Strategies

Now that we’ve covered best practices for your Landing Page and Email, let’s chat through 3 different approaches you can take with your campaign.

Offer Early Access

Offer early access to an upcoming launch or sale in exchange for signing up for your SMS List. This approach is especially effective if your brand tends to see a lot of hype around new launches, or if you sell certain items fairly quickly! FOMO is real, and hearing about new drops before everyone else can be an invaluable incentive to your most loyal customers.

Here’s a great example from Poplight:

Waiting List

Do you have an item that you can’t keep in stock? Or a new colorway coming out? Leverage your SMS List as a way for interested customers to be notified of restocks and/or new variants as soon as they hit the site.

Check out this example from Wild One:

VIP List

When in doubt, offer VIP perks to your text list — give them exclusive deals, previews of new collections, and more. SMS is by far the most intimate marketing channel, so these sorts of perks might make it feel more worthwhile to interested customers.

The most important thing about this strategy and incentive is to actually follow through with it. For example, if you say you’ll send monthly SMS-exclusive offers and first dibs on new arrivals, but you never end up doing those things, your list may grow but your subscribers might not stick around for long. Choose a VIP approach that feels realistic for your brand to keep up with!

Here’s an example from CLEARSTEM: