How Instant Shop Helps Influencers Own Their Audience

Shoppable’s Instant Shop not only allows influencers and creators to create a profitable side hustle, but it also provides the essential tools for them to promote and grow their businesses. This includes allowing creators to gain more control over their audience and building an email list.

As you may know, many influencers and content creators do not have a website.  The social media platform, where they connect with their communities, is often their sole marketing channel.  That is why Instant Shop, at the free personal account license level (geared for influencers and content creators), acts as a pop-up storefront.  No website is required to create a storefront with Instant Shop.

Unfortunately, without a website, influencers and creators also lack an online location to collect email addresses that would enable them to create an email marketing strategy.  Instant Shop, however, offers an email opt-in feature to collect email addresses from shoppers while they are checking out.  It’s within the shopping cart, collected right along with their shipping and billing information. 

As an Instant Shop owner, you’re fully equipped to nurture your revenue stream!

Obtain a Higher-than-Average Number of Email Opt-ins

Perhaps, you do have a website, or post on a blog platform, where it is much more feasible to collect email addresses?  The good news is that Instant Shop’s email opt-in vastly outperforms the opt-ins that are obtained on any standard website. Per Sumo, a provider of email marketing services, the national average for email opt-ins submitted via websites is 1.95%.  

In contrast, the average for email opt-ins collected via Shoppable's products is 34.06%. 

Much of this success is due to the email opt-in being presented within your shopping cart.  The Shoppable® customer experience, which makes it easy to shop, also makes it easy for your shoppers to opt-in to submit email addresses.  They are already shopping on a page that has been customized to your brand (that they know and trust). They are not being linked off to another site to make their purchase. 

During checkout, your consumers, or shoppers, are in the midst of sharing their most personal information—their names, shipping addresses, and credit card numbers.  Being asked to include an email address is expected, because they have already committed to providing all of their information, in order to purchase a product.

Your Opt-in Incentive Aids in Collecting Email Addresses

A common tip, we suggest, is that you should present an incentive in return for an email address. Incentives do impact your opt-in rates.  Instant Shop allows you to customize your marketing opt-in offers.  You could ask shoppers to sign up for your updates, a newsletter, or to receive the discount codes for future sponsored products that you recommend. 

If you’re a beauty or fashion influencer, people could “sign up to receive updates on the latest trends and new products,” for example.  Offering your curated gift guides for holidays and events (think summer BBQs, graduations, weddings, vacations, etc.) may also be seen as an incentive. The bonus would be that these types of incentives would garner you even more sales.

Why Do Influencers and Content Creators Need Email Marketing?

As much as people enjoy the spontaneity of social commerce, email marketing is just as popular.  Email is a commonly accepted form of communication.  It’s checked daily.  Often, multiple times per day, given the ease and convenience of checking emails on a mobile phone. It is a proven method to generate sales. 

Email can also foster a long-term relationship with someone interested in your product recommendations.  An email campaign, especially, if using a recipient’s first name, can seem like a note from a friend.  When it comes from an influencer or content creator, someone who is trusted and whose expertise is recognized by the addressee, it has even greater impact. 

It is welcomed by the recipient. 

They know you.  They like you.  Your email is an extension of your social media persona rather than an intrusion.  It can become your opportunity to obtain a repeat purchase, upsell, or cross-sell.  Do you have new sponsored content?  You’d be able to direct your most pre-qualified and engaged followers to that pic, reel/video, or post. 

An email list, created by your email opt-in feature in Instant Shop, will be an often-used resource. 

Your Instant Shop Email Opt-In Creates the Highest Quality Email List

Your email opt-ins are not the normal email subscribers who submit an email address on a website to receive your updates.  Nope, these email opt-in subscribers are the high-quality targets that every marketer desires. 

They are shoppers. 

They’ve already purchased an item from your Instant Shop. 

As shoppers, they have displayed much higher engagement than someone just signing up for a free newsletter or download.  Marketing to them is more likely to increase your ROI, since your shoppers offer you the greatest potential that they will buy, again, and again.

An Email List will be Your Most Valuable Asset

Here’s another big advantage of an email subscriber list—you own it. 

One of the frustrations of working with a social media platform is that you lack total control.  Platforms can change their rules, their algorithms, or reduce their payment for content creation, and you would have no recourse.  Also, sometimes, a social media platform can be overtaken in popularity by a new upstart platform.    

Once you’ve built an email list, however, you’re no longer reliant on a social media platform to provide access to your followers.  Imagine if something happens with your social media account—it’s canceled for some reason.  Or, perhaps you’ve decided to move to another platform. 

You are still able to reach out to your most devoted followers and super fans. They are not tied to any specific platform.  And, the practice of consistently building and adding to your email list is a reliable method of increasing your engagement and sales. 

Go to the Next Level with Instant Shop’s Email Opt-In Feature

You may have started out with Shoppable’s free personal account license (since you didn’t need a website as an influencer or content creator), but you’ll eventually wish to upgrade to Startup or Growth level licenses due to your success.  You’ll want to enhance your Instant Shop to handle an increase in online traffic and/or to stock your virtual shelves with even more products.

The Startup license was also developed for those influencers and creators who do have a website.  They may want to embed their Instant Shop into their website in order to keep their hard-earned traffic on their site (to maintain the income earned through digital ads and selling sponsored content).  Due to Shoppable’s Universal Checkout technology, Instant Shop does not link off to a retailer site to complete a transaction, unlike traditional affiliate networks.  This allows these Instant Shop owners to sell their choice of products and not cut into the revenue generated by their website advertising (by sending their traffic elsewhere). 

The Growth license was designed for small businesses that are fully committed to eCommerce.  Publishers, for example, may be at this level, or more likely, given the volume of editorial product reviews, the Enterprise license level.  Whatever the Shoppable® license level, all Instant Shop owners benefit from having a state-of-the-art email opt-in mechanism built into their shopping cart!