12 Better Alternatives To Buying Email Lists (For eComm Stores)

There’s one thing that most eCommerce businesses know like the back of their hand, and yet, are not immune to it.

Buying an email list. 

For those of you who don’t do it, it might be difficult to imagine why someone else would, so here’s what’s not instantly apparent:

The perceived value of buying a list. 

It appears quick and to not come with the struggles of building, maintaining, cleaning or growing a list. 

Additionally, some want to jump straight into sending out communication that will eventually turn into conversions. 

In reality, though, buying email lists shouldn’t be on your agenda, not in 2025, not ever. 

And here’s why. 

5 Reasons Buying Email Lists Have Been an eCommerce Nightmare

😡 Major compliance issues

Data protection laws like CAN-SPAM and GDPR, if operational in your region, can create repercussions around compliance. What this really means is that a business can earn up to thousands of dollars of penalty on each email. 

😡 Domain reputation goes for a toss

On one hand, spam complaints rise because recipients (the real ones, that is!) haven’t explicitly agreed to receive emails. On the other hand, engagement metrics suffer big time because many of the emails aren’t opened or clicked—and email service providers do consider these metrics to evaluate domain reputation. 

😡 Ends up annoying recipients

Going back to not taking explicit consent, bought email lists mean brand sending emails to people who haven’t signed up for them. This in turn leads to higher rates of unsubscribes and non-engagement. 

😡 Does not target engagement or purchase intent

And that just means your emails won’t do what they’re supposed to, in terms of offers, messaging and even support, which brings us to 👇

😡 Heavy skews in email performance metrics

From hard bounces to low opens to reduced deliverability, bought email lists begin to consistently affect email performance metrics that are key to email marketing success. 

Clearly, the easy answer to state as an alternative is to grow your own email list, but in reality, there are many other ways you can ensure the health & growth of your email engagement tactics. 

12 Powerful Alternatives to Buying an Email List

1. Build an organic list by targeting high intent

When you’re trying to tap into “high intent” through your email marketing strategy, you’re essentially looking at three hyper-specific segments: 

👉 Those who’ve returned more than once to your store to browse, and you’ve detected repetitions in their browsing patterns

👉 Those who’ve added to cart but have somehow not proceeded towards checkout

👉 Those who’ve entered your site after clicking on an ad

Now that this is clear, you can look at specific tactics instead of buying email lists for marketing:

✔ Feature early access hooks on pop-ups & paid ads: The people who sign up through these are likely to be interested in limited time offers, limited edition products and even brand collaborations. 

✔ Offer exclusive email-only discounts: Someone who signs up after seeing an email-only discount prompt is clearly indicating a closer, more personal engagement with your brand.

✔ Show a % off on a “save your cart” prompt: Make this a pre-checkout pop-up that nudges these shoppers to save their cart by logging in and earning a % off in the process. 

Women’s fashion brand Ann Taylor targets high intent buyers through “exclusive” messaging on their pop-ups:

2. Segment your audiences based on interest

Since we were just talking about sending emails to high intent buyers, it’s worthwhile to segment your larger audience first. 

This will help you send targeted messaging, targeted offers as well as advice targeted exactly for where the subscriber is along the customer journey. 

✔ Identify the right personas to finetune the messaging: Look at demographics, age, behaviour and stage of customer journey to determine whether the messaging is for a new subscriber, existing customer or potential buyer. 

✔ Track engagement from previous emails: For this, look into the level of engagement amongst existing subscribers—who is highly engaged with your emails & have also bought through them? Who opens them, clicks, but doesn’t buy? And, who doesn’t engage / open / click at all?

✔ Assess purchase intent signals from potential customers: Significant signals would include time spent on high intent pages like home, category and product pages, keying in details to access gated content like style guides or recipe books.

Further Reading: The Founder's Guide to Customer Journey Map (eCommerce)

3. Offer control through an email preference center

Other than you controlling what email recipients will see, there’s another way. 

To give back the control to subscribers themselves so that they can choose what they receive emails about. 

In 2025, if you have to double down on how you run your email preference centers, you’ll have to:

✔ Sync preferences between multiple communication channels: As against making only emails sensitive to shopper preferences, apply it across SMS, push notifications, social media and app. 

✔ Create more granular opt-in options: It’s great that you’ve been asking them to pick from send frequency and areas of interest, but here are some additional opt-in areas they’ll thank you for: language, types of updates (clubbing everything under “marketing updates” isn’t cool anymore!), channels they want to hear from you on and types of email they’d like to receive. 

✔ Use AI-powered personalization to suggest categories: The better you sync your personalization engines with existing data, the more closely they’ll be able to pull out these category recommendations—and this will in turn lead to more potential customers clicking on options that you serve them and going on a product discovery. 

Check out how ASOS gives back power to the subscriber in one of their preference center emails:

4. Create hyper-specific lead magnets for the whole funnel

Gone are the days when eCommerce brands would earn email sign-ups just by gating an informative interview with a stylist or expert. 

As we move into 2025, hyper-specific lead magnets that tend to the entire conversion funnel will spruce up your email list:

✔ Offer “starter kit” recommendation discounts to ToFu shoppers: Since early stage shoppers tend to freeze out of choice paralysis, helping them build a starter kit and then asking their email to send across the related discountworks really well. 

✔ Feature product assessment quizzes for MoFu shoppers: In this stage of the journey, customers are really interested in whether you can “match” them up closely with what they will “benefit” from—so lead magnet quizzes around the themes of “perfect outfit for your style” and “find your ideal morning cereal” do especially well. 

✔ Display “try before you buy” offers for BoFu shoppers: Messaging that assures and creates confidence at the same time can fetch faster sign-ups at this stage: “Sign Up first to get this product on a free 7-day trial—pay only for shipping”

Sephora, for example, features compelling reasons like the following to help people who’re about to checkout sign up with their email:

Further Reading: 14 eCommerce content marketing mistakes (+ their fixes)

5. Offer instant value in exit-intent pop-ups

Whether you do competitor analysis or not as an eCommerce brand, the truth is that competition is looming large and shoppers are spoilt for choice. Even when it comes to acting on exit-intent pop-ups. 

And this is why the value you show on them has to be immediately accessible instead of indicating a vague future purchase. 

✔ Give free access to members-only content: You can offer a mini video series for example, featuring a limited number of episodes (make sure this number doesn’t exceed 3 because otherwise shoppers begin to doubt the value of this offer.)

✔ Offer a free expert consultation voucher: And ensure you state the actual $value of it alongside something to the effect of “Unlock free consultation voucher originally valued at $85”.

✔ Feature free shipping on the first subscription: Many brands offer this either on the first purchase or on the first 2 or 3 orders, but if you don’t want this bleeding into your profit margins, feature it only on subscriptions, where you also highlight how much they’ll save if they subscribe. 

Here’s how meal kit brand Blue Apron amplifies the value of the first order for the customer:

6. Collect rich zero-party data

Third-party cookies have said goodbye. And that has brought the entire focus to zero-party data that eCommerce brands can leverage to send more targeted information. 

Any day better than buying email lists that won’t help you personalize, and here’s how to gather such data:

✔ Feature an interactive profile creation: While keeping it short, make it humane and ask information across areas that connect them to your brand (for example, if you’re a skincare brand, ask about what weather suits them, which time of the year they face most challenges etc.)

✔ Highlight the benefits around the loyalty program: Two of the most compelling benefits we’ve seen repeatedly work is “free shipping” and a “special members-only price”—highlighting these on the notification bar and even as microcopy on product pages helps. 

✔ Focus on collecting feedback: Whether it’s from those who will move into a post-purchase experience or those who come back to browse your store. 

Skincare brand Olaplex, for example, offers two different login options for usual customers and customers who’re also salon professionals and then directs the latter to a pro site for special pricing & advanced products:

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Further Reading: 7 Smarter Marketing Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies (for eCommerce)

7. Send quality content to existing subscribers

Those who’ve signed up to be part of your list already expect enough communication from you. 

But how you elevate this decides if they continue to be subscribers or not. 

To avoid buying an email list and instead focus on sending out great content:

✔ Create better follow-up sequences: This is your opportunity to send personalized content every subscriber can learn from based on what they’ve bought, from guides to recommendations accompanied by UGC material. 

✔ Offer highly specific limited time deals: For example, if they’ve bought from you multiple times over the last 3-6 months, you can feature a 24-hour limited time additional 10% discount on items that are in their cart and are already on sale. 

✔ Make milestones a high priority: Be it your brand anniversary or their birthday, honoring milestones deepen the emotional connection between a brand and its subscribers. 

The following ULTA Beauty eCommerce email is highly celebrated because it sums up a shopper’s journey through the year gone by and hints at fresh possibilities in the new one:

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Furthe Reading: 28 No-BS Ways To Get More Email Subscribers in eCommerce

8. Create compelling social media contests & challenges

Incentives and excitement come together to make the best social media contests drive engagement, participation and finally quality sign-ups. 

But what do you need to do this more effectively instead of buying email lists?

✔ Incentivize sharing the contest: Even if you don’t want to offer free gifts, feature referral incentives like 50% off on the first purchase for tagging 10 friends. 

✔ Create anticipation in the countdown to the event: Fall back on storytelling through BTS content and sneak-peek posts to heighten the eventfulness of the contest. 

✔ Align the prize closely to customer interest: Generic giveaways are passé, so align yours to customer interest and brand goals—for example, if you have a new product launch in the horizon, which is a collaboration with a designer, feature a creation of the latter as a contest prize. 

A case in point is how Booxies Australia held a spring giveaway contest and announced a box full of books as the final prize—they also mentioned that those who share the post to their stories, have a higher chance to win:

9. Promote email-only offers more actively

In the chaos of marketing communication, it’s highly likely your email subscribers stop feeling like they’re special. 

And this can have a huge impact on how often they convert and how much they buy. 

Something that you can actively offset by introducing targeted email-only offers:

✔ Send “early access” limited time discounts: Lead with “subscribers exclusive” and then state the conditions “access the big sale 24 hours before everyone else at an additional 15% off!”

✔ Increase the incentive on referrals: Lead with the new incentive as the headline and make sure you state the usual incentive you offer within the microcopy. 

✔ Ensure your messaging contributes to desire: Urgency is great, but right now it’s everywhere—so for your email-only offers to shine you’ll have to feature words that add to the sense of exclusivity. 

Here’s how skincare brand 100% Pure does it, especially notice how they’ve used “curated the most coveted products” to hook the recipient instantly:

Further Reading: Turn boring transactional emails into cash cows: 10 proven ideas

10. Participate in collabs to access new audiences

This makes even more sense if you can think of a collaborator who can complement what you make / create. 

For example, if you run a furniture store, you may want to consider tying up with a designer who exclusively works on vintage decor and come up with a collection based on that. 

However, to make this successful, you’ll have to:

✔ Work with a strong value proposition: When shoppers think, “this brand collab better be something really different,” they expect the result to be something more compelling than what they’re used to buying from the same brands separately or competitor brands. 

✔ Make it a limited edition drop: And position it in a way that shoppers feel the desire to possess the product to show to posterity—launching it without the limited edition hook won’t create enough impetus for high intent buyers. 

✔ Retain the reviews section on your website: Even if the category or product page doesn’t show existing products, give latecomers a chance to see just how the drop benefited them or how much they love the products. 

In fact, this is the approach that Bombas took for their Bombas x Pixar sock drop—go over to that page and you’ll see that the brand maintains the product page and even describes what the drop was about:

What you can additionally implement: Feature an email sign-up hook to notify customers if you’re planning to bring back the edition in some form during a special holiday etc. 

11. Offer a “free” hook on gated content 

Just saying that you have millions of great recipes from top chefs may not cut it for your regular meal plan hunter, for example. 

But if you say, “3000 recipes now free from the member exclusive database,” they’re likely to prick their ears and sit up. 

Just make sure to:

✔ Narrow down on the audience: The hyperspecificity of “30 Morning Meal Recipes for Busy Professionals” will get you more signups than the generic quality of “Sign up and Get 30 Morning Meal Recipes.”

✔ Offer immediately applicable advice: Anyone wanting to subscribe to you for your content is most likely doing it for quicker results, so you’ll have to offer something that they can practice / put to use from the word go. 

✔ Create professionally-vetted content: Even if you don’t have the resources to get a top chef to write a whole meal manual for you, you can feature quick tips from, let’s say, 50 home chefs to make the advice practical yet professionally vetted. 

Gym brand Peloton features a call-out to “free classes” on their website and when you click on it, you see that you can try them for free for a limited period of 30 days, after which they charge you a fee:

Further Reading: Gated content: 8 do’s & don’ts that ecommerce founders must know

12. Create landing pages that really engage & convert

If you have to optimize your site for those you’d like to subscribe to your email list, prioritize your paid ad traffic first. 

These are the good folks who key in a highly specific query and when your listing appears as one of the results, they may either skip over or click. 

And that’s why you need to:

✔ Align ad copy & landing page copy closely: The more targeted to a specific audience these are, the more likely these audiences are also likely to find your offering—and ensuring message alignment between ad copy & landing page headline is a must!

✔ Feature deals no other competitor is offering: For example, if competitors are offering generic discounts to draw shoppers in for Christmas, you announce a deep discount on your bestsellers for a limited time only—and make sure your ad copy screams the deal window!

✔  Think beyond deals & discounts: While transactional content is the go-to for most landing pages, sometimes it’s best to pull visitors in through non-transactional content—in this case ensure you have a prominent “Shop” button within the eye-view to direct shoppers after they feel convinced having read the content. 

eCommerce brand Menolabs focuses on building health and wellness for menopausal women, and this is how they draw attention to their non-transactional landing pages:

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Further Reading: 33 High-Converting Product Landing Page Strategies (+ Examples)

Leverage & Grow Your Email List Marketing

Most eCommerce store owners don’t see email as a serious revenue stream.

Ask them about the importance of email marketing, and you'll hear: “we don’t really have a major strategy,” “we mostly use generic templates,” or “we just send emails to people on our list.”

BUT AT THE SAME TIME:

There are stores out there that drive 30%+ of their revenue from email marketing.

Engage can help you do the same - Book a free demo.

We’ll show you:

• workflows we can create for your store,
• proven ways to drive 30% or more $$ from email alone, and
• successful templates and strategies from your industry (and others).