Get in front of your target buyer personas
While it would be wonderful if every single person on the internet was interested in what you sell, the truth is that your brand is particularly interesting to a unique customer base.
With all the money and time in the world, you could try to convince everyone that they need your product; but marketers like you have real time and budget constraints that force you to focus your efforts. While it is important to continuously grow your audience, you should focus on quality growthover quick growth. Perform customer research and create outlines of your customer persona(s) to help you identify who you're targeting.
The key to building a high-quality list is to show up strategically where interested individuals are likely to be, presenting them with intriguing content and calls-to-action (CTAs) that will motivate them to subscribe for your marketing.
5 ways to acquire quality subscribers
There are a few methods for growing your audience that we view as essential: enable consent at checkout, set up onsite sign-up forms, and add an embedded form to the persistent footer of your website. Beyond these basics, what else can you do to get in front of people who might be interested in your brand?
1. Create a referral program for current customers
Word-of-mouth marketing is hands down the most impactful form of marketing. Why? Because people will always trust the recommendations of people they know over a marketing message coming directly from a brand.
That’s why it’s worth your effort to construct a referral program to reward customers who refer their friends to your brand. You will not only retain your biggest brand advocates, but you’ll also gain high-quality leads who likely share similar motivations and characteristics.
Sound time consuming? It doesn’t have to be. Klaviyo has plenty of tech partners who offer referral tools that are quick and easy to set up, and integrate directly with Klaviyo.
2. Drive growth with social proof
Similar to the point above, people are much more motivated to purchase when they feel a sense of social pressure or social acceptance around choosing a certain brand.
“Social proof” refers to the concept of people making decisions based on the opinions and sentiments of their peers. Two powerful forms of social proof in marketing are:
- Customer reviews
- User-generated content (UGC) from social media
Again, people trust other people who they relate to. If you aren’t already, you should be encouraging your current customers to share images, videos, and opinions about your brand across all social media platforms. This drives organic growth, but also gives you the opportunity to collect that media to use as marketing collateral in the future. You can share your social proof on your website, across your social media accounts, in paid advertising, and more.
Need tools to help you? Explore Klaviyo Reviews, as well as Klaviyo tech partners who can help you collect and manage UGC.
3. Add teasers to your onsite forms
One small but effective change you can make to increase sign-up form submit rates is to add a form teaser. A teaser is a little floating module that stays on the screen of your website when someone dismisses a sign-up form, which, when clicked, reopens your sign-up form.
Why is this useful? Think of your own experience as a customer shopping online. When you immediately see a pop-up on a website without knowing much about the products or the brand, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll sign up for anything until you’ve had a chance to explore. With no form teaser, you’ve lost the conversion.
By adding a teaser, you allow site visitors to re-open the form and easily sign-up once they’ve had time to browse. Learn how to add form teasers.
4. Use a strong lead magnet
The concept of offering an item of value in exchange for someone’s contact information is known as a “lead magnet.”
One super popular lead magnet is a quiz that will give users a valuable result or recommendation. In order to view the results via email, they must share their contact information and opt-in to marketing. Another common lead magnet is encouraging prospects to sign up for marketing in exchange for a digital consultation.
The benefits of lead magnets are two-fold:
- You collect zero-party preference and demographic data from shoppers.
- You collect leads who have a moderate level of buy-in since they took the time to interact with the lead magnet.
You can offer the lead magnet on your website, or use it as the main CTA for a paid ad on platforms like Meta or Google. Use the data collected from your quiz or digital consultation to follow up with these leads about recommended products or services.
Explore quiz and survey tools that easily integrate with Klaviyo.
5. Lean into content marketing on social
Does your brand excel at content marketing? Do you have strong blog content or customer education resources? Take your newsletters and blog posts, and create small previews of these content pieces for social media. The call to action from these posts should be:
Join our email list to get all of the details!
Tease your social network with the most interesting or thought-provoking snippets of content, but leave the rest of the content for your email subscribers. Then, place an email sign-up link in your social bio (think Instagram and TikTok) so that followers can easily subscribe. Full-page sign-up forms work really well for this use case.
Learn more about how to use a full-page form as a landing page.
“Audience” is more than just an email list
Many of the strategies we talked about focus on email. However, when we say “audience,” we don’t just mean an email list. We’re referring to the collection of profiles in your Klaviyo account who have opted into hearing from you through one of your Klaviyo channels.
Your Klaviyo marketing channels include:
- Text messages(SMS and RCS)
- Mobile push notifications (if you have a mobile app)
Email list growth is central to audience growth, but it’s equally important to encourage your engaged email subscribers to connect with you through more channels. The more touchpoints you have with a user, the better your chances are of keeping them engaged, thus increasing their customer lifetime value. Explore the strategies below to grow your audience across all owned channels.
While the strategies discussed above can be customized to collect text (SMS and RCS), WhatsApp, and push sign-ups, as well as drive mobile app downloads, let’s explore some key considerations and recommendations for growing your mobile messaging subscriber lists across all channels.
Text message (SMS and RCS) sign-ups
Text messages are an extremely personal channel, well-suited for urgent or time-sensitive messages. Since SMS and RCS share the same opt-in requirements, you can collect consent for both together. If you have a loyalty program, or are interested in starting one, consider making text a primary communication channel for your VIPs, and use VIP perks as a sign-up incentive.
Other helpful ideas include:
Optimize your forms for text message sign-ups
- Create a multi-step form that asks for email consent on the first step and text (SMS and RCS) consent on the second step.
- Create a text-only form targeted to existing email subscribers that asks only for text consent.
- Use SMS smart opt-in and tap-to-text to streamline the submission process. Tap-to-text is especially helpful given the substantial changes with iOS 26.
Leverage your existing email channel
- Encourage email subscribers to sign up for text (SMS and RCS) with an email campaign promoting text-only exclusives or timely updates. You can also keep a text sign-up CTA in the header or footer of your weekly newsletters.
Ask for text message consent via social media
- Use both paid ads and organic content to grow your text subscriber lists.
Push notification sign-ups
If you have a mobile application for your business, push notifications are a fantastic vessel to communicate with your customers and drive more traffic to your app. Like text messages, push notifications are well-suited for time-sensitive messages. If you offer app-only exclusives, use push notifications as the sole channel for delivering those messages. You may also consider making mobile app downloads a key part of your loyalty pgoram strategy, which can help incentivize sign-ups for push notifications.
Other helpful ideas include:
Plug your mobile application in your welcome series
- Once someone signs up for email or text messages, let them know you also have a mobile application that will provide them with everything they need to know at their fingertips.
Use sign-up forms to promote app-only promotions
- Announce your app-only deals and initiatives via sign-up forms, to encourage site visitors to download your mobile app. In your sign-up form copy, make sure to recommend that people sign up for push notifications upon oa, so they don't miss out on future programs.
Use social media to drive more app downloads:
- Hype up your app and your app-only benefits via socials, with a CTA to download your app from the app store. Write copy that emphasizes the importance of signing up for push notifications so they can stay up-to-date.
WhatsApp sign-ups
WhatsApp is another mobile messaging channel that you can grow alongside text (SMS and RCS) and push notifications. While many sign-up strategies overlap with text messaging, there are a few important nuances:
Regional preferences matter.
Some regions use SMS/RCS as their primary mobile messaging channel, while others rely heavily on WhatsApp. Some use both for different purposes. Use regional indicators (such as area code) and Klaviyo’s channel affinity to understand which channel to lead with for different audiences.
You can collect SMS and WhatsApp consent in the same Klaviyo form.
Then use area codes or channel affinity to determine which channel to message each subscriber.
Repurpose your SMS sign-up strategies for WhatsApp.
Multi-step forms, email CTAs, VIP programs, loyalty incentives, and social sign-up prompts all work well for both channels.
Use Ads that Click-to-WhatsApp.
These can be set up in Meta Ads Manager and paired with Klaviyo’s WhatsApp integration to drive sign-ups directly from paid social. These placements work across News Feed, Stories, and Marketplace, and can support goals such as generating leads, driving sales, and boosting marketing efforts.
Remember the dos and don’ts of list growth
We encourage you to experiment, expand your presence across channels, and test out new strategies. As you find new ways to grow, keep these best practices in mind to retain your current subscribers, reduce spam complaints, and protect your sender reputation.
DO
- Use double-opt in for all email lists.
- Make sure you’re growing your subscriber lists compliantly across email, text (SMS and RCS), WhatsApp, and push.
- Send your campaigns to a variety of engaged segments.
- Use Smart Sending to avoid over-messaging.
- Deliver on the promised lead magnet or sign-up incentive immediately.
- Include your privacy policy and terms of service on every sign-up form.
- Follow up with non-openers by scheduling a resend to anyone who didn’t open your first email—just update the subject line to increase your chances of engagement.
DON’T
- Purchase an email list. Ever.
- Send text messages outside of sanctioned Quiet Hours.
- Camouflage unsubscribe links or make them hard to find.
- Send unsegmented (what we call “batch and blast”) campaigns on a regular basis.