Email is the only channel in this whole subject that nobody can take away from you. Not a marketplace, not a search engine, not a social platform's algorithm.
It is also the one most sellers start last, usually around the time they realize the other channels are slower than expected. Starting it in week one instead of month eight is the highest-return decision available on a new store, and it costs almost nothing.
Why it matters more here than anywhere
The argument for leaving a marketplace is that you want to own the customer relationship. An email list is what owning the customer relationship literally is. Everything else is a rented audience: search rankings, social followers, marketplace visibility. All of them are somebody else's system deciding whether your message is shown.
A list is a file of people who said you may contact them. It moves with you, it survives an algorithm change, and it is the asset that makes the store worth more than the sum of this month's orders.
Where the first subscribers come from
You have fewer routes than an established store and more than none.
People already visiting your store. Small in month one, and they are the highest-intent people you will ever have.
Your existing social following, wherever that is.
Anyone who buys. A customer who checks out is the easiest subscriber you will ever get, provided you actually ask and provided they opt in.
People you already know. Friends, family, your supplier, the person who does your accounts. This is a smaller number than the internet implies and it is not nothing.
And the marketplace, only within its own rules. Every platform has its own policy on contacting buyers for marketing, and those policies differ and change. This site does not describe a way around them. Product inserts in physical orders are the route most commonly permitted, and the way to know what applies to you is to read your own platform's current seller policy. Doing this wrong risks the account that is currently paying your bills, which is a poor trade for a few subscribers.
What you need to offer, and what to avoid
The ask has to be worth something. "Sign up for our newsletter" is not a reason. A person needs to know what they will receive and why they would want it.
What works for a small store, roughly in order of how well it holds up:
Access to something. First look at a new range, a restock notification, or an early window on a seasonal launch. Cheap to deliver, genuinely useful, and it attracts people who want your products rather than people who want a coupon.
Genuine help. A sizing guide, a care guide, a how-to-choose guide. It attracts people at the research stage rather than the discount stage, and it doubles as the content you should be writing anyway.
A discount, which works, and which selects for discount-motivated buyers and trains them to wait for one. It is a legitimate tool and it is not free.
What to avoid is a signup form with no offer, a popup that appears before the visitor has seen anything, and a promise you will not keep, such as a weekly email you will send twice.
The mechanics, without naming a product
One form on the site, in a place people actually reach: in the footer, on the collection pages, and near the point of purchase.
A checkout opt-in, if your platform provides one, with a clear separate consent rather than a pre-checked box.
Confirm what people are agreeing to, and honor it. Consent, unsubscribe handling and record-keeping are governed by law in most countries and by your email platform's own terms, and the rules differ by where your subscribers are rather than by where you are.
And a welcome message that arrives immediately. This is the highest-open message you will ever send, and on many new stores it does not exist.
What to actually send
The hardest question for a store with fifteen products, and the reason most lists go quiet.
A rhythm you can sustain. Once a month you actually send beats once a week you abandon. Decide the frequency by what you can keep doing in a busy month.
Content that is not always a sale. A list that only ever receives promotions gets ignored, then unsubscribed. What works for a small maker or retailer is the thing a marketplace never let you do: show the person behind the products, the process, the decisions, the failures.
A reason to open, in the subject line, that is not urgency. Manufactured scarcity works once.
Some segmentation, eventually. People who have bought and people who have not are different audiences. Do not build this in month one; do collect the information that would let you build it later.
And ask questions. A list that replies is a list you learn from, and buyer replies are the raw material for your product pages, which is part of why our guide to turning a marketplace listing description into a product page starts from what buyers ask rather than from the old copy.
The first 90 days, roughly
Not a schedule, and not a promise about numbers.
Weeks 1 to 2: exist. A form on the site, an offer that means something, a welcome message that sends. That is the whole task and most stores do not complete it.
Weeks 3 to 6: ask. Every order gets an invitation, within your platform's rules. Every social post has a route to the list. The offer gets tested and changed if nobody takes it.
Weeks 7 to 12: send. Establish the rhythm. Two or three actual emails, so that the list is a habit rather than a database.
Throughout: measure the one number that matters, which is not the size of the list. It is whether the people on it open and click. A small engaged list is worth considerably more than a large indifferent one, and a list built from discount-seekers behaves differently from one built from people who wanted your restock.
The reason to start now rather than later
A list compounds. Every month you do not have a form on the site is a month of visitors who arrived, looked, and left with no way for you to reach them again.
Those visitors are the most expensive ones you will ever have, because in the first months you are getting so few of them. Letting them go anonymously is the specific, quiet waste of the early period, and it is entirely preventable.
For where this fits alongside the other channels, our article on measuring your marketplace dependence shows how much of your current audience is actually yours to move. And if you have not yet decided whether to make the move at all, our pillar on whether you should move is the place to begin.