Never forget this. Your email list is one of the most important things you could ever grow. Email is intimate. Email is precious. For the most part, email is opened every day.
While Social Media is great for nurturing customers, engaging prospects and building relationships, it is also great for building leads. A lead in my book is anyone who comes to our website and gives us their email. As a business this is something you need to grow. The more leads you have the more sales you can make. The more emails you have, the more leads you have. Simple as that.
Social media should be used to extend your brand beyond your website. Everything you do on your website should be promoted on social media. Keep that in mind when reading these 4 ways to grow your email list below. You need to promote them just the same as you would something on your site for maximum results.
Here’s how you can use social media to build your email list.
1. Contests
Social media contests are a great way to build your list. You can host one on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram. But when it comes to gathering emails easily you should have a tool that integrates with your CRM or email marketing system. We use Infusionsoft and their partner GroSocial provides a good option. When you create a social media contest you should be thinking about how it will grow your list, not about how it will increase your followers, which is a mistake I see often. Sweepstakes are the best for growing your list quickly because the barrier of entry is low. While you will get a lot of entries they may not be the most targeted. On the other hand something that requires work from the entrant will provide you with the most targeted people but also the least amount. You need to figure out what is best for you and your business.
Learn more about social media contests here.
2. Facebook Tabs & Apps
Facebook tabs or apps as they are called now allow you to capture emails right on your Fan page. It requires a little bit of integration but it isn’t too complicated. Pretty much every email marketing system has their own Facebook app.
While Twitter, G+ & Pinterest don’t allow you to have an app for this purpose you could link to your landing page in the about or bio sections on these sites.
3. Twitter lead cards
Twitter has a lead generation option and it is a dream come true for direct marketers. What I like about it is that you don’t have to leave Twitter to be added to your newsletter. You do have to spend some advertising money however to participate. But with one click of a button your Twitter follower can now be your subscriber too.
4. Give something away
Offer and promote an incentive for signing up for your newsletter. This can be a discount to your ecommerce store or a white paper or ebook if you are B2B. Of course to do this you’ll have to have a specialized landing page that you can drive traffic to.
How do you grow your email list?
