How to Grow Your Email List with Social Media Marketing

If you use email marketing for business promotion, having a solid email subscriber list is a must. No matter how many subscribers you have, it’s better to grow an email list full of subscribers.

The more channels you use, the better. With the growing popularity of social media networks, it’s important to combine email marketing and social media marketing and turn your followers into email subscribers.

The days when people used social media platforms only for getting in touch with their friends and family and sharing photos are far behind us.

Social media platforms have great sales potential, so it’s no wonder that 91% of U.S. businesses use social media marketing for business promotion. Most companies are obsessed with the number of followers, and just a few of them put effort into turning these followers into email subscribers.

Why Grow Your Email List with Social Media Marketing?

At first glance, social media platforms are great solutions for businesses that want to raise brand awareness and increase brand loyalty and trust.

But social media marketing can go hand in hand with email marketing and therefore help your business nurture more email leads.

Here are three main reasons to grow an email list with social media marketing:

• Your potential email list subscribers are active on social media: The popularity of social media platforms is constantly growing. With 3.48 billion social media users, your target audience is definitely active on social media. This means being active on social media is a great way to reach them out and draw their attention to your company.

• People are engaged and they love to interact with brands on social media platforms: Social media users want to follow brands they support on social media. According to one report, when people follow your brand on social media followers, they want to learn more about your brand (57%) and keep up with your company’s updates (47%). Thus, it’s more likely that your followers are engaged and ready to be your email list subscribers.

• Social media platforms have many business-specific features for collecting emails: Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have evolved over the last few years. Since more and more businesses use social media networks to get in touch with their customers, the number of business-friendly features is also increasing. This gives brands an opportunity to make the most out of features like clickable links or question stickers and grow their email list, for example.

Now that you know the importance of using social media for growing your email list, let’s understand which social media channels are the best for collecting emails as having a social media presence on each platform can be a daunting task.

Which Social Media Channels to Use for Collecting Emails?

Facebook, X (Twitter), Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Quora… The number of social media channels is huge and it can be difficult for brands to decide which sites to consider for your business promotion.

To grow your email list, it makes sense to tailor your social media presence to the social media networks where your potential email list subscribers spend a lot of time. 

The latest Social Media Marketing Industry report says that Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are still the most used social media platforms among businesses of all sizes and niches.

If you use at least one of the above-mentioned social media platforms for business purposes, this article is right for you as we’re going to focus on 9 proven ways to grow your email list with social media marketing.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

9 Ways to Grow Your Email List with Social Media Marketing

1. Write a Descriptive Bio Section

With the attention span of 8 seconds, it can be difficult to grab and hold your customers’ attention. When it comes to social media marketing, you need to make it easier for your followers and visitors to understand what action you want them to take.

Whether you promote your business on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, writing a descriptive bio section is an important part of achieving your business goals with social media marketing. If attracting new email subscribers is high on your list, just tell your fans about it!

An example is to encourage viewers to take action and helps interested fans sign up for the email list with ease – they just have to tap on the link and get redirected to its landing page.

The bottom line? The easier the sign up process is, the more subscribers will join your list.

2. Add Relevant CTA Buttons

Since more and more businesses use social media marketing for brand promotion, all popular social media sites have call-to-action buttons to add to your business profile and therefore help to direct followers to take actions that meet your business goal.

The good news is that CTA buttons can help you grow your email list, too.

With the right CTA buttons, it is easier for your business to turn your social media followers into email subscribers, so it’s an important (and easy) way to grow your email list with social media marketing.

3. Ask Followers to Share Their Emails

Emails bombard users from all sides. In fact, an average internet user receives 121 emails daily, so they are less likely to sign up for another email list unless you ask them to do it and offer something valuable in exchange for their email addresses.

To grow your email list, think about the benefits you can offer your subscribers. For example:

• Send individual promotions and discounts
• Give access to exclusive content
• Solve customer requests privately

A great way to ask followers for their emails is to provide customer service. However, it’s a good idea to use direct message communication to protect their online privacy and prevent data breaches.

With the growing number of junk emails people receive daily, businesses should make sure they offer something valuable to their email subscribers. Once you know what are the benefits of being on your list, tell your social media followers about these advantages and then ask them to sign up for your newsletter.

4. Promote Lead Magnets

As an email marketer, you know the importance of lead magnets. When you offer an incentive for your customers in exchange for their email addresses, they are more likely to share their contact information.

While many businesses create eye-catching landing pages to promote their lead magnets on the web, just a few of them use social media marketing to spread the word about these incentives where their fans are actively engaged. Thus, it’s important to choose a lead magnet that can hook your audience’s attention and write about it in social media posts.

Lead magnets come in all sizes and forms, and some of them include:

• Discounts
• Trial subscription
• Branded freebies
• Premium content
• Webinars
• E-books

Spreading the word about your lead magnets is a great way to build brand awareness.

5. Work with Opinion Leaders  

Social media platforms allow common people to share their views and thoughts without being interrupted, so the number of social media opinion leaders is growing. Today, influencers come in all sizes and shapes: from world-known celebrities with an army of fans to nano-influencers who are influential within their community of close friends.

Working with opinion leaders is one of the most effective word-of-mouth marketing tactics brands can use these days. To grow your email list, consider working with opinion leaders who promote your brand within their following base.

Most users trust social media influencers as much as their friends and family, so it can help to get more leads. However, you need to collaborate with influencers who meet your views and values.

Once you’ve found a relevant influencer on social media, use an email account finder to find contact information. This allows you to stand out from the crowd of other brands who want to secure collaboration opportunities with this influencer and send an email without getting buried in their inbox on social media.

Don’t have the budget to hire social media influencers? Invest time and effort into improving customer satisfaction and turn your customers into brand advocates.

If you aim at improving your Net Promoter Score (NPS), it’s more likely your customers are satisfied with your brand which means they are happy to recommend your business to their friends and family.

6. Organize Social Media Contests

Social media contests are extremely popular among users. One report says that an average giveaway gets 64x more comments and 3.4x more likes than a regular social media post. This means organizing contests allow you to achieve your business goals faster. Moreover, it’s you who decides on the participation requirements, so you can ask your participants to ‘sign up for our email list for a chance to win your prize.

If you have a Facebook shop, it can be a good idea to organize a contest and give away your products in exchange for email sign ups.

Obviously, all customers are different, so it can be a good idea to create certificates so that your winners can choose prizes of their choice. By giving away gift cards, you can attract even more participants which means more email sign ups.

And here’s another example of a social media contest that allows you to grow your email list. Although the company doesn’t ask participants to share their emails, users need to send their photos via email which helps to collect customers’ email addresses

Before planning your contest, make sure you know the best time to run it as organizing a contest means nothing unless you have potential participants to take part in your giveaway. With the right social media calendar tools, it’s easy to manage your content and therefore find a good spot for organizing a contest that your users will love.

7. Include Clickable Links

Email sign up process must be intuitive and easy to give wonderful results. Thus, it’s important to make the most out of social media features and include relevant clickable links where relevant. For example, you can link to your lead generation landing page where your followers can share their contact information quickly.

Each social media platform has its rules for using links. Writing a Facebook or Twitter post, you can add a clickable link in your caption.

But if you use Instagram for business purposes, you can add one clickable link in the bio section or include clickable links in Instagram Stories if your account is verified or has over 10k followers.

For example, you can use the Instagram bio section to tell visitors how to get their questions answered – just add a link to your website with a live chat on it and ask visitors to share personal contact information like an email address in exchange for accessing it.

In short, your clickable link can help you grow your email list and increase user satisfaction. Thus, it’s important to show off your creativity and find interesting ways to use links for email sign ups.

8. Make the Most out of Ephemeral Content

The phenomenon of ephemeral content – with a lifespan of 24 hours only, has become extremely popular over the last few years. Today, stories grow 15x faster than feeds as they create a sense of urgency that encourages people to take action faster.

However, not all social media platforms offer this type of content to their users. In short, you can publish stories on Instagram or Facebook. To get emails from Instagrammers, you can tell your followers about an important event via Instagram Stories and add a clickable link so that they can share their email addresses and get notified in time.

It allows you to find a relevant CTA button for your link and therefore tell viewers about the link so that interested followers can tap on it and sign up for your email. After all, ephemeral content disappears fast, so users don’t have much time to think about your invitation or offer and they are more likely to take action in order not to miss out on it.

9. Run Lead-Generating Ads  

With the number of businesses that use social media marketing for business purposes, it’s getting harder to reach your target audience and convince your potential customers to join your email list. However, social media advertising allows you to target the right people who don’t follow your brand on social media and invite them to take the desired action, e.g. join your email list.

Moreover, all social media platforms offer lead generation ads that are aimed at turning users into leads. An example?

And here’s how outdoor gear and apparel company Rock/Creek (@RockCreek) used the Lead Generation Card in a Promoted Tweet campaign to capture the email addresses of people who wanted to enter a drawing to win a free pair of Chaco sandals. The campaign saw a 4.6% engagement rate and generated over 1,700 new email contacts in less than one week.

Finally, Instagram also offers ad objectives to meet your business goals. For example, Nubank ran Instagram Stories ads to increase the number of users registered for banking/credit card products on its website.

The best thing about running lead generation ads is that you get an opportunity to interact with people outside of your following who are interested in your business. It helps to reach more potential customers who want to learn more about your products and services via email.

Conclusion

Social media platforms have evolved over the years. Not only do social media users show their interest in interacting with brands, but also platforms roll out business-friendly features and tools that help brands improve communication with their customers. As a result, you can grow your email list with social media marketing.

If you haven’t started using social media marketing for more sign ups, it’s high time to jump on the bandwagon and turn your followers into email subscribers and therefore tell more people about your amazing newsletter that is worth signing up.

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