Social and email: the ultimate power couple. Each on their own can yield fantastic results. But when you put them together? That’s when the magic happens.
Social can boost your click-through rates up to 158%, and social sharing can increase your reach by 24%. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Anyone can achieve amazing results with social and email, and the first step is turning your social followers into email subscribers.
Why is it important to get my social followers on my email list?
Think about it this way: your Facebook posts will only be seen by your followers 2% of the time, but your emails will reach them 90% of the time.
Email is a direct line of communication between you and your audience, and the people who sign up for your list are your biggest fans. Through email, you can promote your products and services to the people who care about you the most. And, not surprisingly, these are the same people who will buy from you and become loyal, long-term customers.
Now, let’s talk about how you can get those relationships off to a great start today.
Create an exclusive Facebook community for your subscribers
If you have an existing subscriber list and a social following, this is a perfect way to grow your subscriber list and start building a community at the same time.
First, look at your email analytics to find your most active subscribers – people who regularly open and click your emails. These are the people who are most likely to participate in your community. Create a Facebook Community and send an email invitation to those active subscribers only. Jump in and ask a few questions to greet them and get the conversation started.
Next, tell your social followers about your community. Let them know it’s exclusive to subscribers only, so if they want in they’ll need to sign up to your email list. This way, your community becomes an incentive for people to sign up for your list. Then be sure to add your new subscribers to your community.
You’ll need to moderate and keep conversations going in your community so it remains valuable to your followers. The purpose of any community is to give your audience a place to ask each other questions and get educated. Eventually, your community members could become your very own brand evangelists.
If you’re already collecting email sign ups and you just want a better way of connecting social and email, you can create a referral program like Noah Kagan does for his Email1K course. Everyone who signs up for the course is asked to refer two people. If they do, they get access to the exclusive community. Just another ingenious way of connecting social and email together.
Run a limited-time contest
Contests are one of the most effective ways to boost your email list on social when you have a time budget. Just ask Kristina Allen, an entrepreneur who literally grew her list overnight. Here’s how to ensure your contest is successful.
First, you’ll need a tool like Shortstack, Woobox or Wishpond. Next, choose a limited entry period for your contest. If you want to grow your list fast, choose a shorter period – one week will do. You’ll want to choose a prize that is valuable to your audience. It doesn’t need to be expensive, it just has to be something that your followers actually want.
Create a sign up form for your contest that clearly states what the prize is. On your form, make it clear that anyone who signs up will be added to your email list. Share your sign up form across your social channels, reinforcing the limited time period to enter.
Here’s an example of a Facebook contest Wishpond ran using their own software:
Your work isn’t done once your contest is over. You’ll need to keep your new subscribers engaged. Send them helpful content that introduces them to your business, and let them know how your business can provide solutions for them.
Since the majority of people who sign up for your list won’t be winners, you can offer them a consolation prize or a discount on their first purchase with you. This not only encourages them to buy something, it shows them the value of remaining signed up to your email list.
Promote an incentive offer with Facebook ads
Incentives give people the nudge they need to sign up for your email list. When you promote your incentive offer with Facebook ads, you have the opportunity to get your content in front of exactly the right audiences and collect more subscribers.
No incentive? No worries; you don’t have to author a 40-page ebook. A simple PDF checklist, email course or graphic download will do. Here are more incentive ideas to get you started.
There are a few things you’ll need to do before setting up your Facebook ads. First, decide how you’ll deliver your incentive. If you use a tool like Canva to create a PDF guide, Canva will create a link where your guide can live. You can simply include that link in a welcome email to anyone who signs up.
Next, set up an autoresponder email that will deliver your incentive. Finally, create a simple landing page for your incentive offer. Leadpages is a super effective tool for this – you can set up a landing page in 10 minutes or less!
Now you’re ready to create your Facebook ads. Define your campaign goal (in this case, website conversions), target audience and budget. You have about 90 characters to work with in your Facebook ad copy, so be sure to communicate the biggest benefits of your incentive offer loud and clear. Your link title should be actionable if possible. For example, “Get my free trial” or “Download my free templates.”
Here’s how Marin Software uses Facebook ads to promote their ebook:
Track your results and test new ad copy and images every few months to refresh your campaign. To learn more about Facebook ads, check out Sprout Social’s Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Advertising.
Leverage live social feeds
A live social feed is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a live feed pulled directly from your social channel of choice that updates itself automatically. You can use it in an email to promote user-generated content or to create buzz around a new product or event.
So how can you use a live social feed to turn your social followers into email subscribers? Let’s say you’re using your Instagram account to feature photos of your customers wearing your new line of sunglasses. Tell your social followers that they have a chance to be featured in your social feed. If they want to see the feed for themselves, they can sign up to your email list.
You can send an email with a live social feed any time you want to promote a new product, so consider making it part of your email strategy. To get your social followers even more excited to be featured, make a contest out of it.
Choose one lucky winner from your live social feed to feature weekly, monthly, or however often you send email. You can send the lucky winner a prize, or not – sometimes the possibility of being featured is enough to drive people to participate.
Including Instagram in your live social feed is a great way marry social and email while adding a unique visual component to your email content. Land Rover includes their Instagram feed at the bottom of their emails. Here’s what it looks like.
Start turning your followers into subscribers today
If you’re not turning your social followers into email subscribers, you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity at building lasting relationships with your audience. Test out one of these tips to fast-track your subscriber list growth today.