5 Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List with Facebook

Growing your email marketing list can be a tedious and time-consuming task. However, without a robust email list, sending out a weekly or even monthly newsletter is an exercise in futility. If you're tired of idly waiting for subscribers to join your email marketing list over time, you can reel them in to purposefully grow an email list that any brand would be proud of. Related: Why newsletters are a great marketing tool When it comes to growing your email marketing list, you might not have to look further than your own Facebook brand page. Though it's often underutilized for this purpose, Facebook has the potential to grow your email marketing list by simply implementing a few smart strategies. Here are 5 ideas to help you get started. Run a paid advertising campaign By running a paid advertising campaign, you can gather useful email addresses from individuals who are already interested in your brand—without pestering them to enter their contact details. It's a great way to generate new leads with less friction. It's important, though, to offer some form of incentive that attracts potential clients. By offering a free sample or trial, you're giving readers something before asking for a favor in return. This builds trust and good will, making it more likely that your audience will perceive your brand's messages in a positive light. Spy on relevant pages Gain some insider knowledge by joining relevant Facebook groups in order to "spy" on their contents. Facebook users are great at connecting with one another to share recommendations and word of mouth. If you monitor these conversations, you can better determine what they're looking for and how to target them effectively. For example, you might discover what types of incentives or promotions they're most interested in. This guerrilla market research will help you tighten up your messaging as you craft better emails. Edit your call-to-action button Utilizing Facebook's call-to-action button underneath your brand's cover image is a great way to grab info from potential clients or those who wish to receive emails from you. To use it, simply click on Edit Button, select Get In Touch, and change it to Sign Up. This will redirect Facebook users to a page on your website that will display an email sign-up page. Don't forget to reiterate the incentive or free offer on the webpage so they're encouraged to seal the deal. Add a jab for a right hook Many brands make the mistake of asking their Facebook users for something too soon. Before feeling comfortable and confident enough to ask your audience for a favor, you need to jab before the hook. Meaning: you need to offer your followers informative, entertaining and value-added content before asking them to subscribe to your newsletter. If they know they can consistently expect useful, valuable content from you, they'll be much happier to provide their email address. Don't ask them to take a chance on you while they're still in the dark. Set up a "Subscribe to newsletter" tab Make accumulating email addresses easier by adding a "Subscribe to newsletter" tab to your Facebook page. We recommend opening a MailChimp account, because the integration is easy to set up. Then, if someone chooses to subscribe to your newsletter via Facebook, your email address list is automatically updated in MailChimp. It's pretty neat, but it does mean that you'd need to use MailChimp as your email marketing service. If you're already using another email marketing service, ask them whether they support this integration. Gathering emails for your marketing efforts is vital for reaching and nurturing your audience, so it pays to be innovative with your approach. Since you already own and manage a Facebook page, it only makes sense to take advantage of the tools it offers. Then it's up to you to pull those readers down the funnel with captivating email newsletters and content. And with oodles of free templates and intuitive drag-and-drop design, our free newsletter software can help you do just that.