With so much focus on social media marketing, it’s easy to overlook that email marketing is still alive and working well.
In fact, according to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing yields an estimated 4,300 percent ROI. AdStation reports that every dollar spent on email marketing offers a return of $44.25.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to zero in on members of your target audience. This is why you want to continually build your list. Facebook is a great source for doing just that.
Facebook has the numbers
For so many people, Facebook has become the ultimate one-stop where they can get information on everything from intimate updates from friends to information on their favorite brands. Facebook now has more than 1.23 billion monthly active users, 945 million mobile users and 757 million daily users. With numbers like that, it is common sense to tap these users to gather new email addresses and potential customers.
Create a sign-up form
If you haven’t done so already, create a sign-up form on your Facebook page. Make it easy for those who already are connected to your brand to easily subscribe to your list. Many email providers such as MailChimp, Constant Contact and GoDaddy provide step-by-step instructions on the process. Go to the support portion of your email provider to get information about how to add a form to your Facebook page.
Once you have the form in place, encourage subscribers by providing information along with the link.
Add an incentive
To further encourage subscriptions, take time to create an incentive. It’s not necessary that you give something away; you can just provide a link to “learn more.” For example, say you have a conference or speaking engagement coming up in three or six months. Promote that now and let your audience know that if they sign up today, they will be the first to learn the event details.
If you do offer e-commerce, consider providing something special for those who share their information: discount on purchase, a value-added thank you or in-store coupon.
Whenever you create an incentive, make sure you have a good visual and the call to action is clear.
Provide exclusive content
Even if you don’t have a product to discount, it does not mean your business doesn’t have something vital to offer. To gather sign-ups, provide exclusive content for users.
Solve their problems. Be their go-to source. Content could be a downloadable guide, e-book, or even a recipe that you won’t provide anywhere else. Get creative and think about what you have to offer. Remember your target audience and what it expects from you.
Host a webinar
Facebook is a great forum to get the word out about webinars. When you host a webinar, you can collect information about the participants and add them to your list. As with incentives, whenever you advertise your webinar, make the promo visually enticing. Be clear about what you will offer during the webinar and make the call to action easy to find. Make sure the time of the webinar is front and center and take into consideration time zone differences.
Contests, sweepstakes and giveaways
Facebook used to be a great source for getting out the word about sweepstakes and contests. Changes at Facebook altered the way those promotions got shared with “Friends.” Today, only 11 percent of users share sweepstakes and other giveaways.
However, Convince and Convert suggests there is still a way to get to this group of users. They say using the “frictionless sharing” based on Facebook Open Graph is much more effective. As they explain, “The Open Graph Frictionless Sharing feature is automatic. Frictionless sharing will not require your participants to click on a button in order to share their participation in your sweepstakes.
Instead, once they have installed your Facebook app and have accepted the automatic ‘share’ dialog, their participation will be shared automatically on their timeline as well as their friends’ newsfeeds, and tickers.”
Once you’ve got ’em, use ’em
Continued growth of your email subscriber list is a vital element in the success of your business. Once you’ve taken the time to gather new subscribers, remember to use that data to your advantage. According to Capterra, there are 251 email marketing software solutions currently on the market that can get your email marketing message out.
Always keep in mind the mobile audience and optimize your mailings to be read on a mobile device. Data from Litmus Software states 33 percent of email opens occurred on an iPhone. TechCrunch found that 75 percent of Gmail’s 900 million users access their accounts on mobile devices. Thus, it is still very possible to reach your target audience via email. They just may not ever read it on a desktop.
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