Your social media networks can be a major source of acquiring new email addresses for your subscriber list. It’s a myth that social is “killing email” or that social users prefer to use social networks exclusively to communicate. The truth is that most users prefer to use multiple channels to receive information from brands, using some channels for certain types of information and accessing those channels during different periods of their day.
Why acquire the email address of a user already following you on a social network? Increased engagement. Some research has shown that the vast majority of users following your Twitter stream or that “like” your Facebook page are unengaged. For some brands, less that 1% interact. More than 90% never see a post, and only 5% ever return to a page that they have “liked.”
It’s not that these users aren’t interested in your brand. It’s just the nature of the flood of content they receive from their social channels. These users are potentially your best email subscribers if you can make them aware of your program’s benefits.
Working a call-to-action into your content calendar at regular intervals is crucial. Crafting a post to let your “fans” know that there are many distinct benefits to subscribing to your email list will allow them to connect with you in a deeper way. The post should be clear about why the user might sign up and can link directly to the email sign up form on your site. Alternatively, referring the user directly to a custom tab within Facebook with your email sign up form will help increase conversions by decreasing drop off since the user never leaves Facebook.
In a similar manner, Twitter is a tremendous resource to leverage for email acquisition. Tactics similar to those leveraged on Facebook should be applied to Twitter as well, although adjusting for the nuances of that network. Follow these email acquisition 2.0 tactics for Twitter.
- Increased frequency of posting is acceptable and necessary when compared with Facebook. Make sure to post a link to your email sign-up form during different parts of the day.
- Your message on the benefits of your email program needs to be more concise than your similar posts on Facebook.
- Although you can not create the sign-up form directly on Twitter as you can with Facebook tabs, tactics such as making the sign-up form look more like the Twitter environment have proven to increase conversions for some campaigns.
