How to build email subscribers from Social Media

I remember reading an article years ago about email being dead.

Well…long live email.

When you share something out on social media channels typically less than 5% of people actually get to see it.

If you’re sharing on email around 20% of people will see it.

And…

….there’s also another difference.

Seeing something on social media is like seeing a billboard as you’re driving by.  With email you stop at the billboard!

Email is and will continue to play an important role in Internet marketing.  Look at the research below from eConsultancy which shows that email is still the highest converting channel over all other online marketing channels!

So how does social media contribute towards building email subscribers?

Social media has many uses but one is a channel which you can use to build your audience.

As you build relationships within your audience more of your audience will pay attention to what you share and end up on your website.

You don’t typically sell anything on social media.

You build an audience and relationships and then bring people back to your home base (your website)

This could be to buy your product or…

..if they are not ready to buy then you could encourage them to become an email subscriber so you can continue to market to them.

If someone sees a tweet about you this is the start of a potential relationship.  But it’s probably too early for them to buy something from you and that is why email is so useful and powerful to help build that relationship over time.

So how does social media contribute to growth of emails subscribers…

Let’s see… here are 4 tactics to consider:

1. Pin content on social channels directing to landing pages

Some of the channels (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) allow you to pin content to the top of your feed.  This is a golden opportunity to offer something of value that will encourage people visiting your profile to visit your website.

For example, create a pinned post with a nice image that directs people back to an opt-in on your website.

Mike from SocialQuant has the following pinned to Twitter:

At the time of writing this got over 5,000 clicks with 2,000 email opt-ins.  That’s a lot of opt-ins for a pinned post!!

2.  Change your profile image to promote your opt-in

If you look at Kim Garst’s Facebook page you’ll see that her profile image promotes an opt-in.  If you click the ‘shop now’ button this brings you to a landing page.

The people that see this image is not typically your existing fans.  This is targeted at new fans and I’m sure Kim gets opt-ins every day.

You’re building fans but also building email subscribers.  Ideally you should encourage fans to become email subscribers and vice versa!

3.  Share more content that results in website visitors

If you can get more traffic from social media to your website you have a much better chance of increasing your email subscribers.

You have created great content so if you can get more visitors some of those visitors will want to get more content from you.

An example of how you can get more traffic is using evergreen content.

Evergreen content is content that doesn’t run out of date.  In the following you can see a queue of content set up using Edgar.  With Edgar you create buckets of content.  For example ‘Evergreen posts’ are blog posts that don’t go out of date.  There is a constant feed of existing blog content which is shared which results in more regular traffic to your existing blog content.

You’re building fans but also building email subscribers.  Ideally you should encourage fans to become email subscribers and vice versa!

3.  Share more content that results in website visitors

If you can get more traffic from social media to your website you have a much better chance of increasing your email subscribers.

You have created great content so if you can get more visitors some of those visitors will want to get more content from you.

An example of how you can get more traffic is using evergreen content.

Evergreen content is content that doesn’t run out of date.  In the following you can see a queue of content set up using Edgar.  With Edgar you create buckets of content.  For example ‘Evergreen posts’ are blog posts that don’t go out of date.  There is a constant feed of existing blog content which is shared which results in more regular traffic to your existing blog content.