Email marketing and social media aren’t an either/or situation. You should always be using both and that includes efforts to grow your list. Listen to this episode to find out how you can use social media to attract new subscribers.

00:23 Andy Shore: Welcome back to another episode of Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer. We’re continuing to talk about growing your list. It’s important to do, we’re telling you all the ways to do it. And today’s topic is social media. So Daniel, why should you use social media to grow your list?

00:38 Daniel Miller: Well, first of all, I think Facebook recently posted that 2.4 million people go on to Facebook every month.

00:47 AS: I was gonna say every second.

00:48 DM: And I think 1.4, I think 1.4 million go on it at least once a day.

00:52 AS: Mmm, hmm.

00:53 DM: So if that’s not a big enough reason as to why you should leverage social media to grow your list, I don’t know what is. But in a way, it’s a little bit of an addiction and it’s a little scary, but when it comes down to it you really wanna try to surround your subscriber with as many possible channels and ways as possible. Alright, somebody is already following you on Facebook, it’s a great opportunity to try to leverage that little bit of trust to maybe get them to sign up to your email list if they haven’t already done so. It’s a mistake to think that just ’cause they’re falling you on Facebook, that’s okay. Let’s knock on wood if Facebook tomorrow doesn’t wake up, what’s gonna happen with all of your followers. I have some friends that have over 100,000 followers on Facebook, their sales are going great and they’re really trying hard to get all of these people as a lead on their emails because again, they don’t want Facebook to have as much control as they do on that list on that audience. They wanna control as much as they can of it.

01:50 AS: Absolutely, and think about it. Someone comes to your website, and you have that sign-up form, you’re only getting some of the people to come to your website to sign up to that form and that’s that. But if you were on a social campaign to grow your list and you’re posting about it, that gets shared, retweeted, whatever it may be, that grows beyond the reach you already have, because that’s the nature of social media and it opens up new opportunities to expand your reach when other people share it, so you’re getting more people than you normally would and it’s gonna help you grow that list more quickly. So now that we talked about why, let’s get into how to grow your list. And I think the one that most people might be familiar with is a signup form on your Facebook page.

02:32 DM: Exactly, and I think recently, Facebook has now a new limit, right? I don’t remember exactly how much it is, but I think you need a certain amount of likes before you can actually have a sign-up form on your page. So again, this is another reason that you wanna make sure that you’re not just relying on Facebook because they just changed that rule, I think a couple months ago. What other rule could they possibly change? So putting a sign-up form on your Facebook once now that you have the amount of likes to do that. Go ahead and do so, ’cause again, you don’t wanna rely on that one channel, you wanna try to bring them on to a channel that you fully control. And also, it’s something that you can send a push notification to. Meaning, when you post something on Facebook, Facebook doesn’t notify all of your followers saying, “Hey this business now posted.” Sometimes they do, they say, “Hey, so and so, that hasn’t posted in a while, just released that.” But that’s kind of like an arbitrary algorithm that sets in. In regards to your emails, nine times out of 10 it’s the first thing that we check in the morning, at lunch and right before we go to bed. So when you’re sending out an email you’re directly communicating with the user in an inbox that they’re probably checking.

03:44 AS: Definitely, and be on Facebook with Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. I’m sure you’ve all seen that phrase, link in bio on all of those places, but you’ve got a landing page sign up form for your newsletters, or whatever it may be, on your website, throw that link in your bio, and give people a chance to sign up from all the different sites and touch points you have with them. It’s gonna work, it’s gonna help grow your lists and followers on one place, aren’t necessarily subscribers in another or followers in another. So, like Daniel said, “Bring it all into where you have the most control and where they’re gonna pay the most attention.” And as we wrap up, I wanna flip it a little bit because it’s not just social that can grow your email. You can also use email to grow your social. Benchmark has social media templates that you can integrate with those channels and send out your most five recent updates, ten recent updates from any of those channels and say, “Hey, if you want more of this content, subscribe, like, follow, whatever it may be.” And then like we said, it works both ways. It’s a two-way road and you can use email to grow your social, social to grow your email, and your list is gonna grow no matter what, your reach is gonna grow no matter what.

04:54 DM: Yeah, and again, going back to that, we can definitely send that email and that kind of gets pushed on to it but like we’ve been saying, you don’t just wanna rely on one channel. You wanna diversify and having your list being pushed to Facebook and trying to generate more likes through that, allows you to also send the same message or a different perspective of that message that may click a little different with that follower on a social media that then has them subscribe to something else on your list. So yeah, I think that’s about it for…

05:25 AS: Yeah, definitely. Thanks, everyone for listening. We’ll catch you next time as we continue our conversation on growing your list. We’ll catch you next time, next time, next time, next time.