15 Ways to Grow Your Email List on Social Media

From Facebook to LinkedIn, social media platforms are the perfect avenue for growing your email list. Tailoring your strategies to each platform will make your list-building even more effective. 

From major enterprises to mom-and-pop shops, brands worldwide leverage social media to grow their businesses. Typically, they focus on boosting brand awareness and directing some web traffic to their websites. However, many brands miss a key opportunity: turning their social media friends into email subscribers. 

Your social media pages are the ideal places to look for email subscribers. They are already engaged users who have demonstrated an interest in your brand and the content you share — why wouldn’t they want to hear from you in their email inbox, too? 

While social media typically has a broader audience, plenty of those users are likely interested in targeted, personalized content from your brand. That’s where email marketing comes in.

Find your audience’s preferred platforms and grow a following of interested customers. Once you do, work on getting them to also sign up for your email list using these effective list-building strategies across the top social media platforms. 

Each social media platform functions differently and attracts a different audience, so tailor your approach to each separately. With customized tactics across platforms, you’ll grow your email list on social media in no time. 

Quick wins on Facebook

Facebook remains the world’s number one social media platform, with over three billion users. Its content is incredibly varied, making it an ideal choice for brands in any industry. 

Try these strategies to grow your email list on Facebook.

Add a sign-up button to your business page

Like most other social media platforms, Facebook allows brands to create designated Business Pages. These pages have some extra features compared to basic personal pages. 

You can leverage your Facebook business page for email marketing by creating an email list sign-up button. That way, anyone who arrives on your Facebook page and wants to hear more from your brand can easily sign up for your email list.

In your Facebook account, select your page, click the three dots, then select “Add action button.” Choose “Sign Up,” then enter the URL of your email list sign-up page. Select “Save” and “Publish Page” to launch your new sign-up button. 

Create posts that make people want more

Facebook users don’t randomly decide to search your business page and sign up for your email list. You need to draw them in with relevant, enticing content that makes them want more from your brand. 

Instead of creating content specifically geared toward promoting your email list, focus on making high-quality posts that stand out. Tease additional content that is available in your newsletter or email promotions. Those posts will attract users and persuade some of them to join your email list. 

Use Facebook’s lead-generation ads

Facebook is a robust paid ad platform with options for every type of campaign you might want to run, including ones focused on boosting email sign-ups. The platform’s lead ads with forms are specifically geared toward collecting subscriber information like email addresses.

You can target your lead generation ads toward users with characteristics that fit your ideal customer profile. Then, those users will see the ad and can click to fill out a sign-up form for your email list — all within the platform. With lead generation ads, they can share their contact information with you in just a few clicks. 

Share exclusive content previews

You can also entice your Facebook followers to sign up for your email list by sharing exclusive content previews. Make some posts that only contain a portion of the interesting or useful content you share with your email subscribers, then encourage your followers to sign up for your email list to read the rest. If your content is intriguing enough, many users will share their email addresses to see more. 

Instagram growth tricks

Despite also being owned by Meta, Instagram is a very different platform from Facebook, requiring a unique approach. Try these tricks to grow your email list on social media using Instagram. 

Make your bio link work harder

You can only include one link in your Instagram bio, so choose wisely. Brands often use their website homepage, but you can do better than that. If your main focus is growing your email list, you can add a link directly to an email sign-up landing page. 

However, if that’s not what you want to devote your one bio link to, you can embed a link leading to a landing page with several links, including your email sign-up page. Linktree is a popular tool for this, but you can also create your own landing page. With this approach, interested users click on the link in your bio, select the link they’re interested in, and end up on the right page. 

Use Stories to drive sign-ups

Instagram Stories is Instagram’s answer to Snapchat. These posts are photos or videos that appear as a slideshow on your page and disappear after 24 hours. Using Stories has several advantages for brands, especially when building their email list. 

Stories can include links that direct users right to your sign-up form. They also appear at the top of users’ feeds — above any traditional posts from accounts they follow — so you can get excellent visibility on your Stories. Stories are generally informal and less polished than posts on your main feed, helping you humanize your brand to your followers. 

Create Instagram-only offers

You may be tempted to share a fantastic promotional offer on every social media platform and other marketing channels. While that’s often the right choice, keeping your offers exclusive to one platform is sometimes better. 

In this case, creating some Instagram-exclusive offers can show your IG followers you appreciate them and want to share something special with just them. Tie those offers into your email sign-ups, and you will have created compelling promotions that engage your audience and help grow your email list on social media. The exclusivity is part of what makes these offers appealing, boosting your email sign-ups. 

Share sneak peeks of email content

Like on Facebook, you may find it useful to share previews of your email content on Instagram. These sneak peeks can help persuade users who are hesitant to share their email addresses so they can access the full content. 

LinkedIn list building

It’s easy to overlook LinkedIn as a social media platform for brands, but it’s actually a handy tool. Once you create a LinkedIn Company Page, you can drive brand awareness and generate leads — like new email subscribers — through the platform. 

Implement these tactics to grow your email list on LinkedIn. 

Optimize your company page

Every detail you include in your LinkedIn Company Page is important, so take the time to optimize them. If you haven’t already done so, add a logo, which will function as your brand’s profile picture on the platform. It should be crisp and recognizable for your brand. 

Then, choose a snappy tagline that summarizes your brand. Your tagline will appear right under your company name and logo, so it should appeal to your target audience.  

Follow the prompts LinkedIn suggests to add a location, follow relevant pages, and invite connections to follow your page. All of these steps will help make your brand page more visible. To optimize for search engines, add keywords to your description and a branded cover image that promotes a new product launch or other important news about your brand. 

The last step in optimizing your LinkedIn page is adding a custom button for email sign-ups. Change your profile CTA to “Sign up” or “Register” and connect it to your email sign-up landing page to grow your list from your LinkedIn page. 

Share professional insights that hook readers

Your industry experience provides unique professional insights LinkedIn users would probably love to read. Share some behind-the-scenes details to help people understand what it’s like to work in your field, or how-to’s that might interest your customers. Posts like these draw in your target audience and convince them to follow your page.

They’ll want to read more of your insights, which can entice them to sign up for your email list. 

Use articles to showcase expertise

To persuade LinkedIn users to follow your page, you want to show them you are an expert in your field. One of the best ways to do that is to publish articles that highlight your expertise in an accessible way. 

Focus on sharing insights your target audience can use to solve their problems. The more relevant and unique your articles are, the better they will perform on LinkedIn. These articles can draw in more followers, some of whom will likely sign up for your email list to receive even more of your content. 

Connect with industry partners

Connect with other businesses, such as your industry partners, to grow your LinkedIn network. Staying active on the platform and engaging with other users will help make your page more visible, boosting your ability to grow your email list on social media. 

Other platforms

Though Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are likely the top platforms for growing your email list, you can also be successful with social media marketing on other platforms.

Lead Landing Pages

When possible, insert links in your social media marketing content directing users to lead landing pages. These landing pages, including email list sign-up forms, help you gather contact information from interested customers and data about how your digital marketing efforts are performing. 

Exclusive Content Subscriptions 

Several social media platforms now allow creators and brands to create exclusive content subscriptions. Interested followers agree to pay a monthly fee to see additional content from the brand, such as extra posts, exclusive live streams, webinars, or behind-the-scenes footage. 

For brands, these content subscriptions can be a source of revenue while also fostering a deeper relationship with some of your most engaged customers. Your content subscribers are also great candidates for signing up for your email list since they’re clearly interested in more content from your brand. 

Bonus Content, Engagement Offers

Another way to get more out of your social media pages is to make engagement offers that reward followers for interacting with your page or content. For example, brands often launch contests or giveaways on social media to draw in a larger audience. You can require users to sign up for your email list as part of the entry rules. You’ll boost your social media engagement and email list subscribers simultaneously. 

Making it all work together

Like any other marketing effort, growing your email list on social media requires some experimentation before you find what works best for your brand. Choose social media and email marketing tools that help you track your results. Then, adjust your approach to emphasize the tactics with the biggest impact. 

Remember to keep your content fresh, though. Social media is constantly evolving, and users want to see variety in your content. Find a formula that works, but adapt it as necessary to stay current and interesting. 

Next steps for success

Social media is an underutilized avenue for growing email lists. These platforms offer a way to reach broad audiences and connect with users who might be interested in your content through other channels, like email. 

Start with one social media platform instead of overwhelming yourself by trying to do everything all at once. Grow your audience and promote your email content to them. If you publish engaging, relevant social media content, you’ll get plenty of email subscribers from there. Rely on email marketing tools to make things easier. Constant Contact includes comprehensive email list-building tools to help you grow and manage your contacts, including through social media. Sign up for a free trial today to get started. 

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