With Instagram’s popularity, many are now asking if it’s possible to and how to grow your email list with Instagram. While this might sound impossible, it isn’t, and it is a natural evolution of Instagram marketing.
In the last few years, Instagram marketing has gained in popularity for two main reasons: the platform is constantly growing and its users are ready to communicate with brands in-app. With great potential, the community of businesses has reached 25 million business profiles and Instagram presence is a must for any business in any industry.
However, 73% of customers still want to receive brand content via email. With the number of email users growing to 4.2 billion, email marketing is one of the most effective strategies for customer acquisition and retention.
But: Internet users want to stay safe online, so it’s no wonder that people are reluctant to share personal information like email addresses. Just imagine: 733 million email addresses were stolen in 2019. For businesses, it can be difficult to reach their target audience and encourage potential customers to be on their email lists.
The solution? Let Instagram and email marketing work together.
Today, Instagram is not just about spreading the word about your company and products, interacting with potential customers, and growing brand awareness, loyalty, and trust. When done right, you can establish a connection with your target audience and encourage followers to join your email list.
Why Grow Your Email List with Instagram?
Numbers speak volumes, so let’s take a look at the recent Instagram statistics to prove that Instagram is a great place to grow your email list for the following four reasons:
- With over one billion monthly active users, it’s more likely that your potential email subscribers use Instagram.
- Instagrammers are happy to communicate with brands as 80% of them follow at least one business in-app and 200 million visit a business profile daily.
- Instagram has a higher engagement rate than other social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, so you can deliver your brand message to your target audience.
- Since more and more companies use Instagram for business promotion, Instagram has various business-friendly features that can help you collect email signups.
Instagram has great potential, so it can be an alternative source of collecting email addresses from your customers. To do it the right way, here are seven tested ways to grow your email list with Instagram:
1. Spread the Word about Your Newsletter in the Bio
When Instagrammers visit your business profile, the first thing they see is your Instagram bio. It serves as a visit card that tells your visitors and followers about your company. Since modern users have a short attention span of eight seconds, it’s critical to make the most out of this section and tell your visitors about your newsletter if you want to grow your email list.
When creating a perfect Instagram bio that spreads the word about your newsletter, keep in mind that you’re limited to 150 characters and one clickable link.
Any example needed? Here’s how one brand uses its Instagram bio to promote its newsletter and get more email signups:
And here’s how Little Extras Lifestyle has added a call to action to its ‘Name’ field so that it appears bold on the top of its Instagram bio. What is more, the company lists benefits that encourage viewers to sign up for its email list:
To get more email signups, you need to convince both followers and profile visitors to join your email list. Since people can quickly lose interest in your brand content, you need to hook their attention, so your Instagram bio is a perfect place to tell about your newsletter.
2. Link Back to Your Lead Generation Landing Page
Not all companies can afford to dedicate their Instagram bios to newsletters. Since users are limited to 150 characters, many of them make the most out of one clickable link and add valuable information on their website.
For example, if you are looking to grow your email list, you can link back to your lead generation landing page that has information about your newsletter, an eye-catching call to action button, and an easy-to-use field for users to enter their email addresses.
Check out this example from Frank Body. Once Instagrammers tap on its Instagram bio link, they get redirected to its lead generation landing page that explains the benefits of being on the email list and has a sign up form:
3. Add an Email Button to Your Business Profile
The days when posting photos and videos was enough to keep your audience engaged are far behind us. Customer demands have risen. Today, people contact brands on social media and they expect to hear back from you within 60 minutes.
If you don’t provide customer support on Instagram and your followers write comments or send you Direct Messages in order to inquire about your brand, you can always use email finder tools to get their personal emails and solve their requests via email.
However, you can add your email address as a contact option so that interested Instagrammers could reach out to you via email, just like GAP did it in the example below:
Users have different contact preferences for communication. When you provide your Instagram visitors with various contact options and list an email address as one of the ways to get in touch with your brand, chances are that more customers will contact you via email. This means you can encourage Instagrammers to share their email addresses without putting much time or effort.
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4. Tell About the Benefits of Being on Your Email List
When people follow your brand on Instagram, they are interested in learning more about your company. If you are thinking of ways in which you can turn your followers into email subscribers, it’s a good idea to add informative posts about your email subscription to your Instagram content strategy.
You can create a series of posts that tell about the benefits of being on your email list or invite followers to join your email list from time to time.
Example? Tell that you send company news and updates to your email list:
Or make your email subscribers to be the first ones to get your exclusive deals:
No matter what benefits of being on your email list you have, they must stimulate your target audience to sign up. If you would like to tell more about the benefits of your email list and keep your audience engaged, consider publishing Instagram video posts as Instagrammers love video content. Moreover, you can create video posts with ease if you use an Instagram video editor like some covered in this post on video marketing tools.
5. Include a CTA in Your Caption
If you tell followers about your email list, that’s great. However, it’s not enough to encourage your potential subscribers to join your email list. Most people want to be guided on what to do next, so writing compelling Instagram captions and including well-written CTA copies is of the utmost importance.
Check out the example below:
It doesn’t take much time or effort to understand that the Instagram influencer invites her following to join the email list. What is more, she tells fans how to sign up for her email list without putting much effort.
6. Make the Most Out of Instagram Stories Features
Over the last four years, Instagram Stories have gained in popularity. Any proof needed? 500 million people use Instagram Stories daily, businesses create one-third of the most viewed stories, and 96% of marketers plan to create more stories in the future.
What is the secret? With a lifespan of 24 hours, Instagram Stories create a certain sense of urgency that encourages viewers to take action faster. Want to know the best part? You can use Instagram Stories for lead nurturing and convert your engaged viewers into email subscribers. Moreover, there are several Instagram Stories features that make the process easier.
First, consider using an Instagram Stories clickable link. Not only can you tell about your email list, but you can also include a link to a field where interested users can leave their emails.
NB: To include clickable Instagram Stories links, you need to get verified on Instagram or gain 10k followers first as this feature isn’t available for all users.
Second, you can use the question sticker that helps to gather customer feedback. But if you seek to collect user emails, you can ask viewers to share their email addresses in the field and add these emails to your list.
Instagram Stories are popular among users, so the company rolls out business-specific features that help companies achieve their business goals. Moreover, you can unleash your creativity and use these features to collect emails.
7. Organize an Instagram Sweepstakes
There’s no better (and faster) way to boost engagement than running an Instagram contest. Why? People love free stuff and they are ready to complete the participation requirements for a chance to win something valuable.
Although most companies ask participants to like and comment on the contest photo, you can change the requirements and ask people to join your email list. Check out how to do it:
To get more signups, you need to attract more participants. How to do it? Offer valuable prizes! Although you can provide winners with brand freebies, you’d better use a certificate maker to create gift cards so that your participants can choose the gifts of their choice.
But if you don’t have ‘subscribe to our email list’ in the participation requirements, you can still add several people to your email list when winners claim their prizes via email. Here’s how to do it:
So, You’ve More Email Subscribers. Now What?
Instagram offers many ways to grow your email list. However, there are several steps you need to take if you desire to communicate with your email subscribers and establish long-term connections with them:
- Verify email addresses. For a variety of reasons, not all people who join your email list share their valid email addresses. If you strive to run effective email marketing campaigns, you need to check email addresses and make sure that you have active emails from real people who are interested in receiving your brand updates via email.
- Re-engage your email list. If you have a solid email list, that’s great. But you need to pay close attention to the open rate as this metric shows that your subscribers are real people who are interested in your company. Before sending emails, re-engage your email list as it helps to improve email deliverability and therefore allows you to achieve better results.
- Send welcome emails. Once you’ve built your email list, it’s also important to keep your email subscribers engaged. Thus, it’s a good idea to thank Instagrammers for joining your email list with the help of welcome emails. To increase brand loyalty and give your subscribers to check your email newsletter, you can include a brand reward like a promo code or discount.
Have you used Instagram for growing your email list? What tactic would you recommend to get more email signups?
Hero photo by Bruno Gomiero on Unsplash