Blog: Subscribers

3 Ways To Convert Social Media Followers To Email Subscribers

Your email and social media campaigns can support each other.

13% of all leads in 2013 were generated through Email marketing, making it the third most effective sales channel.

Social Media on the other hand only contributes to about 1% of all online sales, making it one of the worst sale channels.

Yet by combining the two you can drive consumers to sign up to your emailing list that will generate leads.

So what methods can you utilize that will entice your target audience to join the others that already receive your regular emails?

Connect The Two With A Simple Sign Up Form

No matter what size your business is, having a simple email sign-up form that is integrated with your social media channel, will make it easy for those consumers who have already invested interest in your business to sign up.

On your Twitter profile, having a small URL that links directly to a simple sign up form is all that you can really manage due to the limited space. Perhaps something as simple as:

“Receive weekly tips from mywebsite.com”.

This only takes up 38 out of your 160 limit and therefore you have plenty of space left for other content.

You can also invite people to sign up through regular tweets.

With Google+ you’ll have to take the same approach as it currently doesn’t support another method.

With Facebook, you can use a tab at the top of your fan page that will automatically send users to a simple sign up form. You will need to have an image and a good call to action in the tab to entice people.

There are many different apps that can connect your page to the sign up form. To install one of these apps to your Facebook fan page, visit the top right app banner and click on the drop-down menu.

Click on the ‘+’ sign and select ‘Find More Apps’.

You can then search for an app that will allow you to integrate your email sign up form with your Facebook page. Remember to follow the step-by-step instructions for a flawless integration.

Take Action:

• Connect your social media profiles with your email list sign up form.

Connect Your Emails To Social Media

One of the things that social media is very adept at doing is generating traffic. Connecting your emails to social media in two ways can generate traffic to visit your latest release.

Consumers who see how valuable your emails can be to their everyday life will encourage them to sign up to regularly receive the emails. You can share your emails in the following methods:

• By sharing a web copy of your newsletter over social media channels.
• By including social share buttons on your emails.

You’ll need to create interesting lines to capture attention of the audience. A good method is to quote part of the email that users will find interesting.

Take Action:

• Include social media links on your email.
• Identify key quotes from your email to share on social media.
• Share the web copy of your email through social media channels.

Provide Incentives

Providing an incentive to signing up to your email list can be particularly powerful.

The incentive could be something simple as offering a discount on their first order, or a free gift card for signing up.

You don’t even need to have a financial reward at the end of the campaign. Other companies offer a free ebook or report to be delivered after the visitor has provided their details.

Therefore if you have any premium content you can connect the three up – offer snippets of the content in a social media update, that will send them to a signup form promising them a full copy once they have signed up. Then deliver the book once you’ve received their details.

Take Action:

• Offer an incentive over social media to generate traffic to your sign up forms.

Conclusion

Social media can generate significant amounts of traffic to your website; utilize this by directing viewers to your email sign up form.

Then you can present your products and services to your customers through an effective sales channel.

What methods do you use to drive social media followers to your email lists?

Let us know in the comments below.

Read post   1 Comment. Tagged in: email marketing, Email Newsletters, Email Strategy, Social Media, Subscribers

The 3 Email Lists Every Small Business Needs

Not every marketing email that you send out is appropriate for everyone on your subscription list. A message about a service that has already been bought is useless to one person while another consumer might enjoy that particular marketing message.

Sending the wrong message to certain consumers may damage your future online sales when people who feel there is no value in your messages unsubscribe. Therefore, it is important that you maintain an effective group of lists, segregating subscribers into the correct list depending on their history with your company.

1. Current clients

Your current clients are really important contacts to keep happy and nothing works better than word of mouth or referral marketing. They might also be interested in buying more products from you, especially if they had a positive experience with their previous purchase.

Therefore you can use your email marketing campaigns with current clients to spread the news of your products or services to people who have yet to hear about you and gain extra purchases.

You need to concentrate on sending messages that are going to be of use to the current client. Some of these messages may be rather simple service change notifications or other terms which will affect how they use your product / service. Alternatively you may wish to email them about complimentary services or products or something that will enhance their experience of your product.

Another email you could consider sending is a request to share information about your brand to their peers. Offering a deal, like a $10 voucher or a free month’s subscription, is a good way to encourage this behaviour.

2. Potential clients

Potential clients are an important list to curate into current clients. This list should have more specific targeting as you will likely, or should, have some data of their behaviour on your site. For instance they may have downloaded a free e-book or entered a competition to win a product. This information is useful as you know what products they are interested in.

Using this information you can create highly targeted emails based on their behaviour.

If you have several offers or e-books that can accessed once an email has been collected – you can segregate the list further into those who are interested into different products.

3. Website subscribers

There will be a list of people who have perhaps subscribed online but have yet to download an offer or any marketing material you have. These are the people that you have to collect more information about. They probably will have the lowest open and click through rate and also the highest rate of unsubscribing.

Yet they could be potential clients in the near future.

Each person on this list is different so you should mix up what products or services you send them information on. Getting them to buy directly is probably only going to result in low conversion numbers. Instead you should try to find out what in particular interested them in your business.

You can do this by directing them to your other marketing material (e-books, trials, etc) and see what they sign up for. This way you can gain further knowledge about your new potentials and use targeted marketing to convert them to a full paying customer.

Remember to maintain your lists

Your subscribers are highly unlikely to remain on the same list forever. You should constantly monitor who is on what list and swap them to the appropriate list when it is right. Otherwise you may find that you are losing potential consumers because you’re emailing them the marketing content you have designed for website subscribers – which has no more value to them.

A proper maintained and segregated group of lists is the best way to increase web traffic and generate leads.

Image: Horia Varlan

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Why You Should Delete Old Subscribers From Your Email List

At this time of year, when you hear someone talking about a list, thoughts immediately go to a holiday shopping list. Among email marketers, however, the word “list” brings to mind a subscriber list. And, just as shoppers cross off items from their holiday lists, email marketers should do the same with certain older subscribers on their lists.

You obviously don’t want to delete all old subscribers, as some of these might actually be your most loyal customers. One way to find out if these older subscribers are still interested in receiving emails is to conduct a test.

Segment your list, check it twice

Segment your list into two groups, older and newer subscribers. Compare the bounce rates and unsubscribes (as well as opens and clicks) of the two groups. Subscribers on the old list who appear active (comparable to actives on the new list) are keepers. Those with high bounce and unsub rates or low activity are possible candidates for deletion.

But don’t be over-eager in your desire to cleanse your list. Before removing such subscribers, try a re-engagement campaign to see if you can salvage some of them. If not, go ahead and remove them.

Why should you remove these older subscribers? It’s industry best practice, and for plenty of reasons:

• Inactives – Subscribers with no activity in the past six months or so are poor prospects and more likely to file complaints (which could lead to being blacklisted by an ISP). The length of time deemed as inactive can vary depending on how frequently you send emails. Inactives are dead wood; they are costing you money to email them, and producing no ROI.
• Spam traps – Some ISPs use old email addresses as spam traps designed to identify companies using old lists – and designate them as spammers. Don’t fall for the trap!

Tips for list maintenance:

• Follow the bouncing email address – Hard bounces are email addresses that are permanently undeliverable (bloFolcked or invalid email addresses) and should be deleted from your list. You can keep soft bounces (such as a full mailbox) on your list, but keep an eye on them.
• Check for typos – An email address @gmial.com probably should be @gmail.com. Correct such errors instead of removing the subscriber altogether.
•  Just de-dupe it – Remove any duplicate email addresses.
• Be on the alert for alias emails – Remove “role-based” email addresses such as team@, webmaster@, sales@, help@, support@, admin@, etc.
• Opt for opt-ins only – Banish email addresses of people who did not opt in to receive your email communications.
• Be careful out there – Be smart when building your list; do so organically.

Breaking up is hard to do, but it’s all about deliverability. The last thing you want is for your company’s emails to be blocked by an ISP. That’s why domain reputation is so important. And why sometimes you’ve got to cut your losses and move on.

So when you think about your email list, think quality, not quantity. Scrub your list until it’s squeaky clean. Follow the best practices outlined above, and you’ll be considered an email marketer who’s nice, not naughty.

Image: mikrash from morguefile.com 

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7 New Ways to Add New Subscribers to Your Email List

Email marketers are great at marketing products and services (either their own or a client’s), but not so great when it comes to marketing their own email newsletters. Think of your e-newsletter as a product or a value-added freebie. Then market it accordingly. 

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