Marketing managers who want to reach out to their target audience through Instagram are always obsessed about increasing their follower counts. While it remains a very important aspect of marketing on Instagram, the network is also ideal for elevating your relationship with the followers even outside the platform. Marketing managers can use Instagram to generate an email subscriber list that is even more helpful in driving engagement and conversions.
Advantages of Email
Despite it has been around for very long, email remains one of the top channels of communication. In fact, https://litmus.comsays email delivers a return on investment that is distinctly superior to the rest of the digital marketing channels, a fact that brand managers with tight marketing budgets never fail to appreciate. The other aspect is that email is extremely stable and not subject to the inherent dynamism of changing algorithms that force a sea change in social media every now and then. When you add in the fact that email inboxes are accessible on demand and most people know how to use email, it does seem that email can be a very powerful weapon in the brand manager’s armory. The use of email is also extremely advantageous because it gives an opportunity of directly contacting the subscriber whereas with social media like Instagram, whether the target audience will really see your post or not is unknown. Even when a brand has a large follower base, it is virtually impossible to predict how many of them will see the Instagram post and how many will miss it completely. By using email, at least you can assure yourself that the message is there right in the inboxes of the intended recipients and available for viewing on demand.
Reasons Why Instagram Is a Great Social Media Platform for Generating More Email Subscribers
Continually growing a larger follower base on Instagram is very important for contemporary marketing managers. Instagram has emerged as the social networking platform of choice due to a number of reasons. It has not only crossed one billion active monthly users mark but also boasts of the highest rate of engagement of all social media. In fact, the engagement rate of Instagram is 10 times higher than its parent Facebook. Instagram has an engagement of 3-7% while Twitter scrapes through with a paltry 0.2%. According to statistics, Instagram users also spend more time on the platform giving brands a better chance to connect with followers and build enduring relationships with them.
Methods of Getting More Email Subscribers Using Instagram
Organize competitions: Everyone loves contest and a chance to win something even though it may not be very valuable. It may be psychologically important for many people to prove to themselves and to others that they are smart and intelligent enough to outwit others. By holding contests and competitions of various sorts on Instagram, you can boost your engagement rate with followers considerably; in fact, surveys reveal that posts connected to competitions get an astonishing 64 times more comments and 3.5 times more real Instagram likes than other posts. What this demonstrates is a simple fact that by holding a contest on Instagram, you can reach a large number of people who can be persuaded to subscribe to your email list. By making it a condition that users need to subscribe to your email list to participate in the content, you can easily acquire qualified leads of people who are interested in your brand and who can be emailed on a regular basis with brand updates and news?
Involve Followers: User-generated content is extremely popular with marketers because not only does it take the pressure off on the generation of interesting content for posting on your Instagram account but also, it elevates follower engagement like nothing else. You can request your followers to contribute photos and videos on a particular theme or subject, preferably one revolving around your products and services and post them on your account. Followers are generally thrilled to see their content being used by brands and feel appreciated and important. More importantly, UGC acts to boost the conversion rate due to the better engagement and this automatically means that you have a very good opportunity of harvesting the email addresses the users use when transacting on your website. According to studies, posts with user-generated content achieve click-through that is up to four times that of ordinary posts so using UGC is a great tactic for prompting users to sign up for the email list.
Use Compelling CTAs: Even though you may have email subscriptions as your principal intent when engaging with your Instagram followers, it may not always be very clear to them. Calls-to-action promoting a sense of urgency to complete a particular activity, in this case, email newsletter signups, can be very useful and effective even though it may seem very elementary. Using power-packed phrases like ‘Sign-up” or “Register” can actively prompt the followers to take the necessary action and subscribe to the email list. Similarly, you can use appropriate CTAs in the bio section of your Instagram business account urging followers to grab an attractive and valuable freebie by visiting a landing page specially designed for email subscription signups. You can also use hashtags in your posts descriptions to promote the giveaways and ask followers to visit the bio section to avail of the opportunity.
Use Captivating Instagram Stories: Instagram has evolved beyond just photos and video posts and the Stories feature that has a life of just 24 hours has been immensely successful with both individuals and businesses. According to statistics, more than 300 million Instagram users use the Stories feature every single day, which makes it an ideal channel for getting your message across in a friendly, informal, but credible manner. The inherently interactive nature of Stories gives users more scope for conversions because it is possible to lead followers to special landing pages in a number of ways, adding text to the photos, swipe-up links, and moving CTAs being some of them. When you use Stories to promote email newsletters, users can simply swipe-up to subscribe and start receiving the email at regular intervals.
Conclusion
Instagram today is the hottest social media platform for marketing managers planning to grow brand presence and reach. Apart from the opportunities that Instagram offers within itself, the versatile networking platform can be used to generate email subscriptions that can then be used to improve conversions.
