How to Grow Your Email List with Instagram

How to Grow Your Email List with Instagram

Did you know that 81% of businesses use email marketing to grow their business with customer acquisition and retention? Such is the massive power of using emails.  

However, to send emails, you need to build your email list. 

Buying one is entirely out of option because then, you’ll be targeting the wrong people and see little to no results from your email marketing efforts. 

But there’s a great way to build your email list with real subscribers who want to buy from you – Instagram!

Instagram has an audience of over 1 billion, making it one of the best ways to find your audience and grab them in your funnel with emails. 

Even though Instagram doesn’t permit users to collect email information directly, there are plenty of ways to work around it.

In this article, we’ll focus on three proven ways to grow your email list with Instagram and convert your followers into subscribers.

1 – Create a lead magnet

A lead magnet is a free source of information you create to get email addresses from your audience. 

It’s like a barter system- you give them something valuable, and you get an email address to build your email list. 

This lead magnet needs to be a valuable asset to your audience, something that can help them solve their problems. 

This can be an eBook, a webinar, masterclass, template bundle, checklists, etc. 

If it’s appealing, offers valuable information, and is presented attractively, it will get sign-ups.

Apart from the lead magnet itself, the landing page (it’s gated behind) needs to be persuasive enough to drive visitors to sign up with their email. 

Here are some best practices to host your lead magnet compellingly:

• Create a landing page that offers the benefits of downloading the lead magnet
• Take a benefit-driven approach, and use FOMO to persuade them
• Give them an insider look into the lead magnet by highlighting topics
• Use testimonials to build trust in the lead magnet
• Make it worth their while by explaining the need for such a lead magnet

Please pay attention to both the lead magnet and the landing page that’s hosting it. 

They should be compelling, add value to the audience, and be worthy of an email exchange. 

This will help grow your email list whenever a user visits your website or landing page through your Instagram profile.

Also, promote the lead magnet with other types of opt-in forms like popups, welcome mats, and sliders as they help convert traffic that visits other parts of your website like the blog. 

2 – Promote your lead magnet 

Now that you’ve created a lead magnet, it’s time to promote it using Instagram and boost the number of sign-ups. 

You can do this in various ways; let’s explore some of these:

Link in bio

One of the most common ways to redirect your audience to an off-platform link, especially to a lead magnet, is to include it in your bio. 

You can have a single link or a bridge landing page like Linktree, which contains multiple links. 

This will give your audience options to choose wherever they want to navigate. 

However, if you solely want to build your email list- include the link to the lead magnet sign-up page only.

You should also include a Call-to-Action (CTA) in the line above the link so you can persuade the reader further to click on it. 

This can be something like “Grab the Instagram Hashtag Strategy worth $$$ FREE” or “Register for the free sales mastery masterclass here.”

This way, your audience will understand where you’re redirecting them to and click on it out of curiosity. 

The more people you get on your profile, the greater their chances of clicking on the link and contributing to your email list.

Add CTAs in captions

Another way to get people to your lead magnet is by including a CTA in your post captions. 

The first half of your caption should talk about the post and add more context to the image or video. 

However, once you’re done with that, you can use a line break and add a relevant CTA. 

For example, if the post is about how to handle sales objections, and you have a lead magnet related to it, you can add a CTA which says, 

“Want to learn how to handle sales objections in a much better way? Grab my free eBook today, and say goodbye to these objections. Link in bio, only FREE till the next week.”

It’s a great way to get people to notice, navigate your profile, and click on the link.

Another hack is to make an IGTV video around your lead magnet’s topic and include the link in the description. 

IGTV captions are the only place where you can add clickable links despite the number of followers, so leverage that.

Add links to stories

Adding a swipe up link to stories is one of the most convenient ways to send your audience to the lead magnet. 

You can talk about the offer in the stories, include a verbal and written CTA, and redirect them to the landing page. 

However, the only catch is that you must have over 10,000 followers to use this feature.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing on Instagram is at an all-time high. 

If you can get shoutouts on Instagram from nano or micro-influencers, you’ll be able to reach a much wider audience, thus growing your email list even further.

For this, identify niche influencers who have a similar audience and can help you reach them. 

They can put a sponsored post, reel, or story on their profile along with a CTA to your lead magnet that will capture email addresses.

However, before you proceed with an influencer, ensure they have an engaged, authentic following, and the kind of content they create is catchy enough for people to follow what they say.

Run ads

Running ads can help you reach the right set of audience at the right time on Instagram. 

This makes them essential to your email marketing strategy’s success. 

You can run story ads or feed post ads with a CTA to the landing page, which gates the lead magnet. 

It’s a great way to promote your lead magnet because the targeted ads will help you reach the audience you want on a larger scale.

In these ads, you should promote the benefits of the lead magnet highlighting how it can help the audience. 

It should be compelling enough to make them want to click on the landing page. So focus on making these ads persuasive and targeting the right set of people.

To generate a positive ROAS from your ads, the emails you also send matters. 

So, make sure you study some of the best email examples out there and write persuasive emails for your marketing funnel. 

What’s the point of just capturing emails?

3 – Run contests

Everyone loves free stuff; giveaways and contests are a huge part of Instagram. 

You can put one of your products or service offerings as a prize in the contest. Since you’re the organiser, you set the rules for participation. 

One of the rules can be to subscribe to the email list or visit the website and fill out a form. 

This will help you capture more people in your email list and make the audience happy because they have a chance at winning something. 

These contests are a fantastic tactic to get more people to visit your website, increasing their chances of clicking on the link in bio.

It’s a win-win situation and can massively help you grow your email list.

Conclusion

Instagram is not just a social media platform anymore; it’s a marketing and business tool that can help you capture leads and grow your email list. 

Once you create a stunning lead magnet and use Instagram to promote it with a benefit-driven approach, you can start collecting email information using mass email services. 

Lots of customers worldwide use Instagram to run their business, and especially, grow their email list – so can you. 

Follow these three steps and use them as leading factors to start your email marketing journey through Instagram.

Happy emailing!