5 Ways to Grow Your Email List on Instagram

Building an email list is crucial to developing long-term growth, and marketers can gather email contacts in a variety of ways. While Instagram may not be enough to grow your list on its own, it can still go a long way toward helping you attract more leads.

In this article, we’ll cover five of the most effective ways to increase the size of your email subscribers list through Instagram marketing campaigns. Turning your Instagram profile into a reliable source of new leads will help you to consistently generate more traffic and sales on your online store.

#1 Add a CTA to Your Instagram Bio

Calls to action are the most straightforward way to move leads through the successive stages of the sales cycle, and adding one to your Instagram bio will give users more ways to engage with your brand. If someone clicks through one of your ads to your Instagram profile, they’ll have the opportunity to learn even more about your products on your company’s site.

In most cases, your CTA should link directly to a dedicated landing page that’s designed to encourage even more interactions. Make sure to include a clear description of the link’s function and what users can gain by visiting your site. Leads are much more likely to convert into customers once they access your online store for the first time.

#2 Run Contests and Giveaways

Social media is all about engagement, and contests and giveaways give users an added incentive to engage with your brand. Social media contests often go viral, helping brands reach a large volume of new users at relatively low costs.

Just $100 or $250 in prizes, for example, could motivate hundreds or thousands of users to enter their names and other information. You can also encourage other actions by providing additional entries. For example, some brands offer another entry for users who follow the brand’s page or share the contest on their own social media profiles.

Amazon gift cards and other generic prizes can work well in the right context, but it’s usually better to offer one of your own products or another prize that connects to your unique brand image. If you sell bikes and biking accessories, your contest prizes should be something that a biker would be interested in. Picking a relevant price will help you connect with users who are more likely to check out your products after the contest ends.

Furthermore, switching from a giveaway to a contest will dramatically increase engagement. That same biking company might ask users to submit their most scenic biking pictures instead of simply giving the prize out to a random winner. This approach will also give you a large quantity of user-generated content to repurpose in future marketing campaigns.

Once the contest is over, you can send a concluding message to everyone who entered. Make sure to include some of the best entries along with a call to action that will bring them back to your site. Most contest emails come from organic social shares, so you won’t have to spend much money to bring in new users.

#3 Offer a Lead Magnet

Most internet users are already subscribed to a large number of newsletters, so they’re often wary of giving their information to yet another brand. Lead magnets cut through that apathy by giving leads a concrete reason to enter their contact information.

A lead magnet is simply some kind of gift provided in exchange for a user’s email address. It could be anything from a discount or free shipping to a free PDF or video guide. The right lead magnet for your brand depends on what your audience is interested in.

Lead magnets are one of the most reliable ways to grow an email list, but it’s critical to use a lead magnet that truly incentivizes your target audience. Don’t hesitate to run some A/B tests in order to determine which items lead to more subscriptions.

#4 Track Your Performance

A/B tests can be incredibly helpful when comparing different lead magnets, but their utility doesn’t end there. Like any other type of digital marketing, Instagram campaigns require consistent testing and analysis to achieve sustainable results. A/B testing is an easy way to get started, so you should be running as many as possible in order to consistently adapt your approach.

Of course, tracking is only worthwhile if you have a goal to compare your results with. Every campaign should be centered around particular targets that will give you a frame of reference for future evaluations. For example, you might want to generate a certain number of signups during a contest or from a particular promotion.

Evaluation isn’t as much about fixing obvious mistakes as it is about identifying overall trends and making the necessary adjustments. Marketers who fail to track past performance will have no way of knowing which strategies worked and which ones need to be tweaked for future campaigns.

#5 Create a Custom Landing Page

First impressions are everything in digital marketing, and a landing page gives you full control over the initial experience of accessing your site from Instagram. As mentioned above, you can link to your landing page on your Instagram bio in order to move leads through the sales funnel and turn their curiosity into brand loyalty.

If you’re offering a lead magnet to boost subscriptions, this should be prominently featured on the landing page. Users should have the opportunity to join your email list before they do anything else on your site—you don’t want to distract them by displaying products or any other offers. The goal is to make it as easy as possible to join your email list after viewing your Instagram profile.

Instagram marketing is a complicated yet promising field, offering a massive potential audience that rewards creative and visually-attractive posts with plenty of engagement and sharing. And while it might seem a little daunting at first, it’s actually simple to get started by setting up an email funnel on your profile.

After that, it’s up to you to provide your followers with the type of content that they want, while capitalizing on your creativity by expanding your email list with the above suggestions. We hope you find them to be useful!