For many nonprofits, email is the bridge that Facebook fans frequently walk across on their way to becoming a donor. This means having a smart email marketing strategy, in addition to a smart Facebook strategy.
Here are five tips for building your email list with Facebook:
1. Offer a Big Carrot
Before you stick an opt-in form on your Facebook Page, be clear about the carrot you’ll offer in exchange for their name and email. You can do this in a few ways:
- Offer an eBook (resource guides, healthy recipes, how tos). I’ve acquired almost 500 emails from Facebook with this eBook.
- Give them regular tips on staying healthy like the American Diabetes Association does.
- Ask people to take a pledge, like The Human Society of The United States does.
- If your org does advocacy, ask people to sign a petition like Care2 does.
2. Put an Opt-in Form on Your Facebook Page
The Case Foundation uses the Mail Chimp Facebook app to add a simple but effective opt-in form to their Page (as shown below). You can also use Static HTML: frame tabs or ShortStack (my personal fav).
3. Design For Action, Not Awards
Don’t get OCD about creating a beautiful tab. Design for action, not awards. A few ideas:
- Use a large font size, 16pt or higher. Easier to see––and trust.
- Use a few words as possible. Try and reduce your first draft by 50%.
- Focus your copy exclusively on the benefit of joining your list, like on this tab.
- Use highlighter yellow as the background color for the fields, like I do here.
- Use arrows and white space to direct attention, like The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews does (as shown above).
- Include a headline that clearly states the value of joining your list.
4. Make it Mobile
Custom tabs are not viewable on mobile devices, unless you create tabs with a tool like Shortstack or Static HTML: frame tabs which offer smart URLs that display a mobile version of your app.
5. Promote Your List with Updates and Ads
People won’t visit your custom tab just because you built it. You have to post updates, and use Facebook ads to promote it!
In the description of photos, encourage fans to subscribe to your email list to get the inside story. Or share a photo and ask people to take a pledge, like The Human Society of the United States does here (shown above).
6. Measure, Measure, Measure
One way to easily measure which approach is working is to to create a unique form specifically for your Facebook custom tab.
This will allow you to see how it performs compared to other places where you’re collecting emails (in the example above, I learned that Facebook converts better than my blog).
How have you acquired emails on Facebook?