Tips to Collect More Email Addresses

Think about all the online "touch points" you have with customers and prospects. 

Like many companies let's assume you have a main website, a Facebook page, and a blog.  Are you taking advantage of each as an email collection opportunity? 

If not, you certainly should be doing so!  Here are four tips to collect more email addresses.

1. Make the email sign-up form easy-to-see and include a call-to-action.

How can people sign up if they can't find your sign-up form?  Also, call it what it is -- and "e-newsletter" or "email deals" label is just fine, so long as people immediately recognize it's your email sign-up.

Give people a reason to sign-up...answer the "what's in it for me" question!

2. Create a Facebook "Welcome" tab and embed the email sign-up form here.

According to multiple studies, companies with a "Welcome" tab tend to have higher sales conversion rates than those without. 

There are different applications for creating Welcome tabs.  An easy one to use is called "My Tab"

Creating a Welcome tab isn't difficult -- if you don't know how to do it, just have someone you trust "like" you and then make them an Administrator of your Facebook page. They can then insert the sign-up form code.

Heavy Facebook developers may want to consider additional tabs for things like "Promotions" and embed the sign-up form there. However, for those new to the game a Welcome tab is just fine.

3. Ask for Email Addresses on Your Blog

Using RSS feeds is great, as is allowing people to get instant or daily blog post updates through a native blog tool -- but they are not replacements for email sign-up forms!

Why are they not replacements?
* You don't get someone's email address using those tools;
* The communications are likely to be unbranded
* You lose the opportunity to cross-promote other social channels

People reading your blog and receiving RSS feeds may not want to receive emails -- but that's okay, they won't sign up anyway.

The ones that do sign up should be highly engaged with you.

4. Ensure Your Email Technology Can Support Multiple Sign-up Forms and Segmentation

Some email technology platforms only allow you to have one sign-up form, or the sign-up form may not be easy to customize. Be sure to ask your email service provider if they can support this requirement.

Another key element for successful email marketing is to group people together based on where they signed up for emails.  On your website -- automatically place all sign-ups into a "Website Sign-up" group.  Facebook: place in a "Facebook Sign-up" group; the same for your blog.

When the time comes to send emails, you'll want to know who you're contacting. By placing people into distinct groups, especially from social media websites, you can measure their email performance separately.


What does everyone want to understand?  Social media return-on-investment (ROI). Emailing social sign-ups separately gives you one additional tool to measure that investment -- they may convert more or less than other prospecting avenues.


Need help implementing these tips? Contact us today and we'll be glad to work with you!