 Welcome to The Journey. Today we're going to talk about how to grow your email list with Instagram. So when coming up with your marketing strategy for your business, it's key to think about combining your social media with your email marketing so they work together. Yeah, and you want to make sure that you're basically top of mind and top of those inboxes. So let's start off with the why. Why would you want to combine your email marketing and your social media marketing? Well, for one, everybody's doing it. 59% of brands are currently integrating the two. And think about how you're attracting customers. I know with social media, right? That's where you go to attract customers. And then your email, you use it to stay relevant with your audience, continue to send them content. And now with social media, it's a great place. We all love it, but social media doesn't last forever. Email does. If you have those email subscribers in your little list, you can constantly send them emails and updates and tips and value if Vine or Instagram or anything else ends up going away like some of them have in the past. So where do you begin? First off, make sure you do kind of like a little inventory on your social media. Ensure that you've claimed and optimized all of your pages across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Make sure you have some high quality photos there. And don't forget the background, the cover photos as well. And that's really important before you go into any of these next steps. And also make sure there aren't any duplicates out there. I've had that happen when I was speaking to business owners and I'd be on their Facebook page and kind of point out a few things and they were like, this doesn't look familiar. And it was because they had a duplicate swimming around online. So step one, clean it up. I think the next step is to ask your followers to subscribe to your email list. And this is simple as having a thing saying, Hey, if you want to stay updated with what I'm doing, subscribe here. But to go a step further, I highly, highly, highly recommend setting up some sort of lead generator. Now that lead generator can be like a free ebook, free video course, free piece of content, whatever it is that kind of entices them to want to sign up for your newsletter. Because at the end of the day, if they're not like avid fans, you want to give them something in return for their email. Yeah. So first off, claim and optimize, be consistent with your brand and reputation. And then tap into what are people looking for when they sign up for an email, often an incentive or a deal. Fun stat, 70% of subscribers. This is good to know when they are opening an email, they are in search of a discount or a deal. So spread the word about that to get people to do it. I know just even 10% off of a meal. I'm hooked. So talk about on your Instagram stories, maybe post on Twitter or Facebook to help cross promote people over to that deal. Yeah, but you will want to limit how many times you promote your newsletter because you'll just come across a spammy and always trying to sell your newsletter, right? You want to add value first and then sprinkle it in as a, hey, as an extra incentive. If you want even more value, even more content, check out this newsletter. Try to keep it that 80, 20 rule, 80% value, 20% selling. Now let's do the reverse. Let's say people originally found you with email. Now it's a good time to cross promote them over to your social media. So I know one thing that we do for our customers, if we're handling their email marketing, have their social media logos linked to the actual pages on each email newsletter that goes out. So in one click after they read that email, they can hop over to your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. It's a great way to cross promote and build your audience on social media. Yeah, just make sure you give them a reason why they should follow you. Because if you just say, Hey, follow me on Instagram, if you haven't really added that value yet, chances are you're not going to convert much. But if you say, Hey, follow me on Instagram, I have great videos to help you with whatever your target audience wants to know about. It's a great reason for them to click over, follow you, get all your content. And make sure you're posting frequently as well. Think about it. If I get an email newsletter from you, I then hop over to your Facebook page and your last post was in 2018. Why would I follow you? Right? You're not putting out any content. There's nothing of value there. And it's really critical that you're interacting with both your email subscribers and your social media followers. So we've talked a little bit about like, Hey, claim and optimize your pages, put out content, cross promote, but it doesn't stop there. You want to actually engage with someone who comments on your Instagram post, or maybe someone retweeted one of your tweets on Twitter, engage with that, let them know that you notice and appreciate the help they're doing to spread word of mouth and positive testimonials about your business. Or maybe they left a comment on Facebook, engage, engage, engage, turn on those notifications. And if it's not you directly doing this, maybe you have a team, make sure you have a marketing strategy in place that you're both on board with that's clear and expectations are clear. So that next customer doesn't go unanswered or their positive testimonial goes unnoticed. Yeah, it's crazy to think, but one of the best ways to grow your email list is to focus on your current people, right? They become your advocates and the people that tell others about you. So don't go out and just try to acquire new customers, focus on fostering the relationship, build a community with your community and make them basically your brand ambassadors because you give them so much content, they love you and they want to tell all their friends about it. All right, that's our app. You just learned how to grow your email list with Instagram. Be sure to like this video and comment below with your favorite stuff. Yeah. And Hey, subscribe to our channel and ring that bell for these episodes first. This is the journey. We'll see you next time.