There’s a reason why 200 million businesses and 80% of social media marketers invest in Instagram marketing. Who wouldn’t, if they had access to a platform where 2.5 billion monthly active users spent the better part of an hour on it, day in, day out?
But like most other social media platforms, Instagram is designed to keep people on it. Which makes it great for brand awareness, but not so much for conversions.
If you want to build rock-solid relationships with your audience (we’re looking at you, business owner whose worst nightmare is being locked out of their account overnight), you need to branch out. To a channel you own and control, i.e., email.
In this article, we’ll go over why Instagram is the perfect hunting ground for finding the target audience of your dreams, and how to turn them into email subscribers.
Understanding the Basics
If Instagram offers you a sea of opportunities to cast your net in, email is how you get the fish to bite.
By funneling the engaged, loyal audience you’ve built on Instagram to your email, you can build a highly targeted email list that is both interested and responsive.
The obvious advantage of being an owned channel aside, email also boasts an ROI of 3800%.
And it’s not hard to see why.
With email, the possibilities for personalization are endless.
You can communicate one-on-one with potential customers with a
- message,
- offer,
- and sending time
tailored to their preferences.
Each lead can be nurtured at their own pace, with emails designed to acknowledge and advance each behavioral cue.
To ensure that your Instagram audience’s addition to your email list is as frictionless as possible,
- Get their consent before sending them any marketing emails, and
- Monitor the relevance and frequency of these emails to avoid rubbing recipients off the wrong way.
Once you have your segmenting criteria and email sequences in place, start mobilizing your Instagram traffic to lead them to a sign-up form or landing page.
Optimizing Your Instagram Profile for Email Sign-ups
Your Instagram profile bio is the most precious inch of real estate you own on the platform. It’s also the most straightforward way to collect email subscribers from your audience.
When someone likes your content enough to visit your profile, make it easy for them to continue hearing from you.
Explain what you do or the kind of content you create.
Use niche-specific keywords to boost appearances in searches.
Instagram lets you have up to 5 links in your bio. Use one of them to link to your opt-in form or page.
To add a link, click on Edit profile > Links and fill in the URL and title fields.
When you have multiple links in your profile bio, visitors can only see the first one and have to tap on the section to view the remaining.
If email list growth is your top priority, set the opt-in link as the first link.
Include a short CTA in your bio just before the link to encourage sign-ups. If it’s listed lower on the list, give it a title to avoid confusion.
You can also use ‘link in bio’ tools like Linktree to create a mobile-optimized landing page that drives subscriptions and traffic.
Business profiles can connect lead forms to an action button and use them to promote their newsletter.
Your profile itself should also lend allure to the idea of signing up for emails. The more your profile aligns with a signature
- color theme,
- font,
- post style,
- post format,
the more it draws in your audience and builds trust.
Creating Engaging Content That Drives Email Signups
As the first (organic) touchpoint between you and your Instagram audience, your content, even if it doesn’t directly promote email sign-ups, still has to provide enough educational or entertainment value to
- impress your audience and
- leave them wanting more.
To boost engagement and show authenticity, weave storytelling techniques and personal anecdotes into your content.
Give them insights into your brand journey, customer success stories, tips and tricks, etc. To present these, you can use carousels, Instagram’s best-performing content format, and videos, the post type that gets the most comments.
If you are trying to directly encourage sign-ups with a post, reel, or video, consider linking them to lead magnets.
You can also offer early or exclusive access
- upcoming launches,
- content releases,
- sales or limited-time offers
to make them feel like insiders, which is a powerful motivator for joining your email list.
Note: Instagram post captions don’t support hyperlinks. So you’ll either have to direct users to a link in your bio or story, or set up automated DMs to share it.
Instagram creator realchasechappell routinely posts about marketing strategies for e-commerce businesses.
At the end of each post, he offers a detailed guide on the topic covered that his followers can access by commenting a keyword.
The comment triggers an automated DM bot that then shares the link to the promised resource.
You can follow the same strategy, and gate the resource behind an email capture form.
Using Instagram Stories and Highlights for Email List Growth
Not all your posts will show on every one of your followers’ feeds. But with stories, you have a place secured at the very top of their screen.
Even when someone visits your profile, because of their prominent positioning on Instagram, stories are more likely to be viewed.
You can use them to share daily updates, useful resources, special offers, etc.
Highlights can be equally impactful. The main advantage they offer over stories is that they’re permanent.
You can group stories on the same topic or aimed at the same goal, e.g., promoting freebies like a guide or a masterclass, and post them as a highlight.
Evergreen content and important details about your brand can also be captured through Highlights.
- Instructions for signing up,
- snippets from your emails,
- subscriber testimonials
can all be showcased in the highlights section where they’ll continue to fuel email list growth.
Since posts can’t feature clickable links, interested subscribers will have to be directed to stories and highlights with a ‘Link in bio’ or ‘Link in highlights’ caption.
These links can be shared using
- the swipe-up feature (available to accounts with 10k or more followers)
- or sticker icons (by selecting the link sticker and pasting the link to your subscription landing page).
Hosting Instagram Contests and Giveaways 220
Contests and giveaways work on the same principle as lead magnets. They dangle the carrot of exciting prizes to get the audience to part with their email information.
Before you announce your contest, you’ll need to have
- a specially designed landing page or native lead form to collect email addresses, and
- a prize that can generate excitement in your audience.
On the landing page, list the features or benefits of the prize and explain the contest rules.
The entry form should include a separate checkbox to get their consent to receive marketing emails and clarify that the contest is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by Instagram. This keeps you in compliance with data privacy laws and Instagram’s promotion guidelines.
To get more traction, you can use participants’ word-of-mouth to promote the contest and receive additional entries. For example, determine the winner based on the number of likes, or ask participants to share the post with at least three friends.
You can also make subscribing to your email list part of the eligibility criteria.
Since the ask (their email address in return for a chance to win) is quite small, a move like this can improve your email list growth by leaps and bounds.
Collaborating with Influencers to Reach a Wider Audience
Businesses that
- have just started their social media account,
- have limited followers, or
- are struggling with reach
Can find and connect with new audiences with the help of influencer marketing.
But for significant payoffs, you need to partner with the right influencer: one that already has an audience
- that matches your ICP and
- hangs on to their every word.
Look out for factors like
- Influencer niche
- Number of followers
- Location and age of followers
- Engagement rate
- Alignment with your brand image and values
You can find these influencers using a dedicated influencer collaboration platform or through Instagram’s organic search feature.
Your collaboration can be in the form of a single sponsored post, a series of posts, a review, a long-term brand ambassadorship, etc.
For example, if you sell a SaaS product aimed at solopreneurs and small teams, find an influencer who is one themselves and regularly documents their struggles and posts about software solutions and “hacks” for those sailing in the same boat. Or partner with a tech advisor or expert who makes product recommendations and reviews.
Their post can
- redirect their audience to your profile (where they’ll interact with your content and be encouraged to sign up for promotional emails), or
- directly promote your sign-in form or newsletter.
Utilizing Instagram Ads to Promote Email Signups 240
Organic content does a great job of keeping your followers hooked to your account. But if you want to reach specific audience segments faster, ads are your best bet.
Instagram ads come in a variety of formats:
- Post ads
- Story ads
- Carousel ads
- Video ads, etc.
You can
- promote popular content with a decent track record of generating subscribers,
- or create entirely new, targeted ads (that don’t appear as posts on your profile) to drive email sign-ups.
To create an ad, head to Meta Ads Manager.
Click on ‘Create’ and select your campaign objective.
Selecting Leads as the objective allows you to create a lead capture form.
Fill in the target demographics of your audience.
You can also select interests and behaviors from a drop-down list in the detailed targeting section.
Set a budget for your ad campaign.
Then select the format.
Create content in the 9:16 ratio to maximize space usage.
In the placements section, since you’ll be running ads exclusively on Instagram, switch from Advantage+placements to Manual Placements.
Use the CTA button to direct users to
- your profile
- a native lead form for opting in,
- a landing page on your website, or
- your DMs.
You can showcase your product in the ad or offer a special discount to incentivize click-throughs.
Once you’ve reviewed the ad, click on Publish.
Try out a few different CTAs and content formats to understand what truly works with your audience.
Analyzing and Optimizing Your Strategies 300
You can try these strategies individually or in combination with others but ensure you’re monitoring individual performances.
Generate an Instagram Insights report to analyze metrics like
- The number of subscriptions generated
- The number of subscribers converted into paying customers
- Their Lifetime Customer Value
- Shares
- Likes
- Comments
- DMs received per post, story, or highlight.
Market trends, platform algorithms, and user behavior change all the time. Keep a close eye on dips and inclines to get the best ROI.
Use performance data to optimize
- post content,
- format,
- image-to-text ratio,
- CTAs,
- timings,
- target audience attributes, etc.
When launching mass sign-up drives like these, it can be difficult to maintain data integrity and deliverability.
Double opt-in can weed out fake email addresses from your list. Another way to maintain list hygiene is by email verification at the time of sign-up and then at regular intervals.
You can run your email list through Hunter’s Bulk Verifier or use the Chrome Extension for Google Sheets.
Open the sheet with your email list subscribers’ addresses and click on ‘Verify email addresses’.
If an email address is invalid or incapable of receiving emails, you’re better off removing it from your list.
You can attempt to collect their correct email address through retargeting campaigns or an email finder.
Conclusion
Leverage Instagram’s unbridled potential to connect you with your ICPs and then establish one-on-one communication with them through email.
The strategies listed here can help you attract, engage, and convert Instagram followers into email subscribers and eventually, loyal customers.
Just follow a regular posting schedule and watch as your consistency pays off.