In the short history of digital marketing, we have seen many marketing channels come and go. The channel is at its peak now, might soon make way for new ones that are more effective and efficient.
That said, among the current leaders we see a prehistoric animal lurking around. Yes, email marketing is the medium of the old days that’s still as or more effective than others in achieving your marketing goals.
Consumers still find emails as a reliable medium to learn about products and services.
According to research, over 66% of consumers buy a product or service that they learned through email. With an ROI of $38 for every dollar spent, email marketing has a better return on investment than many other marketing channels.
Although an excellent marketing strategy, using email marketing alone doesn’t guarantee success. Many businesses have failed miserably in trying to grow their email list.
You need an email list filled with leads interested in your brand and what better way to build such a list than using Facebook video ads.
The social media platform needs no introduction. Facebook is the biggest and most popular social platform. Plus, it’s one of the best places to find leads and grow your email list.
Today, let’s find out how to combine the three biggest marketing tools: Email, Facebook, and Video, to achieve your marketing goals.
Why Use Facebook Video Ads to Grow Your Email List
Of all the methods at your disposal to increase sign-ups, why should you use Facebook video ads?
First, as more businesses are starting to use videos in their marketing, we have also seen an increase in video editing services, which has brought the cost of video production down.
Secondly, nearly half of all consumers (47% to be precise) watch video ads on Facebook. Hence, Facebook video advertisements are worth your time, effort, and money.
The benefits don’t end here; the following are the top five reasons to use video ads on Facebook.
Captures Attention Instantaneously
Fill a page with thousands of words, pictures, and videos. Our eyes will subconsciously find their way to the moving images.
Even as kids, most of us preferred watching television or movies to reading books. There is something about video content that arrests our attention.
It makes perfect sense to show video ads to attract your target audience rather than images or text. Video content will draw more people towards your brand than any other type of content.
When playing an ad along with a video, place the ad at the start or in-stream. This will encourage the target audience to watch the ad fully so that they can continue with the video content.
Facebook’s Targeting Options
The most popular social media platform has over 2 billion users. That isn’t the interesting part. It has over 1.79 billion active users, who are your potential audience.
The beauty of Facebook is the tools the platform provides for you to focus your efforts on the right people with pinpoint accuracy.
In addition, while designing your ad campaign, the social media platform allows you to clearly state the campaign objective and work towards it.
The marketing tools that the platform provides also allow you to optimize the video ad based on certain metrics before you launch the campaign.
The targeting options in Facebook enable you to focus on the right people, with the right video ad, at the right moment.
Increased Engagement With Facebook Video Ads
Social media marketing tools are getting more sophisticated with every passing day. That said none is more advanced than the Facebook Ad tool.
The platform helps businesses improve their campaign success rate by allowing better targeting based on engagement rate. This means you can carve out a more custom group with a higher engagement rate from your target audience. The new custom audience is more likely to convert (i.e.) subscribe to your email.
Including a custom audience has dual benefits. Apart from growing your email list, it also decreases campaign costs, thereby improving the return on investment.
Provide More Information to the Audience
We have sufficiently established that video content is more popular than text or images.
One reason for this is that videos share more information about the brand (product or service) in a shorter time than other types of content.
Videos keep the audience interested in the content and share valuable information so they can take the desired action.
Although the attention span of people is shrinking, they have a better tolerance towards longer explainer videos than ads.
Hence, keep the video ads short and to the point. Ideally, video ads should not be more than 15 seconds long.
Facebook Video Ads Drive More Conversions
Facebook controls 87% of video ads on social media platforms. This stat shows that businesses trust Facebook ads to boost conversions.
Facebook’s conversion rate is better than other social media platforms, which means businesses can expect better ROI on Facebook than other social platforms.
According to Business Insider, soon the social media giant will get a lot closer to becoming a video-only platform.
Although the chance of this happening is slim, users will see a lot more videos than images or text. This means you’ll see more businesses using video ads now than ever before.
Compared to all the content formats, video ads have the best conversion rate. According to Wistia, CTAs placed in videos have the highest conversion rate.
Ideas to Grow Your Email List With Facebook Video Ads
We have sufficiently established the many benefits of using Facebook video ads. Time has come to share ideas to use the social media method to earn more email sign-ups.
(#1) Start With an Email Marketing Plan
All three departments – video ad production, Facebook video ads marketing, and email marketing – need your attention. Start with a plan for each.
In addition, you need to have a plan for how to use the email list. This might be part of email marketing, but you need to pay special attention to the follow-up steps once the campaign starts producing results.
The video content is at the core of your campaign. Decide on the message you want to convey, the script of the video, and the tools for video making.
The video ads you produce, even though short, must hook the audience to the screen and induce the action that you want.
It would take several blog posts or a couple of volumes of books to write how to use Facebook ads. Suffice to say, if used right, Facebook video ads will rope in leads with the best chance of conversions.
Like everything else, you need to decide when to show your video ads on Facebook.
Study your audience behavior, learn when your potential customers will be most active and responsive, and then prepare the social media calendar for your video ads.
Finally, devise a plan for the follow-up emails you’ll be sending to the leads.
Bear in mind that the lead is already introduced to your brand (product or service), thanks to the video ad. So, the follow-up emails must work to build on the trust already created.
(#2) Decide the Information to Collect
While the ‘buyer persona’ will give a general idea about the target audience, demographics, pain points, online behavior, likes, and dislikes, it’s time to get specific.
To build a relationship with the lead you need to collect certain personal information, of course, information must be volunteered by the viewers.
It would do wonders to a lead-brand relationship if the leads know they are receiving emails because personal information was voluntarily given.
Top of the list of information to collect is the ‘email address’ which is the main objective of the campaign.
In addition, you can request other particulars, including name (first and last name), mobile number, city, DOB, name of the organization, status in the organization, etc.
Seeking personal information is a double-edged sword situation. Personal details, as much as you can gather, will help create personalized emails.
On the other hand, too many required fields can put off the viewers.
There is always an opportunity to collect personal information later in the process of dealing with a lead.
Initially, when you’re trying to convert viewers into leads, focus only on collecting the ‘name’ and ‘email addresses.’
Going beyond these two will only help if you’re planning to create separate and more focused email lists.
(#3) Include an Incentive
Viewers might consider your request for information favorably if there is a quid pro quo involved.
At this juncture, when you’re focused only on collecting email addresses, instead of financial exchange, focus on value exchange.
What you need is a lead magnet or a gift that’ll encourage viewers to share email addresses.
We see this strategy used all the time and it works. Businesses offer a guide, check-list, blog series, quiz, video series, and similar stuff.
Bear in mind that the lead magnet must be something that your target audience needs or wants.
Also, if the gift is more than one, like a weekly or monthly blog or video, then a content calendar and mass mailing software will ensure your leads receive the gift on time and every time.
This is important because sharing an email address is the first contact between the business and the prospective customer.
Hence, deliver what you promised to construct a strong foundation on which long-term relationships (i.e.) future decisions to buy, are built.
(#4) Come up With a Clear CTA (Call to Action)
There are no two opinions; a call to action is a significant element in video marketing.
On social media, people are bombarded with information from all sides: text, images, and videos. They soon start to experience decision fatigue; an inability to decide what to do and how to respond.
A call to action will eliminate confusion and give them a clear idea of what to do next.
People are quite perceptive, if they feel their response isn’t required here and now, they might not take any action.
CTA creates a sense of urgency which is effective in pushing the viewers to do what you want.
You can also experiment with the CTAs. Test multiple options to pick the best performing text, button, color, etc. Even if you can’t think of any CTA, you can choose options provided by Facebook.
(#5) Mobile-Friendly Landing Page, Welcome Emails, and Performance Tracking
It has been observed that it’s better to take viewers to a landing page to encourage a sign-up than using a pop-up email subscribe box.
You can also use the landing page to reveal details about the lead magnet, which will further encourage people to join your email list.
Most people access Facebook using their mobile devices. So, naturally, when you move them to a landing page they expect it to be in a mobile-friendly format.
Nowadays, you don’t have to design separate pages for desktop and mobile. You can use responsive themes to design your landing page.
Trust will soon turn into doubt if leads don’t feel their action is appreciated. Relationships are not built on a single action; it’s a process.
Take the process forward by sending a welcome (or thank you) email to all your new subscribers. Make use of the welcome email to explain your brand or what they can expect by becoming your subscribers.
Once the video ads campaign takes off you should see numbers and charts appear on the Events and Ads Manager. Also, track the performance of your landing page.
Instead of wasting time on all metrics, keep a tab on those related to the number of email subscribers.
You can monitor metrics such as CTR, drop-off rate and points, video views, page views, etc. to study the performance of your campaign.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is going to be around for a long, long time. Marketers and businesses know there are plenty of reasons to use email marketing.
Now you can boost its effectiveness – bag more sign-ups and grow the email list – by tapping into the huge potential of Facebook video ads. But don’t dive into action without a plan.
The best practices we discussed today should allow you to bag more subscribers and ultimately earn more sales.
Author bio:
Cristian Stanciu is a freelance video editor, owner and post-production coordinator of Veedyou Media – a company offering video editing services to videographers, marketing agencies, video production studios or brands all over the globe. I can catch up with him on his blog or on LinkedIn.