In the sea of tasks, we bloggers have, one that should be our top priority is growing our email list. Today I’ll tell you how to grow your email list with Twitter.
Why should you grow your email list? While you might have a decent following on social media, Bloglovin or Feedly, you shouldn’t ignore your email list. None of the options I listed above give you the option to get personal with those who follow you. Unless they also happen to be on your email list.
Having an email list for your blog allows you to offer so much more to your readers, rather than just a new post notification.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Your Twitter followers are already engaged, now add them to your email list. See how! #IBABloggers” quote=”Your Twitter followers are already engaged, now add them to your email list. “]
Promoting your email list can seem like an impossible task. But what if I told you that you can use Twitter to promote your email list for you? And no, I am not talking about scheduling tweets with a link to your sign up page. I’m talking about using Twitter Lead Generation Cards which allow you to collect email addresses directly from Twitter. This really makes it easy for you to grow your email list with Twitter.
Twitter already has email addresses in their database so if they click on that button, their email address will be submitted to your newsletter provider. The reason this is a great way to grow your email list is because the users don’t have to fill out another tedious form and more importantly they are already interested in what you have to say on Twitter. So why not give them the opportunity to connect with you via email?
Let’s see how you can grow your email list with Twitter. There are two ways you can do this. The first one is to simply set up the Lead Generation Card and then download and manually import the leads into your email provider. However, this isn’t the most intuitive way of doing this. The second one is to actually connect it with your email list provider. Since MailChimp is one of the more popular solutions out there, I’ll be using MailChimp for the purposes of this article.
How to Grow Your Email List with Twitter
The first thing you need to do is click on your profile picture and then Ads. In order to use the Lead Generation Card, you have to sign up as a Twitter Advertiser. They will ask for your credit card information but they won’t actually charge you unless you decide to create a campaign. However, we won’t be doing that, we just want to access Twitter cards which are a part of their advertising platform.
Once you go through the steps of signing up as a Twitter Advertiser, you will be able to see the menu on top that says Creatives. Click on that, then click on Cards> Lead Generation Card. After that, you will go through some basic configuration steps: enter a short description for your lead card, write a clear and compelling call to action, and finally upload an attractive image which should be 600px wide by 150px high. Finally, scroll down to Data Settings (optional) and click on it to expand it. Once that is done, you need to login to your MailChimp account and copy some information. First, under your profile click on Lists and then click the drop-down menu next to the list you want to work with and choose Signup forms. Then, select Form integrations. Under the Twitter section, copy the Submit URL link. Go Back to Twitter and submit the URL you just copied from MailChimp into the Submit URL section. Make sure you set the method to POST. Under Custom key name, type EMAIL in all caps in the Email text field. This matches the email merge tag value for your MailChimp list. After that, click Add another hidden field and name it id, making sure the letters id are in lowercase.
Then switch back to your MailChimp account on the Form integrations page for your list, copy your list ID number, and paste it into the Value field in Twitter. Check the box at the bottom of the page to agree to Twitter’s data use policy and finally, click Create card. You will be prompted to test the card and make sure everything is working.
Twitter will then create a custom Tweet for your card which you can send out any time to promote your list – you can schedule this with a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer. But why not take this a step further? Once Twitter gives you the link to your card, go ahead and tweet it out. Then head to your profile section to see the tweet you just sent out with your new Twitter Lead Generation Card. Once you see that tweet, click on the three dots and select Pin to your timeline.
Did you forget to ‘pin’ me?
And that’s it! Now every time someone visits your profile they can sign up for your email list with a click on a button. How easy was that? What are your favorite ways of growing your email list? Will you use Twitter Lead Generation Cards to grow your email list with Twitter?