Social media and email marketing tend to go hand in hand in our current age of technology, and social media can help build a solid prospect list to help continually fill your funnel.
With around 68% of adults alone using Facebook, social media is a tool that more and more digital marketers are using to collect valuable information on their brand’s target audience.
What is a prospect list?
A prospect list is a list of potential clients. These are people that you believe could benefit from your products or services.
Marketers may also know this list as their email list. However, a prospect list doesn’t necessarily have to be email specific. It is worth noting, however, that 73% of millennials (those who are believed to spend the most time on social media) still prefer to connect with their favorite brands via email.
How can social media help?
If millennials still prefer to communicate with brands through email, why should brands use social media to help build their prospect lists?
Because you go where your audience is.
People are unlikely to discover a new brand by going through their inbox. Instead, they are more likely to come across a mention of a brand by a friend on a social media platform (for example, on Instagram or Facebook).
These channels are great ways to engage with and get to know your targeted audience better before initiating the sales process.
From there, you can start building on your existing prospect list and begin to move them through your sales funnel slowly.
How can I measure the success of my social media platforms when building a prospect list?
What are some metrics digital marketers should focus on when measuring the success of their social media platforms in building their prospect list?
Conversion rates
In email marketing, the conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who complete a specific action, such as signing up for a course you created or making a product purchase.
This metric is important because it shows not only engagement, but, since the end goal is typically purchase-related, it is an indicator of return on investment.
Analytic tools often help keep track of where your leads are coming in from, such as social media, email, and so on.
Number of followers/likes
When it comes to social media-specific metrics, one of the top indicators that your marketing efforts are working is the overall number of “likes” or “followers” on the business page.
For example, when looking up the brand Fitbit on Facebook, the results show that 2.6 million people follow the brand on this platform alone.
Source: Fitbit/Facebook
Total shares, impressions, comments & overall engagement
Shares, impressions, comments, and engagement are another way to monitor the success of your marketing efforts on social media pages.
Business pages often have separate analytics pages that a marketing team can monitor. However, a quick glance at a given post can show just how successful a post is as well.
Again, look at this pinned post from Fitbit’s Facebook page. It clearly states the number of overall impressions/reactions (248), comments left on it (141), and even the number of times it was shared (45).
Source: Fitbit/Facebook
Does social media really matter when building a solid prospect list?
With some 2.56 billion active social media users on the internet, it is easy for us to declare that social media does matter when building a solid, steady prospect list.
Being able to engage with your audience freely will help your brand grow, and, as the engagement continues, it will only help build trust between you and your potential customers.
Source: Campaign Monitor
What now?
Taking your prospect list and turning it into an active email list is simple. Once you’ve gotten the names and emails of potential clients, you want to work on setting up email campaigns to keep them engaged.
What are some qualities of a strong prospect list?
- Open and click-through rates are stable or increasing
- Personalized messaging to your segmented lists
- Email campaigns are tied directly to ROI
- You’re maintaining a healthy list
Once you’ve compiled your ideal prospect list, it’s time to implement it in the new era of email marketing! Check out our guide on how to create, maintain, and use your email list to see real results.