Growing your business with Instagram isn’t limited to getting more likes and followers — you can also use Instagram to grow your newsletter subscribers!
In fact, one of the best ways to build a deeper connection with your Instagram audience is to take your relationship off Instagram and into their inbox.
Why? Because it is the most direct contact you’ll have with potential customers!
Ready to learn how to grow your newsletter subscribers with Instagram? Let’s get started:
Why You Should Use Instagram to Grow Your Newsletter Subscribers
Whether you sell e-commerce products or offer online services, Instagram is an incredible channel for reaching new audiences, building a large and engaged community, and even making sales.
But even in the age of social media, email is still one of the best ways to establish an ongoing relationship with your audience.
Newsletters, in particular, are a great way to connect with customers — especially if they deliver really interesting content that resonates with them (the self-care community and newsletter Girls’ Night In is a great example of this!).
Newsletters also allow you to communicate in a personalized way with your customers and deliver the right message at exactly the right time — a stark contrast to Instagram (thanks to the Instagram algorithm) where you have much less control over how many of your followers will see your posts and stories.
When you send a newsletter, even if only a fraction of your subscribers opens the email, at least you know they got it!
So if you’re trying to leverage Instagram for business, capturing your followers’ email addresses can help you build your newsletter and, ultimately, grow your business.
Before we jump into the top ways to grow your newsletter subscribers, don’t forget to sign up for Later’s newsletter! Get the freshest social marketing tips and tricks, delivered straight to your inbox!
Grow Your Newsletter with Instagram #1: Add a Call-to-Action in Your Instagram Bio
Your Instagram bio is a great place to explain what your business does, highlight new offers and campaigns, and, of course, promote signups of your newsletter.
For the most part, we recommend using the top part of your Instagram bio to cover your “what” and “why” (and flex your Instagram SEO!).
When someone visits your Instagram profile for the first time, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention and convince them to click the “follow” button — so it’s important to keep your copy direct and to-the-point.
But the second part of your Instagram bio is the perfect place to drive newsletter signups!
A great example of this comes from The GIST. They explain what they do and offer, and then include a clear call-to-action for their newsletter:
While The GIST uses a custom URL, this won ’t work for every business.
For example, if you’re a cosmetics brand, you may want the link in your bio to drive traffic to your online store because making sales is a bigger priority.
Here’s the good news: you don’t need to constantly change your Instagram bio URL to reflect your latest sale or campaign! With Linkin.bio by Later, you can create a clickable landing page that hosts numerous links to product pages, blog posts, campaigns, and, of course, a newsletter signup page.
And in case you missed it, we just released a free version of Linkin.bio, so everyone can start driving more website traffic and reaching their sales goals through Instagram with Later!
Grow Your Newsletter with Instagram #2: Create a Custom Landing Page for Your Instagram Followers
Since you’re asking your followers to leave Instagram to sign up for your newsletter, you’ll want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
For example, if you’re asking your followers to sign up for your newsletter but direct them to your home page, they might have to search for where to sign up, get frustrated, and quickly leave your site. You can easily lose a ton of leads by not having a landing page!
You can also take things a step further and create a custom landing page that is only linked from your Instagram bio — this will let you communicate better with your audience since you know they’re only coming to that page from Instagram.
Whichever option you go with, it’s a good idea to add UTM parameters to your newsletter URL so you track how many signups you’re getting from Instagram.
You can create your URLs by hand or you can use a URL generator like Google’s Campaign URL Builder (we recommend the latter). There are 5 parameters you can add to your URLs — source, medium, campaign, term, and content – and each parameter must be paired with a value that you assign.
If you’re tracking newsletter signups from Instagram your medium could be “instagram” while your campaign could be “newsletter-signups” to identify the overall campaign.
When a user clicks a referral link, the parameters you add are sent to Google Analytics, and the related data is available in the Campaigns report.
Of course, another option is to use Linkin.bio by Later — you can track all of your Instagram traffic right in Google Analytics as Linkin.bio will automatically add UTM parameters to each link and post!
Grow Your Newsletter with Instagram #3: Promote Your Newsletter on Instagram Stories, IGTV, and More
If you’re just getting started with your newsletter or you’re looking to drum-up your subscribers, it makes sense to promote your newsletter anywhere possible — like your feed posts, Instagram Stories, IGTV, and even Instagram Reels!
Just make sure to include a clear call-to-action letting your followers know where and how to sign up for your newsletter — check out how the environmentally-friendly design company Skandinavisk does it:
Another way to drive traffic to your newsletter signup page from Instagram is to add links to your Instagram Stories — a great option if you have over 10K followers on Instagram!
And although this feature is an instant win for encouraging newsletter signups, there are several ways to make it even more valuable for your brand.
To start, it’s always worth promoting a link in your Instagram Stories. Whether it’s done verbally or through a text caption, providing a quick explanation for why someone should “swipe up” is a good start when it comes to driving clicks.
Equally, it’s a good idea to add an eye-catching GIF that encourages more “swipe up” activity. If you have a custom “swipe up” GIF then you’re way ahead of the game — but if not, there are a ton of ready-made options to choose from.
Grow Your Newsletter with Instagram #4: Create an Irresistible Opt-In
These days, people are pretty careful about who they give their email to — and with good reason. No one likes getting spammed.
So your followers aren’t going to just hand you the keys to their inbox simply because you asked them nicely. This is an exchange, not a free handout.
Rather than simply asking for their emails, you should consider creating an irresistible opt-in!
Think about your ideal customer or client. What can you offer them that they wouldn’t think twice about signing up for? This is called your “lead magnet” and it should be something of value that relates to an end-result that your business offers.
For example, Paynter Jacket offers access to early info about product launches to drive newsletter signups:
Similarly, Dash Drinks uses the allure of a winning an Instagram contest to drive email signups (note how they also created a custom landing page for the campaign):
These are just a few examples of opt-ins that can help boost your newsletter subscribers from Instagram. Some others include:
A coupon or special offer for subscribers
A free download or worksheet
A challenge
A mini-course
A free sample
Grow Your Newsletter with Instagram #5: Give Your Followers a Sneak Peek
Another great way to drive newsletter signups from Instagram is to give your followers a sneak peek into what they’ll get when they do sign up!
A great example of this comes from Very Good Films, an online film catalog and newsletter. Every time Very Good Films send out a new newsletter, they also share an Instagram post highlighting the topics and films they’re covering:
We love this strategy because they’re careful not to share too much about each newsletter — just enough to pique their followers’ interest!
But you can also share more than just a sneak peek. Check out how Taylor Loren recently used Instagram to share the first edition of her brand new newsletter:
Both strategies are great! At the end of the day, it’s all comes down to showing your followers what value they’ll gain from giving you their email address.
And that’s it!
Using Instagram to grow your email list is a great strategy to build an even deeper relationship with your followers (both on and off of Instagram) and can help you reach your other marketing goals as well.
What did you think of the tips? Are you using Instagram to drive more newsletter subscribers? Let us know in the comments!
Did you know you can plan, schedule, and auto-publish to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter with Later — for free!
