Using Social Media to Drive E-mail List Growth

Eric Groves
Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:20:00 +0000

While there has been a lot of digital ink spilled lately about combining the power of e-mail marketing with the reach of social media, by comparison there's been relatively little in the way of real-world examples of how companies are using social media to help grow their e-mail subscriber list. To correct that, I've got a success story for you: Dingo Brand is one company using its great Facebook presence to help drive subscribers to its e-mail list.

Dingo is a pet food distributor in Cincinnati that's passionate about making food and treats for dogs that are healthy and fun. (Full disclosure: it's also a customer of Constant Contact, the company I work for.) Over the summer, the company wanted to increase the number of people that "Like" its page on Facebook. To do so, it offered customers a $20 coupon if they both Liked the Dingo Facebook Page and joined the company's mailing list (which is easily accomplished through a Join My Mailing List tab right on the company's Facebook Page.) Twenty bucks alone would get many customers to join, right?

The company took it a step further by making the deal contingent on its Facebook Page getting 5,000 likes. This caveat is similar to those employed by group discount sites such as Groupon and TeamBuy.ca, which make daily deals contingent on a minimum number of buyers. Such contingencies drive deal-seekers to tell their friends and share the deal with their social graph in order to help achieve the minimum. Dingo bet on the same phenomenon happening with its offer.

And did it ever.

Dingo's Facebook Page went from a mere 330 Likes to well over 5,000 in just three days. What impact did this have on the bottom line? Dingo's monthly sales increased 22 percent, with roughly half of that number attributed to new customers. That sounds like a social media win to me. Now the company is extending the promotion in an ambitious effort to drive the number of Likes to 25,000 by the end of October.

It's not only about the number of Likes, though. Dingo does a great job of engaging its Facebook fans and encourages them to share pictures, videos, and stories about their pets. They're tapping into people's love of pets to create a community built around the Dingo brand.

One important note if you're thinking about running a similar contest: Facebook has some pretty strict rules about how contests can be run using a Facebook page and how participants can be incentivized. Take a look at the rules and make sure your contest does not run afoul of Facebook's regulations.

If you've got a social media marketing success story, I'd love to hear it. Leave a comment here or visit Constant Contact's Facebook Page to share your story.