Every day, millions of brands advertise, create business pages, and test lead-generating marketing strategies on Facebook.
While Facebook has a robust range of marketing tools to offer, email marketing is a major marketing staple that you’ve never really explored before. This could change soon.
That summer, a small number of Facebook Business users gained access to a new email marketing tool that Facebook later confirmed it was experimenting with.
While you might not expect a major social media platform like Facebook to invest in email marketing tools, this move actually makes a lot of sense.
Over the past decade, Facebook has improved its advertising and lead generation offerings. While B2C companies can easily run an ad for a product and roll in ROI, the platform has also enabled B2B companies to sell more expensive offers to connect their CRM and generate leads through lead ads or landing pages.
Facebook has been continuously expanding to make its platform a stronger lead generator for brands. And now that Business Pages can pull contact lists from the platform, it makes sense for Facebook to consider an email tool that brands can use to reach these audiences directly.
“We are examining whether these tools are beneficial for people and companies before we decide whether they should be expanded further,” Facebook told AdWeek.
Since Facebook began testing the email marketing tool, marketers have prevailed. At one point Meg Coffey, a social media strategist, tweeted screenshots of the tool after discovering it:
In the responses, a few marketers shared their thoughts on the new email tool.
In the tweet thread, many marketers were optimistic about what Facebook’s email and CRM compatibility could mean for lead generation.
Facebook’s email tool may seem interesting, but before you delete your marketing email tool for this one, keep in mind that it is still in the testing phase. While some branded sites have the option to use it, others don’t. Also, if the test fails, there is a possibility that the tool will never start completely.
If you want to learn more about the tool and how it can benefit your Facebook marketing strategies when it goes live for all pages, here’s a quick rundown of what we know about it so far.
What you should know about Facebook’s email marketing tool
While Facebook’s email marketing tool is in the testing phase and not yet available to all users, social media marketers and page administrators have shared a number of screenshots to demonstrate what it is capable of.
Here’s what we know from the screenshots and information we could dig up.
1. Facebook’s email marketing tool follows the provisions of the GDPR subscriber list.
Sending email to people who have not knowingly signed up for them is against GDPR regulations – and emails sent through Facebook’s new tool are no exception
Although Facebook is primarily a social media network, it respects email privacy regulations by instructing users to only send marketing emails to contacts who sign up for them.
According to social media posts, Facebook marketers see a warning and a disclaimer about what they can and can’t send to contacts when they click into the email tool.
2. You cannot create email lists with addresses from your contacts’ Facebook profiles.
When you hear that Facebook is offering email marketing, you may think that the marketing emails are simply being sent to someone else’s Facebook Messenger or the emails associated with Facebook accounts that are Like your company page.
As with any other email marketing platform, however, your contacts must subscribe to a list and associate an address with their contact name in order to receive an email from the Facebook platform.
Luckily, if your connected CRM already has an email subscriber list, you can simply select it from a drop-down menu in this image:
If you don’t already have a subscriber list, there are a few different ways you can create one. You can create a form on your website promoting your new email and encouraging users to subscribe, or you can run a Facebook lead ad promoting email subscription.
3. Facebook’s tool may not be as advanced as other free email marketing software.
The tool’s available screenshots show that users can customize email headers, subject lines, and copies of text. However, marketing organizations like IMPACT say it is unclear to what extent email marketers are associated with design control of images, color schemes, links, and formatting.
In one Follow up tweetCoffey said that there are “far more robust email marketing tools” out there, but that the Facebook tool could be useful for those “getting their feet wet” with email marketing.
In its current form, the email tool can be useful for business owners or less tech-savvy Facebook page owners who are starting to try email marketing. However, since reviews of the tool suggest it’s pretty simple, it might not be robust enough for businesses that need solid customization, personalization, and performance tracking.
Develop an email marketing strategy
Even if Facebook’s email tool fails the test phase and has not fully started, Facebook’s interest in marketing email proves one thing: email is certainly not dead.
Email marketing from any tool helps increase brand awareness, can keep you connected with your audience, drive ROI from customers, and even bring solid, non-organic traffic to your website.
If you are a beginner in email marketing, there are a few things to keep in mind regardless of the tools used to compose your message.
- Respect the privacy of your contact: If a contact fills out your lead gen form but doesn’t want to receive an email, listen to them. Also, don’t build your email list by buying contacts from other brands. This violates the GDPR regulations.
- Provide valuable content: When you have a list of subscribers, provide them with the content they want to see the most, as well as the content that you were promoting when you encouraged them to subscribe. Embedding email content can include discounts or links to helpful blog posts, for example. Remember, don’t over-advertise or bust your subscriber list with just emails about your products. This could result in your messages being marked as spam.
- Get the reader’s attention: Since emails sent through Facebook or other email marketing tools go straight to a series of cluttered inboxes, try to create catchy subject lines, preview text, and body text that will grab a busy person’s attention drag smartphone that just flips through emails.
If this is your first time testing email marketing or trying to improve your current strategies, check out this ultimate guide for more expert tips and tricks.