Facebook Ads: How to Grow Your Mailing List with Laura Hanlon (episode 157)
by April Buencamino-dyLaura Hanlon is the founder and co-director at eCommerce Growth Acceleration Agency Pink Leopard. It is the UK’s number one Boutique Ad Agency for Women’s fashion, beauty, and homeware! She shares how to improve sales and recruit better-quality customers using her proven strategy.
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Getting Into the World of Facebook Ads
Laura started off consulting in the organic social media space. She later realized that there was a misalignment between the service she was providing and what the businesses wanted to achieve.
She saw paid ads as the way to go, and she wanted to become as good at Facebook ads as she could be. She then spent her first year working with mentors and coaches, learning how powerful Facebook ads were for the businesses she worked with.
Integrating Facebook Ads and Email Marketing
Given all the changes in iOS, including tracking restrictions, increased competition on the platform, and rising costs, Laura and her team made the decision to thoroughly test Facebook ads for building email lists.
They brought email marketing in-house as a complementary service to Facebook ads. What they discovered is that generating leads is much more cost-effective than trying to secure immediate purchases.
This strategy has proven to be highly effective for many of their clients, and they strongly advocate for its integration alongside a comprehensive funnel approach, ensuring that they continue to drive conversions.
Strategies for Lead Gen Ads
Currently, Laura’s strategy is to channel the incoming leads directly into the welcome flow. They keep a close watch to make sure that the conversion rate remains steady, and so far, they know this strategy is effective.
However, her team is now discussing the possibility of separating them within their email service provider for better monitoring. This means experimenting with a separate welcome flow solely dedicated to these ads in the near future.
Facebook Ads and SMS Marketing
Previously, Laura relied heavily on email for their ad campaigns because their clients primarily interacted with them through email rather than SMS.
However, due to the significant increase in SMS usage, they now integrate SMS with pop-ups on our clients’ landing pages. SMS is definitely effective as a communication channel, which means it has the same level of effectiveness as email.
More Tips for Growing Your Email List
Having a pop-up on your website for capturing SMS and email information is important for any business, so make sure you have that.
Also, you can test having a separate landing page on your website where you have your offer. Then, have that landing page integrated into a welcome series. This is a different strategy altogether, but it is still vital if you want to grow your email list.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with Facebook ads – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
Make sure you have a really good offer for your pop-up on your website to have an incentive for people to sign up. Then have a good welcome flow to convert all that traffic as well.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve Facebook ads performance?
It’s all about testing. Test the design, the copy, and the offer of the pop-up of the lead form ad to see what will work for you.
If someone listening wants to learn more about Facebook ads is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
Check out Pink Leopard’s blog on how to use Facebook ads to significantly grow your email list.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in Facebook ads?
Meta is investing in AI and also dedicating a whole department to it. On your part, take a really good look at your content and its value, because being mediocre won’t cut it. Make sure it stands out, and see how AI can help you with this.
Interview Links
Laura on Social media:
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