Using Facebook Lead Ads to Grow Your Mailing List

Facebook Lead Ads are ads designed to help marketers capture customer information by automatically filling in the Facebook user’s contact info when they click on an ad with an opt-in offer. Here are the pros and cons of this Facebook ad type.

Facebook ads can be a smart marketing tactic to build your mailing list. The ability to target your ads to the exact type of customer you want on your list makes it a good way to reach new people who could be good customers for your business.

The new Facebook’s Lead Ads program allows businesses to create ads that capture contact information once the Facebook user clicks the call to action button. Their contact information is pre-filled when they click from a mobile device making it easier for the user to sign up. It can be a great way to use Facebook ads to grow your mailing list, but it may not turn out to be the easiest way depending upon what CRM / mailing list program you use.

How to Create a Facebook Lead Ad

SIgn in to your Power Editor account and go to Create Campaign. Choose Lead Generation from the list of Objectives. You’ll need to create an Ad set as well. One thing that is different from other ad types is that you must target an audience that is 18 and over. You create an ad pretty much the same as other types of ads and then you add in your lead generation form.

You can ask up to three questions or forms of contact in your form. It is highly likely you will want to use name and email as your first two, so then you can decide what other information, if anything, you want to gather. You can go with an additional contact such as work phone, company name or work email. Or you could find out their gender, age or relationship status.

RELATED: How to Change a Business Name on Facebook

There is an option to make up a custom question as well. This would be something specialized to your business or a piece of information that will allow you to follow up more specifically. Use caution with this question as the more you ask, typically, the lower your response rate will be. But don’t lose out on the chance to capture a piece of very useful information either.

You can use any of the following call to action buttons on your ad.

Sign Up
Subscribe
Learn More
Apply Now
Get Quote
Download

Facebook Lead Ads work well for building an email list, getting sign ups for a webinar or requesting a white paper. They can generate inquiries for additional information or a sample product or even registration for an event. Anything for which you require contact information and a simple call to action will work.

How to Retrieve Your Leads from Facebook

When someone signs up for your mailing list using a web form created by your mailing list program, they are automatically on your mailing list. That new contact can be sent an immediate autoresponder and will begin to receive your emails whenever you send to your list. The signup process added them to your list.

Leads captured by Facebook still need to be put into your CRM because the signup process just captured their information in Facebook. If you use one of the CRM systems that is fully integrated with the Facebook Lead Ad program (currently: Driftrock, Marketo, Maropost, Sailthru) then you can set up that connection and leads from Facebook ads will be automatically entered onto your list. This is the optimal situation.

If you don’t use one of these CRM systems, then you can either set up an integration via API and your CRM or you can manually download the leads as a CSV file. The API option will require you to hire someone who is knowledgeable in this type of technology (unless you happen to have API experience).

Manually downloading the CSV file is not highly technical, but it requires consistent attention. You will want to download often and get these new leads into your CRM system / mailing list program. After all, until you do this, they will not receive any contact from you.

If your CRM / email system is not integrated with Facebook, it will be simpler and more effective to use a regular Facebook ad that links to a mobile friendly opt in form on your site. That way your new contact doesn’t have to wait to get their information and you don’t have to go through the process of downloading and importing your leads.

It may be worth running a test to see which type of ad converts best for your business. If you find that you get significantly more leads using the Facebook Lead Ads then the hassle of downloading and uploading your leads may be worth it. If not, then you can just go back to using ads to drive traffic to your mobile-friendly opt in form.

For more information about creating a Facebook Lead Ad: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1462876307360828