Do you own your audience? You may think you do, but do you really? Let’s take a closer look at list building and why it is so crucial to your brand.

Currently, if you do not implement a strategy for digital list building, then you do not own your audience. Your audience is actually owned by the platforms you use. For example, you may have built out custom audiences in Facebook of people who have engaged with your posts or liked your page. But these lists cannot be exported and uploaded into an email management system or other platform. You do not own this data…Facebook does.

Did you know that email marketing had an average 28% ROI in 2018 compared to other marketing efforts?  – Statistic from campaignmonitor.com

This is a huge number to consider when looking at your marketing plan. It’s not all about email marketing either. Honestly, traditional email marketing is now on a downward slope compared to previous years. However, social messenger marketing is growing at an alarming rate and is more successful year-over-year. In some cases open rates for messenger marketing have been DOUBLE that of email marketing.

This is a great way to fully own your audience. Let’s pretend it’s the year 2021 and for some reason Facebook goes out of business. Now what? If you didn’t build systems to own your audience then they’ll just be gone and there you will be, starting from scratch. Owning your audience future-proofs you from running into problems down the road.

The big question is: How do we do this?

It’s both a simple and highly sophisticated answer. To quickly summarize it for a blog like this though, can be this:

Build a system that allows your customers to easily input their data into a database you own, have access to, and can link up to other systems. For example, you have a customer that messages your Facebook page inquiring about a promo offer. Your messenger then verifies the user by asking for an email address. Then, automatically, that email is sent to a management system like MailChimp and put into a list (also with any other data the user provides)… AND…that user is put into a custom audience built within Facebook of people who message your page for remarketing purposes later.

That’s just one part and one way to do it.

If you’d like to see a LIVE test example of how this can work, simply visit the Fearworm Hauntvertising Facebook Page. If you’re on a desktop, a messenger window should automatically appear…just hit “Get Started” on the bottom. If you’re on mobile, when you visit the page click the  large blue “Send Message” button. Another example you can check out is by commenting on this Facebook post we made. Our messenger system automatically sends a message to everyone who comments on this post after a two-minute delay. We’ll have more examples and information for you at our booth in St. Louis at Transworld’s Halloween & Attractions Show 2019.

See how you can easily scale this and grow your audience? An audience list that you own! This digital marketing tactic is more important than ever before, and with growing concerns over user/first party data, the digital platforms are only going to tighten their belt when it comes to protecting and owning your data. The time is now to start your list building.

If you’d like to chat more about email marketing and list building, email us today and let’s get started on your 2019 marketing plans.