Using Live Video Streaming to Grow Your Email List

• Last updated September 2, 2019
• lead generation

Live video streaming is available on nearly all mainstream social media apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter. Stats show that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular, with Snapchat not too far behind.

Other statistics show just how popular live video has become. For example:

• 4 out of 5 people prefer watching live video to reading a blog
• A similar number—so around 80%—prefer live video from a business than social posts
• Live video is growing at 113% per year, far outpacing the growth of other types of online video

In other words, it’s becoming an increasingly key way to reach your audience.

It’s also far better at connecting. Live videos achieve 300 percent more engagement than non-live.

The popularity of live video streaming, and the high engagement levels it delivers, makes it’s an increasingly powerful medium for list building activities.

Author and Internet marketer, Joel Comm, for example uses the strategy extensively to grow his list, along with many other marketers who understand the power it gives you.

How Do You Use Live Video Streaming to Grow Your Email List?

If you’ve got a highly engaged audience—the type that live video delivers—they’re going to be receptive when you present a CTA (call to action) asking them to join your email list.

Give Them a Reason

To encourage viewers onto your list, give them a reason to join.

This can be as simple as offering to send them regular updates.

They know you’re not going to be broadcasting 24 hours a day, but are still likely to want to feel connected, as well as not miss out on upcoming content you may have available.

So invite them to join your list to keep informed.

You can also offer to send them a free resource of relevance to your broadcast, or perhaps a discount or special offer of some kind for something you have available for them.

Contests and Giveaways

One way to increase the effectiveness of the above and drive more viewers on to your list is to run a contest or giveaway.

For example, let them know you’ll be awarding a prize to a random person who joins your email list during the broadcast. Try reminding them about this every few minutes during the broadcast, encouraging others who may just be lurking or have come in late to get involved.

Another idea would be to announce a giveaway you have coming up for your email list, encouraging viewers to join who are not already on it.

Build Interactivity

Live video tends to generate a strong sense of community. This is most effective where the presenter is interacting directly with viewers in different ways.

You can also get a sense of community developing between the viewers themselves, encouraging a tribal feeling.

As a result, viewers often want to solidify their sense of belonging by joining your list. They’ll naturally want to be ‘in the club’ rather than feel like an outsider.

So it can be a smart strategy to deliberately foster these feelings during the broadcast. Some ways to do this include:

• Requesting likes, shares and comments
• Directly and visibly responding to people when they do engage
• Calling viewers out by name
• Thanking people for their engagement actions

You can also build social proof by thanking viewers by name as they join your list, encouraging others to do exactly the same. Rather than doing this every time someone joins, you can do this periodically, for example by naming a few who have joined every half hour or so.

How Often Should You Mention Opportunities to Join Your List?

With a live broadcast potentially lasting for hours, you have multiple opportunities to present your list-building offer to those watching. For example, there’s a limit of 4 hours for a live video post on Facebook, or potentially unlimited for their Continuous Live Video service.

People will also come and go throughout a broadcast, so you shouldn’t waste opportunities to capture leads and grow your list.

As a rough guideline, try mentioning your CTA after ten minutes or so, and then at regular intervals during the broadcast.

Make sure too you mention it right at the end when people are about to lose that sense of connection you’ve built with them. Joining your list at this point helps mitigate their sense of loss when the broadcast finishes, and helps maintain the ‘nice warm fuzzies’ they may have felt.

Who Can Use Live Video Streaming To Grow Their Email List?

Live video can be used to help grow the email list of virtually any kind of business, whether mainly digital or a traditional, offline, ‘bricks ’n’ mortar’ business.

For example, John Kapos (“Chocolate Johny”) of Australia-based Perfection Chocolates, uses live streaming extensively to encourage viewers to join his list, as well as to buy.

His videos cover his daily life as well as interactions with customers who come into his shop, and have attracted hundreds of thousands of views.

Whenever viewers ask where to get his chocolates from, he simply holds up a piece of paper with details of his website so that people can screenshot it.

Does it work?

According to John, it does:

“[Live streaming] has been the best for my list building. And they buy from my online store.”

To Conclude

As this post has illustrated, live video streaming can work very effectively to grow your list. Plus, the sense of connection viewers feel during your broadcast makes for a warmer, more responsive relationship when they do sign up.

So if you’re not yet using live video streaming to help grow your list, plan to start trying it out over the next few weeks and months..

steve shaw

Steve Shaw is the CEO of optinopoli™, next-generation lead capture and sales conversion technology—click here for more info.