How do you actually own your audience in 2025? 

The answer is capturing relevant customer data by building your mailing list. Once you’ve collected email addresses, zip codes, phone numbers and more, you’ll have greater access to market to your audience, even as platform popularity grows and shrinks. 

Linktree’s Forms feature has been designed to take all the hassle out of growing your mailing list and effortlessly marketing to your audience, so you don’t lose out as the social media landscape changes.

Why social media isn’t enough anymore 

Social media platforms are amazing tools for increasing your visibility – they put your brand, be it personal or commercial, in the spotlight and help you be seen by relevant, interested consumers. 

But, you’ll never truly own your social media audience, which is where email marketing comes in. Let’s explore some of the benefits of growing your mailing list: 

• Platform changes: We’ve all heard the news of an impending TikTok ban, and while it’s been put on the back burner for now, things can change in an instant. If you’ve built an audience on TikTok, you run the risk of losing your link to all those followers if the site goes dark. Without meaningful customer data like email addresses, phone numbers and addresses, you’ll totally lose your ability to market to those people. 

• Algorithmic volatility: Social media algorithms are in a state of constant flux. One small shift could upend your reach or engagement, giving you less power to sell your products or services to your existing audience and to continue growing. 

• Surface-level connections: While social media is an incredible attraction tool, there’s still a way to go in actually resonating with your audience and building customer loyalty by leveraging buyer psychology techniques. Because email marketing is longer-form and tends to dig deeper than a photo or a video, this is where you should be attempting to truly form connections with your audience. 

• Less sales power: Selling on social media in 2025 is completely possible, but it’s still not for everyone. If you’re trying to convert leads into customers, email marketing is a much more effective channel, especially amongst older audiences, as it gives you a higher chance at cut-through and more control over your message. It’s also much easier to track sales directly compared to social media, where lead sources can be harder to pin down. 

Using Linktree Forms to seamlessly grow your mailing list

So, you know you need a mailing list – but what comes next? Linktree Forms is an easy-to-use tool for capturing customer data, simplifying the process of converting social media followers to email marketing sign-ups, and putting unparalleled sales power in your hands.

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Ready to reap the rewards of adding a Contact Form to your Linktree? Learn how here. 

Once you’ve set up a Linktree Form, explore these best practice tips for getting the most out of it: 

• Keep it simple: When it comes to getting customers to hand over their data, less is more. If your focus is on building a strong mailing list, capturing names and email addresses is plenty of data to get you started. Then, once customers purchase, you can build out their profiles with additional information.
  
  
• Always add value: A great way to usher people to your sign-up link is to offer something valuable, such as a freebie, a discount or exclusive access to behind-the-scenes content. If you’ve ever wondered why brands offer 10% off to new email subscribers, here’s your answer! By dangling a carrot, you’ll increase sign-ups to your mailing list and build customer loyalty early to inspire repeat purchases down the track. 

• Link your Form everywhere: Once you’ve set up a Linktree Form, make sure you’re getting the most out of it by linking it across all your channels. As well as giving it pride of place on your Linktree, you can include your form on your website or on specific sales-based landing pages to encourage more sign-ups. 

Exporting your audience to Mailchimp and other email platforms

When you use Linktree’s Contact Form tool, you’ve got the option of importing the data you collect directly into a handful of third-party platforms, including Mailchimp, Zapier and Google Sheets. This is extremely beneficial as a marketer, as it lets you handle your data with more precision and use it to not just populate a basic email marketing list, but to build out targeted campaigns and lists based on different behaviors. 

When you use Linktree to capture your customer data, you also have the ability to export your data and use it across any platform you like. Simply run a manual export into a Google Sheet or .csv document, and then upload it to ConvertKit, Flodesk, Klaviyo and more. 

You’re not limited to email marketing use cases, either – once you have names and email addresses, you can construct a database across any number of platforms and use it to achieve your business goals. 

Creating a bulletproof email marketing plan

Your email marketing list is just one piece of the puzzle – once you’ve got customer information at your disposal, it’s time to use it to drive sales and nurture loyal customers. 

Here’s how: 

• Choose your cadence: How frequently you email your database will depend on your capacity. Pick a sustainable cadence, be it weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and strive to uphold it over time to create a consistent bond with your audience. 

• Build out content types: There’s more to email marketing than just a monthly newsletter. Develop a plan with different content types represented, such as personal updates, new product or content drops, exclusive offers and even community-based emails like customer shoutouts and review spotlights. 

• Raise your voice: Personality is everything, especially in a longer-form medium like email marketing. Really uphold your brand’s tone of voice in your email communications, and don’t be shy about adding personal notes, funny asides or exciting anecdotes to inspire better click-through.

• Give insider insight: Think of your mailing list as your inner circle. They’re more than just customers – they’re brand loyalists who crave exclusive insights into the inner workings of your business, whether it’s the creation process for a new product or a deep dive into who you are as a person. By including behind-the-scenes content in your email marketing plan, you’ll foster brand loyalty faster and create an unbreakable bond with your followers. 

• Include automations: The best email marketing plans run themselves using automations. While it’s impossible to automate everything, setting up flows that automatically trigger an email at different points in the customer journey (such as on sign-up, post-purchase and upon cart abandonment) will take tons of work off your hands without compromising your connection to your customers. 

The payoff of owning your audience in 2025

Owning your audience is paramount in our volatile digital age. By capturing customer data that goes beyond likes and social media reach, you can employ more effective marketing tactics to turn leads into customers and inspire repeat sales and better brand loyalty. 

When you own your audience by building a mailing list, you’ll: 

• Enjoy higher engagement and conversions: Email marketing tends to see better engagement and conversions than social media, and these sales are infinitely more trackable to boot.
  
  
• Build trust over time: The more you communicate directly and openly with your audience, the better your chances are of building trust and a strong sense of loyalty over time. Email marketing is much more direct than social media as it doesn’t rely on the shifting tides of various algorithms.
  
  
• Cut out the middleman: If today’s top social media platforms go bust, you lose your audience to the ether, which is a nightmare for any brand. With a mailing list, you’ll retain access to your customers and effectively cut out the middleman, giving you a straight shot to more sales. 

There’s so much value in crafting a strong, dedicated mailing list. As you give Linktree Forms a whirl for your brand, remember: social media is a funnel, not your home base. Use it to attract new audiences, build intrigue and show off your brand’s personality, before moving things to the true home of the action – your mailing list. 

Email marketing gives you ten times the leverage that social media does, allowing you to authentically and effectively connect with your audience and inspire real, easy-to-track sales. Make building your list and using it to your advantage a complete breeze by adding a Contact Form to your Linktree – and all your other marketing channels – now.

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