SimplyCast: Email Marketing Blog

Does your company have a Facebook page? Did you know that you can easily add a sign-up form to your Facebook fan page so your Facebook friends can join your mailing list?

When using SimplyCast, there has always been a simple way to put a sign-up form onto a web page. From the List Manager you would copy and paste HTML code onto your site so people could sign-up and be entered directly into your list.

Now it is almost as easy to add the same sign-up form to your Facebook fan page.

Here are the instructions.

To begin, you need to make sure that you have two things:

1. A Facebook fan page. (You can see SimplyCast’s fan page here)

2. The HTML code from SimplyCast that allows you to embed your sign-up form on a web page.

To get this first you need to have a list created. To get the HTML code to embed you need to select the list you want to use and go to Generate Forms on the List Manager toolbar. A screen will open that will provide HTML code to copy. The number of fields used is based on how many pieces of information you have entered in the chosen list. If you want to remove any one of the fields just unclick it and the code with refresh.

Next we will make the necessary updates on your Facebook fan page.

You need to add the static FBML application.

FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language. This inclusion basically allows you to embed your application in the Facebook platform. The easiest way to add the application is to search for “Static FBML” using the upper right hand search box on Facebook. It will show up as the second search result, and you need to click on “add to page”.

Next, navigate back over to your fan page and select “edit page” from right below your profile picture.

Scroll down to find FBML in your list of applications, and click on the little pencil icon to edit it.

In “Box Title” you can give the tab a name like “Email Signup” or “Newsletter”. Then in the “FBML” section, paste in the embed code that you copied from SimplyCast in Step 2. If you want you can use basic HTML to give it a look and feel that matches your brand.

You will want to make it easy to find so friends will see it and sign-up. You can do this by adding a new tab to your fan page’s navigation bar.

Go back to your fan page and select “edit page” from directly below your profile picture. Then scroll down to find FBML in your list of applications, and click on the little pencil icon to edit it once again. This time you want to select “Application Settings”.

From the Application Settings, you have the option to select whether you want your sign-up form to appear as a box, a top navigation tab, or both. As you can see on the SimplyCast Fan Page, we have our signup form set up as a tab on the top of the page. This is a matter of individual preference and will not affect the functionality of the form. Be creative!

By adding a sign-up form to your Facebook fan page you are expanding your reach for new customers that might not of found your company or product by traditional means.

If you have any questions on this please feel free to leave a comment and we will do our best to help you out.