As best as we can tell, there are about a billion Facebook users, 313 million Twitter users and 2.6 billion email users.
If we could integrate social media communication with email, we’d get unparalleled access to our existing and prospective customers.
And, given that 77% of users prefer email to receive promotional messages, it’s likely we’d increase our sales at the same time.
This article, from guest contributor Kevin George of EmailMonks, gives 7 actionable strategies for how your business can integrate social media with email, and boost sales doing it.
Integrating Email Marketing and Social Media
Let’s take a look at the benefits of integrating social and email:
- The integration helps in increasing the reach of your emails and thereby increases your email open and click-through rates.
- Sharing your emails on social media platforms will help you in growing your email subscribers’ list.
- Adding social sharing buttons in emails helps your customers in engaging with your brands on other platforms.
- It will help you in tracking your email performance metrics and identifying key influencers.
Let us now dig into the details of hooking up social media and email marketing for maximum efficacy. But before that, take a look at this email from Good American:
It’s a simple and plain email to let subscribers connect with their brand on all major social media platforms.
Moving further, let’s take a sneak peek into the various ways in which you can bring together the most powerful digital marketing platforms…
1. Including opt-in forms on Social Media Accounts
Does your brand have a huge number of followers on Facebook and Twitter, but not many subscribers on the email list? Well, you can draw traffic from your social accounts to your emails.
This can be done by asking your fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter and other social accounts to subscribe to your email list with the help of embedded sign-up forms. This is a legit way to ask for permission and then let the subscribers to opt into your email marketing list themselves.
2. Adding social sharing buttons in your emails
Include links to all your major social media accounts in your emails. Like in the above email, announce it loud and clear instead of just including small icons somewhere at the bottom of your emails. Once you send the announcement email, you can include the icons in your further emails.
Make them aware of your social presence and give them options to connect. It’s a good practice to do so a part of the welcome email series but in case you miss out on doing so, you can send such an email anytime during the email lifecycle. Check out this cool email from Handy:
3. Inviting subscribers to share
Just providing a link to your social media accounts on your email won’t serve the purpose. Ask your subscribers to connect with your brand on other channels and also share the emails and the offers on those channels. If the subscribers share your emails on their social media accounts, it will help your brand with improved reach and visibility.
4. Providing incentives
To attract more users to subscribe to your list, give them an incentive. No matter what campaign you run, the viewers will respond better if it benefits them in some way. You can provide incentives in the form of discount offers for the first purchase or running referral programs.
You can also give them options to get featured in the next email correspondence or delight them with personalized emails. This will induce them to share your brand and emails with their peers. Have a look at this email from Square that gives the subscriber $1 for sharing the link.
5. Running dedicated campaigns
Promoting your social media accounts in all your emails will still not give you desired results. For this, you need to run dedicated campaigns exclusively to drive traffic to your social channels.
You can run different dedicated campaigns for each platform. For example, you can send an email stating why your subscribers should follow your brand on Instagram and Snapchat. Have a look at this email from BlackTux that does the same in their welcome email:
6. Asking the Subscribers to Tweet and Retweet
Adding tweets to your emails can help you in cross-promoting your brand offerings better. Include one liner click-to-tweet buttons and trending hashtags in your emails and ask your subscribers to tweet and retweet. This will help your brand in reaching more users.
7. Running Social Contests
Promoting social contests in your emails is a great way to engage your followers and subscribers on both these channels. Draw your email subscribers by giving them a chance to win something and give them free gifts and offers on your social channels. This will be a great motivator for them to subscribe to your brand on all channels.
Wrapping Up
So the bottom line is, both email marketing and social media marketing allow brands to connect with their audiences in a powerful way. When done right, social media can be used to improve your email campaigns and vice versa by strengthening your brand overall. How do you combine emails and socials for your brand’s marketing? Do share with us!
Author Bio:
Kevin George – the Head of Marketing at leading email design and coding brand, EmailMonks – specializes in crafting beautiful email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and email templates HTML free. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and breathes ‘email marketing.’ He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing tips and best practices at his email marketing blog.
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