Email marketing or social media marketing? How about both? If you are not already utilizing them together, you are missing out on some awesome benefits. Email and social media marketing are like peanut butter and jelly. One is good by itself, but is even better when combined with the other! Email and social media marketing are different and excel in different areas, which is exactly why it is a great idea to use them together.
When you integrate email and social media marketing, they can broaden your audience reach, spread brand awareness, gain traffic, and help you connect with different types of people. Social media can increase the number of people who receive your email campaigns. Your emails can potentially go viral after being shared through social media, resulting in increased click, open, and conversion rates.
Combining email and social media marketing can help you identify your main influencers. Most email service providers include metrics on who has shared your emails, as well as the effect their sharing has caused. This data can help improve insight of your audience and help you better target your future marketing campaigns.
Did I mention that integrating email and social media marketing can grow your email list as well? The more people you have checking out your emails [thanks to social media], the higher chance you have of gaining new subscribers.
Email and social media marketing integration also lets your prospects connect to your business in multiple ways. It is possible that your email subscribers actually prefer to engage in different ways other than email. While email is a great way of communication, some people may prefer social media; therefore by combining these two forces, you are not limiting your communication with prospects. You are actually expanding your reach! How can email and social media integration be done? Here are 5 basic ways you can combine email and social media marketing.
1. Include social media icons in your email
It is important to include social network platform icons in your emails. Don’t insert a teeny tiny Facebook icon way at the bottom of your email. Make it visible so people actually see it and click it! By doing this, you are giving your audience the tools to share your message.
2. Tell people to connect and share
Showing your audience just an icon may not be enough. While many subscribers recognize the Facebook and Twitter icon on your email campaign, not everyone knows what action you want them to take. Your email should have a clear social media call-to-action, like “Follow us on Twitter”.
3. Tell people why they should connect and share
Provide your audience with an incentive on why they should connect to your email and social media marketing. Reward those who share you content with a special offer or some other incentive. Your incentive doesn’t have to be some huge prize. Something as simple as a small discount can be very effective at getting people to interact with your business across multiple social channels.
4. Add social media buttons to your email unsubscribe page
Just because someone does not want to receive your emails does not mean they do not ever want to hear from you. They may just be cleaning their inbox out. Give them a chance to connect with you on social media to still keep in touch in a less distracting way.
Like peanut butter and jelly, email and social media marketing are even better together. They become more powerful marketing tools combined and can really drive results by reaching and engaging multiple social channels and communicating with a wider-ranged audience. So try incorporating these two together. You will be driving in more subscribers and followers and achieving higher conversions, sales, and better satisfaction from your email marketing and social media marketing efforts in no time.