Integrate Email and Social Media for a Successful Marketing Strategy

6 min read

The most successful brands have a holistic view of their digital marketing strategy. The result is an integrated customer experience and strong brand image. According to Google, the average customer will come in contact with a brand about 10 times before making a purchase. By being present in as many places as possible, you’re making your journey to success easier.

If you think of two, widely used and highly effective in customer acquisition digital channels, the first that come to mind are email marketing and social media. Rather than arguing which one is better, integrate them for better customer experience.

Integrate Email and Social Media for a Successful Marketing Strategy

Social media and email are different by nature but they can work together really well and form a successful strategy. Social media are very effective in expanding reach, building trust and generating traffic opportunities. While social media clearly fit well into building a strong brand image, email is more of a private nature, which means it is more efficient when it comes to sales and personalized direct communication.

Both channels definitely have something unique to offer and by integrating them you just make your marketing strategy stronger.

Use Social Media to Build Your Email List

Your followers and fans have already shown interest in your brand by joining your fanpages and they might also be more likely to join your email list. Use your social media wise and present your followers with the benefits of your newsletter.

You can post about your email sign-up on different platforms in a variety of ways. I’ll show you some possibilities below. Remember that people love incentives and prepare carrot content or a special giveaway for people joining your list. The bottom line is to give them a reason to join your newsletter.

Embed sign up form on your Facebook fanpage

Facebook delivers a massive audience that you cannot ignore but just a mere presence on this social media channel isn’t enough to effectively monetize your marketing activities.

You can use your fanpage to build a quality list of subscribers. Make your pitch clear – you have an email marketing newsletter with great content and offers related to your brand.

The easiest way to do it is to display your newsletter sign-up form on your page using an HTML app: Static HTML – Thunderpenny. Without coding skills you can design your sign up and locate it in place you think fits the most. On our page we decided to show the sign-up right under the “about” section.

Use Social Media to Build Your Email List

Use the Facebook call to action button

Facebook offers a call to action button which can be easily customized to your needs. For building your email list “Sign up” will be the best fit and primary choice.

Visit your Page and click the “Create Call-to-Action” button. Choose “Sign up” from the dropdown menu and add an url to your sign-up form from your website. Voila!

Use Instagram bio

Instagram drives a lot of traffic, especially for e-commerce retailers. This image-based social media platform can help you present your offer using visual assets and it can also be used to grow your subscriber list.

Since Instagram allows you to only put links in your bio, the best way to promote your newsletter is to prepare a dedicated Instagram post and refer users to your bio.

Use Social Media to Build Your Email List

Talk about your newsletter on Snapchat

Snapchat users are watching 10 billion videos a day compared to 8 billion on Facebook. It’s a tremendous opportunity for brands to distribute fun and relevant content.

You can spread awareness about your newsletter easily with Snapchat. Talk about benefits of joining your email list. Provide a sneak peak of your newest campaign. Don’t forget to show your users where they can find a sign-up form on your website.

Pin your newsletter sign-up form on Pinterest

Create a dedicated pin which will refer users to your landing page with a sign-up form. Add UTM tracking codes that will allow you to keep track of generating email sign ups.

Use Twitter Cards

Twitter offers a special platform for your promotions, Twitter Cards. When a user clicks on your Tweet to expand it, he or she sees your offer and the call to action. Another click gives the permission to sign them up and Twitter sends the contact information to you, which is then accessible in Twitter Ads.

Message your LinkedIn contacts or LinkedIn Group

Contact specific individuals who you want to form a deeper relationship with and suggest joining your email list.

Use Email to Build Your Social Reach

Have your strategy working both ways. Improve your email campaigns using your social media content to strengthen both email and social media.

Let your subscribers know they can follow you on social media

Some of your subscribers may not know that you run social media profiles. Ask them to follow you in order to stay in touch. Add social media buttons that lead to your profiles and encourage people to click by using a call to action button.

You can also write a word or two about the interesting things that can be found there so they know it’s worth joining.

Use Email to Build Your Social Reach

Focus on building relationships

Make it easier for your subscribers to contact your company. Prepare the contact section on the bottom of your newsletter which links to your social media profiles. This way, subscribers will be able to send you a social media message directly from the email they’ve just got from you.

Such methods significantly remove an artificial customer-brand barrier and potentially shorten your path to conversion.

Show your social media content in your newsletter

When you publish photos or videos on social media and they get a great response, a lot of comments and likes – showcase your success in your newsletter and encourage your subscribers to interact with the content on your social media platforms.

Invite your subscribers to share your email

Place social media sharing buttons in your email and invite your subscribers to share your email content. You can for example place “Retweet this” tag and cross-promote your offer on Twitter and email.

Add social share buttons to your “Thank You!” page

A “Thank You!” page is the page the subscriber lands on after filling up the email list registration form. Use this page and put there social share and follow buttons. Just remember to point a landing page URL to the “Share” button and not to the “Thank You!” page URL, because you want their friends to sign up on your list.

Use Email to Build Your Social Reach

Pro tip

You can merge your social media and email audiences. Install a tracking code (a snippet of code) on your website and you will be able to cookie your visitors and then show them ads on social media. How to do it?

  • create a targeted email campaign
  • retarget only subscribers that clicked your CTA buttons
  • create a custom audience on Facebook, here you can see how to do it.

This way you won’t be throwing ads at random social media users. By retargeting ads, you can reach customers who’ve already shown interest in your brand and you can re-engage them. Such adverts are definitely more impactful.

Wrap up

The more holistic your strategy is the better and more integrated experience your brand is delivering to its customers. A great starting point for forming your strategy is to track what consumers are saying about you and then planning your content across many digital channels.

Use social media monitoring to gain relevant information and plan your content smart. Then, integrate email and social media efforts and make your marketing strategy stronger.

Author Bio:

This article is a guest post from Maria Wachal, Head of Content at FreshMail. Maria is passionate about digital marketing and content creation. She puts her technical and marketing experience to work towards the goal of enhancing email marketing.

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