Have you ever thought about why some brands stand out so well in marketing? How are they everywhere, not missing a single opportunity to be heard by their audience?
Well, it’s not rocket science. You can do this too!
The secret sauce lies in bringing together the most powerful marketing channels—emails and social media.
Social media marketing works best to reach a new audience, while email marketing works best to nurture and maintain a healthy relationship with your existing clients and customers. When combined, they make the perfect strategy to target and re-target for various marketing campaigns.
The most successful brands know this, and combine email marketing and social media to create an amazing customer experience. However, many brands still don’t have an understanding of this or fail to bring their marketing efforts together effectively.
When marketing teams are divided, communication breaks down, making it very hard to integrate new initiatives. This will ultimately lead you to a dead-end where you will no longer be able to reach out to new customers. And we all know how important it is to gain new customers and sales in the business realm.
To save you from such a catastrophic situation, we have come up with the best ways to unify your marketing efforts and provide the best of both worlds to keep your existing customers happy and your customer base growing!
Benefits of Integrating Email and Social Media Marketing
In order to nail a marketing strategy, you first need to understand it thoroughly—what it is and what you’re going to get out of it. So, let’s have a quick look at the benefits of integrating email and social media marketing tools before proceeding further.
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Boost your marketing metrics:
Most brands focus primarily on email marketing only, missing out on other opportunities that can arise from it. For example, encouraging a visitor to share a landing page on social media with followers after being directed to it from an email.
Incorporating social media marketing with email marketing will not only increase your chances of content being shared, but also increase your conversion rates and sales—in other words, boosting your overall marketing metrics.
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Grow your subscribers’ list:
If your email subscription list is not growing, then combining emails and social media can certainly help you reach out to a larger audience to publicize and drive people to your subscription list. This also holds true for growing your social media follower list.
This is probably one of the best ways to see growth on each platform. You may start by posting about newsletters and other content available via marketing emails on social media platforms and invite your followers to subscribe. Similarly, embedding your social profiles into your emails so anyone can find, like, and follow your brand is a simple way to get quick wins.
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Provide options to your audience:
The people who follow and like your brand may have different schedules, lifestyles, and preferences. Some may be more active on social media, while others might check their emails more frequently.
Your audience has a choice when you integrate email and social media marketing. They get to choose where they want to interact with you, this makes it more convenient for them and benefits you as well.
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More tailored experience:
Knowing more about your audience will help provide a better experience, increasing your chances to convert them. And social media makes this easier for you.
You can derive useful data about the people on your list and their preferences. This will help you create emails tailored specially for them around what might interest them, or to send rewards and exclusive offers you know they’ll appreciate.
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Amplify the reach of your messages:
The more, the merrier! Being active across multiple channels will amplify your reach to a wider audience and keep them informed about new ventures, promotions, and offers.
With email marketing and social media marketing both by your side, you get to increase your reach and have better chances of being heard by your leads and customers.
How to Integrate Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing
The Marketing Rule of Seven says that it takes at least seven interactions with a brand before a consumer decides to make a purchase. Your brand’s presence across multiple channels can increase the chances of your success and improve customer experience by making it more likely you meet that rule of seven threshold.
Let’s look at some of the smart ways to integrate email marketing and social media that improve your marketing efforts:
1. Maintain consistency:
First of all, you need to bring your marketing efforts in sync. You most likely already have an email marketing calendar. But, does it communicate with your social media team on a regular basis? Or are they utilizing a separate calendar to which you may not have access?
This isn’t a far-fetched thought; teams frequently wind up repeating their work simply because they aren’t connected to one another. For example, the social media team may have developed a holiday calendar but don’t share it with the wider marketing team to assist with email efforts and vice versa.
Integrated calendars are fantastic for keeping everyone on the same page and aware of when campaigns begin and end. This makes it easier for teams to collaborate, promote initiatives, and meet deadlines without disagreement.
2. Uploading subscribers lists to social networks:
Uploading your subscribers list to social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter associates each subscriber with their email address.
This connection helps you know a little more about the interests and preferences of your customer base. It also gives you additional channels through which you can engage with your customers and target them with ads.
3. Use social media to grow your email list:
Leverage the power of social media to grow your email list. Encourage your social media followers to sign up for your email list using call-to-action (CTA) buttons on your posts and different social media accounts.
For example:
- You can turn your Facebook CTA button into a sign-up button for, say, newsletters. It’s easy to set up and a quick way to get your users on your mailing list.
- Instagram also lets you convert your followers into customers. With a business profile with more than 10k followers or by using Instagram in-built ads opportunities, you get to use the CTA buttons such as “subscribe” as a swipe up in your Instagram feed posts and Stories. These CTA buttons lead your followers to a sign-up page or any landing page of your choice.
- You can also use CTAs on Twitter to lead your audience to your signup page.
4. Add social media icons in your email templates:
Adding social media icon buttons to your emails is another great way for integrating email and social media. This can boost your email click-through rate, increase your brand’s visibility, raise credibility, and grow your fanbase.
Marketers and sales representatives typically insert social symbols at the very top or very bottom of an email. These buttons allow your subscribers to effortlessly contact you via numerous social media channels, as well as follow your business and engage with your content there.
You can also include a few lines urging them to follow you there and indicating what benefits they get by joining you on social media.
5. Create a social group for VIP email subscribers:
Fear of missing out is something we all experience sometimes, and this anxiety might benefit your business. By creating a private group on Facebook, you can take advantage of the human desire to stay connected to what others are doing.
How do such private groups operate? As an example, you may specify that only individuals who refer their friends to your email list will be able to join the Facebook group. Alternatively, you might simply invite all of your prospects and make them feel special.
One fascinating aspect of this concept is the ability to form a VIP group to improve engagement and organic reach. Because closed groups have no or very little spam and more relevant content that interests the audience, they are more popular.
6. Launch email marketing campaigns to promote social media pages:
Using an email sequence to promote your social media platforms might help you increase your social reach.
These campaigns don’t have to be complicated, and can simply be aimed at highlighting the additional benefits your subscribers get by following you on your social media. This method is excellent for increasing the number of people who follow you.
Tip: Before sending out your email campaigns, make sure to clean and verify your email lists. Using an email verifier to do so will maximize the results of your campaigns.
7. Use sign-up forms on your Facebook page:
In addition to the CTA on your Facebook page, you can also embed a sign-up form. You can do this by designing the sign-up form with an HTML app and placing it in a suitable location on your page.
Offer enticing incentives to get people to sign up for your newsletter. For example, you can provide exclusive content to your subscribers or draw their attention to something like “special offers for the first 100 subscribers.”
8. Social sharing through emails:
Email marketing campaigns encourage your subscribers to click on your CTAs. Even if you have a large enough email list that gives good conversion rates, creating emails for social sharing can broaden the reach of your message and lead to better outcomes.
By utilizing the social sharing strategy, you will be able to make your emails shareable while increasing visibility and conversion rates. You gain access to your subscribers’ details when you allow them to share your email content with their peers. This also improves cost-effectiveness.
9. Direct subscriptions from Instagram:
Instagram is a great platform for businesses. Compared to other channels, Instagram has more potential to drive the highest amount of traffic.
The platform allows you to include links in your bio to direct your audience to your landing page. Use your posts to talk about why they should subscribe to your newsletter and what they will get out of it. This will assist you in growing your email subscriber base.
10. Reward-based referral marketing strategy:
Encourage your customers to “like” and “share” your brand’s social media pages, and get their friends and family to do the same. In exchange, you can provide them with something of value, such as special discounts, early access to sales, or reward points.
For example, you can ask your customers to share their referral codes with their friends and colleagues via email and social media.
11. Embed live social media feed in your emails:
Embedding live social media feeds in emails is another effective strategy to combine emails and social media. You can incorporate live feeds from Twitter, Instagram, and other sites into your emails.
When the recipient opens the email, this feed gets automatically updated. For instance, if you send an email on Friday and the recipient opens it on Monday, the live feed will retrieve the most recent data and the recipient will be able to see the most recent posts on Monday.
By clicking on the feed, the subscriber will be redirected to the relevant social media account, which is also a wonderful approach to gain more organic followers and engagement on your social media profile.
12. Using social media ads to retarget your email subscribers:
Using tailored adverts may be the most effective way to ensure a multichannel marketing strategy.
You can use the data from your email subscribers who open your emails to retarget them with advertising on social media platforms. This opens up the possibility of engaging with potential leads, thereby making your strategy far more feasible.
13. Launch contests and giveaways:
People love contests and gifts. It’s not only a terrific technique to increase interaction, but it also aids in the growth of your email list. It only requires the correct mix of design, messaging, call-to-action, and awards.
People will soon sign up for your newsletter in order to have a good chance of winning the contest. When it comes to social media, there is no limit to your originality, so feel free to test out your ideas. To acquire some inspiration, you may always research some amazing work done by other brands.
Next steps
The above are some of the most effective ways to integrate emails and social media and gain more customers while delivering a multichannel experience to the existing ones. These tips and strategies can boost your customer lifecycle, sales, and marketing endeavors.
It’s now your turn to apply these integration strategies and achieve the best of both worlds!
Contributed by:
Aastha Shaw is immersed in creating & developing content at Clearout & ClearoutPhone SaaS tools used for finding emails, email verification & Phone validation. She has been creating content for websites, blogs, and videos for marketing. You can reach out and connect with Aastha on LinkedIn.
