Email marketing is perhaps the most cost-efficient way to build a following and generate sales. But, even the best welcome email examples can’t match the sense of community and connectivity users get on social networking platforms. While each one definitely has its own merits, combining them into a synergized strategy could yield double the results without doubling the effort.
The Advantages of Enhancing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy With Email
1) More options to connect
The truth is, each user regards each platform differently. Some prefer to use social media for commercial interactions, while some like to limit their social networking activity for personal communications. Others might not even be active on social media at all. By providing equal value on social networks and email, you allow each user to choose the best way to engage with your brand. Consequently, they’re more open to your marketing messages.
2) Improved engagement
By getting your email and social strategies to work together, you essentially have more options to trigger interactions. Your newsletters can send users to your social media accounts, and your social followers can boost your subscriber count and email engagement. With more interactions, you have more opportunities to make a sale. Additionally, providing value on both platforms also keeps your brand at the top of your audience’s minds.
3) Well-rounded subscriber data
By combining your data, you have a more complete picture of each of your subscribers. That paves the way for deeper connections and identifying those that have the potential to offer the greatest value to your company. That also gives you a more complete profile of your entire audience. You’ll be able to identify what communication strategies work best on which platforms, allowing you to develop the most effective marketing campaigns.
4) Enhanced marketing insights
One of the most significant values of social networking sites is detailed metrics. By observing what your social media audiences respond to the most, you can gain valuable insights to improve your newsletter marketing. Generally, what works on your social accounts will also boost subscriber engagement on email.
Top Tips for Combining Email With Social Media Marketing
For newbie marketers, combining email and social networking strategies stops at adding social media sharing buttons on each newsletter. While that goes a long way for boosting engagement, it leverages only a very small portion of what the two platforms are capable of. To truly enjoy the immense potential of combining social media and email marketing, here are some tips to follow:
1) Combine your data
Email and social media each give you valuable data on each of your subscribers as well as your audience as a whole. Combined, however, you’ll get an incredibly complete picture of who your audiences are, what they like, what works for them, as well as what doesn’t. You’ll also be able to pinpoint who your loyal followers are as well as those who could use a little nudge to improve conversions.
2) Engage in re-targeting tactics
Combining your data also allows you to engage in re-targeting tactics. For example, you can show ads to email subscribers who engaged but didn’t convert. By subtly reminding them of your products and services on a different platform, you have a more considerable potential to make a sale. The most awesome thing about this is the best email marketing tools can seamlessly locate your email subscribers on social media, target them based on specific parameters, and show them the most relevant ads for maximum conversion potential.
3) Reach out to your email subscribers on social media
Re-targeting tactics don’t need to be limited to generating sales. It can also be used to deepen relationships with your subscribers. With complete data and better insights, you can use social media to reach out to critical subscribers. For example, you can target your most loyal subscribers to reward them (and hopefully encourage them to influence others to patronize your brand as well). You can also target wavering subscribers to engage them in conversation, address their concerns, enhance your relationship, and gather insights to improve your campaigns.
4) Use social media to boost newsletter subscribers
Through social networking features like Twitter’s lead generation card and Facebook’s email signup tab, you can harness your social media following to gain newsletter subscribers. All you need is a compelling reason for people to subscribe. That could be a promise of a free course, access to exclusive content, etc. No matter what it is, just make sure you offer something different and complementary on each platform to keep your audiences engaged on both. You can make use of social media scheduling tools to help you manage these social media accounts effortlessly.
5) Use social media insights to enhance email marketing engagement
By spending some time observing essential social media metrics, you can gather valuable insights to use for your email newsletters. Take a look at your top social media content in terms of volume, reach, and engagement. Then, gather insights on what they have in common and the reasons why they’re the best performers. By doing so, you’ll have a better understanding of what type of content works best as well as what kind of language leads to improved engagement.
6) Develop a VIP group
Social networks can serve as a platform to host a group of your best customers. For example, you can create an invite-only Facebook Group to develop a community among your loyal customers. That enhances their sense of affinity for your brand. If done right, that also gives your regular customers something to aspire to. They may end up buying more and become more engaged in hopes that they would qualify to join your exclusive group.
The idea of combining email with social media marketing might be overwhelming. But, it’s actually one of the most cost-efficient things you can do for the success of your online business. When used synergistically rather than separately, you can use each platform to complement each other and develop a unified strategy to enhance your online presence, boost sales, and generate a loyal following.
