7 Tips for Integrating Email and Social Media Marketing
How can you grow your email list, increase your social media following, strengthen your brand, and extend the reach of your email campaigns? By integrating your email and social media marketing. Here are seven tips for doing just that.
- Include “connect with” social media icons in your emails. This is one of the easiest ways to let your subscribers know where they can connect with you on social networking sites. That’s probably why so many email marketers already do it. For example, one study showed that 76% of emails include social media icons. Plus, adding social media icons to emails is also an effective way to increase engagement with your subscribers. Another study showed that emails with social media buttons had 158% higher click-through rates compared to emails that didn’t.
Keep in mind, however, that promotional emails should be focused and feature a single, primary call to action. So, put social media icons in the footer of your emails to prevent distracting subscribers from the main goal of your email campaigns.
- Promote your email newsletter on social media networks. Let your social media followers know about the valuable content and exclusive deals and discounts they’ll get by signing up for your email newsletter. And you can make it quick and easy for users to subscribe to your email list without having to leave the social media site or fill out a long form: For example, lead-generation cards are available through Twitter’s ads toolkit, and customized tabs can be added to your Facebook page to collect contact information.
- Provide links to share the content in your emails and email newsletters. Getting subscribers to share your email content and promotions with their social media friends and followers is a great way to increase brand visibility. But be sure to clearly label social media buttons as “connect with” and “share with” so that your subscribers can differentiate between the two.
- Place retargeting ads on Twitter and Facebook for subscribers who click on a link in your email. Advertising on social media sites can be expensive. To get the biggest bang for your buck, set up a retargeting campaign. This involves installing a tracking code on your website landing page, sending an email that promotes products on that page, and then sending targeted social media ads to those subscribers who showed interest by clicking the link. Check out this informative Twitter blog about retargeting ads. Plus, click on the following links to find out more about how to target ads using paid reach on Facebook’s Custom Audiences and Twitter’s Tailored Audiences.
- Run a contest on your social media sites and promote it to your email list. Having the opportunity to win something wonderful from your company may be just the incentive your subscribers need to become a follower of your brand on social media.
- Use dynamic content in your emails to share live social media feeds. For example, the live feed could feature tweets, Facebook posts, and/or Instagram photographs that include a certain hashtag connected with a promotion or event. Even if subscribers aren’t interested in your current promotion, they may still be motivated to open your email to check out the latest conversations and pictures posted on your social media sites.
Sharing live social media feeds involves embedding code in the email to create a truly dynamic and engaging experience in the inbox. So, be sure to test that the live feed renders well on various desktop and mobile devices, as well as resonates with your target audience.
- Offer an option to follow your company on social networking sites on your email unsubscribe page. Perhaps your email subscribers may want to keep in touch with your brand, but email isn’t their preferred channel. So, following you on a social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram may be more to their liking.
Want to get started at integrating your email and social marketing strategies? Contact FulcrumTech today and we’ll show you how to successfully harness the power of cross-channel marketing.