Both email marketing and social media marketing are important channels in a company’s marketing mix. Both groups, newsletter subscribers and social media followers, are interested in your brand and/or product. Not only do they want to be informed and stay in touch with it, but these users actively express their interest by subscribing or following the brand on social media. Such an active interest is exactly the right starting point for your marketing, but to look at both marketing channels, separately from each other is not necessary and should not be.
If you succeed in linking email marketing and social media marketing and using them cross-media, both channels push and support each other. The users who then follow your brand on both channels feel even more closely connected to it, customer engagement increases. At the same time, your database expands: because if you attract new subscribers to your newsletters from social networks or win new social media fans from users of your email marketing, you generate new leads for both channels. The connection between social media and email marketing helps to retain existing fans and even to gain new fans.
Combine social media marketing and email marketing
Just how do newsletter subscribers become aware of your social media channels? And how do social media followers become recipients of your mailings? Here are a few ideas on how you can combine the two marketing channels:
From email marketing to social media:
- The easiest way is to integrate “follow us” links into your newsletter. You’ve probably seen them before, as they are often social media icons with links at the end of each mail. This allows users to see immediately on which social media channels they can still follow you.
- Use hashtags in your newsletters. Hashtags entice your readers to use them in their social network and thus spread your content.
- Make the content of your email easily shareable via social media with “SWYN” buttons. Newsletter readers are three times more likely to share email content (source: disruptive advertising). Recommendations from friends (keyword “referral marketing”) are also more trusted: If a new brand is discovered via recommendation marketing, you are four times more likely to buy there (source: ShareSomeFriends). Recommendations on social media by newsletter subscribers can also be promoted with incentives such as discount codes.
From social media to email marketing:
- How about if your community managers invite your followers to also subscribe to your newsletter?
- Share the contents of your mailing on social media as well via a link to the web version of your newsletter. In this way, you can make your followers aware of additional content and publications and possibly attract new subscribers.
- Individual contents of a newsletter can also be promoted via social media: If your newsletter articles have their own landing pages, simply share the individual links and let it be known that further such content is also available quickly and easily via the newsletter.
- Do you advertise landing pages specifically on Facebook and Co.? Remember to also advertise the newsletter on these landing pages, for example by including a registration form.
- Use lead campaigns or ad campaigns of the various social networks and advertise your email marketing in a targeted manner. Twitter, for example, has lead campaigns that you can use to quickly and easily acquire new subscribers.
Email marketing and social media should complement each other
Probably the content on your marketing channels will differ, because after all, readers of your newsletter have different needs than e.g. your Twitter followers. Social media followers may be just as interested in the topics of your email marketing and become subscribers – and conversely, newsletter recipients are interested in your social media presence. So keep mentioning that there is different, exclusive content and offers on the other channel.
In order for social media marketing and email marketing to work together as a team, you should make sure that all visitors feel “comfortable” with your social media appearances, whether they came there from the newsletter or from another channel. This is how you win them as new followers and fans. Therefore, moderate your community, pay attention to an appealing “ambience”. Also ask your subscribers and followers for feedback. This way your fans feel valued and recommend you to others. From the feedback and user behavior in social media, you can also gain ideas for new content for your e-mail marketing, since you can learn more about your users’ interests through the evaluation.
Always make it possible for users to register quickly and easily for your email marketing. By doing so you will win new newsletter subscribers.
Successfully merger of social media marketing and email marketing
With very simple means it is possible to use social media and email marketing cross-media. Social media fans become newsletter subscribers and the recipients of your email marketing become followers. Your database expands, customer engagement increases, and your fans benefit from the content from the different channels.