Email marketing and social media marketing are two ships running parallel to one another. Modern marketers often find themselves in a dilemma as to which one is more effective in communicating with their customers and prospects: email or social media. However, they often don’t realise that email and social are fundamentally different channels with very distinct strengths and weaknesses.
It’s very tempting to rely heavily on social media for creative marketing in 2019 since it’s direct, simple and everyone in the industry seems to be doing it. However, always remember not to throw all your eggs into one basket! Embedding social media sharing immediately extends the reach of the current campaign. If your socials aren’t moving the needle the way you’d like them to, then it’s time to start brainstorming additional ways to reach your target audience. Hence, integrate email marketing with your social media strategies!
Let’s say that your brand shares a new video on your Facebook page, Instagram account or even YouTube channel and that you are hoping to get some organic reach and engagement from it. The first few minutes after you post are crucial; you need to get views, likes and comments fast so that the social algorithms show you some love.
However, if you have a healthy email list, you can reach out to your subscribers and let them know about your new upload and drive some targeted traffic towards it. Your email subscribers form some of your most loyal fans, so they are likely to check out your content quickly and interact with it.
Integration of Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing
The two key ways that email marketing and social media marketing can be used together:
- Use social media to grow your subscribers base
- Use email to promote engagement on social and grow your social fan base
If people display interest in your brand on social media channels, there are high chances that they will be interested in your email newsletters as well. Brainstorm about ways you can engage your active and loyal follower base, educate them about your emails, and simplify it for them to sign up.
Your fans and followers may or may not know about your newsletter. It is imperative to remind them about your newsletter and provide a link to a signup page. This is the primary and simplest step for turning users on social media into email subscribers.
For example – “Did you know that subscribing to our newsletter can get you a 30% discount on your next purchase?”
How to improve engagement with your audience?
A highly engaging trick is to use your existing email list to create targeted audiences for paid social campaigns. A company can upload their list of email subscribers to Facebook Ads Manager and create a custom audience. On doing so, Facebook will find the profiles of your email subscribers, and you can then use that as your target audience for an ad campaign. This means that you can retarget your email subscribers on Facebook pretty easily.
Facebook’s algorithm will analyse your subscribers and will create an audience of people who have similar demographics, interests, etc. The company can then advertise to this new highly targeted group of prospects.
Most of your email list subscribers are also probably your customers. So, you can create an exclusive Facebook group for them. This can act like a network to share useful content with your consumers. Members can ask questions, interact with like-minded people and help each other, which creates a sense of community and belonging.
So once and for all, instead of wondering which channel to go with, let’s wonder as to, “How can we capitalize on the strengths of each channel and effectively use them work together?”
