Email marketing is probably a mainstay of your small business strategy. You probably also have social media profiles (If not, we should talk.). You use them to boost business and get more traffic to your website. These two marketing platforms are each good on their own.
Integrating your email marketing and social media marketing strengthens both. Plus, doing so gives you a more coherent presence on the web. What’s not to like?
Major Changes Usually Not Required
Integrating email and social media does not require new software or a drastic change in how you go about using these platforms. You probably already have what you need to get going on this.
Good communication and planning are at least half the battle. Once you integrate your email marketing with your social media marketing, you may wonder why you waited. You can expand your email list while finding new ideas for social media posts and ads. It’s a win-win.
You can take several steps toward integrating email and social media marketing right now, in fact. Here are seven ways you can integrate email and social media marketing and start reaping the benefits.
1. Get Separate Email and Social Media Teams Talking
Simply having each team share with the other what they normally do and when they do it can spark ideas. The email team may discover social media posts that would go great in an email campaign. The social media team may likewise discover email content that social media followers would love.
Communication between the email side and the social media side can open both up to new ideas. It can also make it easier to build out coordinated editorial calendars for each.
2. Synchronize Calendars for Email and Social Media
Some companies find that syncing social media campaigns to harmonize with email marketing (or vice versa) can create a more coherent overall marketing strategy.
If this is not possible, then at least granting cross-team awareness of editorial calendars can help both teams brainstorm for new ideas.
Integrating email marketing and social media marketing isn’t about doing exactly the same thing on both platforms. Rather, it is a way of “cross-pollinating” ideas and expanding options on both platforms.
3. Upload Subscriber Lists to Your Social Networks
If your business advertises on Facebook, you can upload existing contacts when creating your target audiences. There is simply no reason not to do this.
Uploading your subscriber list to social media gives you a baseline audience. And it helps you reach email subscribers who may not have interacted with you on social media platforms.
By adding your current email contacts to your Facebook audience, you reinforce your email marketing messages with relevant Facebook ad content. There are also ways to add your social media followers to your email contacts.
4. Ask Social Followers to Subscribe to Email
While you don’t want to bombard social media followers with requests to join your email list, occasionally asking will get results. Some companies hold contests on their social media and ask entrants to confirm their entries by signing up to your email list.
Other companies create private “VIP” groups on Facebook exclusively for email subscribers. Facebook followers who want to join will need to add their names to your email list to gain admittance.
You can also reach out individually to enthusiastic followers and ask if they would like to subscribe to your emails. They may be interested in connecting on a more personal level.
5. Place Social Sharing Icons in Every Email Message
Making your content shareable is extremely important in helping it reach the largest audience. Adding social sharing icons to your emails, just as you do to other content, gives you yet another pathway toward reaching more people.
Ensuring that your social media posts engage followers and then encouraging followers to share them on their own profiles is good too. The idea is to spread your message in multiple ways.
6. Include Social Proof in Email Campaigns
If you have good news from one of your social media platforms, let your email subscribers in on it! Maybe a post went viral or caught the attention of someone with serious influence. When this is the case, your email subscribers should know about it.
You probably already know how compelling social proof can be on your website. It builds trust and nudges interested parties a little closer to buying. It does the same thing in your emails. Think of social proof as a valuable currency that can “purchase” positive attention from potential customers.
7. Reuse, Optimize Content Across Platforms
If you get a terrific response to a marketing email, why not rework the content and put it on your social media feed? Likewise, if you have a social media post that gains serious traction, you can rework that content into one of your marketing emails.
Normally, you have to do some rewording or editing to take content from one platform to another. That helps you ensure the tone is right for the audience, even though the audiences may overlap.
Social media content is fantastic for building brand awareness and exposure. Email marketing content is terrific for establishing a more personal relationship and building communication. When the two work together, the results can be greater than the sum of their parts.
Email and Social Media Marketing: Symbiotic
The symbiotic relationship between email and social media is something you can leverage. By doing so, you make each component stronger.
It isn’t about pitting one against the other. It’s more like knowing which players are most likely to get on base so you can put your cleanup hitter into the order when the bases are loaded. Everyone (except the opposing team) benefits.
Consistency, Frequency of Messaging Essential
With digital marketing, the consistency and frequency of your messaging are the keys to success. Which platform you emphasize will depend on what gets the best results. When you integrate email marketing and social media marketing, you gain greater insight into what works best and where.
If you want to make the most informed choices about your digital marketing strategy, our team knows how to help you create one that works and show you the tools you need to track your progress. From email benchmarking and testing to paid and organic social media, we know what to try, how to gauge success, and how to double down on what gets results.
Why not schedule a call with one of our digital assistants? We are here to solve problems and would love to help you get the best results from your digital marketing on all platforms.
