Torn between e-mail and social media marketing? Why not choose both?
They may have different functions, but social media and e-mail aren’t far apart. Although both can be used as independent business marketing and sales platforms, integrating them can streamline your strategy and eliminate many routine tasks.
E-mail marketing has been proven to outperform all other platforms with its incredible ROI of 4200%, according to a 2019 study. Imagine how much that number would increase when integrated with social networks. With millions of monthly customers on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and more than a billion active Facebook users, you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity.
Integration can help you achieve your goals much more effectively, from increasing the reach of your ad campaigns to adding more potential customers to your subscriber list.
This article is about e-mail marketing and the wonders it can bring to your business through integration with social media. Let’s dive in!
Overview:
- What is e-mail marketing?
- Why is e-mail marketing so important?
- Types of e-mail marketing
- Integrating social media into e-mail marketing strategy
- Advantages of integrating social media and e-mail marketing
- Using data for effective e-mail marketing
- Challenges and solutions for integrating e-mail marketing
What is e-mail marketing?
E-mail marketing uses e-mail to market products and services and builds long-term customer relationships. Every time a company sends an e-mail, it can be considered a form of e-mail advertising besides order confirmations and direct responses to customers.
There are about 3.9 billion daily e-mail users worldwide. And that’s not all: this number is expected to increase to 4.3 billion by 2023. As the number of users increases daily, e-mail offers an excellent opportunity to expand marketing reach and increase sales, with 4.24% of customers buying based on e-mail marketing.
Why is e-mail marketing so important?
Social media is an essential platform for advertising campaigns and distributing your marketing content. But when it comes to building communication with customers, e-mail marketing is way ahead in terms of effectiveness.
The reason is that e-mails are read faster and more often, as they are considered vital than any other message we receive on social media. 21% of e-mails sent are opened within the first hour of delivery. This factor leads to a higher probability of customer interaction.
Types of e-mail marketing
1. Newsletters
It is a familiar ritual for companies worldwide to send e-mail newsletters to their existing or potential clients to make them aware of their products and services. But e-mail brochures are also trending to attract leads by providing insights and highlighting the solution the company wants to offer its customers.
According to the Content Advertising Institute, 77% of B2B marketing experts consider e-mail newsletters a practical approach to content marketing.
2. Targeted e-mails
These e-mails contain information about a specific offer and are usually sent to a specific target audience, while the newsletter is usually sent to the entire e-mail database. This type of e-mail has a targeted CTA and is easy to create, increasing conversion rates and decreasing unsubscribe rates.
Companies need to notify their entire customer base in cases like an emergency or a brand new offer. Otherwise, it’s better to stick to targeted e-mail campaigns.
3. lead-nurturing e-mails
The next type of marketing message we will discuss is a lead-nurturing e-mail. It ensures that the company caters to the needs of its customers down to the smallest detail. To do this, you must identify your ideal customer profile (ICP) or target audience.
70% of Millennials are frustrated and unsubscribe from irrelevant e-mails, except for a few that stand out. Lead-nurturing e-mails are among the messages your subscribers expect to receive, as they contain valuable and informative content.
Such messages are usually automated and sent according to a schedule you set. Their content can vary from special offers and discounts to information about blogs, webinars, online books, etc.
4. Sponsorship e-mails
Sponsorship e-mail marketing is a part of paid media technique that includes PPC, display, mobile, and affiliate advertising. With the help of your existing contacts who agree to include your brand in their newsletters, you can reach a new audience.
5. E-mail Digest
A digest is a series of e-mails that contain a summary of important information and articles. It can be integrated into your e-mail marketing to improve relationships with your customer base, drive the audience to your website, and increase sales. Depending on how much content you want, you can choose between daily, monthly, or biweekly digests.
Now that we know the different types of e-mails, let’s discuss the methods of integrating e-mail marketing and social media.
Integrating social media into your e-mail marketing technique
E-mail marketing offers many benefits. When used correctly, it can help create a diversified customer base for the brand and increase sales volume, leading to higher profitability for the company. And with the increase of social media, conventional advertising strategies are shifting as well, as companies use social networks to reach a wider audience and promote their brands.
By following these steps, you can obtain the best of both worlds:
1. Upload a list of subscribers to social networks
If you upload your list of subscribers to social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, it becomes easier to link each subscriber to their e-mail address. This connection helps me learn a bit more about the interests and preferences of the customer base. It also gives you additional channels to connect with your customers and target them with your ads.
2. Invite social media followers to join your e-mail list
If you see that your social media page is overgrowing, it is a wise decision to welcome your followers to join your e-mail list. To do this, you can add a call-to-action button, such as “Subscribe to our list” or “Sign up for our newsletter.” This way, you won’t lose your followers if your social media account happens to have an error or gets hacked.
3. Reward-based referral marketing strategy
Get your customers to follow your brand pages on various media platforms and get their friends and family to do the same. That will work well if you agree to provide them incentives.
4. Insert social icons into your e-mail
Adding social icons is not only valid when you want to send referral e-mails. Why not include them in other messages you send, be it e-mail digests or newsletters? That can increase the CTR of your e-mails by 158%.
Marketers and sales reps often place social icons at the top or bottom of an e-mail.
5. Create a social community for VIP e-mail subscribers
Sometimes we all have a fear of missing out. And that fear can be beneficial to your business. By creating a private social group on Facebook, you can take advantage of the human need to stay connected to what others are doing.
How do such private groups work? For example, you can specify that only those who recommend their friends to subscribe to your e-mail list can join the Facebook group. Or you can invite all your potential customers and make them feel special.
Challenges and solutions for e-mail marketing integration
Every process comes with challenges, and the integration process is no different. These challenges need to be met with practical solutions. Let’s list each one.
Challenges
- Integrating e-mail data with social networks: Marketers and sales reps must collect and send important information across their channels. For example, they can identify the potential relationship between e-mail and landing pages or capture the revenue generated by an e-mail conversion.
- Improve deliverability: If your bounce rate is high, you probably need to review your e-mail list and remove inactive and non-existent e-mail addresses. This way, you’ll avoid hard bounces.
- Subscriber growth and retention: Marketing experts believe lead acquisition and retention is the third most significant challenge in e-mail marketing. It isn’t easy to grow your e-mail list size and keep your contacts excited about your messages.
- Achieving measurable ROI: Sales and marketing professionals need to know how the messages they send to prospects impact the sales procedure.
Solutions
- Integrate your data systems: To collaborate your e-mail marketing with other data systems, you need to use an intelligent marketing software that does the integration. One such tool instance is HubSpot’s CRM, which includes SEO, content publishing, lead management, lead nurturing, and e-mail marketing progress reports.
- Practice good e-mail list hygiene: Improve your e-mail list by removing addresses that are not active. You can identify these e-mail addresses by tracking opens, website activity, and clicks.
- Earn your e-mail subscribers: Don’t try to buy e-mail lists. Be blunt about what your audience can expect from you if they subscribe to your e-mails. Or give them options on what they can receive. For example:
- Tips and tricks on how to run a successful business.
- News about your products.
- Unique offers via e-mail.
- Nurture your leads: Lead nurturing includes actions such as drip marketing, automated assistants, marketing automation, etc. Automated outreach can assist you in increasing engagement in no time.
Summary
The increasing use of social network platforms among users is prompting businesses to resort to the method of advertising through social networks. Brands invest heavily in promoting their businesses and integrating e-mail and social media marketing. This integration helps strengthen customer relationships and build a good brand image.
Both promotional channels should work side by side, and the information from one should help optimize the use of the other. Regardless of which marketing channel works best for you, at each step, it would be best if you evaluated whether this technique serves its purpose: to increase sales, leads, and profitability for the company.
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