Social media and email are two of the most important weapons in your marketing arsenal. Picking one out of them is not an option for any smart marketer, and both are important part of the marketing mix. Both when working as a separate entity can serve a limited purpose, but, when combined together create a sense of loyalty from the customers and increased sales for you.
They should be combined in a manner that your fans and followers can join an email marketing list via social media and similarly your subscribers can share your email content via social media networks. If you want to combine your email marketing and social media channels, here are 5 easy steps to help do that in a seamless manner.
1. Leverage the Power of Social Media to Amplify Your Email subscriptions
Everyone knows that social media when used strategically can enhance a brand’s visibility, reach and engagement. Similarly, social media can also help you grow your email list. This can be done in various ways, by simply adding a link or subscription button of your email newsletter or by optimizing your blog posts landing pages with opt-in forms or an eye catching call-to-action. Your visitors might not need to opt-in to access your blog posts shared on your social networks, but if they like your content, they might want to subscribe to your site.
2. Add Social Icons in Your Emails
As per stats, “Emails that include social sharing buttons have a click-through-rate 158% higher than emails that do not include social sharing buttons.”
If you’re an experienced content marketer, you know that creating quality content is just half the work done, another half is promoting and sharing it to help you reach more people.
Just as you embed social media buttons on your site to enable your visitors to share your content, similarly give your email subscribers an opportunity to share your emails by integrating social media icons in your emails. Shareability plays a very important role in making a piece of content go viral, similarly giving people an option to share your email can make your email go viral. Also, giving social icons in emails will help you in sending email subscribers to your social pages from where they can learn more about your brand.
It’s even advisable to add your social icons on your email unsubscribe page. This will give you a chance to stay connected with those who have chosen to unsubscribe. This way you will still be able to update them about your brand.
3. Encourage Your Subscribers to Share Your Newsletter and Incentivize Them to do so
Adding social sharing buttons to your newsletter isn’t all about it. But, at the same time it’s also equally important that you encourage people to share it. Simply adding social media buttons to your newsletter won’t boost sharing, as people have become accustomed to seeing them.
If you really want people to share your newsletter, create inspiring content which can arouse emotions in people as people like sharing such content. Add visuals in your content to capture their attention. Stats say, “90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text.” Brands can even use their social media photos in emails. Other than that you can also leverage your subscribers by offering some perks like discount coupons, vouchers etc. to encourage them to share your newsletter and give a nice boost to your social media presence.
Similarly, you can leverage your email list to announce your list of social media contests & giveaways. Send them an email and let them know that they can enter the contest/giveaway by liking your Facebook page or following you on Twitter or whatever social platform you’re working on.
4. Don’t Just Give Sharing Option, Make it Easy to Share as Well
Giving choice is good, but too many choices confuse people. If your brand is present on every social media platform that doesn’t mean you have to incorporate each and every social icon in your email. Otherwise it will confuse your subscriber on which icon they have to click and will make it tough for them to share.
Instead of adding too many social icons include the popular ones like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn or the one on which your audience is more active. This way you cannot just use your email space effectively and clutter-free, but it will also help you in monitoring which are the preferred channels of your audience. And, accordingly you can tailor the content of your emails for these platforms.
5. Create Engaging Emails to Inspire Interaction and Encourage Your Audience to Share
Not all emails get opened. People are dealing with tons of emails in their inboxes already. They have started filtering out mails and open the ones, which they find relevant and engaging. This makes it extremely essential to craft email that not only piques their curiosity, but also provides value to them.
So, make your newsletters engaging by asking your subscribers to reply to your mail and also tell them that they can interact with your brand on your social media platforms. This will help you in building a strong social media community as well.
For a successful online business, your email and social media strategy should complement each other. These simple tips can help you build an email marketing list of subscribers that will look forward to actively engage with you and hear from you thus leading to increased sales and revenue.
Author: Reshu Rathi Reshu Rathi on the Web Reshu Rathi on Facebook Reshu Rathi on Twitter Reshu Rathi on LinkedIn Reshu Rathi on Google Plus Reshu Rathi RSS Feed
Reshu Rathi is a digital marketing executive at GetAmplify, a marketing personalization software & engagement platform. She is passionate about helping businesses boost conversions from their email campaigns…. View full profile
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