Email and social media integration: 6 tips for marketers
11 Nov 2013
It’s all about integration, right? Absolutely. We all know that integrating our marketing channels is absolutely key to ensure consistent brand messaging across multiple channels, giving our customers the right information, in the right way, at the right time, via the right channel. But how many of us are actually doing this effectively?
In today’s marketing landscape, you would be hard pushed to find a marketing strategy that only includes email, or only includes social media and ensuring that your email marketing and your social media activities are integrated is crucial to the success of your campaigns. Many marketers make the mistake of separating the two, when in actual fact to enhance your brand loyalty, improve your customer experience and most importantly increase conversions, email and social should be truly integrated into your multichannel strategy. Here are a few things you should think about when planning your email and social integration:
Do you know your customer’s social media channel of choice?
Don’t know which social sites your subscribers use? Then do a little research. Think about sending out an email campaign to all your subscribers with an offer that can only be redeemed through social media, including all the key social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Once your customers start redeeming this offer you will be able to monitor which are their preferred channels of engagement and which sites are the most popular. This will help you to better tailor the content of your emails in line with your social media platforms.
Have you included ‘share-to-social’ icons within your email campaign?
Newsletters typically include a number of different articles so ensure you include a share button for the most commonly used social media sites on all of the articles. That way your customers can pick and choose which stories they want to share.
Have you thought about incentives?
Social sharing buttons are now a common feature of any email, and so can be overlooked. This means you have to try even harder to capture the attention of your audience with content that inspires or entertains and most importantly spurs your customer to share it with their friends, colleagues and contacts. Think about encouraging your customers to share your email content by offering incentives such as discounts and vouchers to do so.
Are you thinking about social sharing when writing email content?
Remember to produce content that is not only relevant and interesting, but also suitable for the social channels you want your customers to share it on. For example, if you want people to share content on social sites and their preferred platform for this is Twitter, make sure your subject lines and headlines are both short and concise, making it easier for them to tweet your message within 140 characters.
Have you included visual share-worthy content?
The online generation loves sharing, absorbing and even producing visual content, so where possible provide them with infographics, pictures and videos – over articles – to share socially. Not only will your audience be more receptive but your message is more likely to achieve better engagement rates from the people your customers share it with.
Are you encouraging people to subscribe to your newsletter via your social channels?
All too often a company will have a high number of social media followers but not have these same followers subscribed to receive their newsletter. Getting your followers/fans to subscribe to your newsletter is an effective way of acquiring qualified subscribers that are already engaged with your brand. Include a newsletter sign-up form on your Facebook page, or even promote the newsletter on your Twitter profile and blog, with a link to the subscription form.
In short, there are many reasons why you should integrate these two channels. Email and social marketing channels offer many different opportunities for you to engage with your audience. There are strengths within each channel which can be exploited but by far the most profitable strategy is to use the above advice to combine the power of both. With this approach, you can operate an omnichannel marketing strategy, allowing you to communicate with your audience in the right place for them with relevant and tailored content. So what’s stopping you?
Lucy Hudson, Head of Field Marketing, Teradata eCircle
In today’s marketing landscape, you would be hard pushed to find a marketing strategy that only includes email, or only includes social media and ensuring that your email marketing and your social media activities are integrated is crucial to the success of your campaigns. Many marketers make the mistake of separating the two, when in actual fact to enhance your brand loyalty, improve your customer experience and most importantly increase conversions, email and social should be truly integrated into your multichannel strategy. Here are a few things you should think about when planning your email and social integration:
Do you know your customer’s social media channel of choice?
Don’t know which social sites your subscribers use? Then do a little research. Think about sending out an email campaign to all your subscribers with an offer that can only be redeemed through social media, including all the key social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Once your customers start redeeming this offer you will be able to monitor which are their preferred channels of engagement and which sites are the most popular. This will help you to better tailor the content of your emails in line with your social media platforms.
Have you included ‘share-to-social’ icons within your email campaign?
Newsletters typically include a number of different articles so ensure you include a share button for the most commonly used social media sites on all of the articles. That way your customers can pick and choose which stories they want to share.
Have you thought about incentives?
Social sharing buttons are now a common feature of any email, and so can be overlooked. This means you have to try even harder to capture the attention of your audience with content that inspires or entertains and most importantly spurs your customer to share it with their friends, colleagues and contacts. Think about encouraging your customers to share your email content by offering incentives such as discounts and vouchers to do so.
Are you thinking about social sharing when writing email content?
Remember to produce content that is not only relevant and interesting, but also suitable for the social channels you want your customers to share it on. For example, if you want people to share content on social sites and their preferred platform for this is Twitter, make sure your subject lines and headlines are both short and concise, making it easier for them to tweet your message within 140 characters.
Have you included visual share-worthy content?
The online generation loves sharing, absorbing and even producing visual content, so where possible provide them with infographics, pictures and videos – over articles – to share socially. Not only will your audience be more receptive but your message is more likely to achieve better engagement rates from the people your customers share it with.
Are you encouraging people to subscribe to your newsletter via your social channels?
All too often a company will have a high number of social media followers but not have these same followers subscribed to receive their newsletter. Getting your followers/fans to subscribe to your newsletter is an effective way of acquiring qualified subscribers that are already engaged with your brand. Include a newsletter sign-up form on your Facebook page, or even promote the newsletter on your Twitter profile and blog, with a link to the subscription form.
In short, there are many reasons why you should integrate these two channels. Email and social marketing channels offer many different opportunities for you to engage with your audience. There are strengths within each channel which can be exploited but by far the most profitable strategy is to use the above advice to combine the power of both. With this approach, you can operate an omnichannel marketing strategy, allowing you to communicate with your audience in the right place for them with relevant and tailored content. So what’s stopping you?
Lucy Hudson, Head of Field Marketing, Teradata eCircle
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