Integrate Your Email and Social Media Strategy for Maximum Results

Social media and email are two of the most popular marketing methods utilized by businesses, but very often they're treated as competitors. In this post, we will show you how to how to integrate email marketing and social media for making the most out of the two channels.

Whether you're already using social media and have been underwhelmed by the results, or you're using email marketing and want a new way to grow your audience – you'll get the best ROI if using them together.

Some leading digital marketing experts say that social media and email marketing are like cheese and apple: you may think that they don't go together but actually, they are a perfect match.

On the one hand, social media helps to extend the reach of your email campaigns and build your mailing list. On the other hand, email campaigns can deepen the relationship with your audience that you've started to build using social media platforms. Therefore, create campaigns that run across both channels and feedback into each other.

In a recent study from Aberdeen Research, 65% of the top 20% B2B marketers who use social media for lead generation choose to integrate email with it.

Here are some tactics to get you started.

1. Make it Easy for People to Sign Up

If people can't easily share their information with you, it's unlikely that they'll take the extra effort to find your email list. The first thing you'll need to do is set up your online signup form.

Once your form is set up, make sure to:

• Add a link to your sign-up form to your social profiles: Update your "About" section on each of your top social networks with a link to your sign-up form. You can also install a sign-up form directly on your Facebook Page.
• Ask people to sign up: This should be an easy one. How would they know what should do if you don't tell them?
• Simplify the sign-up process: Eliminate any potential roadblocks by keeping your signup form short and sweet. Only ask for information that you plan to use.

2. Upload Your Subscriber List to Your Social Networks

There are a few key reasons you might want to do this:

1. Relationships – It puts a face and a name to your email subscribers
2. Listening – Following them on social networks will give you a better idea of their needs and wants
3. Community – If you are publishing interesting content on social networks, you might earn some new followers

Uploading your subscribers to social networks differs by platform. Take a deeper look at the whole process in our post dedicated to this topic.

3. Make Your Emails More Social Than Ever

Getting your social media fans and followers to join your email list is important. In fact, it's likely going to be one of the most important parts of your online marketing strategy.

• Send a dedicated emailSend a message to tell your subscribers why they should connect with you on social media in addition to email. For example, they'll get additional tips or advice, learn about special offers, or whatever else you plan to share. This is a great way to let readers know how they can communicate with your business on social media.

• Add social buttons to all of your emailsMake your social media presence a regular part of your normal mailings. Add links to your social media profiles within the emails you already send.

• Encourage discussionMake readers share their thoughts or questions about a specific topic from your email on social media. These kinds of strong social calls-to-action will provide a link between the two channels. Just be sure you monitor the discussion so you can reply and keep it going.

• Enable social sharingIncorporating sharing features into your email marketing gets your email out onto social networks where it will be seen by people beyond your mailing list.



4. Run Retargeting Ads on Facebook and Twitter for People Who Click on Your Emails

Blindly running ads is an easy way to spend a lot of money with low Return On Advertisement Spending (ROAS). But matching intent and interest with targeted ads is a good way to make a lot of money.

If you create a targeted email campaign for your subscribers, then retarget only the ones that clicked through, you eliminate guesswork. Social networks are perfect platforms to run your ads because they are affordable and because of the amount of traffic they have.

5. Let Social Networks Send Emails for You

This tactic is a kind of "indirect email marketing." Here's an example of how it works:

When somebody subscribes to a group on LinkedIn, he will start regularly getting emails from LinkedIn triggered by activity inside the group, unless consciously choose to unsubscribe from email notifications.

Since people usually sign up with their most used email address, your emails will likely end up at the top of peoples' inbox without having to press the send button.

The key to making this work is to run a great community. It's not about self-promotion — rather it's about helping people in your niche. If you're able to do that and grow your group's membership, you'll end up in the inbox on a daily or weekly basis.

As an added bonus, the emails are really good. The "from" name is the same as the group name. They tease new content and use a nice blue button to call readers to action.

6. Create an Exclusive Social Group for Your Email Subscribers.

This is an underrated tactic. We will shortly explain how Noah Kagan did it:

First, he created an email course (Email1k), then he took a few smart people to contribute lessons and made the content free to anyone who signed up.

When somebody signs up, he is asked to email two friends about it. And if they do, they will be able to join the private Facebook group.