How to get social with your email campaigns

8 ways to integrate social media into your email marketing

Rather than email becoming obsolete, widespread use of social media updates via email has, in many ways, reinforced how email is an even more powerful marketing channel. I'm sure many of you already use email and social media separately to help promote your business but how many of you integrate your social media and email marketing?

Including and promoting social sharing or share with your network options in an email campaign is beneficial for a couple of reasons:

• They extend the reach of your emails: The more people who share your email, the more potential you have for opens, clicks and conversions.
• They provide an opportunity for list growth: The more eyes on your emails, the better chance you have of gaining new subscribers.

So how do you integrate email and social media? Here are eight simple tactics we have found effective.

• 1. Announce upcoming emails via social media
  Use your social media platforms as a way to spread the word about your email and the content it holds. This will help encourage people to subscribe as you’re giving them a sneak peek at what they’re missing out on.
• 2. Social media icons
  Every single email you send should include social media links or icons. This is the easiest and most effective way to link your email marketing activities with your social media marketing efforts. With one click your subscriber will instantly be driven to your social media pages where they can ‘like’ or ‘follow’ you.
• 3. Social media share buttons
  In addition to encouraging your email recipients to connect with you on social media, you should also be prompting them to share your emails with their own personal social media networks. For this reason your email content needs to be engaging so your subscribers will want to share it with their friends and therefore increasing your campaigns overall reach.
• 4. Share links to online copies of your email on your social media pages
  Once you’ve sent out your email you should post the online link on all your social media channels. If your followers like what they see, chances are they will subscribe so they don’t miss the next one.
• 5. Use your interactions with fans on social media to help determine email content
  By observing what the most popular topics are on your Facebook page, or by asking your fans what they’d like to see in your emails you can tailor the content towards their interests. That way they’ll want to sign up to receive the content that they had a hand in creating or asking for.
• 6. Ask for the conversion
  In your emails, ask your recipients to like your social media pages, and on your social media pages, ask fans to subscribe to your email list. The more points of contact you have with your audience the better.
• 7. Let email subscribers know about social media contests or special offers and vice versa
  If you are holding a contest or giveaway on social media, don’t keep it a secret. Send an email to let your subscribers know what they’re missing out on if they don’t connect with you via social media. Or if you have informed your subscribers of a special offer via email make sure you let your social media followers know about it too.
• 8. Add an email signup form to your social media page
  As well as having a signup form on your website you should have one social media pages that allow it e.g. Facebook. This will help encourage your followers to signup as they don’t even have to leave Facebook to do so, thus adding another avenue for increasing your subscriber list and promoting your business.

Image/Copyright source: NewZapp