They say that opposites attract. When it comes to email and social media, ne’er a truer word was spoken. The old stalwart of digital communication, combined with the rising star of the B2B marketing world, create a potent marriage of reliable, easily-analysed, targeted messaging, with the cutting edge of self-propagating, limitless-reach mass interaction.
Maximising the marriage of these two potent forces will help you to create a powerfulpromotion mix that will reach out to your customers – wherever they are.
It may increase your workload, but it will be worth it.
With the proliferation of social and multimedia platforms, marketers are working harder than ever. According to a 2013 survey of senior UK B2B digital marketers:
74%: “Keeping up with technology is even more of a challenge than it was three years ago.”
73%: “Being a marketer has become more challenging in the last three years.”
65%: “Responsible for marketing to a wider range of territories than three years ago.”
The spread of social media into target marketing has a lot to answer for.
Email marketing is not dead.
However, in a bid to accommodate the rise of social media, don’t be tempted to shirk on your email marketing.
According to Adestra’s 2013 Email Marketing Industry Census:
66% of in-house marketers rated email as having an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ ROI, second only to SEO (75%).
55% of companies said they generated more than 10% of their sales from email marketing alone.
The measurability of email’s effectiveness was a primary reason for its ongoing appeal.
Equally, social media is now a target marketing force to be reckoned with…
38% of companies said that social media and engagement was a top marketing priority in 2013.
Who’s doing what?
A 2012 survey by The Chartered Institute of Marketing found that respondents considered the following platforms core to their business marketing activity:
79% – Twitter
69% – Facebook
66% – Linkedin
60% – YouTube
53% – Blogs
25% – Proprietary online community
22% – Google+
SHOCKING: Despite its popularity, only 9% of businesses in 2013 said that social media was well integrated into their email activity.
The advantages of integrating social media into your email marketing:
Create multiple platforms through which to connect with your audience and have an effective promotion mix.
Allow you to expand the reach of your emails.
Provide you with key opportunities to grow email data lists.
Offers email subscribers more options to connect with you, and each other.
Organic shares and recommends from social media can be used to draw new customers to your brand in a way that email alone cannot.
Enable you to build up an army of brand influencers and ambassadors.
So for the marriage vows…
I, Marketing Emails, do take you, Social Media, as my lawful wedded spouse. I vow to:
Include social media icons in all my email communication.
Incentivise readers to share email content through social media platforms.
Include ‘Tweet this’ prompts in emails to promote content.
Promote social media platforms through dedicated emails to my data lists.
Create compelling multi-media content that my audience will want to share via social media.
Customise emails to a user’s preferred social platform.
Use material which has been posted by brand ambassadors on social media sites as a source for future email content.
I, Social Media, do take you, Marketing Emails, as my lawful wedded spouse. I vow to:
Promote email content and sign-up via social networking sites.
Use social media competitions, promotions and sweepstakes to grow and refine email data lists.
Share web-based versions of email content to ensure a wider reach.
Analyse customers’ social media preferences to influence and target future email messaging.
Include email / newsletter / blog opt-in forms on social media platforms.
Use social media initiatives to try out new content and ideas, and add the most successful to future email programmes.
Conclusion:
Widespread use of social media has undoubtedly increased marketing workloads, but failure to integrate social media into your email strategy risks diluting the impact of both media.
To do list:
Include social media icons in emails as a matter of course.
Incentivise sharing of email content on social media sites to increase organic growth of your data lists and fan base.
Create compelling multi-media email content that can be easily shared via social media.
Use social media as a means to drive traffic to your email content and encourage sign-up to your database.
Download the free eGuide to get your messaging right: The Marketing Executive’s guide: getting your messaging right
