When it comes to your marketing campaign, email is still the most effective way to get your message to your target audience. Does that mean that you should ignore other forms of marketing, like social media marketing?
Absolutely not. Doing so would be a missed opportunity, as social media platforms are another great way to get in front of your audience.
You don’t have to choose between email marketing and social media marketing. They are mutually beneficial marketing tools and when you integrate your digital marketing platforms, your results will be better than merely the sum of your marketing parts.
To fully benefit, you need to create an integrated digital marketing program. An integrated digital marketing campaign is a way to work smarter, not harder, and pairing your email marketing with other digital social media platforms will help you get better results from your digital marketing efforts.
Why integrating digital marketing platforms is vital to your business
Consider the following reasons why so many companies are utilizing both email and social media platforms in their marketing campaigns.
Social media can be used to build your email list
How are people going to find you in order to subscribe to your list?
You can hope that your SEO is on point and that users will find you through an organic Google search. That will work to some extent but, if you want to accelerate the rate at which people sign up for your email newsletters, social media is the way to go.
Email marketing campaigns can be used to build your social media following
If you have a good-sized email list, getting your subscribers to like you on various social media platforms will be a fast, easy way to grow your following.
Create a recognizable brand across platforms
Repetition is a great way to emphasize your brand. By appearing on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, in addition to your email platform, your brand and message are more likely to stick in potential customers’ minds.
Integrated platforms encourage connectivity with your audience
One of the goals of email marketing—or any type of marketing, for that matter—is to establish a relationship with your audience.
Developing relationships takes time, but you can speed things up by being available to your audience on multiple platforms. Plus, because social media tends to be more informal, people are often more comfortable voicing their opinions there.
Give your audience more than one option
Some people prefer social media to email and vice versa. When you create an integrated digital marketing campaign, you don’t have to worry about alienating any part of your audience because you’re available, in one form or another, to all of them.
How to create a successful integrated digital marketing campaign
Knowing why you need to embrace integrated digital marketing is one thing; actually implementing it is another.
Following are some tips as well as examples of brands that have integrated their digital platforms well that will help you get started with your next integrated digital marketing campaign.
1. Buzzfeed News: Take advantage of social media lead generation
Social media is a great tool for building your email list, as well as brand awareness. These platforms give you the opportunity to interact in real time with your target audience, and that interaction can actually increase your email opt-in rate.
Buzzfeed News—one arm of the ubiquitous Buzzfeed—takes advantage of this by linking to a sign-up page through their Instagram profile:
Source: Buzzfeed News’ Instagram
This profile features stories they share through their Buzzfeed News newsletter. When users click through the link in their bio, users arrive on a page that includes the same featured stories as well as a form to opt-in to the emails:
Source: Buzzfeed News
During various periods of your digital marketing campaign, you can do some lead generation work on social media. You can pepper these throughout your campaign to encourage people to subscribe to your list.
Be careful with how often you do this, though, as too much could come across as salesy, and that can be a major turnoff to some people.
Balance is key.
2. Neiman Marcus: Email encourages social media following
Source: Milled
When you want to grow your social media following, look no further than your email subscriber list. If your audience is on social media platforms and they enjoy your emails, they’ll likely also enjoy whatever you have to say on social media.
Add social media buttons to your email newsletters to inform your readers where you can be found online and encourage them to follow you there.
3. Marie Forleo: Encourage retweets on multiple platforms
Source: YouTube
An important part of creating an effective email is offering a clear and direct CTA that gives your subscribers guidance. You need to show them what action you want them to do, whether it’s buying one of your products or checking out your latest YouTube video.
You can, and should, do something similar to your email and social media integration. Having social media follow buttons in your email isn’t always enough to get more followers or to encourage interaction.
In addition to the buttons, you can create a social media call to action within your emails and on your social media platforms.
Marie Forleo is a pro at doing this. Each week, she sends out an email newsletter with an episode from MarieTV. This video can also be found on YouTube.
If you click on the video, you’ll be directed to her website to watch the video and read the related blog. Within the video, Ms. Forleo shares a “Tweetable,” a snippet-sized takeaway from the episode. You’ll also find the Tweetable in her blog, and, when she promotes the episode on Twitter, she shares the same snippet.
Doing this benefits her in a couple of ways:
- Her viewers/followers/readers expect the Tweetable. It’s an important part of her brand that is instantly recognizable.
- The Tweetable encourages her audience to watch the video, read the blog, make comments, and engage with her on social media.
4. Convince & Convert: Email opt-ins on social media platforms
Social media can be used to grow your email list. You can do this in a couple of ways.
First, write a Facebook or Instagram post or a tweet that relates to what you’re sharing in your latest email. You can also advertise your latest freebie or giveaway to your audience and invite them to subscribe to your email list to learn more.
Second, add an email opt-in form to your social media profile. When potential customers/subscribers click on your profile or the “About” section of your profile, they’ll get to know a little bit about you and be invited to subscribe to your email list. Your opt-in can be a simple “Subscribe to our email list” or you can attach it to a giveaway, like an eBook or report the way Convince & Convert does on their page.
5. Dove: Provide an incentive for interaction across platforms
Sometimes, simply encouraging your audience to retweet something doesn’t inspire action. That’s when you need to add an incentive.
Dove has started a campaign to “expand the definition of beauty.” To get the attention they want, they’ve started the #ShowUs hashtag. They use this hashtag across all of their platforms—from their marketing emails and website to Instagram and YouTube.
Source: Dove
To spread the message, they added an incentive. Dove encourages their followers to share their photo and their story, in addition to using the hashtag #ShowUs. The incentive: They could end up being a part of the #ShowUs project with their picture featured as part of the #ShowUs collection.
6. Bonus tip: Add email marketing integrations into the mix
Trying to integrate social media and email marketing can feel overwhelming. It may seem like there’s not enough time in the day to take care of everything that needs to get done to create successful marketing campaigns.
Thankfully, there are tools that can help, like the many integrations you can access through an email service provider (Campaign Monitor offers over 250 integrations to fit any brand’s needs).
These tools allow you to:
- Engage with your audience on multiple platforms, including social and email.
- Easily manage your campaigns.
- Publish content on social media platforms.
- Analyze your progress and see what’s working and what’s not.
Wrap up
Integrated email marketing will improve your marketing efforts across the board. To review, here are some of the benefits and how to implement an integrated digital marketing campaign.
The why
- Social media platforms can be used to build your email list and vice versa
- Integration encourages connectivity across platforms
- It makes your brand recognizable across multiple platforms
- Integration allows you to cater to people who love email, as well as those who love social media.
The how
- Use social media buttons in your emails
- Encourage retweets in your emails and on Twitter
- Add email opt-in forms to your social media platforms
- Provide incentives for interaction.
Don’t forget to make life easier for yourself by utilizing integrated digital marketing platform tools, like Salesforce email marketing integration.
Choosing to focus solely on email marketing or social media marketing is a missed opportunity. Improve your chances of getting subscribers and higher conversion rates by embracing marketing integration.
To truly benefit from your social media platforms, you need to create an effective social media strategy. This, in conjunction with a well thought out email marketing plan, will elevate your overall marketing results. Curious how to do this? Check out our resources for more information.