Email Marketing and social media marketing can be utilized in similar ways to help a business reach their marketing goals. Some of the best uses of both social media and email marketing are:
- Grow your marketing reach and prospect/customer base
- Create engagement through timely call to action messages (special discount, free trial, limited time offer)
- Test your marketing communications. Test different email subject lines and promotions via email marketing or social media marketing.
Email Marketing & Social Media Differences
Email marketing and social media marketing are also different in some regards, so you will want to keep a few things in mind:
- Email marketing is wrapped in rules from the CAN-SPAM regulations that make getting the message out a bit harder. There are very intelligent spam filters on email inboxes these days. In order to successfully deliver your emails you will need to ensure you use an email marketing solution provider that has a record of high delivery rates.
- Social media marketing has no such rules…yet. And there are no such concerns over deliverability. However, you want to maintain a professional and respectful presence in the social media world.
- Email marketing is typically a one-way conversation. You send they receive.
- Social media marketing is a two-way conversation. This real time communication warrants considerably more monitoring and faster response times than email marketing. It may be overwhelming at first, but there are many tools out there like HootSuite and TweetDeck that help keep all the action in one place for you.
Email Marketing & Social Media Collaboration
Regardless of their likes and differences, there are several ways to integrate social media marketing and email marketing to reach your goals. Here are a few you can start today:
- Share your Email on Social Media. After you have sent your email campaign out you should share it on all applicable social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc). This enables people not on your list to interact with your email marketing and hopefully sign-up for your email list. Allow social media followers to view an online version of your email and encourage them to share it with their friends via email or social media.
- Add Social Media Sharing Buttons to Your Emails. By simply adding the Facebook “like” button or the social media share icons to your email you will encourage people to post about this email on their social media page, thus spreading the word.
- Use Email Marketing to Grow Social Media Followers. In the content of your email give a shout out to your Facebook or Twitter page and encourage them to like or follow you to receive special offers or enter them into a drawing for doing so.
- Use Social Media Marketing To Grow Email Marketing Lists. Placing a sign-up form or widget on your different social media profiles enables fans to sign-up easily without navigating away from the social media platform.
As you can see, it’s easy to use both email marketing and social media marketing to grow your business. Just remember they aren’t the same, but are similar and they can and should be used in conjunction for greater marketing success.