More and more, email is being described as one of the social channels. It’s still the number one way people share pictures, articles, links and more with their friends, family and co-workers. So when people ask if social media has endangered email, we know better. (Hint: no.) Marketing has always been about being everywhere your prospects are and that usually means more than one medium.
Email marketing and social media can be valuable comrades in growing your audience online. So are you taking advantage of their friendship? Specifically, are you working social into your email sign up and growing your email list through social media?
Take a look at weaving social and email together for list growth and new customer acquisition.
- The first – let’s face it, kind of easy – step in putting social media to work for your email marketing sign-up is adding social icons to your opt-in forms. When a prospect signs up for email, we’re excited to start sending them email, but maybe they want to connect on a personal level now. On the confirmation page of your sign-up forms, offer other ways to connect with your brand, by showing your social media icons.
- More than that, offer the social media options before they sign up, somewhere on the webpage where they subscribe. That 10-20% of your visitors that never complete the email sign-up form, may be lost forever… unless you entice them to follow you on Twitter or connect to your Facebook page. This is another way to be sure you’re capturing all the new audience members you can during sign-up.
- What has longer legs than a confirmation page? Email, of course. Welcome emails typically garner the highest open rate of any emails you’ll send your subscriber. Take advantage of their attention while you’ve got it. In the confirmation email, include your social media icons and give them a reason to connect. They’ve already signed up for your email marketing list. Why would they find you on Facebook, too? Behind the scenes prep, around the office pictures, stories from the field, Facebook-exclusive online events or special offers. Make sure they have a reason to offer you another way to get in touch with them.
Many of our clients and fellow email marketing pros already rock at pinning social media into their emails. What about the other way around? Does your social media presence help grow your email marketing list?
Why should you ask for an email opt-in if they’re already on your social sites? To gain the advantage of Direct. You can personalize and segment your email marketing messages to each individual on your email list: “from me, to you.” Tailor your promotion, your timing, your offer and more based on what each subscriber has responded to best in the past. Social media’s benefit is in its sense of community and buying things that others “like me” have bought. Email’s benefit is in its ability to be direct and targeted to each consumer.
So, in order to gain more email subscribers that will like your stuff, put social media to work for you.
- Tease your email newsletters and promotions on social media and offer a link to opt-in before the deal drops. “We’re sending out an email-exclusive offer on our popular lip balm tomorrow. Haven’t signed up yet? Get in before the offer hits at 10a. Sign up now at https://bit.ly/deals” or you may have seen emfluence pull one of these: “Monthly emsights newsletter drops this week: Getting Social on Email Sign-ups. Sign up to get it in your inbox: https://bit.ly/9eoMwS”
- If you use your blog as an archive for your newsletter – like emfluence does – be sure to offer an opportunity on each post to sign up to get the newsletters right in your inbox. The number one driver of traffic to a great blog article is email as an instigator.
- In Facebook, add an Email Sign-Up tab to your page and make it the default tab when users visit your page. “Thanks for visiting our facebook page! Any of our fans that sign up for email will get free shipping on their next order. Be sure you’re both: sign up now.”
- On LinkedIn or Twitter, when you make a new connection, send a thank you email and invite them to sign up for your company’s super informative industry-specific newsletter.
- On Twitter, when someone retweets an article from your blog newsletter, thank them and make sure they’ve signed up for the emails.
Social media is about connecting, so don’t be shy about offering value to those that choose to follow you. Part of the value you can offer is the expert knowledge of your email newsletter authors and special email-exclusive discounts.
As with all marketing and advertising, you want to be where your audience wants to find you. So offer them all their options and let them decide where and how often they want to hear from you. Note that since you’re growing your email and social media audiences by working their friendship, you want to be sure your content isn’t identical across all channels. Some things make great tweets, some things make great Facebook contests and some things should be inbox exclusive, personalized and sent via one-to-one email.
