7 Ways to Integrate Social Media with Email Marketing

July 8th 2013 | By Sarah McInerney

Email and social media marketing are both effective tools individually, but when combined together effectively, they can produce something extremely powerful.

Combining social media with email marketing will present several benefits:

• Increases the reach of your message through more than one channel and cross-encourages sign-ups and follows.
• Offers different ways to communicate – using email, Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc. enables you to communicate with your audience in different ways.
• Presents your audience with more options in which to engage with you so they can choose the one they prefer.
• Boosts the chances of people taking action such as converting or clicking through to your website.

And here’s how to do it …

1. Include social media icons in all of your emails so your reader can easily join your networks. Don’t hide them away at the bottom of the emails, make them prominent and include some tempting text to encourage click-throughs. 
2. Tell email subscribers what you want them to do. For example, make it clear you want them to connect or share the email by clicking on certain icons. 
3. Ask your email subscribers to recommend your business to friends on social sites. Give them some sort of incentive, such as entry into a prize draw, or a free gift. 
4. A dedicated email asking subscribers to promote and join a particular network can work well, particularly if you need more fans or followers in one particular social area. 
5. Promote your email sign up on certain social networks, particularly where you have a strong following. Entice followers by whetting their appetite as to the content of the next newsletter then point them to the sign up page to get more. 
6. Use a ‘Retweet’ message in your email. By highlighting a particular tweet from your Twitter feed and using it in your email you can encourage subscribers to engage with you either by signing up or re-Tweeting to their feed. 
7. Make cross references to your blog and email newsletters, both generically and linking to specific content. For example a retailer newsletter about fashion trends for the summer may refer to a blog article that talks about key fabrics.  Likewise, mention your newsletters within your blogs and ask for new subscribers.

In conclusion, email and social marketing can be very powerful when integrated together. There are several opportunities as shown here that can be used to grow both your email subscribers and your social followers. What are you waiting for?! Need help with an email marketing or social media campaign? Get in touch.