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See FeaturesSocial media and email marketing: how to integrate
Social media and email marketing are powerful tools in any marketer’s toolbox. Both offer cost-effective ways to build a loyal and engaged audience organically.
But the true magic happens when you combine social media and email marketing together. This integrated approach can multiply your campaign’s results and bring a much higher ROI. All you need is the right tactics to achieve that.
In this guide, we’ll take you through a long list of ways in which you can integrate social media and email in a way that works harmoniously.
Why should you integrate social media and email marketing?
Here are some of the key benefits of integrating social media and email marketing:
- It maximizes reach. By cross-promoting content to multiple channels, you can reach more people and get the most out of your content or marketing campaigns
- It helps expand your email list and social following. By effective email marketing and social media integration, you can grow your subscriber base and social media following simultaneously
- It enhances audience engagement. When you share a message on multiple platforms, it boosts audience engagement e.g. someone may see your social media posts but not see an email
- Insights from one platform help boost marketing efforts on the other. Findings and comparison of the analytics from social media and email marketing platforms give a more precise look at what engages your audience and how to better tailor your campaigns in each channel
- By repurposing content, you can maximize returns on investment. Integrating email marketing and social media allows you to reuse the same content twice — meaning more value for the time and money spent on creating content
Overall, the integration of social media and email marketing offers many opportunities and benefits for brands. As such, you should diversify your marketing efforts instead of sticking to one channel, to get the best results.
Grab these tools for easier and more effective email marketing:
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How to integrate social media and email marketing
Here is a comprehensive list of ways to integrate email marketing and social media. Use one or more of these to maximize the reach and engagement of your marketing campaigns.
1. Add social media links to emails
One of the easiest ways to integrate social media and email marketing is by adding social icons to your email footer. Most email marketing service providers, including Omnisend, offer the option to add them, so you don’t need any technical expertise.
Take a look at how B-Wear Sportswear integrated their social links in the example below.
B-Wear used Omnisend to run email and SMS campaigns and now 40% of their sales come via Omnisend. They also realized a 66% conversion rate from welcome-series emails and increased the recovered revenue rate by 15% via abandoned cart emails and SMS. See how they did it |
2. Build an email list through social media
Social media is an excellent platform for generating new leads and building email lists.
You can do this in a number of ways, such as:
- Create lead magnets and promote them on social media with direct links to your landing pages
- Run social media giveaways and contests that require participants to fill out a form with their contact information
- Promote links to your landing pages with signup forms on social media
- Add your email address in your social media bios to allow customers to easily contact you via email
Check out how Blume has added a link to their homepage and provided their email address in their Facebook bio.
Anyone who visits the company’s homepage is greeted with a popup to collect their email address, in exchange for an offer.
Use these guides to collect email information and grow your list:
The best signup forms for high conversions
15 impressive newsletter signup examples
How to collect more subscriber information with multi-step forms
3. Use emails to gain social media followers
This is the opposite strategy of what we discussed in the previous point. It involves getting people to follow your brand on social media via emails.
Other than adding social media icons, you can also:
- Add CTAs in your emails that encourage people to follow you on social media, and also list the benefits they’ll get
- Cross-promote your social media contests and giveaways via email and share direct links for your social media profile to boost participation
- Share your top social media content in your emails to generate interest and then ask your subscribers to follow you on social media
- If you have any online communities or social media groups, promote them via email with a direct link for people to join the group
Here’s an example of a brand promoting their Facebook group via email.
4. Sync your email lists with Facebook Ads Manager to run retargeting ads
Did you know that you can use your existing email lists to run targeted social media ad campaigns? Facebook Ads Manager, for instance, lets you create lookalike audiences based on your customer segments. It will then show Facebook or Instagram ads only to relevant users who match your ideal customer profile.
Alternatively, you can re-engage your inactive customers or prospects via Facebook retargeting campaigns. You must, however, create customer segments to sync with Facebook Ads Manager to ensure your ad campaigns are highly targeted.
Omnisend makes it easy to sync your segments with Facebook Ads Manager to run these types of campaigns.
Amundsen Sports, for example, used Omnisend to run an integrated social media and email campaign. They automated order confirmation emails and used them to encourage repeat purchases. They also ran Facebook ads to retarget existing customers in the US.
Here’s an example of an email promoting the 5Mila Half Zip product.
And here’s a Facebook retargeting ad promoting the same product.
The result?
These targeted ads got 2x click-through rates compared to the earlier ads.
5. Promote your live social media events
Social media live events are a great way to engage your audience and interact with them in real time. You can use emails to promote such events and get your subscribers to visit your social media profiles.
Don’t forget to highlight what they’ll gain from attending the event and use a compelling call to action (CTA) to encourage them to join. Offering extra incentives — as B-Wear Sportswear has done in the email below — will drive further engagement.
The email has minimal text and a clear CTA. It mentions all the event details concisely and offers giveaway prizes to some attendees, encouraging more people to join the event.
Here’s a screenshot of the live event page on Facebook.
You can replicate the strategy and promote your social media events to your email subscribers to boost participation.
6. Announce the results of email giveaways on social media
One great way to integrate social media and email marketing is to run cross-channel giveaways. You can, for instance, run an email-exclusive giveaway or contest, but announce the results on social media.
What does this accomplish?
It helps drive your email subscribers to your social media profiles, earning you some new followers in the process.
Here’s an example of an email-exclusive giveaway example from Baking Steel.
7. Promote social media giveaways
This involves running social media giveaways and promoting them via email. The goal is similar to that of the previous strategy — get your email subscribers to check out your brand profiles on social media.
Social media giveaways can drive a lot of engagement. When you combine these with email marketing, you can get more participation and engagement, as well as new followers.
Make your emails detailed and explain all the rules of participation. Then, add a CTA that directs people to your social media profiles to participate in the event.
Another thing you can do is to ask your social media followers to fill out a small form and provide their email addresses to participate in a giveaway. This will help you add your social media followers to your email list.
Check out this email by Holo Taco, promoting its giveaway with clear rules and a CTA to encourage participation.
Holo Taco is a great example of a brand that effectively encourages repeat purchases using post-purchase emails.
See more of their campaigns in this guide: Post-purchase emails: 6 examples & tips
8. Share social media product videos in your emails
Creating product videos and sharing them on social media is a great way to inform and educate your audience about your products. From tutorials on how to use a product, to behind-the-scenes videos of how the product was developed, there are many types of product videos that you can create.
To integrate social media and email marketing, you can share your social media product videos in your emails. Whenever you’re promoting a product via email, add a link to your social media product videos to drive subscribers to tose platforms too.
Check out how Jack Mason promote their new watch Ellum using a series of product videos showing how it was designed.
The CTA “Watch The Series” directs people to the brand’s YouTube channel where a series of product videos are curated in a playlist.
9. Showcase social media reviews in emails
Social media has emerged as an effective channel for seeking customer feedback and offering customer support.
Many people like to talk about their brand experiences, whether good or bad, on social media, instead of using formal review channels. And they often tag the brand itself in these posts.
For example, many social media users like to mention the brands they are wearing when posting pictures of their outfits of the day (#OOTD).
You can leverage these positive mentions and reviews to engage your email subscribers and provide social proof.
Check out how Beardbrand promote their utility balms by sharing positive reviews in this email.
There’s also a CTA button and a link to buy the product at the end of the email.
10. Announce important brand news
The last of our list of ways to integrate social media and email marketing is to share important brand announcements and updates on both.
This way, you can reach more people and ensure your entire target audience gets important updates.
These announcements could be about upcoming brand events, live streams, anniversaries, sales, etc.
For instance, you could run a brand anniversary sale and cross-promote it via email marketing and social media to maximize reach and sales.
See how Holo Taco celebrate their fourth anniversary with a new product launch. This email announces the launch and provides a timeline of planned events to create excitement.
Summary
Email marketing and social media integration offers many benefits, such as increasing your content’s reach and building your email list and social media following.
By cross-promoting on email and social media you can engage your audiences on both and get better results from your marketing campaigns.
Use this guide on ways to integrate email marketing and social media to your advantage. Try one or more approaches and see what works best for your brand.
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