Integrate social with email marketing for better digital marketing

It’s been around for a long while now and even though some people thought that social media would be a competitor, if not the replacement to email marketing, we now know that they are best used together.

Most companies utilise email marketing as one of their major ways of driving website traffic and boosting revenue for a low cost per conversion, but as social media begins to really tighten its grip on web users – it’s important to diversify the way you communicate with your subscribers and utilise the social universe and allow them to do some of the promotional leg-work for you.

I subscribe to many newsletters including Virgin Holidays, Amazon, Splendia and TravelZoo (to name but a few), all of them are beautifully crafted and relevant and I click through on many – but I have not seen any of these embrace social marketing in their emails to its full potential.

In fact most companies I subscribe to are happy to include links to their social sites to encourage followers (Splendia does this particularly well), but why are they mostly displayed at the bottom of the email?

Social marketing offers a way for your customers to share your message. Its relevant, its viral and most importantly it’s free!

You may wonder: what are they missing by not using social buttons? The answer is simple – Facebook has a whopping 800 million users, Skype has 29 million users connected at peak times along with Twitter at 100 million active users (plus many millions more on other popular social sites). That’s a significant amount of people they could be reaching every day for free.

A recent report showed that those who included social media sharing buttons in their email marketing saw an increase of 30% in click-through rates compared to those without sharing buttons!

Most of the companies I’ve mentioned have excellent social media pages that are active every day and are brimming with excellent content from authors and followers alike, so they know the power of good social marketing. They all also handle email marketing extremely well – they just now need to cross promote all of their communications and make them work in harmony.

So what would I suggest?

Here is a brief overview on what I think would make a more social ‘friendly’ email newsletter:

Feature content from your social websites

This could be a comment from a Facebook follower, or maybe it’s a Tweet from a Twitter follower. An example, say for Virgin Holidays, would be to ask a simple yet catchy question each week with the best answer being included in their newsletter – this makes it more viral to answer and may also boost email newsletter subscriptions (having an email subscription area on their Facebook page would be a good next step too).

Like, Tweet & ‘Share This’ buttons

We know that one of the keys to successful email marketing is relevant content, but why not allow your subscribers to share your fantastic products with their friends and family? An ideal example would be when Amazon sends out their ‘recommended’ emails – why not have a Like, Tweet and/or ‘Share This’ button under each product/feature listed?

It’s a universal suggestion and any content could be shared. Below are a few ideas:

1. Interesting graphics like promotional banners
2. Photos (like traveller snapshots)
3. Products (flight prices, products like books/DVDs and beyond)
4. Content (featured articles)
5. Competitions

Include conversation starters

Get your subscribers talking with ‘newsletter only’ content that poses questions to them (or promotes a discussion). This will encourage new followers.

Follow us links

Include the generic ‘Follow us on…’ links in the header or somewhere that is visible straight away. Don’t just add logos – give them a reason to follow you (for example – For exclusive competitions, offers and more follow us on..)

Add more engaging content

Did you know that video is in demand? Why not include a snapshot of a recently uploaded video – again as an example for Virgin Holidays, why not a promotional video for one of their key destinations (or a destination that your subscriber is interested in)?

Skype

Allow your subscribers the chance to call you via Skype for free – It’s another way your customers can communicate with you and is easy to integrate into your newsletter (Skype provide a handy tool that gives you the button).

Where now?

This new direction in email/social marketing is still in its early stages, but if we do not evolve with current technology and lead the way in utilising it to strengthen our digital marketing arm, then we’ll be left trying to figure out how we missed the boat.

Obviously there are companies out there who have put these two marketing titans together and get the results, but as I’ve mentioned previously there are still large companies yet to embrace it and who would undoubtedly see immediate benefits.

At Digital Trip, we’re constantly developing new ways for our clients to monetise their customer communications and are passionate about promoting this new way of email marketing to all of our clients.

So the question is – what will you be doing with your next email newsletter?