How to Engage Users to use Social Media Through Email Marketing

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Key takeaways

• Convert email subscribers to social followers to give customers choice about how they engage and to gather actionable segmentation data.
• Simple asks and one‑click sharing icons increase social follows directly from email.
• If sharing buttons aren’t enough, use incentives: contests, added savings, exclusive offers, early access or charitable donations on their behalf.
• Create and promote valuable, original content (DIYs, tips, advice, unique images) to drive organic shares and follows.
• Offer exclusivity, special offers or early access, to make social follows feel worthwhile.
• Avoid repeating identical content across channels, tailor posts to each platform (e.g., Facebook photography, Twitter hashtags, Instagram images).

Introduction

Making a name for your brand requires multi-channel marketing strategies. Using your tried-and-true email marketing campaigns, you can convince your subscribers to engage on social media. There are a number of benefits to getting your potential customers to connect with you on more than just email.

What are the benefits?

Gives them options

First of all, getting your customers to connect with you on multiple channels gives them choice. Your main goal may be to engage with them via email, but having them also like and follow you on your social media channels gives them the choice of what they want to read from you. This, in turn, gives them the option to click through from wherever they are – reading their emails, checking Facebook or tweeting on Twitter. Facebook has also contended that people who like your page are also more engaged and connected to your brand. This statement could also be applied to other forms of social media like Twitter, Instagram or SnapChat.

Gives you information

A secondary benefit of having your email subscribers also connect with you on social media is that it gives you more information about them. You can segment your users into those who like you on Facebook versus those who don’t. You could even further segment to those who have shared your content on Twitter versus those who haven’t.

How do you engage users to connect on social media?

Ask them

There are a number of ways to get your users liking and following you on social media and the simplest way is just to ask them. Always include sharing icons in your emails. These extremely easy-to-use buttons will enable users to share your information, find your social media pages and like and follow you with just a few clicks (even as little as one).

Reward them

If providing those sharing buttons doesn’t seem to do the trick and get your customers moving forward on to social media, give them a larger incentive to do so. You decide on the offer or incentive, but let them know if they share your content, they’ll be greatly rewarded. This could be in the form of:

• Contests
• Added savings for increased shares or likes
• Exclusive offers
• Early access to content
• Giving back to others (i.e., through a donation the company will make on their behalf)

Give them valuable content

If the content is meaningful, readers will want to share it, without you even having to ask. This isn’t just about deals, promotion codes and coupons either. Depending on your industry, readers will want to know about DIYs, tips, advice and other original and unique content will spur your readers on to share, like and follow. Dan Greenberg, co-founder and CEO of Sharethrough, writes in an article for Fast Company, that the ways to create meaningful content include:

• Connection
• Originality
• Advancement (in terms of uses of media and mediums)
• Depth of engagement

Originality and connection doesn’t just have to happen with your written content, but also with the images you are sharing.

Provide exclusivity

Everyone wants to be a part of the “in” crowd. People want to feel special and it is possible to give your readers the status they crave. Let them know that by also following you on your social media channels, they’ll be a part of something bigger and better. This could be in the form of special and exclusive offers or valuable content, only available to those who have liked or followed you on social media. Early access to an event or sale is one way to give your readers exclusivity as a reward for engaging with you on your social media.

Be unique on all your channels

The best way to discourage your readers from following you on multiple channels is to provide them the same content copied over on each. If you provide something unique on every channel, this gives a measurable incentive to your customers to subscribe in as many spots as they can. Using the platform in the way it was intended will increase your chances that you’ll get follows on each one. In an interview with Mashable, Natasha Khan, social media manager for ModCloth, says “On Facebook that means sharing photography, on Twitter it means wordplay hashtags, and for Polyvore it means styling outfits”. Of course, on Instagram, that means images. While it is super easy to share something between platforms, be wary of doing this and make each platform as unique as possible.

Social media is a powerful tool for brands and while your focus may be on email marketing, there are ways that you can keep customers engaged both with email and social.

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