Social media seems to seep into everything these days. From the 3.5 million Twitter followers of Pope Francis to Barack Obama posting photos of the family dog on Facebook, it’s almost impossible to avoid being social on the Web. When it comes to your email marketing operations, this statement definitely holds true. If the crossover between your promotional emails and the world of tweets, likes, and shares isn’t so clear, don’t worry – with a little review and some keen insight, you can delve deeper into social media, understand how it affects your email marketing, and retool your management of these accounts to get the most out of your next email campaign.
Understanding the Connection
To start, let’s look at how exactly these two seemingly different fields overlap. When it comes to email marketing, your organization is obviously trying to gain ground with a new audience, or keep your established mailing list active and visiting your website. Similarly, companies that run great social media accounts push traffic and conversions back to the homepage by engaging customers with great content and conversation. So where’s the connection? The companies that do both best offer marketing content, like deals and promotions, on social media, all while linking back to social media pages and events via promotional emails. Under this approach, you can build both audiences and generate even more exposure as people like, favorite, and share your content from their inboxes and on their profiles.
Gaining Ground on Google Plus
You also have to carefully consider how you optimize each platform to ensure you get the most out of your combined email marketing endeavors. While many others might start with social media giant Facebook, Google actually offers some serious rewards if you decide to promote your brand on its network. First off, your followers on Google+ are more likely to see your posted content when they search for key search terms on the Google engine. This means you effectively get a third chance to show off your marketed content after sending out an email and sharing it on Google+. The fact that these posts end up on search result pages based on relevancy for users who don’t even follow your brand is icing on the cake. It also gives Google+ some serious clout when it comes to reaching your target audience.
Building Your Facebook Following
However, it’s hard to beat the sheer influence and reach of a great Facebook page. Once you get your page rolling with likes, follows, and shares, your message can literally reach extended viewers around the globe. To get to this point requires the right approach. Start by offering up multiple types of content and not just spamming your basic promotional emails in post form. People on Facebook want to see things that relate your product to their daily lives and pique their interest at the same time. Naturally, this takes more effort and time than hitting your followers with the bland copy and paste strategy, but you’ll soon see why being on the cutting edge of value-added content on Facebook is a great way to compliment your email marketing campaign and score some views at the same time.
Creating All-Star Tweets
In some industries, there’s nothing bigger than Twitter for connecting with customers. If this applies to your company, you can become a thought leader and share your email content at the same time by following a few straightforward rules. To start, optimize your profile to reflect your business and hit all the key tags. While some people don’t bother to put anything in the description for their profile, this can come back to haunt you in a big way. By filling this section out, you can sneak in a little SEO practices while pairing your profile with relevant keywords. Combine this with setting up your tweets to include links and appropriate hashtags while engaging your followers and other thought leaders, and now you’ve positioned yourself as an authoritative voice in your industry while keeping consumers and contemporaries alike glued to your latest updates.
The Big Picture
You could also consider other social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and other emerging social networks, but for businesses looking to revamp the social media process to compliment a great email marketing campaign, it’s hard to steer away from the “Big Three.” That doesn’t mean the others don’t have a place, but building a sound foundation starts with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. With these accounts rolling, you can not only promote your email content on new platforms, but also expand your mailing list and site exposure just by being active. For any company looking to go viral and hit new audiences, you can’t beat this kind of combo.
