Email Marketing Tip OTW – Connecting with Social Media

In this email marketing tip of the week, I want to talk about effectively connecting your email marketing campaign with your social media strategies. The two don’t have to be separate, discontinuous entities and in fact to maximize the success of both, they shouldn’t be. However, just quickly throwing out a link at the bottom of your email mentioning Facebook or Twitter isn’t enough. (Andrew at The Scrappy Email Marketer does a great job at pointing out some corporate blunders in this exact realm.)

In this email marketing tip the point I’d like to drive home is that you can take this on from two approaches.

Starting with social media – If used correctly, your social media platform can serve as a great tool for producing email marketing leads, and drawing people into your overall campaign efforts.

Starting with email campaigns – For the email marketing lead you already have, you can effectively work on converting them into paying customers by including them in some of your more personal outreach efforts.

Let’s start with the second half of this equation, taking an email marketing lead and converting him or her with your more personalized approach on social networking sites. You have to remember that signing up for an account and creating a uniform, empty page doesn’t give you any “street cred”. If you are trying to send your prospects to your social media sites, you have to make it worth their time.

In other words, don’t make the mistake of saying the same things in the same ways on all of your different outlets. I like taking the approach of keeping email marketing campaigns personal, but focused on the task at hand, whether that’s selling a product or promoting an event. Then, I think it’s great to use social media sites for a softer approach, focusing on core values and missions.

I’d like you all to meet Bob from Bob’s Chicken Shack, he’s a small business owner and he’s delving into the world of email marketing and social media. Here’s how Bob can effectively tie together his email marketing campaigns with his social media platforms.

• Bob can focus his email messages on promoting next Friday’s buy one bucket, get one bucket free promotion.
• His Facebook page however can talk about how Bob always loved animals and therefore thinks they deserve proper treatment, which is why he only uses organic products and local produce and yadda yadda.
• His Twitter page can include quick blasts like, just talked with a customer about her stance on using eggs from caged chickens. I don’t do it, but what do you all think?

Throughout all of this he tied his business together and additionally, all of the outlets served a purpose rather than being repetitious, wasted rehashes. Well done, Bob.

Making the Connections

Now you’ve seen how you can differentiate your different strategies while still keeping them related and worthwhile, but how can you actually translate this into an effective strategy for cross-promotion?

Let’s go back to the two ways we looked at this in the beginning.

Starting with social media to find email marketing leads - On Bob’s Facebook page, instead of saying “Sign up for my email list,” Bob could talk about how if people in the local area are looking for a healthy food establishment that treats animals correctly, they should look you up and they can receive discounts if they receive your email updates.

Starting with email campaigns and converting an email marketing lead – Instead of just including a link on the bottom of his email saying “Visit Bob’s Chicken Shack on Facebook”, Bob could place a blurb at the top of the sidebar in his email inviting people to learn more about Bob’s passion for organic products and animal welfare on his Facebook page.

Hey, take the analogy for what it’s worth. The point I’m making with this email marketing tip of the week is that you can effectively tie together your different online promotional strategies, including email marketing and social media.

When you do it the right way, you’ll be successful at producing more email marketing leads while also more effectively converting the email marketing lead you already have in your pocket.

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