Social Media vs. Email Marketing - How to Make Them Work Together

The modern-day marketer has a lot on their plate – from adjusting ad campaigns to monitoring brand mentions and optimizing on-site SEO. Additionally, the abundance of channels means that marketers have to limit themselves to a few options.

With a market size of approximately 3.5 billion users, it’s not surprising that social media is at the top of this list.

As such, relatively older marketing platforms such as email have taken a backseat; but what if I told you that the number of active email accounts in 2018 numbered around 3.8 billion?

The debate of social media vs. email marketing is a fiery one, but experts know that the secret to digital marketing success lies in utilizing both for maximum effect.

The consumer decision-making process incorporates several different touchpoints. This is why marketers are faced with increasing pressure to build an omnichannel presence – including emails.

With 73% of marketers rating email marketing ROI as “good” or “excellent”, a strengthened email marketing strategy makes for a strong addition to every organization. Hence, a good approach regarding the social media vs. email debate is to have both pillars of digital marketing incorporated into your strategy.

As per a study by Google on user search intent, average consumers come in contact with a brand about 10 times on average before they actually buy. Amongst other things, this study revealed an underlying truth about marketing to modern audiences – focusing on just one channel is a recipe for failure.

While social media is the core channel for building your brand image, engaging with your audience and accumulate a following – the private nature of email makes it a proven platform for personalized direct communication and most importantly, conversions and sales.

While emails have a higher open and conversion rate, social media offers the chance to reach a mass audience with close to 3.5 billion people active on various social media platforms.

When looked at from a marketing perspective, opting for one over the other is not the correct approach – particularly when you can choose both. No matter what we choose from both, we should always use social media wisely and responsibly.

Long gone are the days when marketing channels operated in siloes; now, the typical conversion journey of a consumer can start off with your social media page, signing up for a newsletter on your website, and eventually converting in-store using a promotion that you directed via e-mail.

Social media has various benefits for your business and so does email. When combined, both channels can be utilized simultaneously to boost your brand and ROI.

Improve Your Marketing Metrics

As mentioned before, email and social media are two very distinct platforms. While social media promises amplified exposure and engagement, emails carry the likelihood of an increased click-through rate and email opens.

A holistic approach can enable you to make the best of these metrics (and others as well, going as far as sales metrics) by utilizing both channels – and isn’t that what we all aim for?

Increase Your Followers

The success of every business remains in garnering a loyal audience base that responds to your marketing cues, acts upon promotions and remains an avid follower of the brand.

You can direct your social media traffic to your email newsletter to increase your subscribers. You can do the same to increase your social media followers by integrating your social profiles within your newsletter to make sure that your followers also engage with your brand through other channels.

Increased engagement is very healthy, particularly for social media channels where platform-centric algorithms optimize your newsfeed for posts from your friends, colleagues, family, etc. Simply put, the more your consumers engage with you, the more exposure is afforded to your post.

Create An Omni-channel Presence

Today, consumers treat their smartphone as their personal assistant according to Google. Since their expectations of a premium user experience extend far beyond your store, marketers need to deliver a consistent message across all platforms or risk lagging behind the competition.

Integrating email with social media marketing allows you to leverage two of the most successful digital marketing channels together to deliver a consistent message.

Not only does this increase brand exposure, but an effort to move the consumer through the conversion funnel via different touchpoints increases your chances of conversion.

A successful marketing strategy takes on a holistic view of all its components, integrating each one of them in a way that they complement each other.

By using both social media and email marketing, any business is able to reach huge crowd who is interested in communication, engagement and, in the end, buying products or services this business has to offer. Of course, they will reach a different type of audience in a different way in each of these channels.

Still figuring out ways how you can integrate the two? Here are some proven strategies that can help you enjoy the best of both worlds.

Build Your Email Subscriber List – Through Social Media Channels

Let’s start off with the most important one; your email subscribers are some of your most loyal, interested and highly motivated users. As a personalized communication channel, email users only subscribe to newsletters they genuinely find valuable.
On the other hand, the ‘followers’ or ‘fans’ on your social media page are a stage below in the conversion funnel. While they have shown interest in your brand by liking your profile, they still might not buy from you.

This is where you can plug-in a newsletter signup link that allows your social followers to subscribe to your newsletter. If you’re actually serious about increasing your subscribers, then remember to prepare ‘carrot content’ to lure in prospects and offer them an incentive to sign-up.

The more persuasive your incentive, the more people will sign up for your newsletter. Here’s how you can do it across different platforms:

Facebook – Embed A Signup Form

With 2.41 billion monthly active users – an 8% year-on-year increase – Facebook is inarguably the topmost social media platform when it comes to marketing.

While regular posting and updates allow you to stay on top of hyper-populated newsfeeds, it will take slightly more effort to get your fans to convert into customers.

This is where email marketing comes in. Facebook and email might present distinctly different platforms, but they have a massive potential to complement each other.

One of them is adding a ‘Signup’ button to your Facebook page. It doesn’t have to be a complex procedure. Here’s how you can do it:

Go to your Facebook page profile.
There is an ‘Add A Button’ option in the bottom right of your cover photo. Click on that button.
From the resulting window, choose ‘Contact You’ followed by ‘Signup’
There is an ‘Add URL’ option on the page. Paste your newsletter signup link there – and you’re done!

Here’s an example from a normal Facebook page.

The key is to make your pitch as clear as possible – remember, you have an informative/fun/niche-specific newsletter that offers great content as well as exclusive promotional offers and you want your target audience to sign up.

Facebook – Make Use Of Your CTA Button

Facebook offers pages a completely customizable ‘call to action’ button that can be tailored to suit your needs. When looking to increase your subscribers, you can tailor the CTA button to redirect to your newsletter signup page.

The process is really simple:

Open Facebook and access your page profile
There will an option labeled ‘Create Call-to-Action’. Click on it.
In the resulting dropdown menu, choose the words ‘Sign Up’ and add the URL to your signup page

Instagram – Add Signup URL To Your Bio

Instagram is yet another platform that drives a considerable amount of traffic, particularly for businesses. This visually rich social media channel presents an amazing opportunity to grow your subscriber list.

Add the signup URL to your profile’s bio – this way, everybody who visits your profile will see the link. Additionally, create incentivized posts that link back to your bio so users who usually engage with your pictures visit your profile and subsequently, your signup page.

This is exactly what the kids’ apparel brand, Little Lords has done:

Since Instagram doesn’t allow links in caption, users can create promotional posts like this one.

Amplify Your Social Media Reach – Through Your Email

Emails present a perfect opportunity for brands to highlight their social media presence. Some of your subscribers may not follow you on social platforms and your newsletter provides the perfect way for you to attract them.

Add-In Social Media Buttons To Your Newsletter

You can ensure your newsletter subscribers get to see your social media profiles with special buttons that lead directly to your pages. You can make use of a powerful CTA, rely on good old humor or work out something very brand-specific to evoke a sense of belonging – just like Wool and the Gang managed to do.

Notice all the social media profiles in the bottom right? That is how you ensure you increase your social media followers

Include Social Media Content In Your Newsletter

Your newsletter is very personal, which is why you should make it a point to include your social media milestones in your periodic newsletter.

Recently hit 10K followers on Facebook? Write about it in your newsletter.

You can also include photographs and videos from your social media pages to build interest – as an added benefit, using colors in your newsletter can do wonders for elevating its visual appeal and grabbing the user’s attention.

However, make sure to include well-placed links that allow people to access your social media profiles easily.

Send An Invitation Email

Consumers love being asked, rather than manipulated, into doing what you want them to do. When it comes to newsletter subscribers, they generally consist of a loyal audience who is interested in your brand.

Marketers can simply add in a ‘Give Us A Follow’ along with a value-based proportion tagline next to the social media icons/buttons. Chances are, your subscribers might just begin following your social page.

While there is no denying the efficacy of social media as a marketing channel, email still remains an important medium for reaching your leads and customers.

With email as much as 40 times more effective in acquiring new customers than either Facebook or Twitter, it remains as important to your marketing strategy as ever.

Social Media vs. Email Marketing – How to Make Them Work Together