Yes its Working: 4 Creative Ways to Enhance Your Social Media Marketing With Email

Email marketing is arguably the best digital marketing channel with a reported return on investment of $38 per each #1 spent. Email newsletters and triggered emails are, unsurprisingly, widely popular techniques for engaging customers and making more sales, with the vast majority of eCommerce businesses relying on them every day.

In addition to having a superior ability to sell, emails are also a worthwhile strategy for improving the effectiveness of other marketing techniques.

Social media marketing is without a doubt the best candidate for partnership with emails, and here’s why:

Most customers browse social media and emails on mobile, which means that combining the two strategies won’t interfere with the customer experience.
Email and social media are two channels where the majority of online customers want to be contacted (46.4 percent and 38.5 percent, respectively).

Where consumers want to be contacted about profucts and services for enhance social media

42.5 percent of Millennials prefer to be contacted by social media about products and services.

So, by combining email marketing and social media marketing, your company can satisfy an important requirement in online business: meeting customers where they are.

If you’re wondering where to start, read further. Right now, we’re going to learn how to enhance social media marketing with email marketing as well as what benefits come with using this strategy.

1. Building your social media following

This is a common goal of businesses using social media marketing, and emails can help with achieving it. The easiest way to give a boost to the number of visits to a business’s social media page is to include a link to it in each email sent to customers.

While you should place the links to your social media in each email, pay special attention to welcome emails – the first emails sent to a customer. They generate 4 times more opens and 5 times more clicks than regular emails, so they have a higher chance to convince more people to visit your social media pages.

Here’s how Three Cat Coffee Company, an eCommerce coffee seller, does it. The recipient can find the links to social media platforms at the bottom of the letter and connect with the business in just a couple of clicks.

Three cat in a cup to enhance social media

The social media buttons are located just below the call-to-action button so chances are good that the recipient will notice them. Nice job.

You can also add text to encourage more people to connect with you on social media and provide an incentive.

For example, the text in the email below from Solo Traveler invites the recipient to follow the business on Pinterest and offers a choice of other platforms, too.

As you can see, they even provide a link to the Pinterest profile so connecting with them there just takes a couple of clicks. Chances are that building a Pinterest following is a marketing goal of Solo Traveler.

Anyway, it’s a good move, and you should consider doing the same where appropriate.

2. Increasing the awareness of a social media contest

It goes without saying that you should use every marketing communication channel to spread the word about an upcoming social media contest (which, by the way, is one of the best ways to engage with leads).

Emails are great for this because newsletter subscribers may be more interested in participating than people who have never heard about your business.

For example, you can create an email where you concisely but clearly explain the rules and conditions of the contest, describe the prizes, and provide an easy way to become a participant.

The below email by McDonald’s is an excellent example of that. The company ran a contest where customers had to nominate someone they know to be a Brew-Gooder (“someone who does a little something good and deserves a little thanks,” as per the official explanation) and enter the contest to win free McCafe for Life.

McCafe brew-gooder to enhance social media

The email does a great job of explaining the rules of the contest, which is a must for generating maximum engagement. Moreover, there were three ways in which people could nominate someone – clear and concise writing is critical.

3. Promoting live social media videos

First, live videos on social media are a game-changer. Not only do they help with reaching and engaging more customers, but they also build relationships with customers.

The new changes in Facebook and Instagram algorithms suggest that posts that generate discussions will be prioritized and shown in a user’s feeds. Live videos are great here because they generate up to six times more interactions.

Not only this, but there are many kinds of live videos that your brand can benefit from.

For example, if you shoot a behind-the-scenes video of your company, you’re providing your followers with an opportunity to see you face to face; customers appreciate authenticity.

If you’re planning a live video on social media – it could be a Q&A session, a webinar an interview with someone, a how-to video, a podcast, a behind-the-scenes video, a conference, or a live event – let your email subscribers know beforehand with an email.

For example, here’s how LiveStrong invites its subscribers to join the Q&A with a nutrition expert, which is something a lot of them will be interested in.

two girls in livestrong invitation to enhance social media

“Chances are that your subscribers’ inboxes are overflowing with messages – in fact, the average office worker gets about 121 emails a day – so make sure to send multiple event reminder emails,” recommends Onome Jonathan, a digital marketing expert at TheWordPoint. “For example, send one a week ahead and follow with the second one a day before the event.”

4. Improving brand credibility with user-generated content

User-generated content is huge right now. It’s widely considered as the most authentic content by the vast majority of customers. In fact, 60 percent of customers think that content created by other real customers is the most trusted.

And let’s face it, every business needs social proof.

So, if improving your brand’s credibility is one of the goals of your social media campaigns, then sharing some testimonials from happy customers could be a good idea.

Using email marketing makes perfect sense because it’s a direct way to connect with people plus that’s how you can let more people know that your company is doing a great job.

There are two ways you can go about this.

First, you can reach out to your customers who left positive reviews on social media and ask them to give one more review. Your designers could make a great email with it to show off to your subscribers.

Second, you can take a compelling customer testimonial from social media and insert it in an email to share.

Don’t forget to place some calls-to-action encouraging the recipients to check out your products or leave reviews, too.

Email and social media – The perfect combination

Emails are perfectly suited to help with achieving many marketing goals, and their effectiveness is well-proven. So, if you’re looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of your social media campaigns, don’t hesitate to use the tips above.

Guest author: Erica Sunarjo is a freelance writer and a contributor at BestWritersOnline. She has a Bachelor’s degree in social media marketing and she now works as a consultant for several startups to help them develop efficient marketing strategies. In her articles, she talks about her experience working with these companies as well as shares her insights on what constitutes a great marketing strategy.

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