It’s been around a long time but there’s still a lot of new clever marketing thinking being applied to email marketing fuelled by even smarter technology. Peter Ellis of Being Communications continues his series of reports covering what’s ‘new’.
How social networking campaigns plug in to your email campaigns
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn... social networks have grown from a consumer phenomenon into an effective business marketing tool. With the increasing number of companies making use of the viral power of social media, the term Social Media Marketing is now an integral part of the marketing vocabulary. While the growing popularity of social networks had first caused some to question the future role of email marketing, it is now clear that social media is here not to replace email but to work in conjunction with it, and in 2011 we have seen more businesses integrate social media in their email marketing efforts.
Ofcom’s Adult Media Literacy Report 2010 showed that 75% of internet users sent or received emails at least once a week in 2009, compared to 35% going online for social networking sites. With this latter percentage rising even faster in 2010, it makes sense for email marketers to think how they can leverage this passion for online social, community interactions.
One common approach is to use a "Share-to-Social" feature which allows marketers to include links so recipients can easily post emails to their social network profile page, where friends can see the message, make comments and even post the email on their own profile pages. Speaking about the Share-to-Social feature, Matt Lindenberg, assistant director of marketing for Diapers.com neatly summarizes the benefits as follows: "Social networks are all about communication. This feature empowers our customers to communicate with each other, and therefore allows our messages to move beyond our email list. One of our emails was posted on 50 different social network profile pages. That kind of customer endorsement turns our email 'push' marketing into a powerful 'pull' campaign."
As often is the case, effective marketing is not about pitting one channel against another, but rather about how different channels can work in conjunction with each other. In fact, email can function as a seeding tool to get users on to social networks in the first place. It's more about having a balanced multichannel approach and thinking about how to strategically integrate social media into existing email marketing strategies.
4 ways to increase engagement levels through joined-up email and social media campaigns:
1. Add a social sharing or SWYN (share-with-your-network) functionality
Include informative, share-worthy content to engage consumers, request feedback and include links to social media sites at the top or bottom of every email. The “FB Like” merge-tag also allows ‘Like’ buttons to be attached to individual links in the email. The more relevant the content, the more subscribers will want to share it and interact with the brand via other channels.
Another option is to have email campaigns set up to auto-tweet and auto-status to Twitter and Facebook respectively as soon as the email campaign has been published.
2. Be interactive
Use video, real-time quizzes and surveys to give information to subscribers - they are a great way of getting consumers to spend more time engaging with a brand. Doing this via Twitter or Facebook enables brands to engage with consumers on a personal, one-to-one level and gives them a reason to actively follow the latest updates and announcements.
3. Encourage the multichannel approach
Have a cohesive approach that combines communication channels. For example: launch a competition via email, invite people to enter on Facebook, allow people to vote for the winner on Facebook, announce the winner on Facebook and by email, and send an email including related offers and promotions. Each channel works to support the other and the marketing messages are aligned.
Try and encourage social network ‘followers’ and ‘likes’ to subscribe to your emails - place sign-up forms on Twitter and Facebook pages, allowing users to subscribe to the email contact list.
4. Personify the brand
Social media is all about humanizing. It can give a brand a voice and personality, or help reinforce an existing persona. Giving campaigns a personal touch helps them stick in peoples’ minds and creates a closer relationship between the brand and consumers.