Some marketers debate which campaigns drive more results – social media campaigns or email campaigns.
But the truth is that they can both help you make your product campaigns even better, bigger, or most importantly campaigns with better conversion rates.
People do respond better to emails when it’s time to decide whether to buy something or not. But, if you want a long-term relationship with your potential customers and want to make them feel like they are a part of your brand, then including them in your social media campaign is the key move to use.
How can you incorporate your social media pages into your email campaign and your email campaign into your social media content campaign?
Here are 5 essential tips on how to improve your email marketing campaign by using social media.
1. Import email contacts list to Twitter and Facebook for better social media ad campaigns
When creating an ad campaign on Facebook or Twitter, there is a way to narrowly target the audience that you know already showed interest in your product.
You can create Twitter and Facebook ads targeted to only those people who already subscribed to your email newsletter. How, you ask?
It’s actually quite simple. All you need to do is add your email list to the campaign!
The way to do it slightly differs on these two social networks.
When you go to Ads Manager, you’ll find the Audiences button.
Click on it, then click on Create Audience → Custom Audience, and then you’ll see three different options to create custom audiences (check them all out at some point, but now we will focus on the first one).
The first option, “Customer List”, gives you an opportunity to upload email lists, phone numbers, and Facebook user IDs in a form of a CSV list or a TXT file.
This is the perfect example of Facebook ads being more useful for your business than boosted posts.
You might have noticed a “Find people you know” button on Twitter when checking out whom to follow. It’s right below the list of accounts Twitter suggests you follow.
When you click on that, you’ll see that there are a few options you can use to connect with people in your contact list. You can search your contact lists for people to connect with via Gmail, AOL, Outlook, and Yahoo.
But, when you do that, all of your contacts will be shown and then you’ll need to manually select whom you want to follow.
If you want a faster way to target only selected leads from your entire email list, there is another option.
When you go to Twitter Ads (ads.twitter.com) → Tools → Audience manager, you can make a new list of a custom audience by uploading their email addresses, mobile phone numbers, Twitter usernames, etc.
Why is this important?
When you use these options, you’ll be able to target those people whom you know are interested in your product.
Besides that, you will be able to find out more details about them – when you connect with them on social media, you could find out when are their birthdays, what are they interested in, and find out what are their needs.
You’ll be able to create a deeper relationship with people who are most likely to become your long-term customers.
2. Collect email addresses of your social media followers
You know that most of the traffic you get on your website comes from social media platforms.
Your fans and followers are interested in what you have to say, show, and offer, but you are also aware that the majority of people opt to purchase something after a series of emails.
The ideal scenario for your digital marketing strategy would be to collect emails from your social media followers and engage them in an email campaign.
Luckily, there are a few simple ways to do that!
Lead magnets are “gifts” you offer for free in exchange for a person’s email address. That can be a free e-book, a case study, a free trial of your product, a pre-recorded webinar, or something similar that can apply to your product and business niche.
Share what you are offering (for a limited period of time!) and collect the emails of those who are interested in what you’re offering.
- Ask the followers to subscribe to your newsletter
Once in a while mention that you have a weekly/monthly newsletter and ask your followers to subscribe to it. You’ll be surprised how many people will respond to that kind of post.
You can also make your cover photo a call for the newsletter subscription, with a CTA button.
- Create a challenge or a contest
Think about what kind of challenge/contest would your followers enjoy and offer them many smaller-value prizes (more people will enter the contest if they feel like they have better chances of winning) if they enter the contest and give you their email address.
You can even offer some additional points to those followers who invite their friends to enter the competition. But don’t make that mandatory, it’s just spam and people don’t like that kind of conditioning.
3. Use the invite-only option to create groups for your subscribers on social media
Creating a private invite-only Facebook group could be a great way to foster a community of your most loyal brand fans and customers.
In order to have a successful invite-only Facebook group, you’ll need to deliver great content, include people in discussions, answer their questions, talk about their suggestions and thoughts, and stay active.
You’ll need a content-based SEO campaign and you’ll need to moderate the group. That means that you’ll set the rules and if someone starts writing something against the rules (for example, insulting someone else), you’ll need to react to that behavior and penalize it.
What kind of content should you share in private groups?
The groups are there to discuss a certain topic. That’s why you will need to think about the topics that are related to your business niche since the members of the group are already interested in that topic and are there because of it, and the pain points of your audience.
Post some case studies, infographics, dilemmas, questions, news (not only related to your company but to the topic), suggestions, etc.
Over time, you’ll become a thought leader and a person who other group members see as an expert. Before you know it, when the members of your group have a question or need advice on something, they will come to you.
Another important aspect of this kind of group is that it should be spam-free. You shouldn’t promote your products as much, only if there is some very important news about the company or the product.
4. Include social media sharing buttons in your emails
One of the most obvious ways to permeate your email campaign and social media is to include social media sharing buttons in your email newsletter.
That way, you’ll increase your visibility and the number of people following you on social media, subscribing to your newsletter, and ultimately, you’ll increase your conversion rates.
Are those social media sharing buttons magical? Well, yes and no.
When you provide great content and an easy way to share it with a previously written caption (using the hashtags for your business and your business niche), that’s the best way to engage your email audience to spread the word about your company and your product.
The buttons aren’t magical, the content is.
Another way to cross-combine email campaigns and social media content is to include social media word or video testimonials into your emails.
As you know, testimonials are something most people will positively react to, and that could be the point that will prevail in the buyer’s decision to buy your product. Honest and positive word testimonials are a great way to prove your quality. Make sure to include links to the actual testimonials on your social media pages.
Before you click “send” on your mass email campaign, make sure to set up your email deliverability settings, avoid spam filters, and actually reach the recipients’ inbox.
5. Include the most popular Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts in your newsletter with a simple CTA
What works the best on social media might work great in the newsletter, too.
You should include the most popular Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram posts in your newsletter. We are not saying that you should include all the social media platforms, but carefully choose the ones your audience uses the most.
What kind of posts you will include can depend on the tone and the topic of the newsletter, as well. You don’t want your popular social media posts to differ a lot from the general tone or the topic of the newsletter.
Videos are also a great way to share your thoughts in a newsletter – as it is popular on many other channels, people are used to watching videos. Include social media share buttons, and simply watch how the number of views organically grows. Here are a few tips on how to create a video.
At the end of the newsletter (or at the bottom of a newsletter part you want to point out), you can add a simple CTA to share the content on social media.
Conclusion
Both email marketing and social media marketing work wonders, but if you connect those too, you will certainly see some positive changes in your marketing and sales processes.
A great way to check if anything has changed is to split test email campaigns with and without social media content and share buttons.
