Editorial Articles

Proving the ROI from your social media is key to establishing the channel. You may have 250,000 followers on Twitter, but how much is that actually worth? The money is in your list – find out how to capture data from social media for your other channels


Improving the return on your social media investment (RoSMI)

When social media came onto the scene around five years ago, industry pundits thought that it would mean the death of email. In fact, according to Nielsen research those people who were most engaged in social media, were also most likely to be engaged in other digital channels such as email. Why is it then, that according to the Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2011, most marketers don’t integrate social media and email (57%), while 45% see them as entirely separate channels? Too many marketers still see social media and email and completely separate channels when there is so much crossover. Getting over these barriers and using the channels together is the key to proving the ROI from your social media investment and nourishing your email lists with new and engaged data. As this social media is a growing channel, marketers need to get at least basic measurement in place sooner rather than later.

You may have 250,000 followers on Twitter, but how much is that actually worth? When it comes to proving your RoSMI, the money is in your list – and if you aren’t effectively capturing new data for email and other channels via your social media efforts then your marketing ecosystem is suffering. Using simple list building techniques for gathering data you can measure ROI for your social media marketing and build your email data lists.

So how can you use other channels to measure the ROI from your social media? 

There are some simple ways of integrating your email and social media marketing to measure the ROI. Many companies are adding 'add to social share' links to emails these days but many aren’t adding 'subscribe to our emails' links to their social media. But remember the two channels work can work well passing data back and forth. When asked, 84% of marketers say they don't see social media as a source for new email subscribers. The key difference between email and social media is the way email is delivered. The email is delivered directly to their inbox at a time that suits them. Plus it stays there for as long as the recipient requires allowing them to come back to it, pass on to colleagues as well as print for reference. By encouraging your fans and followers to sign-up to your email newsletters you can capture their data and engage them outside of social media. Importantly, you then own this data and can push content to it. The first place to start would be adding a sign up/data capture form on your social media. Make sure you provide some incentive to encourage sign up but also be clear on what people are signing up to receive. Remember the value exchange

Tip: why not try putting exclusive content on your twitter feed and then asking for people’s email address when they want to access it? 

How else can you use your social media content to improve ROI?

Integrating your social media with email can also make for easy content generation. You can easily include your most recent blog posts or tweets in your email content automatically, providing up-to-date information and also encouraging more traffic to your site. By spending less time creating your email content and reusing your social media content could attract more of your email subscribers to engage with you via other channels and increase their level of engagement.

Integrating social media with email activity should be a top priority for marketers this year so to prove their RoSMI and capture the data of their fans and followers. Using simple data capture techniques this is all possible and easy to do, surprising that more people aren’t.