Editorial Articles

Gemma Sheppard, Account Manager at Red Ant, explains why email and social media strategies ned to be married up

Social networking is so ingrained in both our business and personal lives as a method of promotion that a number of pundits have been tempted to write email off as a marketing tool that’s had its day. But email marketing is, in many ways, the original social sharing. Your fans and followers are now your ultimate subscribers;their wall/feed is your inbox/preview pane to grab their attention, and their friends, only a click away from receiving information about your product/brand.

So, what’s the difference between an email subscriber and a Facebook fan, and how can you maximise the potential from both channels?

Subscribers generally sign up for emails following an interest in your brand, and opt infor updates. They expect to receive news and relevant offers. They also have a higher propensity to buy - one US study stated that consumers are 27% more likely to buy after subscribing to an email and 17% more likely to buy after becoming a fan on Facebook. Subscriber data is also essentially owned by your brand - unlike fans on Facebook - and subscribers choose whether they want to open an email and engage with the content inside.

Fans and followers, on the other hand,are able to view multipleposts and tweets a day - what would once have easily been considered spam is now, for the most part, seen as ‘conversation’. Don’t be fooled, though - there are still deliverability issues when it comes to Facebook. It takes effort to stay in a fan’s news feed, especially with the growing number of competing fan pages, and if you are not interacting regularly the chances are your post won’t even be seen.

According to Econsultancy's Email Marketing Industry Census Report 2011, almost half of marketers still manage email and social as two as separate channels. In reality, they are just different ways of conveying your message, which should both be considered as part of your overall digital strategy.

Social media does the job of building the relationship, and creating awareness. Email can reinforce the message and drive the call to action. Combining the two increases the chance that your message will resonate and the customer will complete the journey through to conversion.

Email to social

• Provide an option for customers to join your social media networks on your email registration page.
• Add social links in your welcome/confirmation emails
• Send out email newsletters that are excerpts from social sites and/or your blog with links to each post.
• Promote an ongoing social media campaign/competition through a single message mailing.
• Send out an email offering incentives for subscribers to become fans
• Send out an email with a fan only offer

Social to email

• Add email sign up to Facebook and offer an incentive
• Monitor trends on Facebook and send out reactive emails in line with conversation.
• Introduce social elements throughout the customer journey, for instance adding sharing links on the landing page of the email/post.
• Use Facebook polls to test email subject line content.

Gemma Sheppard, Account Manager, Red Ant