Each week, we ask our panel of leading social small biz thinkers for their thoughts on one of the key social media questions of the day. This week, we ask: Can you integrate social media with email marketing? If so, what’s the best way to do this?
Here are a selection of the best responses. Let us know what you think in the comments and let us know if you’d be interested in joining the panel.
Can you integrate social media with email marketing? If so, what’s the best way to do this?
Simon Turner, Clothes2order Twitter
The debate all too often goes Email Marketing Vs Social Media, but why is it a contest between the two? Just as a good search marketer will find a synergy between SEO and PPC, the Social Media expert must integrate with Email marketing.
A couple of ideas for using the channels to compliment each other:
- Encourage social media interaction within your email marketing. Use a mailshot to kick off social media discussion with your customers. Pose questions and ask them to respond on Facebook and Twitter.
- If your email marketing focuses on special offers, then announce to your mailing list that you will now be offering exclusive special offers on twitter, and invite them to follow you for access to these exclusive deals. Kick it off with a high value, time limited offer only available through your social media accounts.
- Ask for social media feedback and reviews in your email communications – offer incentives like entering anyone who tweets a certain hashtag into a competition. This one comes with a huge health warning though…. if you ask for feedback be prepared to deal with the negative as well as the positive. If you’re not prepared to risk negative feedback in the public domain, then maybe social media isn’t right for you anyway.
Chris Young, C7 Design Twitter
I think that email marketing and social media can integrate really well. Ideally email marketing should direct people to your website. However, offering social media links within your e-letters can offer clients, suppliers and potential clients alternative ways of connecting to you and your business. Having links to your business’ Twitter or Facebook page can also introduce people to the realm of social media and allow for those people to get educated on what it’s all about.
At C7 we use Mail Chimp to deliver our email news and marketing. With each e-news that we send out, a reciprocal link is posted on Twitter. This not only gives our e-news greater exposure, but allows us to measure where we are getting responses/hits from and adjust our marketing accordingly. The integration is great and works well.
Barb Iaquinto, Quintesocial Twitter
Absolutely! Savvy social media marketers do so routinely. Social media marketing is not all-or-nothing. SMM is one facet.
Just as various social media channels can be effectively utilized simultaneously, so can blending of your message via traditional marketing channels like email. For example, a blend of traditional media and social media is especially effective when reaching different age demographics, such as active Boomers, where direct mail and email still holds sway while reinforcing the message via the social media spaces they use. The important thing with all marketing campaigns is to track, as best you can, the responses from each channel and tweak your strategy accordingly.
Catherine Sheldon, Digital PR specialist, Sage (UK)
The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is that one of the most effective ways to achieve this is to use a CRM system.
Software, such as ACT! 2010 by Sage, has been specially designed to enable small businesses to harness the rich insights offered in social media. Missing information, for example, an email address or company location, can be automatically captured, making it easy for you to add the information to your prospect and customer database.
The additional information social media provides delivers improved targeting for email marketing campaigns that ultimately unlocks better returns for businesses. It’s CRM that brings this altogether.
A colleague of mine at Sage, David Beard, wrote an interesting blog post recently about Social Media and CRM.
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