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Social Media and Email Marketing - Dual Strategy to Keep Customers Engaged

Social Media and Email Marketing - Dual Strategy to Keep Customers Engaged

Digital marketing is a blend of different marketing channels. You do not have to stick to a single marketing channel to engage your customers. Instead, use them together to get good returns.

Taking an all-inclusive approach in your digital marketing is what is trending. Social media and emails are two essential parts of digital marketing. Both work differently and have different sets of audiences.

Social media is great for improving brand awareness and emails for brand loyalty. The aim is to keep customers engaged. So, how can you combine both marketing channels to engage your customers?

Let us start with an example.

Buffer’s Strategy

The brand is doing great. Right? Be it social media or remote work, Buffer is doing a wonderful job.

Buffer is an all-rounder social media management tool. Its cross-channel marketing is even better. Meaning, their email marketing is as strong as their social media marketing.

I have been following Buffer’s strategy for two years. With an impressive content strategy, it maintains uniformity on its marketing platforms. Buffer’s emails do not feel like emails. They have fused the power of emails and social media to engage their audience.

Let us take an example of Buffer’s email newsletter and break it down into sections.

Dual Strategy to Keep Customers Engaged

The theme of the newsletter is selling on social media. The brand could have posted it on its social media. After all, it has an audience of 1 million on Twitter. So, what was the need to send an email?

The difference lies in the type of audience. Social media has a wider audience reach, and emails focus on a highly targeted audience.

Both channels have their strengths. It is best to use them together to engage and provide a constant experience to the audience, no matter whatever platform they use.

Coming back to the second section of the newsletter. It contains high-quality resources and news.

email marketing

As Buffer is a social media management tool, its content resources are in the same area. You may send high-quality resources in your emails as per your business needs.

The third section is an embedded trending Twitter post.

posting

Now Buffer could have retweeted the post. But it has not.

Why?

No doubt, it is a great option. But sending an email newsletter to a targeted audience is more engaging. It is more of psychological targeting.

When you open your social media, you scroll through hundreds of posts, statuses, tweets. Which one of them sticks to your mind the most? A few?

When you receive a social media post in an email, it compels you. You click on it to see what is so special about it? Why would a brand send you a social media post in an email? Finally, when you view the post, it sticks to your mind. But what did Buffer get out of it?

The answer is engagement. Next time, send a trending social media post in your newsletter. Chances are, it will stir the interest of your subscribers.

Let us move to the last section. It is about the latest events in Buffer. Now, see the way the newsletter ends.

call to action

You are free to reply through email or send a direct message to Buffer’s team member on Twitter. It is a great way to provide value to the audience. It makes them realize that Buffer is always ready to listen to its users.

Moreover, it maintains a uniformity on both emails and social media channels. Here’s the Instagram post on the same theme.

Theme

Yes, this was a great strategy. But how does it use social media to collect the email addresses of new users?

The first way is to put a newsletter subscription link on social media channels.

social media post

The second way is to conduct short online conferences. The year 2021 has transformed the digital world. Thus, online events are a great way to collect quality leads.

Buffer has been conducting the Built to Last online conference. These online events cover different themes with different speakers. You need to provide your email address to register for the event.

twitter

It does not end here. In case you have missed out on the event, you can still watch it. The landing page continues to exist. Again, you have to give your email address to access the full library of recorded sessions.

marketing

Combining Social Media and Email Marketing

Let’s form some amazing strategies by combining social media and email marketing.

Growing Email Lists

Are people following your brand on social media? Then some of them might show interest in hearing directly from you (via emails).

Make sure you list the benefits that they will receive after joining your email lists. The bottom line is to create an omnichannel experience.

You may host short online conferences like Buffer to grow your email lists.

Your social media followers share their email addresses because they trust you. To raise this trust factor, you may start replying to them on social media channels. Getting replies from the brand itself makes your followers feel valued. Here’s how HubSpot has been doing the job.

social media marketing

Or you may put email subscription links on your:

  • Facebook page
  • Instagram bio
  • LinkedIn description, or
  • Twitter Cards.

Increasing Social Reach via Emails

Some of the marketing channels work well for you while others need some extra effort. You might have a decent email list but not a great social following.

To improve your social media engagement, put social share buttons, and links in your emails. If you have a high-quality email list, chances are, they will follow you on social media as well. Here is an example from Fast Company.

email content

At the end of your email, put a contact us option. In the case of Buffer, there were two options. You can either reply via emails or send a direct message to the representative on Twitter. Some of your subscribers may send messages to you on social media as it's a more informal way of putting things up.

Using Social Media Posts in Newsletters

As seen in the case of Buffer, you may put a social media post in emails to record more engagement.

You may send trending social media posts of other influencers, marketers, or companies. It will boost your engagement metrics, open rates, and clicks.

Of course, you can share the posts on your social media handles directly. But if you have a good number of subscribers, you can embed social media posts in your email newsletters.

Reusing Content and Maintaining Uniformity

You don't have to create new content for every single channel. Providing a uniform experience to your users is a great way to boost engagement.

At the same time, it does not mean you can copy and paste the content on each channel. Each marketing channel works in a different way.

You cannot use the whole email copy as a caption in your social media posts. The key is to keep unity in the theme. Suppose you are creating a week's content on affiliate marketing strategy.  Make sure each of your marketing channels talks about the same topic.

For instance, you may create an email copy that consists of:

  • Affiliate marketing tips to earn extra income
  • Top stories from around the world
  • Best social media post on the same topic or a post by a marketing influencer.
  • A pinch of your brand’s content resources

From this copy, create variations of posts according to the platforms you are on.

Using A/B Split Testing for Social Media Retargeting Ads

The truth is emails are more pocket friendly than running ads on social media. Initially, social media records low organic traffic. Thus, businesses and marketers opt for social media ads for a wider reach.

But writing the ad copy according to different social media platforms is quite a task. For that, you may use emails to test your ad copy.

You may use A/B split test emails to perform research. You can easily send these emails through an email marketing tool. Before selecting any tool:

  • Check all the features
  • Pricing
  • Compare different email marketing tools.

Moreover, these tools provide you with advanced reports to make analysis easy. Keep an eye on the email metrics to find which copy worked the best.

After writing the ad copy, you may run retargeting ads on your social media channels. You can import your contact list in a CSV format on social media channels. You may use:

To Wrap-up

The digital world has just scratched the surface of cross-channel marketing. There are ample ways for you to achieve a high engagement rate. The key is to give value to the users.

Do you currently use this dual marketing strategy? Put your thoughts in the comments below.

trevorAuthor Bio: Trevor is a managing partner of SendX, a powerful email marketing software for sending campaigns, building your list, and automating your marketing. SendX is a product of SendWorks, a software product suite with tools that help send emails that hit the inbox.

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