How to Embrace Email Marketing in a Social Media World

While social media marketing is all the rage in the 21st century, email marketing campaigns are still a crucial part of any great marketing strategy. To give your email marketing a competitive edge, here’s how to embrace email marketing in a social media world.

Email marketing is a form of marketing that uses a series of emails to market your business, service, and products. There is no ‘right way’ to run an email marketing campaign, as every campaign is based around your business, your customers, and your goals.

Today, there are over 4 billion email users worldwide with only 80% of email users having at least one social media account. According to research published by optinmonster, 58% of email users check their email first thing in the morning, while only 50% of social media users check their accounts every day.

While social media is exceedingly popular globally, most businesses still get a higher return on investment in email marketing.

Why?

An average of 2% of your followers will see something you post on social media, while 15 – 25% of marketing emails are opened. Put simply: higher visibility, more conversions. The benefits of email marketing don’t stop there either. Compared to social media, email marketing campaigns are:

• More flexible.
• Less expensive.
• Easier to maintain long-term.
• Easier to measure.
• Faster to set up.

Email marketing campaigns are also extremely personalized, as they are directed at an individual customer rather than all customers as a group.

While social media marketing campaigns are important for many businesses, the best email marketing campaigns are restricted to members of your mailing list. To keep your email marketing exclusive, ensure you:

• Design separate branding for your emails.
• Have a set email marketing budget.
• Offer exclusive discounts over email.
• Use separate promotional strategies on your social media and email.

Customers who sign up for your email marketing list fall into one of two categories: brand advocates and brand-neutral customers. People who don’t want to be on your email list will hit ‘unsubscribe’.

With this in mind, a great strategy to use exclusively over email marketing is the ‘fan club’. Fan clubs are exclusive clubs that offer members special benefits, including discounts, community-focused content, and an inside look into your business.

For a great fan club, brand your club with a name, start an accompanying chat group for customers, and establish set fan-club only discounts. To keep your fan club engaged, send out marketing emails on an irregular schedule so they come as a welcome surprise to fans.

While email marketing software is a great way to run your campaign, don’t let your email marketing become an afterthought. Remember to focus on your fan club as people, not prospects.

Tip!

Be careful that your marketing content aligns with what your fan club actually wants to see! For example, gambling developer companies benefit more from an email marketing campaign that focuses on gambling and gaming than development tips. Think funky, fresh and engaging.

While running email-exclusive campaigns is essential, mailing list customers will still follow you on social media. To keep these people from feeling the push of a hard sell, compliment your email marketing with social media.

Experts agree customers prefer to see brand engagement on social media, and richer, more promotional content in email marketing. With this in mind, your social media content should include:

• Pictures.
• Simple short stories.
• Promotional posts.
• Polls.
• Interactive content.

Meanwhile, email content is more in-depth and provides more value. That includes content like:

• Newsletters.
• How-to guides.
• Videos.
• Interviews.
• Quizzes with discounts.

To keep both these platforms working together, use complementary graphics, link your social media in your emails, and don’t recycle or respin content.

For long term success, make sure the distinction between your email marketing and social media is clear by setting clear expectations for customers on both platforms.

If social media is the billboard advertisement of the digital age, email marketing is a conversation between your customers and your salespeople. Naturally, you need to apply your customer service principles to your email marketing, keeping all content:

• Honest.

• Authentic.
• Personable.

Ultimately, this strategy works for one reason: it relies on leveraging the trust in your relationship with the customer. For example, consider the relationship eSports streamers develop with their audience. While this is conversational, the trust in the relationship allows streamers to advertise products and services with a higher success rate than brands.

Apply customer service principles to your email marketing, and you’ll increase sales in no time. That’s the secret of a personal touch.

Great email marketing makes your customers feel special. To help them feel appreciated, ensure your marketing emails are of a higher quality than your social media posts.

While low-quality marketing emails are ugly, plain, and lack innovation, high-quality marketing emails:

• Use design branding that is suitable for email formatting.

• Are designed to be friendly to mobile devices as well as desktop devices.
• Finish with a clear call-to-action.
• Reward the reader for opening the email.
• Use cloud-based platforms with end-to-end encryption to ensure emails are not intercepted.
• Don’t include downloads, as these are not compatible with mobile devices.

It’s also important to consider scheduling. No matter how loyal your customers are, do not bombard your mailing list with emails unless you want everyone to hit ‘unsubscribe’. Instead, send out 3 – 5 carefully planned emails a month.

The best way to measure the quality of your email marketing campaign is to track your email open rate. Over time, your open rate percentage should remain the same, with increases observed around special promotional campaigns.

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