Brooke B. Sellas — January 5, 2018 — January 5, 2018
If email marketing and social media battled it out, who would win?
Social media allows businesses to meet the consumer where they are but engagement and reach are quickly dwindling.
Email marketing, however, has the reach, but only if you have a large, loyal list.
The truth of the matter is, combining the two provides businesses with optimal results.
Here’s how to combine email marketing and social media in 2018.
Email Marketing Quick Stats
Time
When it comes to email marketing and social media, email takes a lot less time.
- There’s only one medium with email and several (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) with social media
- Email has less competition since you’re able to speak directly to your potential customer
- The average person spends 30 hours a week looking at email (vs. ~14 hours a week on social media)
Money
- Email tends to be 10 times cheaper than Facebook (and even more so when compared to Google ads).
- In a 2016 study by Campaign Monitor, email was said to bring in $ 44 dollars for every $ 1 spent!
- Many email software sites offer free services for a small(er) amount of subscribers
Results
- Being able to time and segment your email messages garners much better results
- Email campaigns often see 50 to 100 times the click rates of Facebook or Twitter
- And as we noted in a post about email marketing last year, email is the place 46.4% of consumers want to be contacted about products and services.
[Source]
There’s a lot of pros to think about when it comes to email marketing!
Social Media Quick Stats
Time
- Social media allows for more posting … consumers can handle 10 posts per week on social media but probably not 10 emails a week!
- It takes one second (less??) to “like” or follow a page and no real commitment (while opting in for email takes longer/has more commitment)
- Social media allows you to quickly and easily target people who have not “showed an interest” in your brand yet
Money
- Now that many sites, like Facebook & Instagram, are “pay to play” it’s not “free” to use social media
- The industry average (spend) for social media marketing settles between $ 200 to $ 350 per day, according to Buffer
Results
- Millennials say social media is their preferred channel when it comes to hearing from a company about their product or services for the first time
[Source]
- There were 2.80 billion global social media users in 2017, equaling 37% penetration
- 71% of consumers who had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others
Combining Your Email Marketing And Social Media Efforts
While email marketing and social media seem like vastly different marketing strategies, using them together is super smart.
Here are five ways you can integrate email and social in 2018.
1) Look for “already there” integrations.
Just take a look at Facebook for Developers and you’ll see that there’s a myriad of applications that will work with Facebook.
That goes with most social sites. Think MailChimp to Facebook or Constant Contact to Twitter.
We love Zapier for connecting ALL THE THINGS!
2) Use your email list for remarketing.
You can take your existing email list, upload it to Facebook, and send ads to your old/new/potential customers. It’s a lot to go into here, so read this article on how to set this up.
3) Use your list to find new blood, too!
Similar to remarketing, you can use your current list to find new people, too. Facebook calls this “lookalike audiences.”
4) Use Facebook Lead Ads to grow your list.
Have a small email list? That’s okay. You can use Facebook lead ads to add subscribers to your list.
You can also run giveaways and contests on any social media channel asking for emails to enter.
5) Cross promote, yo!
Meaning have your social buttons in your email signature and the emails you send.
Additionally, you may want to include a link to sign up for your newsletter on your social sites.
You can also use a Twitter card to promote your list (but you need to have something valuable to give away!).
And don’t forget your Facebook call-to-action button! Send people to a landing page for your newsletter.
If You Had To Choose …
Lastly, if you had to choose between email marketing and social media, what would you do?
Without a doubt, it’d be a tough decision!
I suppose the email stats would move me to use email, but social media certainly has its strengths, too!
Hopefully, you don’t have to choose between the two and you can use them in tandem to create an even stronger marketing strategy in 2018.
What are some of the ways you use email marketing and social media in harmony? Let me know in the comments section below!
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