Social Media and Email: Make Them Play Nice!

Although many companies are warming up to social networking as an effective marketing tool, it’s important to remember that social networking is most powerful as a marketing tool when it is integrated with other marketing initiatives, such as email campaigns. People use social networking sites to pass along information and share with others, so it can be useful to set up your social networking profiles to “play nice” with your email campaigns to improve your results and overall marketing effectiveness.

Integration is Key
Integrating your social profiles with your email marketing initiatives can be as simple as including links to your Facebook business page or Twitter account in your email signature, or as sophisticated as using a “Share With Your Network” (SWYN) button in your email campaigns, allowing recipients to share your emails with others in their networks right from the message itself. Another option is to include special “share” links available from social networking sites (e.g., http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.yoursite.com/email.htm for Facebook) that lets users share your email message with their own contacts with just one mouse click.

One of the key benefits of integrating your social networking profiles with your email campaigns is that you give your email campaigns a chance to reach countless additional people that you may not have otherwise reached. The viral nature of social media means that when users find information that they like, they share it with the people in their own networks, who in turn share it with their contact lists, and so on. By integrating social media with email campaigns, you can make it easy for your recipients to propel your message out to their social network contacts, with the chance your message will travel even further from there.

Make It Two-Way
In addition to using email campaigns to promote your social media profiles, you can also give social network users the chance to opt-in to your email list as well. For instance, you can add your email signup box to your Facebook business page using FBML (Facebook Mark Up Language). Or, you could add a link to an email signup page on your web site to your profiles on LinkedIn or Twitter. The idea is to make it easy (and obvious) for people to join your mailing list and opt-in to receiving communication from your business on a regular basis.

Getting the Word Out
The content of your email campaigns can be re-used in your social media profiles, which is a great way to help your message find its way to new audiences. For instance, if you are sending out monthly coupons to your email list, why not add the coupons to your Facebook business page as well? Or you could use Twitter to announce the coupons at the beginning of the month (including a link to the coupons on your site), then send a Twitter reminder a few days before the coupons expire.

For business events, email and social media are both very effective for promotion, but are even more powerful when used together. For example, after sending out an event invitation via email to your list, you could post the information as an “Event” on both Facebook and LinkedIn, and use Twitter to broadcast a link back to the Events, or even include a link to more information, the event location or maps, or online registration form on your web site.

Social Media is Definitely Here to Stay
Whether you’re new to social media or you’re already using it as a marketing tool for your business, you can make your email campaigns work harder by integrating them with your social media profiles. Integration means that your marketing efforts can be centralized and shared; for example, making your Facebook business page “talk to” your Twitter account and your LinkedIn profile, as well as showing off your latest email coupon offers and e-newsletter articles.

By integrating your social networking profiles with your email marketing campaigns, you can take advantage of the viral nature of social media and potentially reach new, untapped customers and potential customers, and re-use your email messages across new channels. Combine the two, and you can make your online marketing even more effective than by using either channel on its own.