Should You Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing?

As the complementary article “Is Social Media Overtaking Email Marketing? Latest Data” attests, email marketing continues to be a key channel that B2B marketers use to connect with their audience, despite the growing popularity of social networks. Yet, implementing a strategy that integrates the two channels – email and social - in the most optimal way for a particular audience can bring exponential rewards. Or, it can become a program that takes company resources to maintain but does not add to your bottom line. What’s imperative is that you have a disciplined approach to the program, particularly regarding your key objectives and goals, and implement performance measures to gauge whether the program is actually doing what you want it to do. Or, else, you’ll be just another marketer who’s following the latest trend but not delivering results.

First: Identify Your Goals and Objectives

Integrating the two strategies should begin with very clear objectives on what you want to achieve, with specific quantifiable goals for a given time period, and a plan to measure performance. Then it will be easier to blaze a path that will deliver results and ROI. Here are some examples of objectives:

Growing your email list
Getting more site visitors
Acquisition of new customers
Building loyalty and retention with existing customers or a segment of customers
Getting feedback from customers on new products and experimental ideas, or their opinions on existing products, your company, customer service, etc.
Acquiring customer testimonials and positive reviews

Be Disciplined About Your Metrics

Start your plan by determining how you’ll quantifiably measure the success of your program. That’s the smarter way to go than spending company resources on experiments and seeing what will stick.

When it comes to customer acquisition, this is where your hard metrics should really come into play, because across virtually every industry, it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. In fact, one statistic I often hear quoted is that it’s a $9:$1 ratio – it costs nine times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one!

So, you need to consider whether integrating a social media program with your email marketing (or any other marketing program for that matter) is going to cost you more to acquire new customers (and this includes labor and program management) than using, for example, a third party source to generate leads for your sales team. In short, you don’t have to go it alone. The best lead generating sites and lead providers are deploying a combination of their own online marketing strategies (email, search, social, etc.) in order to deliver in-market prospects to their clients – and they have something better than the single business product vendor – the benefit of economies of scale as online lead generation is their core focus.

Performance Measurement Questions to Consider:

Will this increase email subscriptions, site traffic, or customer feedback messages?
Is one social channel delivering far better results than another, demanding more resources to capitalize on that momentum?
Can I get a better cost per click, cost per lead, and cost per sale another way?
Is this causing existing customers to do more business with me or refer me to new ones?

Taking the time to track and measure the elements of your program based on your key objectives will be well worth it, so you don’t waste time on a strategy that isn’t delivering the results you want.

Determine How You’ll Manage the Program

While the biggest social networks are free to use, they will still require active management and company resources if you want to use them to forward your business. As covered in the section on performance measurements, you want to ensure that your return will justify your team’s time and attention.

Think about who will manage your social media program and whether it will be the same team that manages your email marketing, and if not – how will they collaborate? Will your customer service team be involved and how will they respond to your audience? Also, consider how often you’ll update content, such as posts, product images, and news stories, and who will be responsible. Like an email list, quality over quantity comes into play when you think about your social networks – you’ll want to make sure the audience you’re nurturing is worth your time, efforts, and budget.

Consider Your Timing

Another aspect to managing the program is timing. Just as you’re meticulous about when you send your email campaigns and to whom, you’ll want to determine the best time for social network posts and interaction, coupled with when you send your email campaigns.

Setting a schedule of what you’ll be communicating when and through which channel – i.e. press releases, notes from your CEO, best practice articles, videos, sales promotions, product updates, new job postings, etc. - will help you get the most bang for your buck. Not to mention, you can benefit from the value of “compound messaging” by consistently propagating your most important messages across multiple channels.

Choose Relevant, Quality Content

When it comes to content and the key messages you want to communicate to the marketplace, you have the option of delivering a consistent message or a variety of messages, depending on your audience and objectives. The key is delivering value to your target audience in each channel. Let’s face it - the Web is full of useless, irrelevant content – depending on who your audience is! Quality over quantity also wins with content, but at the same time – with the speed of online communications today, you’ll want to consistently get regular, relevant communications out through email and your social network channels. One strategy that keeps customers engaged is sending messages in a series. You can send promotions that build upon each other with each subsequent email or post, such as a weekly drawing leading up to a grand prize. Or, a series of interviews or quotes from top customers on how they’re using your products to be successful.

Ideas for Using Each Communication Channel

Here are some ideas on using the various social networks, email, and also your own website to maximize your results. Knowing your particular market and audience is the best place to start, and hopefully these tips will get the creative juices flowing on how you can get the most from an integrated strategy.

Use Your Website To:

Be your digital headquarters, housing all of your main content, white papers, videos, etc. – will all roads (i.e. links) leading to your website
Invite visitors to opt-in to your email list, social network, or to read your blog
Provide a seamless experience no matter where the visitor is coming from. Make sure people coming to your website from an email newsletter or social media platform can immediately see what they came there for – the video, the white paper, the webinar registration, the form to fill out, etc.

Use Email To:

Link people to your website content or landing pages
Continue to build your email list with “Tell a friend” or “Forward this”
When appropriate – present one simple message with one simple call to action. (Simplicity is golden in the age of information overload.)
Grow your social media audience – reference social networks in emails with links and icons - but only if those extra links in your email are not distracting people from your core message and desired call to action
Note: Rely on ESP (Your Email Service Provider) Almost every email service provider today is offering social media tools that you can add to your newsletters and other email campaigns. Email service providers have the market intelligence gleaned from working with a broad range of clients that are all doing email marketing - ask them for ideas on what’s working for other clients who are integrating email and social.

Use Twitter To:

Get feedback on product, service, and content ideas ahead of time from a loyal audience in a low-stress forum
Grow opt-ins for your email list, inviting followers to subscribe before your next newsletter goes out
Share links to your content with a potentially wider audience
Use the Twitter search feature to follow discussions about your company.
Tweet and tweet again – Twitter supports a one-to-more format and it’s acceptable to send quick follow up communications about the same topic.

Use a Blog To:

Post timely news and updates, such as new releases, best practices, and opinions, but in a paragraph format vs. the limited characters used in tweets
Post communications from your CEO or other executives in an informal environment
Grow opt-ins for your email list and an audience for your other social networks
Search engine optimize your website, as part of your website
Invite public discussions and feedback with customers, prospects, and industry experts

Use Facebook To:

Grow opt-ins for your email list and other social networks
Link visitors back to your site
Share lifestyle aspects of your company – your team’s photos, company culture, community service, etc.
Notify your audience with status updates of when your next newsletter will go out and other timely happenings
Gain market intelligence and feedback from your audience

Use LinkedIn To:

Recruit employees
Show your team and work culture
Grow opt-ins for your email list and other social networks
Be a subject matter expert in LinkedIn groups and discussions by answering questions and posting articles
Gain marketing intelligence from industry alerts and newsletters
Undoubtedly, there are great opportunities for businesses that combine their email and social media strategies. The key to a successfully integrated program is having a disciplined approach to tracking and measuring results from each channel, as well as your overall results once they’re integrated. Then, continue to capitalize on the momentum from what’s working with your audience..