Email marketing and social media, condemned to understand each other

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This year, ice cream company Ben & Jerry's decided to stop doing any email marketing activities and focus solely on social media advertising. However, very few companies have made this decision as marketing departments have realized that social media and email marketing are complementary tools.

According to a survey conducted by Adestra, an e-consultancy and email service provider, most companies are using social media to reinforce their email campaigns rather than replace them. The report shows that more than a third of companies, 37%, use email to encourage sharing of content on social networks and 31% plan to do so. 21% use it to promote consumer reviews and comments and 26% plan to do so.

Another study conducted in June by marketing firm Lyris found that 54% of respondents felt that marketing results had improved after integrating email with social media. According to a study by Get Responso, email marketing messages that include a social media sharing option generate 30% higher click-through rates than those that do not.

Email marketers have already realised that their future is social and are now considering how to do it. Email is a perfect tool for distributing short messages announcing a sale or offering a discount coupon, while social media is more innovative and flexible and companies can experiment much more.

Here are some tips for integrating social media with email marketing:

1. Promote Facebook games, apps, and contests via email and Twitter. 2. Include Facebook contest winners in newsletters. 3. Tweet about exclusive content for newsletter subscribers. 4. Promote promotions on Facebook and Twitter but make them only available to subscribers. 5. Include “like” buttons in newsletters and promotions

6.Include links to Twitter and Facebook pages in newsletters.

7. Collect email addresses from consumers who link to africa mobile whatsapp number your site from Facebook and Twitter.

8.Include questions asked via Twitter and Facebook in your emails and answer them.

9. Create a segmented email database including Twitter followers to whom you will send exclusive information via email.

10. Encourage subscribers to ask questions on Facebook and Twitter pages.

11.Host videos on your Facebook page and include links in emails and on Twitter.

Other ways to measure a Twitter account or Facebook page is by allowing users to embed content on their own blogs or Facebook pages, an action that generates a 20% higher conversion rate.

This integration is transferred to the mobile world where messages must be consistent with those issued from other channels and be versatile.