Digital Marketers use a find mix of a wide range of online marketing strategies. Each strategy serves a particular purpose, and sometimes one may not be enough to succeed in the highly competitive market.
Email marketing is one of the oldest and most effective digital marketing strategies, whereas social media is comparatively new. Some people say that email marketing is now more effective as it is an old strategy. However, many others believe email still exists as one of the most influential marketing strategies.
Here, in this article, we will take a closer look at both email marketing versus social media marketing and whether integrating these two can provide some add-on benefits to your business marketing.
Social media marketing
At the baseline, social media marketing promotes your digital content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc. The content should be custom-tailored to the given specifications for each channel based on the specifications to boost your brand awareness online.
It is noted that various people in various regions differ in the usage of social media channels. So, the marketing content on each channel should cater to those audiences’ needs on that medium. Say, for example, you may want to use high definition images on Instagram with short captions. On the other hand, at LinkedIn, you have to be a professional storyteller.
Social media marketing’s major benefit is that the digital-literate society consists of about 3.2 billion active participants across the globe on these platforms. This puts forth an unprecedented opportunity for marketers; however, the challenge is also big. With the huge content overload on social media, organic reach is very tough to come by. Say, for example, the number of people now using Facebook searching for new brands is down by about 11%, which is not, of course, the best odds.
Even though social media marketers may not rely on organic content anymore, it is still a much viable option compared to mail marketing. Social channels can better facilitate business marketers’ direct engagement with the customers and then build brand loyalty. The need is, however, for fun and engaging content like realistic videos and in-app e-com options. Luckily we have tools and software for post scheduling on different platforms, for example LinkedIn Video Post Scheduling Tool, which can be used to influence your marketing strategy.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a channel to lad Email the prospects down to the sale funnel by sending newsletters and marketing materials to their inbox. For example, Amazon’s fan followers may sign up for their newsletter to get all their special offers, seasonal discounts, or coupon codes as soon as they are announced.
About 3.8 billion people across the world start their day by checking their inboxes. About 60% of them prefer to get marketing emails too to their mailboxes. So, investing in email marketing services surely leads to sales. About two-thirds of the customers tend to purchase as a result of direct email marketing. The overall ROI of mail marketing is an estimated 4400% ROI, a wonderful deal. This means for every $1 spent on email marketing. You may expect a $44 return. So, email is still a prospective digital marketing tool, which can surely ensure a higher return on investment.
As both social media marketing and email marketing are there on the frontline of digital marketing, one may be juggling using both of these strategies to maximize the benefits of digital marketing campaigns. Further, this article will discuss effectively integrating social media marketing with email marketing with some Flosum experts’ insights.
Integrating social media marketing with email marketing
Being a brand, you do not have to Tweet out an email link as a plain test in the hope of getting followers to sign up. There are many engaging ways to integrate your marketing strategies, which will further delight your customers.
Email Marketing vs. Social Media
As we have seen, social media marketing can attract fresh potential customers and give a proper definition to the brands. On the other hand, email marketing focuses more on the existing loyal customers who would like to hear from you and strengthen that relationship further. So, these positive elements can work together to get you the benefits of both worlds with a fine balance between these.
The best way to direct your target audience to their favorite channels. For example, you must have the audience who use to interact less on social media but pay a huge attention to their email inbox. So, you can promote your landing pages on social media to collect the emails of such an audience and then serve them via email marketing.
Or you may include your social media links on your marketing emails to loyal subscribers, giving the subscribers an option to choose the channel of preference to engage with your brand and content. Email marketing promotions should entice readers to explore more about their products. The links to the company’s social media will invite the subscribers to check those out and connect with them. But make sure that your email doesn’t go to their spam box.
There are many platforms like HubSpot, which will help you integrate email marketing with social media. You may include a Connect at the bottom of the promotional emails and newsletters with logos hyperlinked to their favorite social media channel in a second. A holistic digital marketing approach will incorporate both mail marketing and social media to reach your customer in an easily noticeable and memorable way.
Brands can also integrate email marketing and social media to elevate their level of engagement with customers. When you think of email promotion, do think of your potential audience who can receive similar content through social platforms as well. As we discussed above, there are many platforms like HubSpot, which can help you to manage your social media marketing and email campaigns all in one place.
However, even when you are trying to integrate email marketing with social media marketing, you should maintain a clear distinction between these two fundamentally, each of these services to a unique set of the target audience. So, the ideal approach is to have a custom set of strategies for each of these platforms by exploring the avenues for cross-platform promotions wherever possible.
When you use it correctly there are many possibilities you can work out with email marketing. You need a proper strategy to make the most out of it. Also, be careful not to spam your customer’s inbox, it is sure to pout them off. Find out what they need and deliver to them exactly that.
