How Email and Social Marketing are Similar: Six Cross-Over Tactics

You’ve got a thriving email marketing program, but somehow your social program isn't carrying it's weight like email. There is a big misconception that social media marketing needs to be approached in a totally different way than email marketing. Yes, you will need to engage with that audience appropriately, but fundamentally there are some common tactics between email and social that you can utilize as you begin or reevaluate your efforts in social.

Goals

Just like your email program, your social program will need goals. This will keep you focused, organized and able to evaluate how successful your efforts are over time.  Typical social goals include fans/followers, clicks, and conversions.  Evaluate your past social results and set goals for where you'd like to see your social program improve.  In addition to the goals, discuss tactics that you will use to help reach your goals.  If you have social fan/follower goals - will you use contests to increase that number?  If so, make sure you have the resources to support that type of campaign.

Scheduling

Email marketers often build out their messaging months to years in advance.  While you may not need to build out to that extent, you should have a monthly plan of messaging.  How will your social and email messaging be similar?  How will you offer different content/offers per channel?  If you've convinced social followers to subscribe to email for exclusive deals, make sure you're not offering those exclusive deals via social channels.  If you plan out your email and social schedules in advance you can assure that each channel has the right content/messaging queued up to avoid any channel conflicts.

Re-posting

In email marketing, we view remailing is an additional opportunity to have our message seen.  Whether it's inbox fatigue or a subject line that isn't compelling, email marketers know that it may take several attempts to engage a subscriber.  Social media is similar in that on average a Twitter user sees 10% of the content that is in their stream.  That means that most likely even the fullest inbox will never be as full as an average Twitter stream. There are more posts in my Twitter stream in an hour than in my inbox all day (Yes, I get a lot of emails, and follow a lot of people on Twitter). Re-purpose your messages and send it out multiple times over the period of a campaign. By only posting a sale once you really limit yourself on how many eyeballs it will receive. Knowing the viewing trends of you followers/likers will help you in optimizing when you post.

Target customers with unique promotions: your followers/likers are a specific group of people who have chosen to interact with you through social media. Treat them differently then your average user (just like you would treat a purchasers different then prospect). For those who interact with you frequently reward them with specific promotions. This will attract them to your social presence and make them more connected to your brand.

Sending the right message at the right time to the right person

This is a marketing fundamental that holds true for the social channel just as much as it does for email. Find when you audience is paying the most attention to you on social, by determining when fans/followers are clicking/sharing.  Also determine what they are responding.  Are pure promotions the way to go? Or is the purpose to build up conversation? Picture sharing? Contests? You already know how they respond to certain emails, but it took time to discover those patterns. You will need to find the right messaging and timing for your social messages.

Evaluating data

Just like with your email campaigns, you need to go back and look at your data and see how your social campaigns/messages are performing.

• When are people sharing?
• What are they sharing?
• What are people clicking?
• What keywords are getting people to click?
• How long are they spending on your website?
• Are they converting after clicking?
• If they are converting, what message or promo code did they use to convert?

Use this data to compare to your initial social goals and readjust as needed.

At the end of the day if you have a well-thought through email program then you will be able to bring over many of those aspects to a social program. Respect social as a different channel that has different hurtles, audience members and voice. Have you found any other email tactics that work in social media marketing?  If so, share below!

Kestrel Lemen
Marketing Strategist at Bronto