Frequently I get the question, “Which should I use, email marketing or social media marketing?”. Most times I answer both.
Let’s look at their differences, similarities and how you can combine both for even more benefit to your company and brand.
The “buy in”
Email marketing – When a person willingly gives you their email address in exchange for a free e-book or download, they’re giving you permission to market directly to them. Their expectation is to receive a newsletter or eblast weekly or monthly, and they expect to receive more information about your product or services in the email.
Social Media marketing – Readers must take the first action to like or follow a page or profile. They’ve seen what you have on your website and like the content enough that they want more, or a friend or colleague has shared your content with them, and they like it enough to want more and follow you.
With both email marketing and social media marketing, the reader reaches out to you for more information. Yay, for inbound marketing!
How can you combine social media and email to get more followers and subscribers? Add social connect buttons to your emails so your readers can join your social media networks. Add an email subscription tab or a subscription link to your social media accounts. In Facebook, you can add a tab easily with MailChimp or a 3rd party app like Tabsite. In all the other networks you’ll need to add a link to your sign up page in your description or about area.
While I don’t see many email subscriptions from social media, the subscribers you will get are engaged and hungry for more info from you.
What are your demographics?
With email, you can see your demographics to a certain extent. A cruise through your email addresses will give you an inkling of the sex of your audience. Look at their domain provider for a hint of their age bracket, i.e., @aol.com and @hotmail.com will be older people that have had their email addresses for a while. These people tend not to be on top of the tech curve. In your email campaign reports, you’ll be able to find what type of device people are viewing on and the email reader they’re using to open the email. Apple mail and iPhone opens usually mean a more affluent audience just because Apple products cost more than PC’s and Android phones. So if you have a lot of Android opens your market base will be younger as they have less disposable income. Outlook opens mean 1 of 2 things … the email address gets opened at a corporation, or the reader is older and doesn’t want to switch from a program they know and trust even though the program is outdated.
With social media, each network has its quirks in their user demographics. Here’s a great infographic from SproutSocial with demographic information on each of the social networks.
You can find your demographics for your Facebook page. Go to your Facebook Insights >> People.
For real synergy use your email demographics along with your Facebook demographics to create a persona to speak to in your blog, email, and social media posts. If you can get the language/messaging for your brand really tight, so tight that it speaks directly to your potential customers, you’ll see a bump in your readership and your sales.
More content!
While each social network is just a little different in their market demographics and how they display your content, we can make some general assumptions about the industry as a whole. Social media readers are visual, and they like their content in small, bite size pieces that are quick to read and easy to digest.
Email readers want info. They want to see your next event or your newest product. They want to learn and understand what you offer and have the patience to read a longer article to get that understanding. They’re willing to use links to click through to case studies and “How to” articles.
An easy and fast way to create regular content for your social media news feed or newsletter is to curate articles you’ve found that will help your clients or potential clients understand your industry. Add your blog posts in with the curated articles.
Both email readers and social media readers will see you as a market or subject expert when you curate content that’s relevant to your business and valuable to them. They also want to see sneak peeks of blog articles, events and “How To” videos.
Can you see that by using email and social media together you can create an even better marketing outcome for your business than by using one type of marketing?
This article was originally published at Maximizesocialbusiness.com, by author Amy Hall.
Recent Comments