The Ultimate Guide to Integrating Email Marketing with your Social Media Strategy

• 54% of social browsers use social media to research products (GlobalWebIndex).
• 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention (Hubspot).

Social media marketing and email marketing, both can be robust stand-alone approaches to your strategy. These are the two most widely used and highly effective marketing techniques. While it is separately utilized by many companies, integrating both of them can surprisingly bring benefits to your brand.

Well, we all know how different both of these marketing techniques are. On one side, social media works on expanding relationships socially and building a brand image, and emails, on the other side, are a bit more personal and are known for direct communication. Let’s move on to understanding the advantages of integrating email marketing with your social media.

Benefits of Social Media and Email Marketing Integration

1. Boost your marketing metrics

When working on just email marketing, brands usually miss out on directing the readers to a landing page or even in guiding them to share it. Integrating social media marketing with your email marketing will not only increase the chances of your email getting shared but also boost the conversion rate, hence boosting your marketing metrics.

Pro Tip: You can also evaluate your website’s traffic by checking it regularly and comparing data from the last months to understand better your business’s conversions and marketing metrics.

2. Gain more subscribers

You can always utilize your social media to promote and add more audience to your subscriber’s list and vice versa. Make it easier for the reader to share your email if they want to. Letting the audience share and talk about your brand is the best possible way to market your brand as word of mouth is louder than most marketing attempts.

3. Utilize a different platform for interaction

Each platform comes with different opportunities to interact with the audience, and as they say, “the more, the merrier”. Let the audience on your email list know that you are active on social media as well and ask them to get in touch for the latest updates, offers, etc. On the other hand, you can also provide offers on social media to get subscribed to your email list. These methods utilize both platforms and let you get in touch with more audiences.

Pro Tip: To always stay active on social media and make it easier, you can use the best social media management tools and save plenty of time.

4. Letting the audience make a choice

With the growing number of Internet users, some might be more active on social media, and some might check their emails more often than anything else. With the approach of integrating social media and email marketing, your brand gives a choice to the audience. This choice lets them choose where they want to interact with you, making it convenient for users and beneficial for the brand.

Were you enticed enough with the advantages?

Let’s dive into how to do it.

How to Integrate Social Media into Your Email Marketing Strategy

1. Embed an email sign-up form on Facebook

Facebook, being the most used social media platform, is a gold mine for marketers like you. Your Facebook page, if marketed well, can bring an immense number of audiences and benefits. Contributing to this, Facebook provides you with a feature of embedding an email sign-up form that can get your social media audience to subscribe to your email list.

Utilizing the power of social media to get to your audience personally with an email is one of the best approaches to get them into your digital marketing funnel, and here is how you can embedded a ‘Sign Up’ option on your Facebook page:

2. Use Instagram bio

Instagram is a platform of visuals, and as visuals induce 650% more engagement than text-based posts, it has become a go-to place for so many people nowadays. Also, it is on its way to becoming a one-stop solution for ecommerce retailers. This platform lets you add links in your bio section, and businesses have been taking advantage of it since the start.

You can begin by creating a visual-based Instagram post that can draw engagement. As you gather the audience, you can refer them to the link in the bio using which they can enroll themselves for an email newsletter or updates/offers. To get email subscribers from your Instagram followers, you can simply edit your bio and add a link that will be displayed to everyone who visits your profile on Instagram.

3. Use Twitter cards

Twitter is a social media platform that works well for some and not for others. It all depends on how much you can make the most of it since 89% of people use Twitter to discover new products. For businesses, Twitter comes with a feature where the audience can click on your tweet to expand it.

The first click will expand the tweet, while the second click on the call to action can redirect them to sign up to your email list. You can utilize this feature to drive your Twitter traffic to boost your email list.

4. Let your subscribers know they can follow you on social media

The emails that you send to your already built email list can also be of benefit for increasing your social media engagement. You can start by notifying them about your social media profiles in every email. A footer is typically a good place to do it. This way, the reader will know that they have platforms to choose from to interact with your brand.

Later on, you can also promote offers/getaways in the emails in return for following your social media profiles.

5. Add a live social media feed in your emails

If you have been working well on your social media profiles, this can be an excellent opportunity for you. I would suggest using a robust email marketing service and a third-party software tool such as Zapier that allow you to easily integrate a live social media feed into your emails, i.e. Instagram and Twitter.

These live social media feeds get automatically updated when a new tweet or an Instagram post is made. Whereas this could be the best way to notify the audience on your email list, clicking on the link will redirect the subscriber to your social media profile. Keeping all of it in mind, this is how Dunkin’ Donuts integrated email marketing with its social media strategy with appealing infographics:

6. Add social share buttons to your thank you page

After completing the subscription form, users likely see a page that says "Thank you for subscribing." If the user has reached this page, they are definitely interested in your product/service. You can make the most of this by putting your social share buttons on that page. This isn’t just a great way to engage them further with your brand, but it can also lead to additional income in your pocket if you’re getting them to YouTube.

You can also offer giveaways/contests in return for connecting with your brand on social media. This can boost your social media engagement as to why anyone would want to miss something like that!

7. Retarget your active email subscribers through social media ads

Targeted ads can reduce your work to half and bring double engagement than usual. Something similar can be done when integrating social media and email marketing. With the information you hold on your email subscribers, you can retarget them with social media ads. Moreover, to make sense as a brand, you should only retarget subscribers who aren't already connected to your social media handles. When you do this, it’s a good idea to invite them to attend a webinar or offer some free materials that they’d be interested in.

8. Organize social media giveaways to build an email list

Who doesn’t love giveaways and gifts!

Your subscribers will love it too. Organizing a social media giveaway to build an email list is on almost every marketer’s bucket list. This method is one of those that can show quick results as it works merely on give and take basis.

You can run a contest on social media where getting more people to subscribe will increase the chances of winning. You can also just put a simple giveaway for a lucky winner from their email list. With hundreds of ideas to implement, this is how @jennakutcher did it on Instagram:

It’s a wrap

Using just email marketing or just social media marketing can usually set limits to the marketing umbrella of your business. Integrating both of them can give a wholesome experience of your business to you as well as to the audience.

Each attempt you make can bring benefits to your business but only until you are relevant and responsive to your audience at the same time.

Let us know what worked out for you in the comment section below. Feel free to drop more ideas on integrating social media and email marketing.

Happy Integrating!