The Marketing Innovation Blog

By Jenaleigh Landers & Josh Nason

As of today, the future of email marketing is still uncertain. One thing that marketers are certain about is that social media is on fire! Large and well respected brands like Starbucks and Ben & Jerry’s are among the very first to take steps to eliminate their email marketing strategies all together. They have found that their customers prefer to be contacted via social media, which is what will replace their email marketing. In fact, social media is so popular among Starbuck’s customers, that is has become the first consumer brand in the world to reach 10 million Facebook fans (or ‘likes’). Ben & Jerry’s also has a fun and interactive Facebook site for its ice cream lovers to dote on the brand.

The majority of companies, however, don’t believe that Ben & Jerry’s and Starbucks’ bold marketing move is the way to achieve optimal effectiveness, and they feel that email is still a critical component to the marketing mix. Instead of eliminating email marketing completely, most companies are turning to social media to enhance their email marketing campaigns. The following are the top five considerations for companies that want to integrate their email marketing and social media strategies, brought to you by our friend and partner, Josh Nason of SendLabs:

1. Include a social share option in your emails. By using these tools, you’ll enable your users to share full HTML emails with their social networks as well as forward the email to friends within a few clicks.

2. Use your data to truly target your email campaigns. If you know zip code, gender or any specifics about your database, create targeted emails and send based on that criteria – something that can be challenging with social media. If you have the specific data, you have more marketing power.

3. Include an easily visible email signup next to your social network icons on your website. By providing the options, people can choose to receive the content through the channel they prefer. What if some of your users aren’t on Twitter?

4. Develop a unique approach for each medium. Make your email campaign content strategy different than your Facebook strategy and so on. It makes sense to connect these tools and cross promote, but some content may be more appropriate for one channel over another.

5. Realize that the inbox isn’t going away. You cannot sign up for a social media network without having a valid email address…ironic, isn’t it? All mediums can play nice together and you don’t have to eliminate one while putting all efforts into another. It’s called a marketing mix for a reason.

Check out this great example of using social media to enhance email marketing. On the left hand side of Tommy Bahama’s Facebook wall, fans can click on “Paradise Delivered” to receive emails.

Does your company integrate its email marketing and social media strategies? If so, how? If not, why?

Jenaleigh Landers is a recent graduate of Saint Anselm College and is the newest Account Coordinator at Griffin York & Krause.

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company, with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at twitter.com/joshnason and twitter.com/sendlabs.

Source: www.marketingvox.com