Anyone working in e-mail marketing will be familiar with the old prejudices: the medium is outdated, rarely used, and soon overtaken by social networks. But true is that e-mail is still the first means of choice in corporate and customer communications.
But it is also true that social networks such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Xing offer countless opportunities for companies. Be it a higher level of awareness, customer loyalty, advertising, or direct sales - many things are possible with social media.
Therefore, in this post, you will learn how to connect your e-mail marketing to the social networks to grow your contact list and to bind your existing customers even more closely to your brand.
Why You Should Link E-Mail Marketing With Social Media?
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Xing is the list that can be continued indefinitely. There are now so many new platforms that are used by different audiences.
And all the social media mentioned have an advantage over traditional e-mail: the public.
Share company or industry news, and then reach a broad audience with a short, simple post that can interact with you. Not only this is an excellent way to improve your reach and position your business as an expert in your field, but you will also be in direct contact with your customers.
But how do you manage not to lose track of a large number of different platforms with the right approach?
As in any other form of marketing, you should first explore your target audience. Who cares about your brand and your products? Do you work in B2B or B2C?
In the next step, you will find out which social media your target group prefers to use. While a broad audience visits YouTube, a younger audience is mostly found on Instagram.
In all cases, it makes sense to combine e-mail marketing and social media to cover as many channels as possible and thus address a larger audience. This, in turn, will translate into a rising ROI.
How to Build E-Mail Lists with Social Media?
Reach and expert status are excellent and useful.
But let's be honest, e-mail marketing is all about an optimally functioning and growing contact list. That's why the primary focus should be on how social media helps you attract new subscribers to your newsletters.
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Facebook
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Despite numerous data scandals, the American platform is still a heavyweight among the new social media. According to the latest figures, about 1.52 billion people use Facebook every day, 381 million of them in Europe alone.
If you still can not convince these numbers, and you still doubt the benefits of a corporate page on Facebook: 90 million small and medium-sized businesses already use this opportunity.
And it's worth it.
Platforms like Facebook allow you to present the human side of your business. Users are familiar with Facebook and the features and do not have to click through a foreign website to get the information they want.
But how can your Facebook page help you recruit new leads for your e-mail marketing?
Free advertising for your newsletter
First, simply redirect your Facebook subscribers to your registration page. All you have to do is place a Call to Action Button (CTA) under your Facebook banner.
To do this, click on the blue button below your title picture on your page (this will only be displayed to you as a page administrator). You can then choose the action you want (Contact, Buy Now, Learn More, to name a few).
Second, since you only have one CTA under your banner, it must be selected according to your needs. If you would like to extend your e-mail contact list, we recommend choosing the "Register" button.
Third, you can then insert the URL of your registration page: Visitors to your Facebook page can now subscribe to your newsletter with just three mouse clicks.
In this way, you will be able to promote and grow your e-mail contact list for free with Facebook.
Paid Facebook Ads
Your e-mail contact list can grow organically with social media. You can display the corresponding ads and get into the newsfeed of your target group in this way.
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Twitter
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Twitter also provides a great way to link your social media channels to your e-mail marketing and to expand your contact list. And with the lead generation cards, which are similar to the principle of Facebook Ads.
These cards are paid ads (while at least the Facebook CTAs are free). The different settings allow you to reach specific target groups (gender, location, languages).
In just a few steps, you have created such a Lead Generation Card:
First, to create a Lead Gen Card on Twitter, go to their profile picture and select the "Twitter Ads" option.
Second, create a new campaign and select your desired campaign destination. To promote your website/landing page is especially "Website clicks or conversions." You can now define and create new Lead Generation Cards.
Third, choose the Audience and Budget and create a memorable CTA. Write an appealing message, add a visual element (tweets with pictures for better results), and select the appropriate link depending on the objective.
Fourth, select the URL of your newsletter sign-up page if you are aiming to grow your e-mail contact list.
Despite the platform's swiftness, Twitter is an excellent channel to promote your e-mail list and connect your e-mail marketing to this social network.
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LinkedIn/Xing
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When it comes to linking social media and e-mail marketing, the two social networks Xing and LinkedIn are most obvious. They are great for maintaining business relationships and finding tailored audiences.
Here's the opportunity to use your connections and contacts to build an audience.
Tip: On Xing, you can set up your page for your business, build a community, and keep it up to date.
For example, you can export the e-mail addresses of your network to an Excel format and send personal e-mails to invite your contacts to subscribe to your newsletter. However, this can be a very lengthy process.
As mentioned earlier, having your company and you personally as an expert in a particular area is a great advantage.
This means that your voice resonates with your community. This, in turn, means that you share interesting content and point to trends in the industry.
Therefore, every time you share content on your LinkedIn page or XING, you should add an invitation to subscribe to your e-mail by including a link to your sign-in page. So you can make more users aware of your newsletter.
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YouTube
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To provide visual content, use one of the largest and most widely used platforms. You should provide video tutorials to users to help them understand how to use your products and services.
YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world and is used by 1.5 billion people a day - also, 75% of all executives watch weekly business-related videos. This is a chance you should not miss. Videos are popular and are a strong marketing trend - your audience will also be guaranteed to watch your videos.
You can use such videos to grow your e-mail contact list. How?
Frequently and widely used channels like YouTube allow you to add annotations and maps to your videos.
You can easily add links at the end of your video tutorials.
You can provide this information through your channel settings. After adding your domain to your YouTube account, you can integrate your link. It's as simple as that. Be sure to create an engaging message to convince viewers to subscribe to your newsletter.
Phrase like, "Would you like to know more about our product? Then subscribe to our newsletter "is recommended.
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Instagram
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Instagram offers you the opportunity to present your brand to a younger audience. To enlarge your e-mail list with Instagram, you should, in a first step, create the necessary conditions for your followers to learn about the offer of a newsletter.
An excellent opportunity for this is, for example, the insertion of a registration form in the page description.
The next step is to animate your audience to interact. Possibilities for this would be:
- Special promo codes for Instagram users
- Free downloads
- Competitions
- Photos that excite to tag friends
The goal is to promote your company, your brand, and your products. For this, you use word of mouth, which can develop on platforms like Instagram very quickly in your favor.
Stay up-to-date, regular post photos, and especially stories to stay in both the newsfeed and remember your followers - it'll be worth it.
Once you have built up a community, you will be provided with up-to-date news about new products, offers, and exclusive discounts for Instagram followers.
But beware: you should not shoot all your powder on your social media channels. If you already publish and deploy all actions on a single platform, you will have difficulty promoting the added value of your newsletter.
Therefore, you should divide discount codes, competitions, etc. in such a way that you can at any time point out the merits of your newsletter and its added value.
Instagram is a great way to promote your e-mail contact list with visual content - take this opportunity.
How to avoid spam filters in E-mail Marketing?
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All companies should know about how to overcome spam filters in e-mail marketing, but the reality is that they still mistake in the mass sending of e-mails.
When you have a low opening rate in the campaign, it is very likely due to filters they have rated the message as spam.
Surely you would have received in the inbox commercial messages from companies, brands, or websites that make you think where they got your e-mail because you do not remember subscribing or signing up for their newsletter.
Well, the explanation to this case is very simple; today, there are still many companies that make the serious mistake of buying databases with the sole purpose of selling their products or services.
The terms junk mail and junk message refer to unauthorized, unwanted, or unknown sender messages massively sent to a list of people. For this reason, this excessive behavior is called spamming.
Hence, if you want to succeed in e-mail marketing campaigns to avoid dying on the blacklist, you have to create the optimized content and format that will make the subscriber fall in love.
Now, how you can build up an e-mail contact list using social media according to the latest data protection laws - GDPR. Here, comes the role of Mailpro – the e-mail marketing software tool, which is compliant with GDPR and manages your private data.
Mailpro supports you in various steps and provides the necessary functions. With Mailpro, you can create newsletter, manage the contacts, run the e-mail marketing campaigns, e-mail automation, SMTP Relay Server, analysis of campaign statistics and reporting, routing and deliverability, and other advanced features. Today, this free emailing software is used over 150,000 associations, both small and medium-sized ventures. Mailpro compliance with GDPR assures the privacy and integrity of the data and customers.
Conclusion
You now know how to connect your social media channels with your e-mail marketing and what advantages this strategy has. But even with the best social media campaign to build your contact list, it is essential that you observe and obey the legal framework.