Email marketing has been popular for a long time among marketing pros, but social media is trending over the past decade and a half. The hype of social media has taken over all businesses, however its conversion rate is far less than those of email marketing. The organic reach of social media is far less than those of email. 

ROI of email marketing & social media marketing 

Marketers claim that the ROI of email is 3800% whereas the average ROI of social media is just 28%. It is because your social media followers do not see every tweet, post or video that you share on every platform. The social media algorithms work differently. Thus, there is a higher decline in organic reach of a post. For example, only 5.2% of your Facebook fans would see your post. 

There’s a catch… 

While the ROI of email marketing is far higher than social media marketing, the possibility of getting viral puts it ahead of email marketing.

People use social media for pleasure and fun, whereas email marketing is geared towards business purposes. Therefore, you will always have your potential customers on your email list. 

So, without further ado, let’s discuss how to leverage social media marketing for an email marketing campaign. 

No. 1: Use social media to grow your email list platforms

Social media is where most of the audience hangs out. But, the downside is social media has lower engagement rates, and higher bounce rates. The actual results of social media marketing are not trustworthy. However, there are a variety of ways you can use your social media platforms to improve your email marketing campaigns.  

First and foremost, use your social media platforms to gather email addresses. It works well particularly for securing potential long term buyers. When creating social media posts, make sure you add a link to the sign up form for more updates. Alternatively, you can also run an ad with a link to the sign up form. As a result, you will build up your email list of your current and prospective customers. You will be on the safe side even if any of your social media pages are down due to the violation of rules. 

Another great way is to gather email addresses via Twitter Cards. They allow your social media followers to sign up for an email list without even leaving Twitter. As a result, your customers are connected to your brand both via social media as well as email. 

No. 2: Integrate email subscriber list to your social media network 

Improve your email marketing campaign by integrating your email subscribers list with your social media platforms. You can follow the social media accounts of your email subscribers, it will help you put face to their names. 

If they do not have associated social media profiles with their current email addresses, you can invite them to join social media. It also improves referral marketing and personalization. 

No. 3: Promote social media sharing

Social sharing improves email conversion rates. According to research, the email CTR has increased as much as 158% due to social sharing. All you have to do is to ask your email subscribers to share the email on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. 

You might have noticed that most emails that we receive have social media icons at the footer. The goal is to promote social media sharing. Therefore, it is important to design your emails in a way that is eye-catching and shareable. You can use tools like Canva, or Visme to design some engaging templates that boost social media sharing. 

Alternatively, you can also encourage your email subscribers to follow you on social media platforms. Many emails have hyperlinks to social media platforms that you can quickly go and follow. Doing so will improve the email engagement rates, and sales. 

No. 4: Incorporate your social media success in your email 

Incorporate social media success in your email by highlighting any posts or stories with higher reach, more engagements, or higher shares. For example, you can include a link to a Facebook post that has 500 shares, an Instagram story with 100K views, or a Twitter post with 100 retweets. It serves as social proof and strengthens credibility. 

Apart from that, you can also use social media reviews as testimonials in your email series. 

No.5: Create a private social media group exclusively for email subscribers 

We all love to connect with like-minded people, and it’s no different when it comes to the customer journey. If you can create a private group on either Facebook, or LinkedIn, and invite your email subscribers for exclusive offers, it will improve your sales. 

To take it a little further, you can embed the group link and send it via email. Create fresh and value-driven content every single day to make the most of it. It will enable your subscribers to connect, engage and make a purchase. 

Integrate your email marketing and social media marketing today

Now is the right time to integrate both social media and email marketing. Integrating them together will help you harness the potential and supercharge your customer journey. 

Make sure you monitor, adjust and implement these tips to make the most of the strategies.