How to Integrate Email Marketing With Your Social Media Efforts

How to Integrate Email Marketing With Your Social Media Efforts

Here are the 4 methods of integrating social media with your email marketing. 1. Put faces to your email subscribers and retarget them All the major social media platforms have an option to upload your list of contacts. Here is how you can upload your data from your email service provider (or your personal email account) to Twitter and Facebook? Let s start with how you can upload emails from your personal email account to the microblogging network and then run retargeting advertising campaigns. Go to your Twitter account and look for the Find people you know link in the sidebar. It s located right below the who to follow section. You can connect your address book from Gmail, Outlook, AOL and Yahoo. Once you choose a contact book, you ll be asked to give permission for accessing it. After you give permission, you ll be presented with a list of your contacts and an option to follow them. Based on your imported contact list, you ll even be presented with new Who to follow suggestions as well. Next, let s look at how you can import your contacts from an email service provider to Twitter. The first step is to export your CSV list of contacts from your email service provider. If you re using Aweber, you ll first need to head to Manage Subscribers. If you want to work with only a subset, you can search for a subset using the drop down menu. Finally scroll to the bottom left corner of results and click on the Export CSV button. If you re using MailChimp, you ll need to go to the Lists page. Click on Export List. And once the list exporting is finished, you can click on the Export as CSV button. If you aren t using Aweber or MailChimp, you can check for similar tutorials on exporting your email list on your email service provider s website. After you have a CSV file of your email contacts, you can create an audience list of Twitter. Here are the 3 steps to do it. Go to ads.twitter.com >> Tools >> Audience manager.

Next choose a name for your list and specify the type of data you re uploading (email addresses in case you re importing your email list). Upload your CSV file and allow Twitter a few hours to process your list. Make sure you don t click on the checkbox below the uploading option ( The records in this data file are already normalized and hashed using SHA256 ). Unchecking it will permit Twitter to rehash your data and make it more secure. Once you ve uploaded the list, you can create Twitter ads to create personalized offers for your list. Let s specifically look at how you can create retargeting campaigns on Twitter. Note: I am stressing retargeting advertising in particular because it targets those customers that have already shown some interest in you and your products. It can get really cheap and drive great business results (when done right). Head over to ads.twitter.com >> Create new campaign. Scroll down to Add tailored audiences and upload your email list. You can monitor this custom audience s activity by using a tracking code (or a tag). You can also create retargeting ads exclusively for the people who clicked through in your email newsletter. Let s also look at how you can run import your email list to create a custom audience and launch retargeting campaigns on Facebook. Go to Ads Manager. And click on the Audience's link. Now click the green button that says Create Audience. Then choose Custom Audience. Then choose the Customer List option. You ll be presented with this tab and from here you can upload a CSV or TXT file. You can also drag and drop your file to the Custom Audience box. In about 30 minutes, your custom audience will be ready. With your custom audience you can create better targeted ads. Want to expand the reach of custom audience? Then you can create a lookalike audience so that your adverts reach a new audience that s similar to your best customers.

You can also invite your email subscribers to like your Facebook Page. Just Click on the button from your page and click on Invite Email Contacts. You ll see this popup with different integration options like MailChimp, Vertical Response and Outlook. Choose your address book and click on Invite Contacts. There is a limit on uploading and sending email invites. You can only import 5,000 contacts per day using this feature. Retargeting advertising campaigns from your email list on Facebook is similar to creating a custom audience. Head over to Adverts Manager >> Audiences. Click on the green Create Audience button. You ll see a popup to choose the type of audience you want to create. You can import contacts from Mailchimp directly. Once you login to your MailChimp account, your audience on Facebook will be synced and automatically updated every time you add a new email subscriber. Otherwise, you ll first need to export your list as CSV and upload it under Facebook Ads manager. You can also use Perfect Audience for creating your Facebook Retargeting campaign. Once you create your account (14 day free-trial), you ll need to navigate to Manage >> Retargeting lists and click the green Create new list button on the right side of the page. Then you need to enter your list name, duration for running your ad and choose your retargeting type. If you are tracking your email campaigns using URL querystring, then you can use them as your Retargeting Type in Perfect Audience as well. You ll need to append parameters in your email links. You can read this article on how to use Google Analytics URL builder to track campaigns and decide on your parameters. You can watch this video tutorial for a quick recap of the steps to create a retargeting list. Finally, for creating an ad, navigate to Manage >> Create Ads.

2. Invite your social media fans and followers to your tightly knit email community Collecting the email addresses of your social media fans and followers will deepen your bond with your social media advocates because email is a more personal medium. It will also increase your bottom line because email has a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) than social media platforms. So let s start with a couple of ways to collect emails on Twitter. i. Create a lead generation card This is a frictionless and secure tool for people to express their interest in your business. A Twitter user can share their email with you without typing a single character or leaving the microblogging platform. At the click of a couple of buttons, you ll have a user s name, email address and their twitter handle. Here is the list of requirements for using this lead generation tool. a. You ll need to enter your credit card details before using the tool, whether you plan to run Twitter Ads or not. You also need a Twitter Ads account, but that s already been created along with your personal Twitter account. b. You ll also want to offer a free gift like a pre-recorded webinar, ebook, email course or a free trial. This is the bait that will lure a user to give you their contact information. c. Finally, you ll need to develop a privacy policy explaining to the microblogging platform and its users about how you plan to use the sensitive contact data. Once you re ready with this list of items, here s the step-by-step method to create your first lead generation card. Navigate to ads.twitter.com. Then click on Creatives >>Cards. Now click on the blue Create Lead Generation card button. You ll meet an editor requesting a headline, a 600 x 150 pixels image, a small description and CTA button copy. You need to get creative to achieve good results under the constraints set by Twitter. The short description has a limit of 50 characters. Make sure you write compelling copy that demonstrates the value of your offer. As always, testing different descriptions will help you in increasing your conversions. The next element is your card image. As the section mentions you shouldn t use stock images. A tool like Canva can help you in designing elegant designs that grab attention.

Don t settle for anything less than a remarkable image because visuals can have a huge impact on your conversions. The next is the most important element of the card the CTA. The field is limited to 20 characters. You need to craft an actionable message presenting users with the benefits they receive for clicking on the CTA button. Sign up is bad CTA copy. Learn More or Get the Guide are much better. You ll also need to submit the link to your Privacy Policy page. And a fallback URL (landing page with your same lead gen card offer) in case a user is browsing Twitter from a non-supported platform. Finally you have the option (highly recommended) to redirect the users who submit their information to a destination URL. It s like a Thank You Page. You can also enter a post-submit message within the 100 character limit. Using this optional element will ensure a smooth onboarding experience for your new subscribers. Finally you need to name your card to easily identify it on your Cards Manager page. Once you ve created your card, you can preview it from the card manager. So how can you put a lead gen card to use in your tweets? The first option is to simply tweet it to your followers (using hashtags, links and images). Make sure that the cards.twitter.com link is intact in your tweet. You can later pin this lead gen card tweet to the top of your feed. By doing this, anyone who visits your profile will see the lead gen card and is more likely to submit their emails to you. The other more interesting approach is to use Twitter Ads for targeting your users based on their gender, likes/dislikes, geography, etc. By offering personalized offers to your users, you can achieve better conversions. Pro Tip: Your card has high chances of getting compressed in the Twitter stream of users as it gets retweeted. Hence your copy has to be compelling so that users want to click and expand your card. Or you can include a click to expand note in your tweet itself. Directly ask your followers to subscribe. In a tweet, you can also ask your users to sign up for your newsletter.

Next let s look at how you can collect emails on Facebook. Create an email sign up tab and change your cover photo You can create a tab directly on your Facebook Page by using tools like Shortstack or Tabsite. Offer a gift (like a free guide) to those who sign up for your email list. You can even promote your gift on your Facebook Page s cover photo. When you change your cover picture, Facebook will also post an update in your fans news feeds. This type of Facebook cover will prompt you to click on the cover photo, where you ll see the link to the email list sign-up form to claim your free guide. Create a newsletter subscription CTA button Facebook has a CTA button that you can use to link to your newsletter landing page. There are many CTA button options available in the drop down menu. But for collecting emails, you need to choose Sign Up. Then enter the address of your landing page. Facebook has rich analytics that will show you the number of CTA clicks, so you can optimize your CTA and landing page by measuring your results. You can also use the CTA button to attract sign-ups in your Facebook updates. You should occasionally also share your newsletter sign up as an update. Launch a contest A promotional campaign offering prizes in exchange for the contact details of your fans is a great strategy. You ll need to use third-party apps like Wishpond to run campaigns that collect emails. To improve the reach of your campaign, you can offer bonus points to the participants who share the contest with their friends. You can conduct contests successfully on Twitter as well. 3. Create an exclusive social community for your special customers How can you access the private Facebook group? It was given only to those privileged subscribers that emailed two of their friends about the course. Your email subscribers are the most loyal members of your audience and there is a high probability that they ll want to join a special VIP group. But, you ve got to moderate the group and ensure that the group remains spam free (and even self-promotion free, if possible).

Useful content will create an active and engaged audience like the Email1K Facebook group whose posts often get 20 comments or more. You can also start a group on LinkedIn, inviting your email list. 4. Open doors to social sharing on your emails and generate more traffic on your website You can increase your email content exposure by including social share icons inside your emails. Wondering how to get these social icons in your emails? First you ll need to create an HTML webpage version of your email content. Then create a custom code. 1. Create an HTML webpage version of your email content: As users will be sharing from within the email, you will need to create a web page with a link that can be shared on social networks. Most email marketing tools automatically create such webpages as they are necessary for displaying messages and links like "Click here if you cannot see this email. 2. Custom code for your emails: Simply place social share code within the email in the desired location. You can either develop custom code for your social share buttons or use a pre-developed widget from a provider such as LoginRadius. 3. Users can share the URL of the HTML webpage associated with the email from within the message. Some email providers may not display social icon images. So you should fill in the alt text for all of them. To get optimum results, you should test adding a couple of social networking sharing buttons (where your target audience primarily hangs out) and various placements of buttons. You can also use click to tweet text snippets for making social sharing of your email content easier. When you press the Click To Tweet above, you re met with the following option to tweet/buffer. Doesn t that remove the friction in sharing? If building your social following is your current business goal, you can include a CTA to social media platforms in your newsletter confirmation mail. As with other channels, incentivizing your customers to share your email can improve your results.

Losing your email subscribers is painful, right? Maybe your customer s inbox was getting cluttered, so he bid your newsletter goodbye. But you can still offer the unsubscribed people from your email newsletter a chance to reconnect with you. Just provide them links to your social media presence. You can also invite your YouTube subscribers to join your email list using associated website annotation. You ll first need to verify your YouTube account and be in good standing to access it. Once you qualify, you can send your YouTube viewers to a landing page on your website. Are you suffering from organic reach decline on Facebook? Then, you might want to consider engaging your email list on your Facebook Page with a poll like John Haydon. Sending out your popular status updates from the day to your email list can also help you in increasing engagement on your Facebook Page. You can also highlight popular Twitter updates (or any other social media updates) in your email campaign.