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Email Marketing vs. Social Media: Use an Integrated Approach
Social media marketing offers a way to reach untold
thousands of people with your message quickly, but can you trust that they will
stick around and eventually buy from you?
Likewise, email has been proven to be one of the most
effective community-building and sales tools out there - but what good is that
if you don't have any email subscribers?
Using social media marketing and email marketing together
is a way to create a sales funnel that will consistently connect you with the
customers you want to reach and establish the kind of relationship with them
that will lead to a sale. If you want someone to guide you through creating a
system that will sell online, you can talk to an SEO specialist here.
Social Media Marketing for Top of
the Funnel Reach
There is no better way to deliver your message to
thousands of people than social media - and you can do it for free. With the
right social media marketing strategy, your brand can suddenly appear in front
of dozens or hundreds of people who will quickly click like.
If you understand your unique selling proposition and you
have a decent copywriter or social media writer, you'll be able to grow a
follower list quickly. The right social media platform will depend on your
company and the audience you are trying to reach, but they all offer the same
value - you can connect for free with the people you want to turn into
customers.
The difficulty in social media marketing isn't developing
a list of followers - it is selling to them.
Despite PayPal and Stripe integrations with Instagram,
Twitter, and Facebook, most people aren't willing to purchase social media -
especially not from a brand they just found. This is especially true if you are
selling something expensive or niche rather than an online course or clothing
and jewelry.
Customers need a longer, deeper connection with a brand
before they make a purchase, which is where email comes in.
Email
Marketing For Bottom of the Funnel Sales
The return on investment for email marketing is legendary:
4200%, according to a 2019 study.
When you have an email list full of interested
subscribers, generating an influx of cash for your business is as easy as
sending an email.
Email subscribers are more likely to buy from you for
several reasons:
●
They
are not in social mode: scrolling for content from friends.
●
Email
can link directly to the landing page or checkout.
●
Emails
can be personalized to appeal to different customer subsets.
●
You
can send drip email campaigns that offer value, building that
customer relationship.
●
Unsubscribe
rates are low across email campaigns.
While your social media accounts could be locked or even
deleted by a major tech company that owns everything you post there, your email
list is your own, and no one can take it from you. Although some of the email
addresses on your list will become defunct over time as they are abandoned, for
the most part, an email list will retain its value for longer than almost any
other asset on the internet. You can stop selling for months or years and pick
up without frustration from customers, who don't even perceive that you
went away.
Integrating
Social Media and Email Marketing
Social media is ideal for building a large and passionate
following, and email marketing are perfect for deepening your relationship with
customers and selling to them, especially for respective specialized industry platforms like
The key to integrating social media and email marketing is
to find a way to turn your many social media followers into email subscribers.
The best way to do this is to offer value - something free
and appealing that you can give away to social media followers who choose to give
you their email addresses.
You can offer a discount on your products, a free guide,
or a helpful tool your followers want. Post a link to your social media to a
landing page where they can type in their email address to receive this gift.
You can only expect some of your social media followers to follow through and
give you their email addresses, but if even a small proportion do, you will
have a valuable and growing email list.
A customer's journey from a stranger to your brand to a
devoted customer might look like this:
- Discover your social media account
- Become a follower
- Click on a post offering a gift
- Add their email to the form and
submit
- Receive a gift! Yay! Thank you!
- Get emails every once in a while
with offers and sales
- One of these offers is too good to
pass up - purchase!
Without ever intending to buy from you, the customer gets
closer and closer to purchasing by having positive interactions with your brand
and giving you more and more personal information to follow up with.
