How to Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing for a Higher ROI

Many marketers swear by the effectiveness of email campaigns in the customer journey and, ultimately, conversions. 

According to this 2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks report, the average email conversion rate across all industries is around 2%. This shows the potential of email marketing for lead generation, customer retention, and driving purchases.

As effective as email marketing is, it is a channel that can barely exist on its own. You’ll have to integrate other marketing channels like social media to help with awareness and lead generation.

Standalone, they have their strengths and weaknesses. Combined? They’re a dynamic duo, giving you the best of both worlds. 

In this article, you’ll learn three ways you can integrate social media and email marketing for a higher ROI.

But first:

Why Brands Need to Embrace the Synergy of Social Media and Email Marketing

Have you ever received an interesting email from a company and then went to that brand’s social media only to find out it has an inactive account? It’s usually disappointing. 

Buyer psychology suggests that you meet your customers where they are. Therefore, utilizing social media as a touchpoint makes sense because over half the world hangs out there — including your subscribers.

As you’ve guessed, any business with an active email channel but an inactive social media account is leaving money on the table. That’s exactly why you need a combination of social media and email in your content marketing stack. 

You can also think of it this way: social media marketing targets a wide audience, driving brand awareness to show people what you offer. Meanwhile, email marketing narrows down the interaction with your audience to various customer segments using personalized marketing tactics.

This holistic approach creates an amazing customer experience. It makes it easy to integrate new initiatives and run new campaigns to increase your return on investment.

3 Techniques for Combining Social Media and Email Marketing for Better ROI

As said above, the benefits of integrating social media and email marketing are far-reaching. At the very least, you’ll create an efficient marketing funnel utilizing both channels to grow your business. 

Here are three ways you can combine social media and email marketing:

1. Add Social Media Profiles to Your Emails

Including your social media profiles in your marketing emails helps subscribers find you easily on those social platforms. When you reach them with your marketing messages on social media, you can make them feel more connected to your brand. The result? You increase the chances of them buying from you.

You can encourage subscribers to check out your social media by offering freebies or discounts on products. This way, you won’t only increase your shares on Facebook or acquire likes on Instagram. You might even increase your followers, too.

Add clickable social icons at the bottom or the top of your emails so they can be seen. Postable, a card company, displays all their social profile accounts as clickable logos in the example below:

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Encourage your new email subscribers to follow you on social media. You can do this by specifying the benefits of doing so based on feedback from your current social media followers.

2. Target Email Subscribers with Social Media Ads 

Email subscribers are likely to show interest in your products, especially if your brand resonates with them. Rather than casting a wide net with your marketing message, targeting them is cost-efficient because you can leverage the relationship you have nurtured with them via email already. That increases your chances for conversions.

How better to reach your email users than with social media ads, which allow for granular targeting?

To do this, import your mailing list to your social media accounts. How you import your subscribers’ list varies from platform to platform.

For example, on LinkedIn, go to business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/contact-us, then click “Create Ad”. Set up your campaign manager account by supplying your chosen account name, and your existing company page name.  

After LinkedIn sets up your account, go to Plan> Audience> Create Audience. You’ll see a drop-down of options, click “Upload a List”. 

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LinkedIn will automatically target your ads to those companies and their employees on the list. You can upload a list of up to 30,000 companies.

On Facebook, you can upload your email list through your Custom Audience feature in your Meta Business Manager account. You can upload your list as CSV or TXT file. Make sure each entry includes identifiers like the email, phone number, or address. This is what Meta uses to help you find your subscribers on the social platform.

On Twitter, go to Custom Audiences to upload your email list. Twitter matches your list entries with Twitter handles for your ad campaigns. 

The good thing about this integrated social media and email marketing strategy is that you don’t just reach your subscribers with targeted messaging. You get to know your email subscribers better, too.

Your social media analytics can tell you the types of content your email subscribers frequently like or share. With tools like Iconosquare, you can see these stats and also listen in on your email subscribers’ conversations on social media. This umtimate social media solution can export all the social media insights you choose for the timeframe you specify. 

You can then use all this information you gather to improve your email marketing for eCommerce or SaaS strategies.

3. Grow Your Email List with Social Media

You can organically grow your email subscription list through social media. You want to do that because the more email subscribers you have, the more opportunities for conversions. 

Here are ways you can build your email list with social media:

Promoting your email list on social media. Promote your email list on your social media bios or posts. But make sure you make it easy for your social media audience to sign up in the first place. Check out this example from OMIE:

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The company that sells bento boxes includes a link that leads directly to its email signup form on its Instagram bio.

Offering incentives for signing up. This could be anything from a free ebook or discount code to early access to new products or services. Check out what OMIE did above. Offering an incentive encourages people to sign up because they have something to gain.

Running contests and giveaways. With this strategy, people can enter to win a prize by simply signing up for your email list. You can even ask them to follow your account, if they haven’t done so yet. This strategy is also a great way to generate excitement and engagement around your brand. 

Using social media ads. We discussed the importance of using social media ads above. So, you can make a social media ad with the specific purpose of growing your mailing list. To make it more effective, again, consider offering a discount code.

Interacting with your followers. Respond to comments and questions on your social media posts. Send direct messages to followers, too. This gradually fosters a relationship with them, making them more likely to sign up for your email list. 

BONUS TIP: Use the Same Language Across Platforms

When integrating email marketing and social media marketing, ensure the language you use is the same. If not, potential customers will feel confused about your brand. They may even doubt your brand’s credibility. 

Besides, you want to ensure brand consistency across your marketing platforms. Brand consistency is key to brand awareness and recognition. You want your audience to attribute a specific language tone (and, therefore, a specific personality) to your brand. You know how people usually associate Skittles with a humorous tone and a fun personality? You want to be that brand, too.

So, if your language is fun and laid-back in your emails don’t take on a serious and formal tone on social media.  

Follow in the footsteps of Patagonia, an outdoor gear company. The company uses a common language in its emails and social media. Here’s an example of one of their Tweets:

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The captioned image is funny and relatable. Patagonia’s email content is no different:

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If you’re not sure of the language to use on your social media or email marketing campaigns, conduct a brand identity survey. This will show how customers perceive your brand. Then compare those results with your brand perception objectives.

So, if your intent was for your audience to perceive you as a luxury brand and your brand identity survey results tell you that’s how they perceive you, then you’re on the right track. If they say otherwise, then you’d have to make changes to the way you speak to your audience on both platforms.

Takeaways

Leveraging social media email marketing gives your business unlimited potential for success. Social media marketing allows you to grow an audience, while email marketing offers a more personalized experience to people in your mailing list. Together, they grow your customer base by moving potential customers down the sales funnel faster. 

You learned three ways you can integrate both strategies:

• Add social media profiles to your emails
• Target email subscribers with social media ads
• Grow your subscriber list with social channels

When integrating social media and email marketing, make sure you use the same language. You don’t want to confuse your target audience with different brand styles and voices.

With these tips, you’re well on your way to developing a social media email marketing strategy that generates a higher ROI.