We’ve all gotten pretty excited about social media, business spending on social media is set to reach over 2 billion dollars in 2011. We’ve got our Twitter accounts and our Facebook pages, maybe you’ve even tested the waters on location-based services. Hopefully you are being thoughtful: executing on or at least developing, a solid social media strategy. In the flurry of social excitement, have you forgotten about email marketing? Newsletters? Spreading your message and promoting your events to your hard won list of subscribers? Building upon that subscriber list? Asking for the email address?
I know, I know, social media is your new girlfriend. And she is fun and exciting, there’s no doubt. Everyone loves her… I’m going to stop this metaphor right here before it descends into disturbing wife/sister jokes.
But email. Trusty email. No, it’s not perfect, but it is super direct. You have a better chance of seeing a subject line in your inbox than any one of the bazillion tweets that flitter by each hour.
Email remains one of the most direct ways to reach your customers. And while everyone is busy ogling their new social media followers, isn’t this the best time to take a look at that under-utilized email list? Maybe there’s a bit less competition in your customer’s inbox now than there was six or twelve months ago.
This isn’t about making a choice; I’m going to insist that you keep moving forward with your social media strategy. But, take a moment to figure out where email can fit in with what you’re doing today, how you can tie the two together and let them support each other.
No-brainers:
– Promote your Twitter and Facebook accounts on any email you send out.
– Add an email sign-up form to your Facebook fan page.
– Tweet links to your newsletter sign up.
– Tweet or Facebook links to some of your best newsletter content (with sign up link, of course)
– Create newsletter content that links back to your Facebook page or Twitter acct.
These are just off the top of my head. What else could you be doing or are you doing to tie these two marketing strategies together?
