Trying To Find A Balance With Social Media And Email

While simultaneously maintaining an email and social media presence, it?s easy to feel like you?re representing two companies at once ? the Internet?s Jekyll and Hyde. Email and social media are different animals. Even though it?s the same customer who is checking Facebook one minute and their email account the next, these are separate genres and the same customer will have different responses to your message. Because of this, marketing campaigns have generally favored one over the other. If presenting a strong social media presence, they ignore email and vice versa.?That?s no longer the case for organizations and businesses that want to maintain strong, reoccurring connections with their customers. Merging and balancing email and social media requires adaptation. If you can connect with your customer in multiple venues, your branding becomes stronger and the probability of that customer sharing the message with their peers increases drastically. Use the information you?learn about your customer?in one medium to communicate more effectively in the next.

Why social media works

Social media is a new development when it comes to online marketing and many companies are still exploring different ways to connect with customers on social media networks. What we do know is it?s an excellent opportunity to create another point of contact. Cross-channel marketing focuses on a company?s ability to connect with potential customers over many different mediums, including mail, social media, stores and commercials. Of all the offerings, social media seems most promising to create successful cross-channel marketing because of its peer-to-peer accessibility. Marketers have explored numerous exciting strategies with social marketing, such as giving discounts or prizes to users who retweet messages or ?like? your status. Doing this, you learn a lot about your customer?what their interests are, how willing they are to learn about your service or product?and you can communicate more effectively with them using that data.

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Why email works

Email marketing creates a direct path between you and potential customers. While people feel connected with social media, a person?s email remains a direct, more personal link. Because of this, small businesses still value email marketing the most and have witnessed impressive results. Social media can be especially useful to learn how people respond to content you provide on a whole, but email marketing gives you the ability to target specific interests.?Opt-in email forms, through which customers provide their email address to your company, are the optimum connection your business has with customers online. What experts have called?marketing gold, permission to email means the potential customer is willing to listen to your message and expects you to contact them. The key is to know what kind of content they will respond to best.

How social media and email work together

Web entrepreneur?Edwin Huertas recommends an easy?six-step plan to connect social media and email, suggesting companies use information and data gathered from social media responses to generate a newsletter that focuses on the content customers initially responded to. In this way, social media acts as a learning device to better articulate your message in emails.?In other cases, experts suggest that email is the best way to connect with your customers and social media is the best way to spread your message.

If you streamline your message and create content based on the information you?ve received from your customer base, the order in which you communicate your message shouldn?t matter. The goal is cross-channel marketing and to maintain a consistent presence in multiple mediums. Get to know your customers better and make changes to meet their needs.

Source: http://wearesocialpeople.com/trying-to-find-a-balance-with-social-media-and-email/

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