Adding ‘the social’ to your email marketing
When was the last time you made changes to your eNewsletter design and strategy? Was it back when Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites were NOT incredibly powerful marketing tools? Has your email list been shrinking while your social network connections are increasing? If so, it might be time to revisit your eNewsletters.
Despite the growth of social media as a channel for updating clients and customers, email still plays a very important role in most organizations’ marketing and communication strategies. Here are a few tips to make your eNewsletter strategy more social.
1. Forward to Friend
People have been using “Forward to a Friend” almost as long as email has been around. Don’t stop using this. It still works as it allows people to forward an entire eNewsletter to anyone in their email address book. This tactic also takes into consideration email users who are NOT on social networks. (I.e. my mom and her friends).
2. Facebook Sharing
Give people the option to share the articles/stories/offers your eNewsletter links to their Facebook wall or to their Facebook friends.
3. Retweet as much as possible
Allow your recipients to Tweet or Retweet the individual stories or offers directly from the body of your eNewsletter. And better yet, give them the words to do so – craft the message you want them to post but give them space to add their own testimonial or commentary to the message. Also, since you’ve prepared the content already – why not launch it into the twitter-sphere yourself by sending the first tweet.
4. Collect email sign-ups on your Facebook Page
Grow your eNewsletter list FROM your Facebook page too. Including a sign-up form on your Facebook Fan Page allows visitors to subscribe to receive your email content. Many third party Apps exist for this or use your own code on a separate tab using the Static FBML App. <—- Are we doing this on our facebook page?
5. Link to your social media sites from your eNewsletter
Let people know what type of content you offer in each of your social media locations and provide a link to get there. For example, let them know what types of videos you post on YouTube or what you post on Facebook or Twitter.
Hypothetical Case Study: Does Neil Patrick Harris care about our upcoming workshop?
Lets say that Neil Patrick Harris received the Mouth Media eNewsletter. As far as I know, he does not receive it but this is a hypothetical case study so bear with me. And when NPH reads the blurb on our upcoming social media workshop in said eNewsletter he thinks “wow – this isn’t for me, but I think this a valuable piece of content”. What would NPH do if it was easy and non-intrusive? Well if there were ‘share’ options right in the body the eNewsletter, he could potentially post a quick tweet visible to his 650,000+ followers and searchable to anyone else on Twitter. And if anyone those who read it, realize it has been retweeted from a trusted source (who doesn’t trust Neil Patrick Harris) they may retweet themselves, subscribe to our eNewsletter directly or actually register for the workshop which is the reason it was included in the eNewsletter in the first place.
Social media can drastically increase the reach of your eNewsletter content which can help you meet your marketing goals. Why not help it go social?
NOTE: Before you say, PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, please note that the Mouth Media eNewsletter is due for a revamp – and its coming soon!