In the digital age, buying decisions are rarely made based on information from just one channel. Increase your chances of converting clients at the pointy end of the buying cycle by integrating your social media and email marketing.

The winning combination

Some channels work together better than others, and one of the most easily integrated and successful combinations is social media and email.

Salesforce recently completed a study in conjunction with Facebook that examined several campaigns with different clients. The study showed that sending an email and a social ad for the same campaign to the same group of people resulted in a 22% increase in conversation and a 77% jump in reach.

So, how can you make your social and email marketing work together?

1. Combine your databases 

The key to success is having the same audience across both your email database and your social platforms. To start, ensure your social icons have prime real estate on your email template. To amp up the follows, try a dedicated campaign incentivising social follows. Keep it simple with just one platform focus at a time.

Continue to cross-promote by including your email sign-up page on all social platforms and, again, try an incentive campaign for a quick database boost. Some CRM software allows you to build an opt-in form directly onto Facebook to make things even easier for your social followers.

2. Retarget

On Twitter you can easily upload your email database and start following your email subscribers to get to know them a little better – you might just gain more Twitter followers in the process. If you’re using Twitter advertising, you can also target advertising to this list only, to ensure your money is going towards the right eyeballs.

On Facebook, Custom Audience allows you to upload your database (as a CSV or imported from MailChimp) and advertise directly to that list. You can even retarget people who click on your emails by using a tool called Perfect Audience, or simply by extracting the list of addresses that opened a particular campaign email.

3. Curate shareable content 

Get a little creative with how you promote each platform to your audience. Include retweet buttons on choice quotes in your emails, add your most-liked Facebook or Instagram post to your next email, or give a sneak peek of an exclusive piece of content or offer you are sending to your database across social media to encourage them to sign up.

How does your business integrate social media and email marketing?