22 Ways to Win with Social Media in Email

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Marketing is evolving at a rapid pace and there are more technologies than ever before to manage it. We marketers are increasingly challenged with how to best reach our audiences. It’s clear that we want maximum ROI, better engagement, and improved personalization and relevance. The ambiguous question is how to achieve those things, particularly with manageable budgets and resources. Am I right?

Email is the #1 way customers want to hear from you

On one hand, consumers have reported that email is the main channel by which they want to receive communications from brands. As many as 72% of American adults have listed it as their preferred method of contact. At the same time, however, the oversaturation of the consumer inbox has resulted in an ongoing decline of click rates.

In parallel, social media for business has become essential

On the other hand, consumer use of social media has become pervasive. We wake up, grab our phones, and then check our Instagram feed. We scan Twitter with our morning coee or at lunch. And for many folks, Facebook is our second screen as we watch television in the evening.

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With all that engagement, it’s no surprise that Shareholic reports that the top eight social networks drove 31.24% of traffic to websites in December 2014. That’s up from 22.71% in 2013. Furthermore, a 2014 study by Social Media Examiner showed that:

92% of marketers thought social media marketing was important for their businesses
80% of marketers saw an increase in traffic
72% of marketers saw an increase in loyal fans
66% of marketers saw lead generation benefits from their social media efforts

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Why hasn’t social media killed email?

While one might find the rapidly increasing adoption of social media channels indicates the death of the inbox, the opposite is actually the case. Feeling more and more overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information on the Internet, consumers are returning to email to keep up with what’s important.

In fact, the New York Times recently lauded the good ol’ newsletter as growing in popularity, due to the fact that it’s not as fleeting as a continuous stream of Tweets — and email marketers are catching on. According to the article, MailChimp property TinyLetters saw a 15% year-over-year growth in newsletters last year, coming from 100,000 users and reaching a combined audience of 9.3 million subscribers.

Leverage social to make email more engaging

As more budgets split between social media, email, and other channels, it’s important that marketers get scrappy with resources. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to both email and social media. Yet instead of picking one or the other, a third option exists: combine the two. AVARI allows you to add intelligent content blocks to your email for awesome cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Using real-time embedded social feeds in email — along with a bit of creativity — allows you to repurpose your social investment and leverage your community to make the most of your email marketing strategy. We’ll show you some of the best ways to develop your social strategy to get the most out of AVARI’s technology with low effort and greater ROI.

Included in the blog series and guide we've written, you’ll find 22 use cases you can put in place immediately to get a robust, effective, cross-channel marketing strategy up and running today.

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When you inject your social media campaigns into your email marketing, you can harness the power of the inbox to reach audiences and maximize the value of your social media spending. This exposes social content to audiences that might not see it, and amplifies the life of the campaign. It also keeps your emails delightful and fresh.

Excited for more? Check out our guide, "22 Uses for Embedded Social Feeds in Email" with example campaigns. Bring your email marketing program to life with real-time Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and RSS streams.

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