Ask Silver Bullet: July 2017 

If clients, potential clients and readers of Northern Insight leave with just marketing tip, I hope it is the value of integrated marketing campaigns. In the pre-digital era (yes, we cut our teeth that long ago and have regularly thanked our stars that we had that experience), this meant integrating printed or broadcast adverts with PR, outdoor media and maybe Direct Mail to deliver a consistent message.

Come the modern era, of course, it’s meant including all aspects of traditional with digital media including web sites, email marketing and social media. Some marketers advise treating social media and email marketing differently dependant on the aims of the campaign - i.e., is it to increase customer retention and drive actual sales, in which case email is the more powerful channel, or is it to increase brand awareness and community-driven communications, in which case your resources are probably better utilised on social media.

Personally, I don’t think there’s any conflict between these two aims. Yes, they’re different and, yes they work very well independently, but they’re also employed to best effect when they’re used together or integrated into one cohesive campaign just as the direct mail and broadcast and/or print advertising used to work in the days of yore!

Last month’s article gave an idea of the reach of social media so now some statistics, albeit from American research, on the power of email marketing:

• 81% of US online shoppers are more likely to make additional purchases, either online or in a store, as a result of emails (Harris Research).

• 72% of consumers say that email is their favored conduit of communication with companies they do business with. 61% say they like to receive promotional emails weekly and 28% want them even more frequently. (MarketingSherpa).

• One in five (19%) of consumers said they read every email newsletter they receive just to see if something’s on offer. (Forrester Research).

So exactly how do you put the two together?

Without going into much detail, there’s two general ways of doing this. Firstly, social media can be used to increase your list of subscribers or contacts - if they’re interested in your brand on social media, they’ll most likely be interested in your emails so engage and educate them! Get them to sign up to your contact list or newsletter subscription with an offer or incentive - an instant Call To Action (CTA) that drives web site traffic via a sign up page. Include a preview of the content subscribers can access and change the incentives regularly. You can also use Facebook’s Business Pages tabs to acquire new email subscribers whilst Twitter has their own tools (lead generation cards) as part of their own advertising toolkit. 

The other general strategy is to use your email contacts to increase your social media contacts. The easiest way to do this is to include social media icons in your emails and include them prominently, not just tucked away at the bottom almost as an afterthought! Include some copy that boosts them - “see our exclusive Facebook offers” or “follow us on Twitter for a free gift” etc - your emails are now promoting your social media and subscribers are extending their engagement with your brand in addition to reacting to your sales messages, a long and short term strategy in one.

Integrating your email address book into your social media will not only increase the quantity of your contacts and potential clients or customers but moreover it increases the quality of their engagement with your brand. Following your subscribers gives you a greater knowledge of them enabling you to more accurately target them in future campaigns. Whether you do this yourself or use the specific social media tools depends on your budget and level of expertise but I always advise our clients that it’s always easier to sell more services or products to existing customers than acquire new ones.

Do you need some assistance with your marketing? Do you need to review your strategy or do you have another marketing question we can help with? Talk to us. Email your questions anonymously to us today hello@silverbulletmarketing.co.uk  or Tweet us (not so anonymously) @SilverBulletPR.