DMN3 Blog

Do you currently use email marketing? Has social media affected your email marketing? Here are my thoughts on email marketing in the age of online social media.

I’ve written a lot lately about social media marketing. After all, you cannot ignore this elephant in the room of digital marketing. There is at least one more topic that should be addressed: email marketing, specifically how email marketing is being affected by social media.

In my humble opinion, social media is and should be impacting email marketing. Email marketing must adapt to the new social media paradigm that now exists online. I don’t ascribe to those who have pronounced email marketing as no longer relevant in this new environment. Neither do I agree that traditional email marketing practices are still appropriate for today’s social media’s world.

Here are my thoughts on applying the lessons of social media to email marketing. You may notice that the lessons aren’t that different than already advocated effective email marketing techniques. I classify the lessons as:

• Consumers Choose You – “opt-in”
• Segmented to Specific Interests
• Relevant
• Social and Engaging
• Integrated with Social Media Marketing

Consumers Choose You:

Today’s environment dictates that those receiving your email messages must truly be interested in what you have to say. That means that they choose you and not the other way around. They take specific action to subscribe to your email marketing program. Their motive is the same as why they belong to social networking sites. They are looking for relevant and engaging information that they believe your organization will provide.

Users are becoming less and less tolerant with irrelevant or junk email. List rentals have always been a no-no, but even more so today. Your efforts would be better spent building your own highly segmented lists and sending them content that they will appreciate.

Segmented to Specific Interests:

Social networking teaches us that people engage with content that addresses their specific interests. Connections are created as a result of sharing interests. Whether it is a Facebook community page or a Ning community, the growth in social networking communities reinforces what we already know about list segmentation.

The more narrow the focus of the list, the more relevant the information is to those who subscribe to it. Your email list should reflect very specific interests. For example, email content about “community bank marketing” is going to be much more relevant than “marketing” or even “financial services marketing.”

Relevant:

Just because your email list is segmented narrowly doesn’t mean the content you create is relevant to those on the list. You need to understand the content needs of those on the list. There are a number of ways you can find out what they want. You can ask them during or after they opt-in to your email program. You can also use social media to tune in to the conversations taking place on that subject within communities of interests attuned to your list. That speaks to the integration of social media with email marketing discussed below.

Social/Engaging:

Social media is all about engaging with the audience. E-mail marketing can learn from what social media is about. Depending on your audience, you may want to adopt a more social media approach both to style and the way you provide the content. Why can’t email marketing approaches initiate more direct, intimate and socially rich conversations? Why can’t we make email list subscribers feel special by offering something that is just for them or treating them in a special way. Examples include providing subscribers with their own sharable content or providing them access to offers before they are posted on social media, web sites, etc.

Integrated with Social Media:

I always advocate for multi-channel integrated marketing practices. There is a special relationship between email and social media when it comes to marketing. Done right, you can harness their differences to create a better online marketing strategy. After all, aren’t those that subscribe to your email program much more likely to become “fans” and evangelists for you on social media sites?

If you are relevant and engaging in conversations taking place on social media sites, aren't members of those communities more likely to subscribe to your email marketing program where you can market more directly to them?

We are seeing a shift to a common interface for both social media and email communications. The “inbox” will no longer be confined to email. Shouldn’t marketers take the hint as well and explore better ways to approach social media and email marketing in a more comprehensive way?