Four Easy Ways to Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing

In several social media white papers and presentations, there is this concept that email marketing is purely a 'push' mechanism to share information from a company to a consumer. Working for an email marketing ESP, I find that this thinking is long antiquated. Our best clients already use and integrate social media content in their email marketing campaigns. There's a few examples I came across which provide some easy ways to get started in integrating social media content in email campaigns. Numerous studies have shown that consumers trust information from other consumers - much more than from companies that send them email. Integrating more user generated content will bring your brand and it's advocates closer together.

1. Leverage 'creator' content in how to best use your product or service. If for example, you manufacture shoes, you can leverage 'best pairing' blogs on how to create new looks for spring. The example to the left is from Kraft's member newsletter.


2. Add Links for User Ratings,and common Q&A to your newsletters. Knowing what's a five star product from Sephora for example versus a 3 1/2 star product is tremendously valuable. In this example, member questions are included in an email newsletter.

3. Provide ways for your subscribers to connect with you - and each other. Do you have a Facebook page? Are you building a 'follow' audience on Twitter? In your email footers, you can provide links to where to find you company in Social Networks. Peet's Coffee and Tea for example, provides links for social networks, and blogs allowing recipients to find more about them, and become fans or followers.

4. Provide tools for sharing, bookmarking, and publishing your email content. This viral tactic moves your content beyond the inbox for others, including potential new subscribers, to find it. The example above is from Read Write Web. Better to have someone follow you in their RSS feed than not at all!