We pretty much expect a business to have a social media presence these days, much like we expect them to have a website.  Maintaining a presence on social media is full time job and if you’re doing this yourself rather than outsourcing you’ll know that it takes time to grow your following.  

Then there’s email marketing to consider and if you’ve read any of my content about emails then you’ll know I recommend emailing at least once a week.  

In my social media posts, I also regularly talk about the need to drive people to your list because social media is just rented ground.

You may wonder if you should concentrate on social media OR email marketing.  

In fact, I recommend using both because rather than being separate tools, they work so well together.

How does social media help your email marketing?

1.   Offer a free resource

In the four steps of marketing – Awareness, Interest, Decision and Action – social media plays a big part in Awareness.

People are scrolling through their phone, spending a lot of time on social media. They are asking for recommendations on Facebook, looking through hashtags on Instagram and getting inspiration on Pinterest.  

They have a ‘problem’ and actually they might not even know what that problem is yet until they’ve done some research.  They then have awareness of that problem.

More research brings them to your social media where you highlight your free resource that can help them.  Your post directs to an opt-in form to join your list.  

Or, from your social account, they visit your website where they see the same form inviting them to opt-in to receive your free resource.

2.  Ask people to subscriber to your newsletter

 As well as talking about your lead magnet, you could publish posts that simply invite people to subscribe to your newsletter as Twitter have done below.

3.    Tell people about your exclusive subscriber content

Let people know that your newsletter is where the cool stuff lives such as VIP content, discounts and exclusive offers as Octopus Bookstore have done.

4.  Run a giveaway

Competitions works well on social media and are another way to drive people to your list.  You may see some fantastic growth like JewelScent did when they saw a 22% increase in their subscribers.

How email marketing helps social media?

If it’s important to get people off your list and onto your social media, why send people back to social media?

Not everyone on your email list will have found you via social media and in the age of omni-channel marketing, it’s good to have your message in several places.  It doesn’t matter if people see your message more than once – the more they see it, the more it still stick with them.

1.   Provide a link to your latest post

To help you  grow your social media accounts, put  a link from your newsletter to your latest post.  Introduce the subject of the post in your email and invite readers to find out more by looking at your post.

2.  Grow your Facebook Group

Use your email broadcast to help grow your Facebook community.  Encourage readers to join your Facebook Group and meet like-minded people with whom they can share their journey.   

You can send your list a weekly update including some wins from Group members to create FOMO and encourage people to join.

3.   Use your email list to create Facebook ads’ audiences

When you’re using Facebook ads, you can create custom audiences, one of which can be your email list.  You simply upload your list to Ads Manager  as a csv file and create an audience. 

Additionally, you can then create a lookalike audience of people who are similar to the subscribers on your list based on demographics and behaviours.

As you can see, social media and email marketing work really well together and each tool should be a part of the other’s strategy.   Let me know below how you are using social media and email together.