These days, customers expect simple, easy ways to learn about your brand or product. To meet expectations, you need to reach your customers on a variety of platforms. A website alone won’t do it; you need to engage customers through multi-channel marketing.
By connecting your blog, social media and email, you’ll be able to provide the kind of experience customers want.
The benefits of using multi-channel marketing
By reaching customers through a variety of different channels, you’ll maximize your reach. After all, your social fans might not be on your email list or following your blog and vice versa. That’s why it’s important to engage subscribers through multiple channels to make sure every customer that’s interested in your product or brand gets the message.
Plus, by combining your efforts, you can collect a lot of customer data. By incorporating email into your multi-channel campaigns, you can get reports that help you understand audience behavior and allow you to create targeted messages for different segments of your customer base. Juvlon, for example, provides comprehensive, easy-to-read reports.
Why email is the heart of multi-channel marketing
Think of it this way, while the other channels are tirelessly gaining customers attention, email marketing is the glue that keeps all of the efforts together.
Whatever the intent of your campaign is, email can provide direct links that allow customers to take action. Plus, your customers want email. Research shows email is the preferred mode of brand marketing by consumers, according to DMA. And, take a look at the stats, email isn’t just appealing to an older crowd – even millennials prefer email.
Ways to integrate your blog, social media and email
Let’s take a look at a few ways you can use all three of these marketing channels.
1. Write a blog post, promote it via email and social
When you write a new article for your blog, use your social media channels and email to let subscribers know about the new content. Here’s an email that promotes new content on a blog. Notice the business gives readers a brief description of the article and then provides a link to read the entire piece.
2. Host a social media contest, promote it through email and blog
Want a great way to engage your fans? Try a social media contest. Consider asking customers to submit a picture of their family using one of your products, or ask subscribers to write a small (140 characters) essay about what they like best about your service.
You could host a contest that’s holiday related too. For instance, a hair salon could ask customers to explain what they love most about their mom on Mother’s Day. Customers can submit their thoughts on Facebook with the hashtag #MomMatters. The winner gets a $100 gift card for a mother-daughter salon day.
While the contest is held on social media, you can invite guests to participate through email and create a blog posts to promote the contest too. Here’s an email that invites people to participate in a contest:
3. Invite your social media followers to your email community
Social media traffic generally has a lower engagement rate and a typically high bounce rate. Social media platforms can create a huge impact for your business by generating leads and creating brand awareness. But since email helps you to connect with your customers at a very personal level; ie. their inbox, how about collecting the email addresses of your social media fans and followers? This will not only help you to increase your email opt-ins but will also help you to widen your reach.
Do your followers know that you have an email newsletter? They might not. So how about reminding them about your newsletter and providing a link to a signup page where they can subscribe to your newsletter? Make sure your landing page clearly highlights the benefits of signing up.
4. Include social sharing icons
You are probably sending out email newsletters. But did you try to increase the social reach of your email content? Maybe or maybe not. You can increase the exposure of your email content by adding social sharing icons in your emails.
5. Encourage people to sign up to email lists via social network
You are promoting your brand’s social media profiles in your emails, but how about you encouraging your social media followers to sign up for your mailing lists? Yes, and one of the best ways to do this is by using Twitter Cards, which allow subscribers to sign up for an email list without leaving the social media platform.
6. Create retargeting ads on Facebook and Twitter
Ads are expensive and you don’t want to end up targetting uninterested customers. Retargeting ads work when you target the right audience. Retargeting those who are already interested in what you have to offer- your product or service; leads to better conversion rates and eliminates the chances of showing irrelevant ads.
7. Run a social-focused email campaign
Running a campaign that promotes your social channels and the benefits of each channel is a way to use email to grow your social media followers. You can create an email that is built around your social channels to generate excitement for the launch of a new product or a contest.
Tying your marketing channels together ultimately nets the greatest return. The channels should work together to attract and retain customers, all while providing a unique way for customers to engage with your brand or product.