Social media loyalty programs have become popularized by global brands trying to attract new customers. It doesn’t matter if you operate as an ecommerce reseller or sell your own products and services to website customers. Social media activity can make quite a difference in your business’ performance.
According to Pew Internet, 74% of Facebook users visit the website on a daily basis. Additionally, 73% of individuals use more than one social media platform. Whether you choose Instagram, Twitter or Facebook itself, social media platforms can effectively transform the way you conduct email marketing.
However, finding the right approach to combine loyalty programs with email can be tricky. Especially depending on your industry. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how you can benefit from loyalty programs being integrated with email marketing on a regular basis.
Benefits of Integrating Social Media Platforms with Email Marketing
Before getting into the “how”, let’s take a look at “why” social media loyalty programs are such a good fit for email marketing. After all, users who rely on social media platforms also use personal emails for correspondence. Finding yourself in that spot can grant your business several benefits, such as:
1) Increased Brand Awareness
Being present on both social media and email will increase your chances of encouraging customers to visit your landing pages. It also ensures that your brand is known in both B2C and B2B sectors. This is because your pushing sales campaigns on two fronts at once..
2) Loyal Customers
Following on from increased brand awareness, having more touchpoints can increase customer loyalty. The more memorable your brand is, and the more you’re rewarding customers through loyalty programs, the more likely they are to keep purchasing from you.
3) Easier Data Collection
Data collection is an important part of running a successful ecommerce store. It will allow you to personalize email marketing content and segment your audience more precisely for each upcoming campaign. Having active social media and loyalty programs in conjunction with email marketing will help your sales department create a much better advertisement funnel as a result.
4) Customer Relationships
The cumulation of the above three points is the fact that you’ll also be improving customer relationships. Being more present, having more loyal customers and having more data to personalize campaigns and communications all strengthen these relationships. This also has the effect of encouraging customers to become even more loyal with your brand.
Integrating Social Media Loyalty Programs with Email Marketing
Instead of individual tips which may be implemented into your existing pipeline, we will focus on a step-by-step process of combining social media with email marketing. The process is perfectly suited for small-scale ecommerce businesses as well as larger players.
1) Original Content Matters
The first order of business in terms of linking social media loyalty programs to your email marketing is to produce original content. Avoid using stock photography, content written and published by other brands and other copyrighted materials.
The more original content you have present on your ecommerce platform and social platforms, the more people will subscribe to your newsletters for future sales offers. Platforms such as Evernote, Trust My Paper and Grammarly work wonders in terms of helping you write quality content. Once you start publishing original content marketing pieces, it will be easier to include conversion options and calls to action for the customers’ convenience into them.
2) Use Social Media to Generate Leads
While you can generate leads through cold email marketing, it’s far easier to start with social media platforms and work your way toward the users’ inboxes. Social media platforms rely on short-form content with clear calls to action. You can set up your brand’s pages on sites such as Facebook and Instagram and start posting sales offers, blog posts and other incentives related to social media and loyalty programs.
Showcase the value of following your social accounts through marketing activities such as upcoming announcements, teases of big sales, and upcoming features on your ecommerce site. Showcase that you plan to stick around for years to come. This way social media users will likely subscribe to your email marketing shortly afterward in spades.
3) Social Media Handles in Email Marketing
Once your social media followers subscribe to your newsletters, you can begin the email marketing part of your advertising efforts. It’s important for you to state your business and intents in the first email you send to every new lead.
Small gifts such as discount coupons or free trials of your services can do wonders for the final ecommerce sale. Inclusions of stats such as “X amount of money spent” or “Y years of subscription” can make up some of the loyalty incentives.
The best way to incentivize recurring purchases is to set up a loyalty program that takes different metrics into considerations. Social media loyalty programs can take numerous shapes depending on your scale and how much you are willing to “give” to customers without a catch.
4) User Generated Content
A great way to closely interlink social media with email marketing is to focus on UGC in your upcoming advertisement efforts. You can collect user generated content from social media followers (with their permission) and showcase their satisfaction with your products or services via email.
Social proof is one of the most important aspects of successful digital marketing, especially when it comes to product and service sales. The individuals who cooperate with you on UGC can get points toward certain rewards or loyalty incentives.
For example, users who get featured on your email marketing materials can get earn points for their participation. Relying on user generated content will also free up your marketing department’s time and allow them to focus on other tasks.
5. Social Media Loyalty Programs with Emphasis on Email Engagement
Social media platforms are ripe for picking in terms of holding contests, handing out free products or organizing events. You can announce events weeks in advance to build up a following for the when your event will start.
In order to connect social media loyalty reward programs with email engagement, you can ask your followers to contact your email handle from their own or to share your status update. This will ensure that you reach a large number of potential leads. Earning you new subscribers in a relatively short amount of time.
Every social media contest can be held with the intention of encouraging email marketing and customer engagement. After all, handing out single-digit discount coupons or free samples to a handful of people pales in comparison to hundreds of emails and followers you can gain for that price.
6) Use Email to Nurture Leads
Lastly, the most important part of integrating social media with email marketing is to nurture the leads you generated. Everyone who engages your brand on social media with their email address will expect you to get back to them.
Use this opportunity to send regular newsletters about your store’s activities, offer deals and touch base from time to time. Don’t simply collect email contacts for the sake of collecting data. Make the most of the situation and ensure that your customers are engaged via email through the year to incentivize the importance of your loyalty programs.
Digital Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Now that we have a better understanding of how social media platforms can work in conjunction with email marketing, let’s point out a few mistakes worth keeping in mind. These can lower the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Making it harder for you to collect followers and customers down the road:
Lack of Numeric Data
One of the best ways to entice individuals into conversion is presenting them with numeric data in your marketing content. You can achieve this by highlighting the number of total sales or number of products you have. Just use as much numeric data as possible to build trust with potential customers.
No Clear Customer Direction
The calls to action you present your customers with should be as clear as possible. While creativity does play a large role in the way you are perceived as an ecommerce platform, you should always rely on actionable, understandable CTAs in your marketing content.
Lack of Personalization
Your customers are individuals with thoughts, feelings, want and needs – treat them as such and you will achieve huge success. Avoid generalized or cold writing and tone of voice. Personalize your content by using pronouns and address your customer base as a collective “we” and “you”.
Lack of Growth & Change
Finally, your social media loyalty programs and email marketing should never stagnate in terms of what are industry standards. Make sure to keep an eye out on what your competition is up to through tools such as SEM Rush and look for ways to offer more with each email marketing campaign.
In Summary
Combining email social media marketing is a great way to attract a large and diverse customer base. Showcase your products or services through the marketing content you publish to your customers in order to build trust and respect for your ecommerce platform early on. Find a system that works for your marketing department and the target audience you aim to attract and the right customers will always find their way to your storefront.
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