The marketing media loves to compare email marketing against social media marketing for some reason. The smartest marketers are using both channel to improve revenue.
So how can email marketing and social media marketing complement each other in the real world?
- By using content which performs well in all channels. Email, Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc.
- Ask visitors to your social channels to subscribe via RSS to email updates. People don’t want your email marketing promotions just your quality content.
- All channels can be used to promote each other. For example asking an email subscriber to join your Facebook group or promoting your email newsletter on twitter.
Before email marketers can leverage the true power of social media to increase their subscriber numbers they need to realise that their email marketing is boring. Old school “Get 10% off” or “look you may like this product” type email marketing is dying and hopefully will be replaced by social email which adds value.