Optimize your E-mail Marketing for Social Results (via Mashable)

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Marketers plan to increase spending on e-mail and social media marketing more than any other tactics in 2011, according to a recent survey.

As marketers find opportunities to build audiences, conversation and conversions with clever cross-promotion between the two mediums, e-mail and social media tactics are becoming increasingly popular and intertwined.

Incentives Drive Clicks and Conversions

Dingo, a pet food company in Ohio, created a promotion that rewarded customers with a $20 coupon if they signed up for the company’s newsletter and “Liked” its Facebook Page, with the catch being that the page needed to get to 5,000 fans (from a base of around 300) for the promotion to kick in. Mike Halloran, the owner of Dingo, says it reached its goal within three days, as pet owners found out about in the Dingo newsletter and forwarded it to their friends and “liked” Dingo on Facebook.

Of all channels, e-mail marketing and social media go hand in hand better than any other, getting your customers to share your message with friends is the most effective way to grow your business.

 

The company’s e-mail newsletter — which has more than 100,000 subscribers – recently featured a promotion to win a free bike, helmet and messenger bag to fans of the company’s Facebook Page. So far, the opportunity has driven more than 6,500 clickthroughs to the giveaway, versus just nine clicks (yes, nine) to the company’s prompt that encourages e-mail subscribers to become Facebook fans.

 

Promotion Works Both Ways

These promotions can also work the other way, however. Shoe retailer Crocs not only promotes social media through its e-mail newsletter, but also promotes its e-mail newsletter through social media. For example, the company will inform its Twitter followers or Facebook fans about a special offer that’s only available to newsletter subscribers. The company also lets Facebook fans sign up for its e-mail newsletter from an app that’s built into its page, something that Andrea Stow, senior global eMarketing manager for Crocs, says has resulted in a “gigantic leap in our e-mail subscribers.”

 

Stow continues, “Our strategy is understanding and knowing that there might be duplicates [subscribers to multiple mediums] — but the more customer touch points, the better conversion we’ll have.”

That reach, says Stow, gives Crocs the ability to stay in touch with customers year round — important for a company that only expects its average customer to buy new shoes two or three times per year at most.

E-mail Will Only Get More Social

Although companies like Crocs, Timbuk2 and Dingo are still relatively early movers in the integration of e-mail and social media.

Concludes Schmulen, who was also a co-founder of NushellMail, “What we’re seeing today [is the] social call to action [becoming] the primary call to action inside of newsletters.” Expect that trend to continue as marketers start to realize the benefits of doing so and technology providers continue to integrate e-mail and social tools into one package.