Social Media Marketing
An Introduction for Email Marketers
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Peter Ghali - Senior Product Manager
Copyright © 2011 iContact Corp. | www.iContact.com/whitepapers
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{ Social Media Marketing }
This white paper provides practical advice and key strategies for beginners looking to incorporate email
marketing with social media marketing.
Introduction
Sending and receiving emails is easy and free. We do it all the time with our personal email accounts. With
more than 600 million users on Facebook and more than 175 million users on Twitter, social media is also
easy to use and free. However, once you cross the bridge from email to email marketing, there are suddenly
best practices to consider. The same thing can be said for social media marketing.
Email marketing and social media marketing should complement each other in growing your business
presence and generating leads and customers. This paper is designed for you if you are familiar with email
marketing and want to get started with social media marketing.
Social Media Survey
We recently surveyed 414 iContact customers to learn more about their challenges and goals with social media.
According to the survey respondents, their largest social media challenges were lack of time, uncertainty
about how to determine return on investment, and lack of knowledge about social media.
Social Media Challenges
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Lack of The learning There are too Unsure how to Lack of Monitoring tools Lack of time
resources curve many tools determine ROI/ knowledge about don t meet
value social media all needs
Challenges
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Survey Responses
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Social Media Applications Used
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Social Media Application
For the purposes of this paper, we will focus strictly on Facebook and Twitter, which are the most commonly
used social media networks among our survey respondents. The concepts and ideas in this paper, however,
also apply to other social sites.
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Survey Responses
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Social Media Some Key Terms
Before we dive into social media marketing, this section defines some of the commonly used Facebook and
Twitter terms.
Facebook
" Facebook Page Facebook Pages are associated with businesses and organizations. These used
to be called Fan Pages.
" Fan A fan is someone who joins a Facebook Page by clicking the Like button for that page. They
see updates from that Facebook Page in their News Feed.
" Facebook Profile This is a personal Facebook account. It is not recommended that you create a
Facebook profile for your brand.
" Wall The part of a Facebook Page or Facebook profile where fans and friends, respectively, can
post messages for anyone to see.
" Like When Facebook users click the Like button, they let their Facebook friends know they like
particular content, and they give their friends an opportunity to read the content and click the link.
This is analogous to a contact forwarding your company s email to friends.
" Comment Facebook users can begin a conversation about a post by commenting on it.
Twitter
" Username In tweets, you often see Twitter usernames preceded by @. Including this symbol creates
a link to the user s profile on Twitter.
" Retweet Twitter users can retweet a message to forward it to all of their Twitter followers. Retweets
begin with RT.
" Reply A reply is a public response to a tweet. The Twitter username of the recipient begins the reply.
" Direct Message Commonly known as a DM, a direct message is a personal message sent to
someone. It requires that both the sender and the recipient follow each other, and it is not publicly
visible. The message begins with a D and is followed by the username of the message recipient.
" Mention A mention occurs when a Twitter user references your brand. Any tweet with your brand s
Twitter username is a mention.
" Follower A follower is someone who follows your brand on Twitter. Followers receive your tweets, so
it is important to grow your follower count.
" Hashtag Hashtags include text following a #. Hashtags highlight keywords or topics in a tweet.
Twitter users often search by hashtag to find all tweets related to a topic.
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Anatomy of a Social Media Post
One of the key takeaways from our recent survey was that there was a general lack of knowledge about
social media (third-largest challenge) and that the learning curve was a bit steep (fifth-largest challenge). Let s
examine, then, sample Twitter and Facebook posts, using email marketing as a point of reference.
Twitter Post
Information about the content of the Link to additional information.
link encourages people to click the link. Posts are not required to have
In the email marketing world, this is links. Once clicked, this would be
analogous to the email subject. analogous to the email body.
Facebook Post
Email marketers are used to having only Unlike email marketing, social media allows you
a from name and from address for to include text that describes the content being
their emails. On Twitter and Facebook, shared to facilitate searching for the content online.
you also get a logo/image. So, for example, if someone was searching for
#emailmarketing, they would see your content even if
they were not aware of your other social media efforts.
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As you can see in the above posts, the length of a social media post is much shorter than a traditional email.
Twitter limits you to 140 characters, and although you can put more content in a Facebook post, it is still very
different than email. One thing you ll notice is that social media URLs are shorter than traditional URLs. There
are services that can shorten traditional URLs for your Twitter and Facebook posts.
Social Media Key Tips to Keep in Mind
Social media marketing and email marketing share many common traits that help businesses accomplish
their goals. For example, both can do the following:
" Help you grow your audience
" Encourage prospects and customers to respond to a call to action (e.g., visit a website,
sign up for a trial)
" Help you fine-tune your marketing efforts by providing quantifiable results
But there are some differences between social media marketing and email marketing that are helpful to keep
in mind as you launch or fine-tune your social media efforts.
Segmentation and Personalization
One of your major goals as an email marketer is to deliver relevant messages to your recipients. The
information that email subscribers provide such as preferences and demographics can allow for more
advanced personalization and segmentation. This can drive better engagement with your email subscribers.
With social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, however, there are very little organized data, such as
purchase history or website visits, that a marketer can easily access.
Deliverability
The ability to deliver emails successfully to the inbox is critical to email marketing. Some email marketing
solution providers have teams dedicated to maintaining high deliverability rates so that customers limited
marketing budgets have the highest impact. These providers also work with customers to help them comply
with CAN-SPAM regulations and to ensure that messages are not caught in spam filters.
However, in the world of social media, there are no concerns or limitations regarding CAN-SPAM and
deliverability. That doesn t, however, give you carte blanche to go crazy with your social media efforts.
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Ultimately, your fans and followers have very simple and effective methods for disassociating themselves
from your brand. Not only that, but if you employ poor practices, you can create a social media backlash.
So, while there are no government regulations about spam, there is the court of social media to consider.
Real-Time Conversation
Social media is a real-time, two-way conversation. There is an expectation that brands are responding to
and interacting with their social audience in real time. It can be difficult to focus on the constant stream of
content, but there are tools to help you monitor and respond to your customers on social networks.
While you may feel overwhelmed with the sheer amount of content and the real-time nature of social media,
remember that you don t always have to create your own content. It is more important to curate content that
is helpful to your audience. There is so much valuable content out there; the art of separating the meaningful
and beneficial will be helpful as you seek to increase your value to your social media audience.
Email Marketing and Social Media
There are several ways to integrate these two complementary marketing channels to help grow your
audience. Here are a few ideas:
Share Your Email on Your Social Network
Once you have sent your email, you should use your social networks to share the news about your email
messages. Here are a couple of examples of how you can use Twitter to promote your emails:
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You can also use Facebook to share your message just by posting a link to it to your Facebook wall. Here
is an example:
Once one of your social media followers clicks on the
link to view one of your messages, they can share
your message with their social networks by clicking
the social share bar at the top of the message.
Combining your email and social media marketing extends your brand beyond your network to THE network.
The illustration below captures the viral nature of social media:
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Typically, when email marketers think about increasing the relevancy of their emails, they immediately jump to
segmentation ideas. The reality is that by extending the life of your email and making it available to a broader
social media audience, you are making your email more relevant.
Adding Social Sharing to Your Email
Using simple share with your network links, your subscribers can share with their friends specific links or
pieces of content from your email.
American Eagle Outfitters allows its email subscribers to like its email and to spread the word about its content.
Here is how it looks when
someone likes the email:
When someone clicks this
Facebook post link, they are
taken to a web version of
the email. From there, they
can begin the purchase
process or share the email
with their network.
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Here s another slightly different
example from MarketingProfs.
In addition to links to share the
issue on Facebook, Twitter, and
LinkedIn, this email also has
social media sharing options
for individual content sections.
Another way to drive social sharing is to make sure your website has Like buttons on pages that are linked
from your email. Doing so gives those email subscribers or webpage visitors an opportunity to share your
website content.
Your email is a great opportunity to expand your social networking presence. Adding Like and Tweet
buttons to your email gives your email subscribers the ability to share your email with their social networks.
Remember, now that your email has extended its life beyond the inbox, it becomes your ambassador in
the social media world.
Using Your Email to Grow and Engage Your Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers
Using your email as a way to encourage your subscribers to follow you on social networks is very easy to
do, and it gives your email subscribers additional touch points with your brand. This is especially important
if you differentiate your social media promotions and content from your email content.
Many people follow brands on social networks to get special offers. Use your email to encourage that behavior.
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Here s an example from Urban
Outfitters. At the top of the email,
the company has included a
Facebook Like button to make it
very easy for its email subscribers
to become fans of the brand.
Here are more examples from well-known brands Saks Fifth Avenue and Gap:
Saks Fifth Avenue Gap
Note that Saks Fifth Avenue places its social media
links at the top of its emails. Gap places its social
media links at the bottom of its emails.
As you can see from these examples, there are multiple ways to design your email to attract followers on
social media sites. Which social media sites you want to include and where in your email to include those
links is entirely up to you. Many email templates already have Facebook and Twitter icons that you can insert
and point to your Facebook and Twitter pages. Once your email subscriber (or anyone, really) clicks those
links, they will be taken to your Facebook and Twitter pages. From there, they can begin following your brand.
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Using Your Social Media to Encourage Email Sign-Ups
With so much time online being spent on social media sites, it s important to let your social media audience
know that you have an email list and to entice them to engage with your brand through email marketing. One
technique is to put a sign-up form on your brand s Facebook Page. Here are a couple of examples:
Conclusion
As noted in our survey of our customers, many email marketers want to improve their social media marketing.
Hopefully, we have given you some ideas and perhaps a starting point for extending your email marketing
comfort zone into social media. With just a little bit of work, you can start to realize the benefits of promoting
your brand across both social media and email.
About iContact
iContact is a purpose-driven company based in Raleigh, NC, working to make email marketing and social
marketing easy so that small and midsized companies and causes can grow and succeed. Founded in 2003,
iContact has more than 300 employees and more than 700,000 users of its leading email marketing software.
iContact also provides the event marketing platform Ettend. As a B Corporation, iContact utilizes the 4-1 s
Corporate Social Responsibility Model, donating 1% of payroll, 1% of employee time to community volunteering,
1% of equity, and 1% of product to its local and global community as part of its social mission. iContact works
hard to maintain a fun, creative, energetic, challenging, and community-oriented company culture.
Follow us!
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About the Author
Peter Ghali (@pghali) has more than 15 years of experience in various engineering and management roles
at companies such as Intel, Analog Devices, and Motricity. As a senior product manager at iContact, Peter
leads the company s social media and mobile initiatives, and launched iContact for Salesforce. In addition to
email marketing, Peter has experience in delivering mobile marketing and e-commerce solutions to market.
Copyright © 2011 iContact Corp. | www.iContact.com/whitepapers Please don t print me! 13
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