Have you ever considered the possibilities of connecting your social media accounts through your email marketing? The answer is a resounding yes, and for good reason. Imagine having a single inbox where you can see all of the activity across your social platforms — photos you’ve shared, videos you’ve watched, and blog posts you’ve read — all in one place and in real time. Sounds like an ideal situation, right?
Well, you can have that exact same experience through email marketing and social media linking, but only if you approach it the right way. To get started, simply follow these steps:
1. Identify your target audience
When you set out to link your social media accounts through email marketing, the first and most crucial step is to identify your target audience. Who are you aiming your messages at? What do you want them to learn or experience? These are all important questions, and you must answer them before you move forward. Trying to market to everyone is a surefire way to guarantee you fail miserably.
So who is your target audience? That is the question. The answer to this question will not only dictate the approach you take with your marketing plan but also help you determine the success and failure of your campaign. You see, not every email marketing campaign will be a winner. Some tactics and strategies will work better than others based on the nature of your target audience. This is why you must take the time to find out who your ideal customer is before you dive in.
2. Create personas
Creating personas is an important step in the link strategy process. A persona is a fabricated character designed to represent a group of people. For example, if you’re trying to determine the best way to reach male audiences, you might create a persona named Jack, a married father of two who loves fishing and spending quality time with his family. With personas, you can tailor your approach to suit the needs of your target audience. This way you can be sure that your strategy is effective and efficient, and you can keep your eye on the ultimate goal: making money.
Pro-Tip: One powerful tool you must have is the ability to conduct A/B testing. This is invaluable in determining the best approach for your marketing campaign. You can use A/B testing to compare two different versions of an email: one with and one without a particular call-to-action.
3. Create a buyer persona
After you’ve established the primary target audience, you need to create a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a group of people, typically male or female, who have the distinct need or desire to purchase your product or service. In the example above, Jack is a buyer persona since he is the primary audience you’ve identified. You can create as many buyer personas as you’d like, and each one will help you determine the effectiveness of your strategy.
Pro-Tip: A really handy tool for creating and following up with buyer personas is the Salesforce Persona Planner. This tool allows you to:
- Drag and drop your social media accounts
- Enter a description for each account
- Choose the type of content you’d like to generate
- Select an industry, and the tool will pull in the accounts that fall within the scope of that industry.
- Export your work to a CSV for further analysis
- See the metrics that matter to you (e.g., opens, clicks, and unsubscribes)
- Follow up with automated emails to boost growth
- See how various marketing tactics perform (e.g., social media ads, blog posts, and emails)
- Get a full report at the end of the process
4. Match your marketing efforts to the individual platforms
Once you’ve completed the above steps, you’ll have a much clearer picture of the best way to approach your marketing efforts. You see, not all social platforms will benefit from your same marketing strategy. Take Pinterest as an example. Pinterest is a visual platform where users share images and content that is most relevant to them. Typically, marketers will target this audience with brand content since it is the practice to “pin” images that are associated with your brand.
However, if your aim is to promote a blog post or article, you would need to look elsewhere since most brands don’t typically “pin” content. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can take Twitter and use it as your example for a brand-focused marketing strategy. Twitter is a microblogging platform where users can post and interact with content as short as a dozen words.
Pro-Tip: Use HubSpot’s InMail functionality to create automated welcome and farewell emails that can build a bridge between your social platforms and website. These emails can be quite the conversation starter, especially if you follow the right lead-in questions.
5. Create and distribute email campaigns
Now that you have a clear picture of your target audience and know where to find them, the next step is to craft a compelling message and set the parameters for your email marketing campaign. To do this, you’ll need to take your message and break it down into smaller chunks — something easy to understand and actionable.
If you’re new to email marketing, it can be tricky to figure out what works and what doesn’t. To make sure your campaign is as successful as possible, you should take the time to learn from the best. One of the most prominent leaders in email marketing, Emma, has some top advice for new marketers:
“To get started, simply follow these steps:
- Find a relevant blog you can connect with
- Find a relevant niche within that blog
- Decide on a goal for your campaign (e.g., signups, downloads, or just sales)
- Decide on the amount of content you’ll need to publish (e.g., 5 blog posts or 100 tweets)
- Set a budget
- Pick your platform
- Pro-Tip: Choose your platform wisely. Not every platform is made equal. Some will be more effective than others at drawing in your target audience. If you pick a free platform like Google Ads or HubSpot’s inBusiness, be sure to read the TOS before you use the tool.
- Pro-Tip: Don’t get discouraged if your first few email campaigns don’t hit the mark. It takes time to find out what appeals to your audience and what doesn’t. Keep at it, and before you know it, you’ll be sending compelling messages to your target audience through email.
6. Measure the success of your campaign
After you’ve successfully sent your email campaigns, it is time to measure their effectiveness. The answer to this question will dictate whether or not you continue down this path. To do this, you’ll need to set up automated tracking pixels on your website so you can monitor the results of your campaign.
If people are signing up for your email list in droves or engaging with your content, you’ve likely hit on something that works and can be scaled for future campaigns. Alternatively, if your campaign doesn’t seem to be panning out, it might be time to re-evaluate your approach and choose a new tactic.
Pro-Tip: Use Google Analytics to keep track of the effectiveness of your blog posts, ads, and email campaigns.
7. Reap the benefits
When you’ve mastered the above steps, it is time to reap the benefits! What do you get out of all of this? You get the distinct ability to keep track of all of your content — from blog posts to social media — from one place. This makes it easy to find and re-share content that is proving to be most effective. Plus, you get to follow the metrics that matter to you (i.e., opens, clicks, and unsubscribes). This way, you’ll be able to determine the effectiveness of your strategy and continue along the path to a more engaged audience.