Last year, email marketing practitioners took a dive and began to go social. But with the arrival of 2010, social media is set to reciprocate and make email marketing more powerful. Contrary to popular belief, social media marketing does not pose a threat to email marketing. In fact, when these two internet marketing services combine, email marketing soars to new heights because social media provides new avenues for sharing the email and thus, engaging more customers and gaining new prospects.
According to Debra Aho Williamson, an eMarketer senior analyst, people are not about to abandon email just because they spend more time on social media sites. A tandem of these two internet marketing channels can offer great benefits to marketers or business owners.
A survey done by StrongMail reported that 4 out of 10 businesses plan to focus on integrating email marketing and social media marketing this year. About 25% of the respondents are already implementing this joint marketing channel strategy and 24% are presently formulating a strategy. 18%, however, are interested in combining social media marketing with their email marketing strategy but do not know where to begin.
To provide concrete proof on how social media marketing has greatly helped a marketer’s email marketing campaign, a survey conducted by MarketingSherpa in 2009 reported that 81% of marketers owe the success of expanding the reach of their email content to social media. A simple gesture of incorporating social media sharing buttons such as “share” or “follow me” etc. on newsletters brought about an expansion in the reach of email marketing.
Even if the world is going social, the truth of the matter is that one internet marketing channel is not out to eat another channel alive. Combining the strengths of two powerhouses in internet marketing can prove to have tremendous results in effective marketing.