How Social Media Is Supporting The Growth Of Email Marketing

Looking at the multiplying growth of social media over the last few years, many people believe that its advent has brought down the importance of other key digital communication mediums like email. The truth is actually much farther than this. While social media continues to catch pace with every passing day, email continues to hold its hand firmly and grow steadily alongside.

Talking about how social media has made emails more relevant for brands than obsolete, Zafar Rais, CEO MindShift Interactive says, “Contrary to popular belief, video didn't kill the radio neither did YouTube overpower TV and Twitter didn't shut down blogging. Social media has created favourable platforms for consumers to have a personal dialogue with the brand in an era where most say that emails are on the obsolete mark. While social media platforms help initiating the conversation, emails help in taking this conversation forward and also provides a constant recall value by emailers.” He further added that about 68% of marketers believe that email is core to their business.

Social media and emails: going hand in hand
Almost every online brand has an email address for its followers. Emails hold the simple yet effective power to move conversations from a social network, which everyone can read to a private inbox. It plays the role of a brand saviour.

When conversations with a fan turn vicious or where a fan feels the need to protect his concerns & queries, you will see a message like, “Hello XYZ, thank you for your message. Kindly send us your email address and our concerned team will get in touch with you shortly.” This message will encourage you to share your email address as a contact number is extremely personal and you wouldn’t want to be troubled with promotional calls.

Email has also opened up a new range of marketing possibilities. It allows brands to send personalized newsletters, ads, track behaviours and interests. Emails, just like social media, can connect you to a large audience with little effort and at small costs. You may have an online database of social media followers but your actual connections are your email addresses. Brands inspire from top social media and take their loyal fans from their social networks to their email lists. The top 10 Facebook pages in India have about 100,000+ fans and most of these pages invite fans to share their contact details (mostly emails) when running a contest. This is only one of many possible ways to collect a huge database.

What the numbers have to say
There are currently 3.6 billion active email accounts with 163 billion emails being sent out each day whereas Facebook being one of the most active social media platforms has 1.26 Billion accounts with 10 Billion Facebook messages sent per day. For most of us, email is the first thing we check every morning. It is also the medium we rely on to communicate online for business purposes. The same is true for most email users, including your customers and prospects. And at least 91% of consumers check their email every day, which clearly signifies that email is a leading form of communication, even in current times.

Marrying the two
Marrying social media and emails is one of the best ways to move forward for brands. Email marketing today connects 85% of people across the world and social media connects about 62%, just imagine what wonders can be done for brands if these two most powerful online tools are intertwined. The best way one can increase the reach of email is to include social sharing buttons. Links that are shared by friends, family, peers and acquaintances are more likely to be clicked on. Research indicates that emails that include social sharing buttons have a 158% higher click-through rate than the ones without it. Hence, following the cross promotional route, having an eye catching as well as informational email with social sharing buttons embedded would be a perfect recipe to reach out to your audience.

Talking about how it is important to use the two mediums (social media and emails) in tandem with each other for best result, Rahul Puri, executive director, Whistling Woods International says, “The increasing popularity of social media has definitely cascaded on the digital platform as a whole. The primary reason is that social media is a two way platform where more than communication, engagement is possible. However for a follow through, email is the best way. As an educational institute with international presence, email is the most preferred medium for us to communicate with our students, parents, alumni, parents and other stakeholders because the details exchanged are far more wholesome. However social media is used for sharing details about upcoming events and happenings at the school. Considering that the world and industry is upgrading technologically and getting digitalized, it’s only logical for us to keep pace and be approachable using social media and detailed using mails.”

Clearly, social media which seemed like a death sentence to emails is turning to be one of the biggest boons for this medium.