How Do Social Networking and Email Marketing Feed Off One Another?

Some observers say that social media will be responsible for the death of email marketing.  This is fueled by the fact that millions of people have suddenly started spending more time on social networks like Facebook and Twitter than their email programs.  Email may have lost some of its luster in terms of mainstream appeal, but it is still very effective for marketing and general communicating.  In fact, email marketing and social media or more reliant on one another than ever before. 

The true strength of email marketing and social media is in their reach.  Both allow you to reach out to a large audience in an easy and affordable way.  However, social media is proving to be much better at this than email marketing.  If you want to promote your book on MySpace, finding potential customers is as simple as putting out a gang of friendship requests.  Once you have built up your list of contacts, you can engage them through bulletin board postings, blogs and even internal messaging if you take the right approach. 

Email marketing, on the other hand, requires you to obtain permission, which is becoming increasingly difficult for various reasons.  Once you have permission to contact people though, it does get much easier and provides some advantages over social media.  For example, the person who signed up for your newsletter will likely be more open to receiving your messages opposed to someone on MySpace who may not care what you’re selling despite agreeing to be your friend.  When combining them, social media enables email to extend its reach, while email provides social media with a more effective way to connect with the market.   

Internet marketers are discovering that social media is the perfect way to engage beyond email.  They are actively communicating on the social networks, developing loyal followings on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and other popular outlets, making sure to include links to their social profiles when designing their email templates.  Again, this is a two-way street as email marketing also helps spread the word about your social networks.  There is a great chance that a number of your Twitter followers are not the same people you send your newsletter to every month.  This is when you deliver the same news your subscribers received to your social media contacts through a tweet or Facebook update.  By doing so, you will have the opportunity to expand your reach and build your mailing list in one fell swoop.   

Email is a powerful communication platform marketers will always be able to depend on.  While the evolution of social media is indeed changing the landscape, it can never fully replace email  only make it better.  After all, social networks require their members to have an email address to even sign up.  In addition, most people find out that they have new Facebook comments and messages by checking their regular email inbox.  If anything, these to platforms will continue to leverage each other to provide new channels for increasing brand awareness and driving revenue.