Email MarketingHints & Tips

Topic: Using Social Media

A Circle That Never Ends

It's getting to be old news now that you don't communicate to your customers and members -- you communicate with them. As social media continues to grow, and communication channels like email marketing continue to evolve, the idea that you''re simply pushing information to your readers moves further and further into the rear-view mirror.

Are People Talking About You?

Want to know an effective way to grow your customer base? Get your current customers and members to talk positively about you to their friends and family. Word of mouth is a main tenet of referral marketing and a task made a bit easier with today's many social media tools.

Build Your Email List on Social Media Sites

Social media sites offer exciting new ways to showcase your newsletter content and invite people to sign up for your email list. But it's not about adding your voice to the din just for the sake of increasing exposure. It is about making new connections.

Calls to Action Are Key for Social Media Success

As 2011 unfolds in front of us, email and social media will be fully integrated into a larger engagement marketing strategy that fuels customer acquisition, growth, and, ultimately, sales through great content and social interaction with customers and members.

Communication Recipes: Vary to Taste

A recent study by Microsoft and MarketTools on how people (adults in particular) are using the smorgasbord of communication tools at their disposal shows that email and social media usage are both up year-over-year, 45% and 21% respectively. As marketers, this means you have more ways than ever to reach out to customers, members, and prospects, but finding the right mix of tools (email, Facebook, Twitter, et al) can be a bit of a challenge.

Consistent Branding Is Key

Your brand and all of its building blocks -- logo, colors, voice, how things are communicated -- is so critical to your business and organization. It differentiates you from your competition and helps build loyalty and trust among your customers and members.

Email, Social Media Give Hope

The Hope Institute for Children and Families in Springfield, Ill., is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children with multiple disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorders, through educational, residential, and other health service programs. With such an intense mission to help children, raising funds through donations and other sources is of utmost importance to the organization.

Food for Thought

Who doesn't like waffles? Indeed, you would be hard-pressed to find a breakfast-loving person who doesn't enjoy those tasty treats. And that's partly why the Waffle House has enjoyed great success. The company provides its customers with a great customer experience, and that has allowed it to expand and become one of the most popular franchises in the southern United States.

Get Referrals

Any business or organization with a goal of growing larger wants current customers and members to refer their friends. Restaurants love it when customers rave about their food and service on Yelp. Contractors want customers to tout their work on Angie's List. Retailers are keen on shoppers referring their businesses on Facebook and Twitter. Consultants and other agencies depend on people vouching for their expertise and talent. And nonprofit organizations want people to spread the word about their cause. So how do you get your customers and members talking positively about you?

Getting Social with Email Marketing

You use email marketing to reach your customers. You might be using social media to connect with them too. But are you enjoying the best of both worlds and getting the most out of your online marketing efforts by leveraging the two in one unified communications strategy? By doing so, you can drive those on your email list to "like" your Facebook page or follow your tweets on Twitter. At the same time, your presence on these networks can help drive subscribers to your coveted email list.

In this article, we'll give you some tips for bringing together your social media and email marketing efforts.

Lessons Learned

It's safe to say that this past year had its ups and downs. The challenges of the economy required that we take a good, hard look at which marketing methods were the most effective, and new ways of building relationships with customers and members presented attractive options for businesses and organizations with limited time and resources.

Nonprofits Should Get Social

For nonprofit organizations, exposure to potential donors, supporters, and volunteers is critical to success and sustainability. Social media marketing is a great way to gain that much needed visibility at virtually no cost.

The biggest hurdles for many organizations are figuring out which social networks are right for them, getting started, and then maintaining their presence on a regular basis. Here are some ways to do all three.

People Are Talking

There's a lot of talk these days about the value that social media has when it comes to your email marketing campaign. We've previously discussed how sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can help you broaden the reach of your content and increase the number of people on your mailing list. But, to quote the late-night pitchmen: "Wait, there's more!"

Putting Social Media and Email to Work in 2011

If one of your New Year's Resolutions for 2011 is to get your business or organization more involved in social media marketing, then there's no better place to start than with your current email marketing campaigns. Yes, you read that right: Your existing email newsletter efforts can help propel your company or nonprofit into the world of social media marketing.

Shall We Play a Game?

People love to play games -- whether it's in-person or the video kind, on a PC, or on a mobile device. There's a sense of accomplishment that comes from being at the top of the leaderboard, reaching a new level, and even arbitrarily gathering points. Plus, games are just plain fun.

Today, with the rampant use of mobile gaming, it's easier than ever for people to get their gaming fix. That's also good news for you because certain apps, like Foursquare and Scvngr, have turned going places and doing things into a game. These games allow for some friendly competition among users, as well as bragging rights those users can broadcast to their networks. Again, fun!

Success Story - ActionCOACH

This business coach uses Event Marketing and social media to drive seminar attendance

Success Story - B.Good

For Boston-based B.Good, the corporate mission is about more than just selling tasty, healthy burgers and sweet potato fries. Since it's hard to convey that message during a quick visit to one of the chain's seven locations (it's fast food, after all), email and social media play a huge part in delivering the company's story and engaging its most loyal customers.

Success Story - Currier Museum of Art

You might think that an art museum with masterpieces dating back to the 19th century would have little need for modern tools such as Facebook or Twitter. But for the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, N.H., social media and email play a critical role in getting visitors and members in the door. They've even helped shape an entire exhibition.

Success Story - Focus HR Consulting

This consultant uses Email Marketing and Social Media to stay connected with prospects

Success Story - Nancy Juetten

To Nancy Juetten, a person's professional bio is a powerful key to attract clients, speaking engagements, and media opportunities. Through Juetten's consultancy -- Bellevue, Wash.-based Main Street Media Savvy -- she offers her popular Bye-Bye Boring Bio workbook, a Bye-Bye Boring Action Workshop, and an Extreme Bio Makeover service for business owners who find writing about their accomplishments just too hard to do on their own.

"In today's Internet age, a Google search can speak volumes about a company's brand, reputation, and offerings," Nancy explains. "That is why a compelling, client-attracting bio is an essential element in every business owner's marketing toolkit. My objective is to provide bio writing tools and personal support so my clients can reflect their brilliance to the marketplace and attract more of the opportunities they seek."

Summertime, And Your Marketing Should Be Easy

The Year of Social and Email

One trend stands out in 2010: The integration of email marketing and social media

Using Social Media to Promote Your Events

An event -- be it a networking gathering, open house, fundraiser, or class -- is by nature a social affair. People attend events to connect, interact, and share with their peers. Similarly, people join social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to connect, interact, and share with their peers.

Given their complementary natures, it makes perfect sense to use social media to help plan (through the use of pre-event surveys), promote, and build excitement for any public event you're hosting. If the goal is to get as many people as possible interested in your gathering, then social media is a perfect tool for spreading the word to your core base of customers and members, and beyond.

What Are Your Customers and Competitors Buzzing About?

It?s so important to actively listen to what's being said about your business or organization, wherever your customers and members may be talking. We encourage businesses and nonprofits to ask for customer feedback via online surveys, in their email newsletters, on Facebook and Twitter, and by using Facebook's Questions feature. Free tools and services such as NutshellMail, Google Alerts, and HootSuite let you aggregate and track your social media activity, so you can see and hear what customers, members, and industry colleagues are buzzing about.

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