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With so many people using Facebook and Twitter, it's easy to forget that social media as a marketing channel is still very much in its infancy. Social media marketers likely feel a lot like e-mail marketers did 10 years ago—unsure of what tactics would prove to be effective, unable to rely on traditional direct marketing metrics, and eager for someone to introduce standards and best practices the industry could begin to rely on. Which begs the question: are there lessons learned in e-mail marketing that we can apply to social media? Let's explore a few that apply.
1. Provide your customers with relevant content.
Regardless of the channel—e-mail, social media, print, television, radio – there will always be one indisputable truth: content is king. And e-mail marketers have been instrumental in training consumers to expect relevant content. That expectation isn't likely to change when your customer engages your brand in social networking. So how do you deliver? Before creating your brand's Facebook page or sending the company's first tweet, understand what your strategy is going to be. What information are you going to provide? Where is the content going to come from? Can you leverage promotions and offers from other channels such as e-mail? Driving your customers to social networks without a plan for engaging them will most likely lead to disappointment, so make sure you have a plan for publishing valuable content regularly.
2. Create many opportunities to share.
Of course, the more valuable and relevant the content is, the more likely your customer is to share it, which is why e-mail marketers have always placed a great deal of importance on sharing tools such as forward-to-a-friend. It's easy today to add social media sharing links to e-mail campaigns, so make sure you are in synch with your fellow marketers. The more opportunities you provide for the customer to share your content, the more likely you are to create new subscribers and customers who want to talk about your brand.
3. Know who your best customers are and treat them special.
Social media may not have the sophisticated segmentation and targeting capabilities of e-mail, but it's safe to assume that any customer who joins your social network is a pretty darn good customer. For the most part, social media users take their networks very personally, which means they are selective about which brands they engage in their community.
Don't take this selection lightly. Instead, treat the customers in your social community as if they were your best customers or brand advocates, because that is most likely who they are. Conversely, you should be inviting the best customer segments of your e-mail list to engage your brand's social networks, where the ability to advocate on behalf of your brand increases exponentially. Push product reviews, special promotions, offers, videos and games to these customers and encourage them to share them in their social networks.
4. Be prepared to justify your investment.
Undoubtedly one of the key factors to e-mail being the most profitable marketing channel is the fact that it is also one of the most measurable. Of course, measuring the success of social e-mail is more difficult, but the principle rule remains the same: establish your key performance indicators up front and analyze them consistently over time, and across channels. It may be difficult to track social media activity all the way through to a sales transaction, but is that the role social media plays in your marketing strategy? It may be better to focus on how social media is influencing brand penetration, customer engagement, and market visibility which can be measured via user reviews, viral campaigns, and fan/follower activity.
5. Take chances and learn from your mistakes
As cost-effective as e-mail is, it has always lent itself to testing new approaches and experimenting with different offers and promotions, all the while analyzing results to understand what is working and why. The same can be said of social media. Many of your early social media campaigns will likely fall flat, but that's to be expected. The important thing is that you continue to test, measure, and improve.
The similarities between e-mail and social media are no coincidence. In fact, many consider e-mail to be a social media tool that simply pre-dates the term. The best lesson to take away from this discussion is how effective e-mail can be at helping to advance your social media strategy. Make sure that you are integrating your e-mail and social media efforts as a means to convert your best customers into brand advocates, and continue to nurture the individual customer as well as your customer community.
John Rizzi is president and CEO of e-Dialog
Sign-A-Rama - Kearny Mesa in San Diego
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