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3 Ways to Combine Social Media with Email Marketing

There are a number of ways to integrate social media with your email marketing strategy. The method that you choose for your business will depend on the goals you want to achieve. For example, if your goal is to syndicate your content online, then you will likely tailor your campaigns to persuade readers to share your email content with their social networks. If your goal is simply to grow your online following, then you would probably message your email communications in a way to encourage your readers to become your Facebook fan, follow you on Twitter, connect with you on LinkedIn, etc.

We will discuss 1 way in this article and the next 2 ways to combine email marketing with social media will be discussed in the next article.


Based on a survey conducted by AWeber and provided to eMarketer in June 2010, 36% of respondents said they integrate social media with email marketing with the purpose of motivating their readers to tweet their email newsletters to their Twitter followers. Meanwhile, 35% said they broadcast their blog entries to their email database.

Database building is also a noted priority as 25% of respondents said they add sign-up forms on their social media pages for their target audience to subscribe to their newsletters. Building their social following is just as important with 23% including “follow us” links within their email messages.

Here we will discuss 3 main tactics for implementing an integrated social media and email marketing strategy to share your newsletter content, build your social following and email subscription database and promote your email content in the social media platforms.

1. Include "Share" Buttons in Your Newsletters

One way to combine social media with email marketing is to include social sharing links in your newsletter templates. A study by MarketingSherpa states that marketers who integrated social media “share” buttons in their email newsletters saw a 25% boost in reader interaction and a surge in inbound traffic from social networking sites (June 8, 2009 case study).

Many websites today now have a “share” button located at the top. This allows website visitors to share web content with their social networks. Adding these social sharing links to your email newsletters is a great way to expand your readership beyond your subscribers at no additional cost. Here are 5 tips to consider when including “share” buttons in your newsletters:

Tip 1: Identify the most relevant social networking sites – It’s important to select only the social media sites that are relevant to your company. There are many to choose from, but take a moment to think about your target audience and where they are likely to converge on the social portals to discuss topics related to your product or service. Then zero in on the social networking sites that are most relevant to your business.

Tip 2: Integrate the “share” icons into your newsletter templates – This requires adding unique HTML code into your newsletter template. Identify if your existing email marketing system has a feature that will include the “share” icons in your emails automatically.

Tip 3: Test the new newsletter template with a focus group – Whenever you change your newsletter template, it’s a good idea to test it with a small, segmented list prior to rolling it out to your entire database. Make sure the “share” icons render properly and the links direct readers to the right location. You may find that adjustments need to be made to the size or location of the “share” icons. If you do, make those adjustments and re-test.

Tip 4: Roll out the newsletter template to the rest of your database – Once you are satisfied with the template, you can then start using it for your regular newsletters with the rest of your database.

Tip 5: Track shared article metrics – Tracking the shared articles in your newsletter is no different than tracking any other click on your newsletter. Your email marketing system should have sufficient tracking capabilities allowing you to track how many times readers click on your “share” icons. Tracking the number of people who view your content after it’s been shared may be a challenge. However, for a platform like Twitter, you can use a URL shortening tool like bit.ly to measure how many times a shared article is clicked on.

If you have several articles in your newsletter, be sure to link each article to a page on the web. It is recommended that you include an introduction paragraph of the article and a “Read more” link allowing your subscribers to read the complete article online. If you choose to go this route, be sure your “share” buttons are set up to share the URL of each article on the web.

Avoid using Javascript because most email clients cannot render it. Instead stick to images and text links for the “share” buttons. As mentioned, look for an email marketing system that can share your newsletter across various social media sites automatically through the system. For example, WSI Digital Marketing Pro supports several popular social media sites, including MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg and Google Bookmarks. A powerful email marketing system can streamline the process of incorporating social sharing links in your newsletter for you.