Social media can be integrated into your email marketing strategy in a number of ways. However, the method that you choose depends on what you want to achieve. For example if your goal is to syndicate your content online then you will want to target your campaigns to encourage readers to share your content on their social networks.

In 2010 Aweber conducted a survey. The results showed that 36% integrate social media into their email marketing with the purpose of asking readers to send the email on to their social network followers.
The three main tactics for implementing an integrated social media and email marketing strategy to share your newsletter content are as follows:

1. Include ‘Share’ buttons in your newsletters

Including social sharing links in your email newsletters is a great way of combining social media with email marketing. It is also a great way of encouraging your readers to share content. Most websites have a share button on them to make it easier to share.  Five tips you should consider:

1. Identify the most relevant social networking sites.
2. Integrate the ‘share’ icons in your newsletter templates.
3. test the new  newsletter template with a focus group.
4. Roll out the news letter template to the rest of your database.
5. Track shared article metrics.

2. Increase your social following through email marketing

As well as including the ‘share’ icons in your email newsletters, it is equally as important to include links for your subscribers to follow you on social networking sites.  Add call to actions including ‘Follow us on Twitter‘ and ‘Like us on Facebook‘, even ‘Subscribe to our YouTube Channel’.

Also change your email signature to include these ‘follow’ links.

3. Promote your email content in the social Media Platforms

Be confident and cross promote your email marketing and social media.  Just like you inform your subscribers to your email marketing list about your social media profiles, you can do the same on your social networks informing your followers of your newsletter.

Remind all your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Linked In Followers and YouTube subscribers that you have a great email newsletter and encourage them to subscribe. Email marketing should be used as a catalyst for starting conversations online about your brand.

Conclusion

Email marketing is the least costly method of marketing but the most measurable, most effective and easiest to implement as part of your online marketing strategy.  More importantly, by incorporating social media into your email marketing strategy you can boost your business, keep your audience engaged and enhance your brand reputation.

The main lifeline for a company to survive is generating new sales and repeat business from existing customers. Without existing customers staying connected and engaging with you and new leads entering your sales pipeline you company will stay stagnant and not grow.  However, implementing a well planned email marketing strategy can help your business generate new leads and nurture existing clients to ensure continued growth.

Nearly everyone uses email and it is continually growing and evolving. Email marketing is a drip marketing technique which is a direct marketing strategy. Email marketing involves scheduling promotional messages with relevant and specific calls to action sent via email.  It is a campaign spread over a period of time.

5 things to consider with email marketing

Everyone has heard the saying ‘don’t run before you can walk’, well the same applies to email marketing.  Any email campaign must have best practices implemented before any social media integration. If your email campaign is poor it doesn’t matter how much social integration you have, it just won’t work. So, here are some basic email marketing guidelines.

#1 Start with a clean database

Make sure your contact database is clean and complete as this determines how successful your email marketing campaign will be.

#2 Keep it personal

Always make your emails personal so your readers know you are human and feel like you are personally addressing them. Rather than starting ‘Dear friend’ or ‘Dear customer’, use the greeting ‘Hi John’ as this will go a long way.

#3 Compose a catchy subject line

As soon as the email lands in the inbox of the recipient it is the subject line that will stand out next to the sender’s name. Ensure the subject line is catchy and will compel the reader to open the email. It is the subject line that will make or break your email.

#3 Educate and Captivate

Never hard sell in your email. Remember, your readers subscribed to receive email communication that has valuable content – not emails that are sales pitches.

#5 Design your emails for mobile devices

Mobile and Smartphone’s are now indispensible for both personal and business users. More and more people are using their mobile devices to read emails and browse the web. Ensure your email is correctly designed for mobile users.

Benefits of Social Media and Email Marketing

Social media has exploded in the last few years and more and more people are using sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This explosion has transformed the way people communicate online and more importantly how companies market their products and services to their target audience.

Age of Internet Users

No longer the domain of the young, the age of internet users is now fairly well spread across the age groups, for example:

• Children and teenagers account for 24% of usage
• 25 -34 year olds account for 18% of use
• The largest group being 35-49 year olds at 27%
• With the second largest group being 50-64 year olds at 25%

Across almost all age groups the internet is now used either every day or almost every day, and across all age groups 78% of users are on the internet virtually every day, even in the 65+ age group  59% (and growing) use the internet every day.

Internet Activities

E-mail remains the largest internet activity with 90% of all users broadly across all age groups. The big wake up call for businesses is that 75% of internet users are researching products or services online. This has massive implications for B2B and B2C businesses alike. This figure significantly increases for the age groups between 45-64, potentially some of the biggest spenders personally and in business.

During 2010 Google remained the most popular site in the UK with 9 % market share of visits with Facebook close behind with nearly 7%. Other notable sites  include Windows Live and Youtube on 2% each, with Ebay, BBC, Yahoo & MSN also in the top 10. Interestingly advertising is carried on all sites apart from the BBC, Google owns Youtube and delivers marketing to ebay.

Advertising Trends

No wonder that Internet marketing is now the dominant advertising media (it has been for a year or two in the UK) and although the heady days of rapid double digit growth are in the past, it is still the fastest growing media sector with 3% growth forecast for 2011 and 2012, set against the cross media  forecast of just 1%. Both Paid Search Advertising (Google Adwords also known as PPC – Pay Per Click) and Online Display Advertising are set to increase at over 6% pa, though display advertising is set to grow by much more over the coming years. Display advertising, may have been the poorer cousin of  PPC, but now the delivery systems and demographic targeting is improving, there are more and more case studies to demonstrate how Online display is taking over from offline display advertising such as newspapers and magazines. Mmany traditional companies who have previously done well with offline display are now being caught out by failing to be where their customers are now.

Some of the largest spending sectors (for PPC) include some interesting surprises such as:

• Builders (traditionally behind the curve online but rapidly growing as companies invest in local search and seek to reverse their recession, ie if the market is falling then growth can only come from increasing market share.
• Printers have shown a 77% increase in PPC spend again at a time when many traditional printers are struggling against the tide of online publishing.
• Solicitors increased their spend by nearly 40% perhaps in an attempt to build up their business before the much vaunted “Tesco Law” changes.
• Other heavy spending  growth sectors include hospitality  (Hotels & Guest Houses), Florists and Carpet / Rug stores.

With Online Display Advertising set to increase  by 14% in 2012 and exceed£1,1bn by 2014 its worth looking at where companies are currently spending:

• Facebook is leading the pack by some margin with some 58% of the online display ad market
• Microsoft take up 12% of the market
• Ebay controls 7% of the market

It is worth noting that there is a great ability to deliver demographically matched, or contextually matched  advertising, to these and other publishing / lifestyle/interest sites, making them good for branding and for identifiable trackable offers. With the increasing trend of remarking (ie marketing to visitors of one site (who may have met certain criteria such as added to basket but not bought), it makes it possible to make discretionary deal closing offers or up sells away from your own site.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile is and is forecast to be one of the great growth areas of internet marketing over the coming years, mainly because of the success of smart phones and tablets. Google has demonstrated the massive increase in mobile searches and commercial apps and advertising on lite versions of apps is there for all to see.

While only 13% of marketers will spend 11%-20% of their digital marketing budget on mobile marketing, an estimated surge in mobile marketing is expected to exceed £285 m spend in 2014.

Social Media

Social Media has been digital marketing’s the latest phenomenon, typical results have increased the number of keywords companies can be found on, and vastly increasing conversion rates for participating sites. Why? Well because Social Media is branding and engaging prior to purchase, and assisting in the online or offline purchase decision.

Over half of all UK Internet users (24m people) will use Social Network Sites this year. This will increase to 60% by 2014. In fact 69% of all Social Network users will be logged on to social media sites at least once a day, with many reporting several times a day. No wonder that Display advertising is growing in this area.

According to emarketer more than half of UK companies claim to use social media to engage customers, while over a quarter say that they use social media aggressively to engage customers. Evidence on the ground would suggest the opposite, while companies claim to use Blogs, Twitter , Facebook etc, most do not appear to use have even claimed their vanity urls for key social media sites and most appear to have no strategy or chain of command for social media marketing and social media monitoring. When lip service is given to social media, it is unlikely that it is properly followed up, or integrated into any sensible marketing strategy.

Branding is the primary objective by companies using social media (72%) and 53% say that they use Social Media to drive more traffic.

Key Trends Summary

Undoubtedly online marketing continues to grow and displace offline marketing, in particular:

• Online Display advertising will continue to displace offline display
• Social Media will continue to grow and engage
• Mobile is set for the next explosive growth over the next few years

We look forward to watching this rapidly changing space.

Sources

All facts sourced from the UK & Europe Internet Marketing Trends Report 2011 published by WSI
www.wsiyorkshire.co.uk

The full internet marketing Trends report may be downloaded from

www.wsiyorkshire.co.uk/2011-internet-marketing-trends
with all statistics sourced from e-marketer

So what does this mean for businesses eager to tap into this new found mobile demographic? Whilst many devices feature full internet browser capability, the rush to create ‘mobile-only’ versions of popular websites has seen the development of a new and hugely popular market – the mobile website.

Mobile Websites for Business
For many users, smart-phones have become a part of everyday life – accessing train times, cinema listings, the latest football scores and of course GPS (most devices now feature Google Maps or similar application).

Designed specifically to match a smart-phone interface, the emphasis here is on usability, simplicity and efficiency. In this article we’ll take a look at some key reasons why creating a mobile website could be beneficial for your business.

Reaching New Customers
According to technology research company Gartner Inc. (www.gartner.com), smart phone use is on the rise – and fast. During the first quarter of 2010 worldwide sales jumped 49% from a year earlier to 54.3 million units. By 2011, industry experts believe the number of smart mobile devices will exceed traditional desktop PCs. With over 50 million iPhones already in the hands of content-hungry consumers – the potential of this market is huge.

Enhance Usability
Most ‘full-size’ websites aren’t designed with tiny screens in mind. From flash issues to font size, assuming your website will cater to mobile devices could be a costly mistake. Mobile sites are developed specifically for the platform. That means ease of use, seamless navigation and a great user experience. It is also a simple way of expanding your brand cross-platform.

Stay Ahead of the Pack
The mobile revolution is still young – adopting the platform at this early stage could pay dividends further down the line. Chances are your main competitor has yet to launch a mobile site, giving you access to a virtually untapped resource of potential clients.

Google Instant Impacts On SEO and PPC Results

First of all how do you know if you’ve got Google Instant working, it is optional.

Google Instant may be switched on and off from the link next to the search box (above the safe search link)

Google instant gives changing live search results as you type, not only  showing auto complete suggestions, but also changing the results, some results may be a little divers at the early part of typing. The full impact will not be realised for a few months yet as data is analysed and as users become familiar with the interface.

In the search above PPC Management, initial suggestions and results  are around PPRune PPL PPS PPA etc, simply adding a space changes the suggestions to PPCWAREZ, PPC NHS, PPC Supplies etc

Don’t worry there is a filter so that results are not too bad when half  typing “Analysis”

My main concern with Google is the fact that the suggested phrases drop down is pushing the results down the page leaving practically the top 3 PPC results even more prominent and pushing organic results well below the fold.

This will make the top 2-3 organic spots even more sought after and push up the click thrus (not click thru ratio) of the top PPC results. This will increase pressure on budgets for the top 3 PPC positions.  It will be therefore even more important to take the top half of the organic results.

So Google is essentially taking over more of the visible real estate with PPC.

Another concern is that results become skewed to what Google suggests, even if Google suggests based on user activity, it actually becomes self limiting if people rarely get to the end of their own search string.

That said, Google’s proved they are masters of speed once more with their economic programming and pure processing power.

The implications for Search campaigns is probably going to be that:

• Words clicked on could become fewer
• Apparent Impressions will increase giving the impression that there are more searches bing mad than there actually are, since an impression could register after each keystroke. This may make click thru rations lower.
• PPC Management companies like ours will have to consider trends that emerge in changing frequency of words and click thru ratios, and therefore attension to converting successful PPC keyword to high entries on the organic results will become more and more competitive.

For anyone wanting to find out more about Google, Google Instant, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google Adwords (PPC Management). Please call our Huddersfield Office based in Holmfirth West Yorkshire.

WSI Yorkshire is an internet consultancy offering Web Design with Conversion  Architecture and SEO built in; offering Digital Marketing and Social Media packages to our customers.

WSI serves the Yorkshire and Northern Region, particularly Huddersfield, Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield areas.

The new position is for an Internet Savvy Account Manager to help promote our internet marketing services to our customers and to help plan and manage or Internet Marketing Campaigns. No campaign is the same. We may mix such techniques as: SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, PPC Pay Per Click Google Adwords Marketing, Social Media,  E-mail Marketing, Internet Analysis, Internet Consultancy and Web Analytics.

We have achieved outstanding results for our customers and are looking for a new member of our team who will add value to our customers.

The Job Specification is below.

New Internet Marketing Jobs at WSI

Role: Internet Marketing Account Manager
Location: Huddersfield
Salary: £20k-£25K according to experience

As the Internet Marketing Account Manager in our growing Digital Marketing Agency you will be responsible for the planning and management of SEO and PPC for client websites. You will also be responsible for analysis and research of prospects. Training will be given, and you will have access to the latest SEO and analysis tools. You will also analyse the results implemented by our SEO Consultants and liaise with clients, looking for opportunities to improve the clients’ online business. You will attend client meetings and be in constant communication with the client to ensure all Search projects are achieving their targets.

You should have hands on experience of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Google Analytics. As this role is client facing you must have strong communication and presentation skills. You will implement Search Marketing strategies and be competent in the delivery of SEO & PPC Social Media and Conversion Analysis. You will also be responsible for making ongoing recommendations and campaign improvements.

There will be significant training opportunities to further develop your skills.

If you would like to apply, please e-mail your CV and a covering letterincluding salary expectations to lisa@wsiyorkshire.co.uk.

You can checkout the person spec on our careers page

This role overlaps with similar jobs such as

Internet Consultant, Internet Marketing Consultant, Internet Marketing Analyst, Internet Marketing Account Manager, and is based in Holmfirth near Huddersfield