12 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media

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Ever have the feeling email marketing and social media were being set up to be enemies?

It comes up when the social media people say stuff like “email is dead.”

Then the email marketing people snap back with “social media never earns any ROI.”

Everybody just take a deep breath, okay?

Email and social don’t have to fight.

In fact, they can support each other beautifully.

And the more you see all the ways they work together, the more it looks like they’re the perfect compliment.

If you’d like to get more out of your email marketing, and get more out of your social media marketing, try these ideas for blending them together.

1. Drop social posts into emails

Want more content for your newsletters? Social is the perfect solution to this!

Include your most popular social media posts in your email messages to really get subscribers excited!

Not only do you have a great stream of content to pick from, but you’ve also got sharing stats.

You know which posts and images have performed best.

So use just the best-performing content in your emails.

It just might kick your click-through rates up, too!

This retailer uses their best-performing Instagram posts in their emails.

2. Social sharing buttons

If you have a really awesome email that is full of content, why not make it shareable?

You can set your emails up to be shared online – just like any other type of content.



Bonus: You can add “click to tweet” calls to action, too. These are pre-formatted tweets based on a sentence or two of your email content.

3. Social links

You want your audience to cross over from email to social, right?

Well, then, why not include links to your social accounts in your emails!

These are different than sharing icons.

Here I’m talking about the links (or linked images) that go to your profile pages on social media.

If someone is willing to sign up for your emails, they’ll probably be interested in following you on social media, too.

4. Ask for the follow

Sometimes the direct route is best.

Not only should you include links to your social profiles in each email, but specifically ask for them to follow you.

You can even do it when they sign up for your list!

Know that final page your new subscribers see after they’ve confirmed their email addresses?

That’s a great place to ask them to follow you on social media.

People tend to be really enthusiastic when they first sign up – they’re into you, and so if you offer them other ways to stay in touch, they’ll probably say yes.

Here’s how Marie Forleo does it:



Conversely, when people unsubscribe, it’s good to ask them to follow you on social.

If you do this right, you’ll be taking an negative action (the loss of a subscriber) and turning it into a positive (a new social follower) without alienating anyone.

Why would someone who is trying to ditch you, ever agree to make the jump?

Well, that’s a great question, but think about it: most people unsubscribe simply because they’re getting too many emails.

If you offer them another way to stay in touch – without clogging up their inbox – they might say yes.

Check out this super simple CTA from Canva that does just that:



There’s nothing pushy about this at all.

It’s just a thank you along with another option before closing the page!

5. Announce your newsletter

Announce your about-to-be-published email newsletter in your social media posts.

This is a great way to build your list, plus it gives you more content for your social media feeds.

If you’re willing to kick things up a notch, add a short article or other content to your emails that’s not available anywhere else.

Mention that exclusive content when you announce your newsletter on social.

This gives people more of an incentive to sign up and check it out.

6. Capture opt-ins on Facebook

Adding an email sign up button to your Facebook page is about a ten-minute set-up, but it can net you a whole new stream of email subscribers.



The goal is to increase your impact, right?

So why not make it easy for anyone to join your list!

7. Use Lead Ads

Did you know you can build your email list with Facebook’s Lead Ads?

Well, it’s true! Lead ads are an awesome way to get more subscribers.

There is one hassle, though – you’ll have to manually extract the email addresses from Facebook… unless you’ve got LeadsTunnel.

Then the whole process is automated for you.

8. Create custom audiences

If you’re a Facebook user, you can easily set custom and lookalike audiences to attract more people like your current audience.

You’ll need about 1,000 email subscribers for this to really work well, but once you’ve got them, there’s a way to upload your email list to Facebook.

Then you can advertise to those same people on Facebook, or you can use those names to create a “lookalike audience” of folks who are like your subscribers.

Bonus: You can do similar things with Google’s  “Customer Match” via the Google display network.
Or with Twitter’s “tailored audiences”. Oh yeah – and Yahoo offers the custom audiences feature, too.

9. Lead generation cards

If you are on Twitter, you can use their lead generation cards to request sign ups.

If you’ve got the budget, this can be a great way to build your email list.

Especially if you’re more into Twitter than you are into Facebook.



This is a great way to get more social viewers to make the jump and become subscribers.

10. Contests

Contests are a fun way to grab viewers, get them engaged and also encourage them to join your list.

This works best if you’ve got a large following on Facebook, and you’d like to convert them into subscribers.

If that sounds like you, take a look at our article about how to run a Facebook contest to learn more!

Bonus: When you’ve got a winner, add a section about the contest to your next email update.

11. Use overlays

You share other people’s content on social media, right?

It’s good for your authority, and it makes people more likely to follow you.

But there’s one drawback: When people click on the link in the post you’ve shared – whoosh – they’re gone.

Off to somebody else’s site.

There’s a way to fix that.

Use a social media overlay tool to add a prompt to join your list to everything you share online.

You can embed code in your social media links that creates a neat little overlay, like this:



And with tools like Snip.ly, you can add a call to action to join your email list in that overlay.

Now everything you share becomes a micro squeeze page. Like this:

12. Use lead magnets

Got a new lead magnet? Announce it on social media.

I could just tell you, “Ask people to join your list from your social media posts.”

But that’s not really enough.

You’ve got to sweeten the pot.

So anytime you’ve got a new lead magnet, make a big deal about it on social media.

And – of course – include a link to sign up for your list.

Integrate email and social media

See, I told you everyone could relax and get along!

Email and social media can work together in harmony.

And there’s plenty of evidence here to prove it!

Why not choose one of the 12 ways to integrate email and social media and start implementing right now?

Most of them are super quick tips that won’t take much time or effort.

You can easily start adding them to your marketing mix without much thought.

The little things add up, so what are you waiting for?

Want to share your idea on how to integrate email and social media? 

Speak up and leave a comment! 

We’d love to hear from you!



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