Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

How to combine and empower twitter with email marketing

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

During the last couple of moths it looks like in every conversation that involves internet, marketing or both, there is always a common denominator, something everybody is talking about, that has become the hottest thing: twitter. It is almost impossible that a day passes without me reading a story or post talking about a new feature of twitter, new desktop application for twitter, a new iPhone app for twitter, some curious story about twitter, etc.

For me, twitter is a new way of communication, therefore, a new marketing channel through which I can engage with my customers and give them extra value. The fact that is new doesn’t mean that it replaces established marketing channels. That is the reason I wanted to write this post, and explain different ways to combine twitter and email marketing, and how they are more powerful together:

1. Add a link to your company twitter account in every email communication

Add a link in the footer of your newsletter or autorresponder to let your subscribers know that they can follow your company in twitter. You can also add a link to your company twitter account in your signature for transactional emails.

2. Link to your newsletter subscription landing page from your twitter account

It is also important that all your twitter followers know that they can subscribe to your newsletter to receive more quality content from you. So, from time to time, add links to your newsletter subscription form landing page. This way you are converting your twitter followers in your opted-in email subscribers.

3. Post links to your newsletter articles in twitter

Instead of only including one twtit that says: “Check out the latest newsletter”, try to send links to the individual articles of your newsletter over a period of time (a week for example). With a tool like Hootsuite you can schedule all the twits in advanced. This way you give more importance to each article.

4. Add a link in your newsletter articles so that your subscribers can easily “tweet” about them

The same way is important that you add a link in your newsletter to make easy for your readers to forward your message and increase virality, you should add a link that makes easy to your subscribers to twit about the articles in your newsletter. You just have to add a link like this one http://twitter.com/home?status=, and after the “=” you write your under 140 characters message. For example: http://twitter.com/home?status=How to combine and empower twitter with email marketing  http://ow.ly/5nOJ

5. Use twitter as a source of information to write better articles in your newsletter

Twitter is a great way to know in real time what your clients or subscribers think about your product or service, and also a channel to solve different problems and questions. Use this information to write articles in your newsletter with better information to solve those problems and questions and therefore giving more value to your subscribers with your newsletter.

Email Marketing and Social Media, friends or enemies?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

In the last year I have seen a big euphoria about the opportunity that social media is for companies as a marketing tool. There are a ton of articles and posts out there lately about how to use Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc, to build your brand, establish relationships with your users, and much more. Within that euphoria, I have heard voices claming that social media y the new king, and that email marketing is dead.

However, since the moment you need an email address to sign up for any social network, that is completely false. Email and social media are good friends and not enemies. Both of them have an important and different role within our online marketing strategy.

I see social networks as a party, where you meet a lot of people and get in a lot of conversations. That is a really good way to build a community and to find an audience. But, the people that really care about what you do, is the people who are going to sign up to your email list, and the people you are going to start a more direct and personalized relationship with, engaging them with the value given through your emails.

What do you think?