A Social Media Approach to Direct Marketing

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, you’ve probably explored using social media to accomplish some of the same goals of your email marketing campaigns. In this post, you’ll hear how you can use some social media concepts to make your email marketing better.

Here are two easy ways that you can take a social media approach to direct marketing.

1. Build an engaged community, not just a large community.

Translated: Start with a good list.

Whenever you’re building a community of followers, fans or contacts, you should have an idea of who you want those people to be. Ideally, they are prospects for your business or previous clients. The better that members match up to a likely prospect, the better your community is. With your email campaigns, you want to have a similar strategy and buy a good email list from a list broker or create your own opt-in list through other marketing initiatives. In either case, you should have a clear strategy of what kind of people you want on that list. You don’t want a really large list of people who aren’t likely to purchase a product or service from you.

2. Keep track of what’s working and what isn’t

Translated: Keep track of what’s working and what isn’t!

A big part of managing a community is finding out what resonates and engages people, and what doesn’t. The same should be true for your email list. In email you can track open-rates, clicks and similar data. Use this information to make your direct marketing smarter! Does putting “Click here for more info” work better than putting “Buy now!” before an offer? If you don’t know the answer, you could! Make sure you’re doing regular testing to figure out what messaging, what types of offers, or what subject lines work best for your company’s product or service.

What are more ways that you’re making your email marketing smarter? Are you already implementing these methods? Share your thoughts in the comments!