Tag Archives: social media marketing

WooCommerce is one of the leading platforms for ecommerce stores that use WordPress. If you know how to leverage their extensions, you can create a comprehensive, automated order fulfillment process.

WooCommerce is just the platform for building your store. You need extensions to automate shipping and sales tax services, among other things, and the best WooCommerce plugins can help you streamline your inventory and improve your customer’s experience.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms for online businesses built on WordPress. If you want a solution that you can customize, WooCommerce offers several features to create the perfect ecommerce store. The top features are:

  • Open-source platform: WooCommerce is a modular open-source platform. That means you can customize every aspect of your store to build a truly unique ecommerce store. You also have complete control over how many customers, users, and the orders you want.
  • WordPress security: as a leading content management system, WordPress powers over 34% of the websites on the internet, and it’s routinely audited by a third-party industry leader, Sucuri. That means your WooCommerce store has a foundation of trust.
  • Plugin integration: the open-source nature of WooCommerce makes it a powerful platform for businesses that want to integrate their ecommerce store with other product and marketing solutions. Plugins, or extensions, are an integral part of customizing WooCommerce.

While WooCommerce was made for developers, it’s a practical solution for many small businesses that don’t have a full development team.

Note: Plugins and extensions are interchangeable in this blog. WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress, but the additional functionality of the plugin is through extensions.

How do the best WooCommerce plugins and extensions work?

WooCommerce plugins and extensions offer the easiest solution for building a custom ecommerce store. In most cases, they’re relatively easy to incorporate into your online shop.

You can take advantage of WooCommerce extensions by following these three simple steps:

  • Install the extension: You’ll do this from your WordPress Admin tool by navigating to the WooCommerce integrations and choosing the extension you want to install.
  • Log in or create an account: If you don’t already have an account with the extension you’re installing, create an account to have access to all of the right features.
  • Activate any services: At this point, you can set up any services or workflow integrations within WordPress and have access to the data in one place.

Depending on the level of service you choose, you might have access to additional support options to help you install and set up your extensions.

The 10 best WooCommerce plugins and extensions from the last five years

With hundreds of extensions to choose from, choosing the right extensions for your ecommerce store can be extremely time consuming. Take a look at the 10 best WooCommerce plugins from the last five years:

1. LiveChat

Communicating with your customers is a crucial part of a solid customer experience—44% of ecommerce customers say that one of the best features an online store can have is live chat to answer any questions. Specifically, 63% of millennials prefer to live chat for basic customer service questions.

Live chat can improve customer experience and boost customer confidence.

Source: LiveChat

LiveChat has tools that allow you to transfer and archive chats, as well as share files and receive chat ratings. It also features chat buttons, the ability to route chats, and both chat history and transcripts so you can optimize your customer service strategy.

2. Shippo

If your ecommerce store sells physical products, shipping is an inevitable curveball in your order fulfillment process. Shippo gives you access to more than 15 shipping carriers, including Canada Post, DHL, FedEx, UPS, and USPS. You can even get a 60% discount on DHL and USPS shipping rates.

 The right shipping options can make a significant difference for ecommerce customers.

Source: Statista

Why is it so important to have these options? Customer satisfaction. Average consumer satisfaction with shipping companies in the U.S. was 78% in 2019. FedEx and UPS are slightly higher than average at 79%. The more options you give your customers, the happier they’ll be.

3. Sticky Cart for WooCommerce

Cart abandonment is a serious issue. In the first six months of 2019, retail ecommerce stores saw an average cart abandonment rate of 84.24%. With numbers like that, you need to do everything you can to optimize your online store. Preventing cart abandonment is the first strategy.

There are many reasons people abandon carts, but there are ways to prevent that.

Source: FitSmallBusiness

One of the best WooCommerce plugins from 2019 is Sticky Cart. This is a “Smart Cart Feature” that adds a highlight bar to every page of your website with the cart total, a link to add to cart if on a product page, and a link to view cart. Sticky Cart saves the information for returning visitors as well.

4. WooCommerce Social Login

You should always allow your customers to checkout as guests when available. That said, encouraging account creation is a great way to collect customer data and leverage that in the future. WooCommerce Social Login lets your customers create an account from different social media platforms.

Social login makes it easy for your customers to create a new account.

Source: WooCommerce

Almost 80% of ecommerce customers prefer using social login to create accounts and checkout, primarily for security reasons. Nine in ten people are familiar with social login and over 50% of them already use it. This is also a great customer retention strategy.

5. Campaign Monitor | CM Commerce

Email automation is an important tool, with B2C marketers seeing conversion rates that are as high as 50%. Leveraging marketing automation can increase email open rates by an average of 70.5% and click rates by 152%. This makes it one of the most effective tools to boost email performance metrics.

Email automation offers a lucrative marketing opportunity for e-commerce stores.

Source: Campaign Monitor

CM Commerce by Campaign Monitor offers a comprehensive set of automation features, like abandoned cart emails, custom receipts, product reviews, and email newsletters. You can use your data to create customer profiles and target your customers more effectively.

6. FooSales

WooCommerce is an effective solution for ecommerce stores, but what if you need to expand your sales? FooSales turns your web browser into a secure POS system that manages your inventory, customer information, and sales data. This is a practical extension for events and pop-up shops.

Pop-up shops are a widespread trend that drives growth.

Source: Statista

Pop-up shops are a unique trend for ecommerce retailers. Almost 75% of shoppers prefer to purchase certain things in store, like clothing, furniture, and beauty products. Pop-ups allow ecommerce stores to offer physical locations at a fraction of the cost of setting up a store.

7. Pinterest for WooCommerce

Optimizing your campaigns for mobile behavior is a critical digital marketing strategy. If you want to see mobile engagement, Pinterest is the leading social media platform and 50% of Pinterest users will make a purchase after they see a promoted Pin. That makes it a lucrative marketing tool.

Pinterest is one of the best tools to engage your customers.

Source: WooCommerce

With the Pinterest for WooCommerce extension, you can upload your entire inventory to Pinterest and add any new products to your Pinterest boards automatically. Your Pins will have links back to your website and you can manage them all in the same place.

8. WooCommerce Zapier

Zapier is an excellent resource for ecommerce stores that want to integrate multiple cloud services. With the WooCommerce extension, you can set up a complete order fulfillment process that includes both frontend and backend procedures. It also supports other WooCommerce plugins.

 Connecting a number of cloud services can make your processes more efficient.

Source: Zapier

The WooCommerce Zapier app enables omnichannel marketing automation, which can increase your purchase and customer engagement rates by 250% over single-channel marketing solutions. This additionally encourages customer retention rates that are 90% higher.

9. WooCommerce AvaTax

Ecommerce stores have a particularly tricky sales tax situation. Avalara’s tools can reduce the time you spend managing sales tax by 58%, help you avoid overpaying sales and use tax 90% more often, and allow you to pass audits without incurring a penalty 50% more often than without automation.

Reduce filing errors and compliance issues with the right sales tax tools.

Source: Avalara

The WooCommerce AvaTax extension ensures you’re collecting the appropriate amount of sales tax based on your and your customers’ locations. It also lets you stay on top of the more than 400,000 tax changes that can happen each year. You’ll have access to reports that make filing simple.

10. Affiliate for WooCommerce

Affiliate for WooCommerce lets you approve commissions and give your affiliates the tools they need to refer people to your business. “Influencers” are a great example of ecommerce affiliates. Clothing retailers, outdoor gear companies, and even online pet stores use influencers to advertise.

Use micro-influencers to boost your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Source: FitSmallBusiness

Affiliate marketing, or using influencers, isn’t just for companies with a large following. Micro-influencers produce campaigns that are 6.7 times more efficient than influencers who have a significant fan base. They also deliver engagement rates that are 60% higher.

Wrap up

WooCommerce is more than just an ecommerce platform if you use the right extensions. The best WooCommerce plugins are practical solutions to common problems with online stores.

The right WooCommerce extensions can:

  • Create an efficient order fulfillment process
  • Develop an automated omnichannel marketing campaign
  • Tighten your backend processes and procedures.

With a little bit of research, you can put together a comprehensive ecommerce solution that’s both efficient and user-friendly.

Looking for an email marketing tool for your ecommerce store? CM Commerce has the features you need to develop an automated email campaign that boosts revenue.

You put a lot of effort into acquiring new customers and now you want to focus on keeping them. You know that customer experience and value are important—you’re just not sure how you want to capitalize on that.

Customer retention strategies are one of the most effective ways to turn new customers into repeat customers.

By creating fresh opportunities for your customers, you can boost the value of each person who purchases from your ecommerce store.

What are the benefits of ecommerce customer retention strategies?

There are two components to growing your business: customer acquisition and customer retention. Finding new customers is a hurdle in itself, but ensuring those customers come back can be a challenge.

Ecommerce customer retention strategies help you create a solid plan for increasing customer value and they offer practical ways to nurture your sales funnel.

There are measurable benefits to creating an effective customer retention strategy:

  • Acquisition costs: it can cost up to five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a current customer.
  • Lifetime value: by connecting with your customers emotionally, you can see customer lifetime values that are four times greater than without that personal touch.
  • User experience: a solid customer experience can keep up to 84% of customers from leaving over something as simple as returning a product.

To make the most of these benefits, you want to create a long-term plan for nurturing your ecommerce customers.

12 highly effective ecommerce customer retention strategies

Customer retention can have a significant impact on the value of your marketing plan. Use these effective strategies to craft an efficient customer retention solution.

1. Send email campaigns with promotional offers.

Your customers have already made an investment in your company. Promotional offers and discount codes are an investment you can make in your customers. The key is to make your customers feel like this is an exclusive offer.

 Email coupons and discount codes can encourage repeat conversions.

Source: Really Good Emails

Encourage your customers to act quickly by including an expiration date with the offer—82% of people will use their digital coupons within a week of receiving them.

2. Create an SMS marketing campaign.

It’s becoming more acceptable to use SMS marketing with customers who’ve opted in. Text messages have open rates as high as 98%, but less than 15% of companies use SMS marketing to connect with their customers. You can stay ahead of competitors by adopting this strategy.

With the right digital marketing tools, you can put together a text message campaign that drives customers to your website. Start by sending an email with an SMS shortcode and a discount.

3. Introduce a customer loyalty program.

Customer loyalty and reward programs are an effective customer retention strategy. They not only offer value to your customers through cashback, discounts, or other perks, but, by including reward tiers, you can encourage customers to spend even more with your brand.

Loyalty and rewards programs provide legitimate value to your customers.

Source: Really Good Emails

If you don’t already have a loyalty program, consider creating one, as 75% of consumers prefer companies that have loyalty and rewards programs.

4. Craft a clever social media marketing strategy.

Social media is a smart way to connect with your customers, both new and current. Between the various social media platforms, you can reach a diverse selection of consumers. With social media, you can share new products and create a brand culture by engaging in conversations with your followers.

Facebook and YouTube are the two most popular social media platforms, with 68% of American adults using Facebook and 73% of them using YouTube.

5. Put together a customer referral program.

A customer referral program offers two benefits: One is that it encourages new leads and the other is that it rewards your customers. That means it can be exponentially more valuable than other forms of marketing, like paid ads and phone calls.

Customer referral programs help acquire new customers and keep the ones you have.

Source: Really Good Emails

A solid referral program has benefits—54% of marketers say it costs less than other marketing channels and 78% of B2B marketers say it can generate “good or excellent” leads.

6. Optimize your digital marketing campaigns.

Implementing ecommerce customer retention strategies is just one part of an effective digital marketing campaign. To make the most of your marketing efforts, you need to optimize each marketing channel so it reaches the right audience.

Optimization can include aspects like creating mobile-friendly campaigns or sending and posting campaigns at the most appropriate time for your customers.

7. Make customer service and experience a top priority.

Creating value for your customers should be the primary focus of a customer retention strategy. Account updates and improvement strategies can not only provide unique customer experiences, but they can also encourage your customers to spend more with your company.

Customer service and experience can lead to happier customers.

Source: Really Good Emails

8. Provide a comprehensive customer dashboard.

A lot of ecommerce stores offer customers the option to either check out as a guest or create an account to make future purchases easier. When you provide a customer dashboard, you give your customers comprehensive insight into their history with you.

For future purchases, 30% of customers would rather shop with a company they’ve already purchased from, and a dashboard can make it easy for them to shop again.

9. Highlight strides toward corporate responsibility.

There’s a recent trend toward more aggressive corporate responsibility. Your customers want to know that your company is making an effort to give back to the community. This can be in the form of working with charities or implementing new corporate policies.

Highlighting corporate responsibility can lead to a better reputation.

Source: Really Good Emails

While sustainability reports aren’t a new concept, over 80% of the largest investors are now considering environmental, social, and governance issues when they’re making financial decisions.

10. Offer advice and insight that adds value.

You can use your digital marketing channels to do more than just offer coupons and new product information. By providing content that adds value, like industry advice or insight into new ways to use your products, you’re solidifying brand loyalty.

It’s important to find out what advice your customers want—60% of the content most brands create does nothing more than create clutter.

11. Use personalization to improve marketing campaigns.

Personalization is a strong marketing tactic. Whether it’s simply including your customer’s name or diving into more personal information, you can make your email campaigns more effective. Personalization can also help you with list segmentation.

Email personalization boosts open rates, click rates, and conversion rates.

Source: Really Good Emails

An email subject line or campaign with personalization results in a 26% higher open rate and an average 20% increase in sales. It can also lead to a click rate eight times higher.

12. Incorporate tools to connect with customers.

Effective communication is one of the most important ways to increase brand loyalty. You can encourage communication by sending text messages, surveys, and social media invites to your customers. You should also highlight other ways they can reach out to you: phone or chat.

Add social media icons to your website and email campaigns to increase the number of followers you have and insert a chatbot on your website to improve customer support.

How you can introduce ecommerce customer retention strategies into your marketing plan

If you haven’t put a lot of thought into your customer retention strategies, you still have time to capitalize on remarketing to your customers. Rather than reviewing a list and choosing one strategy to implement, you want to introduce customer retention strategies throughout your campaigns.

Use these simple, yet effective tips to introduce ecommerce customer retention strategies to your marketing plan:

  • Leverage your customer data: Email personalization and list segmentation are effective tools for targeting your customers. You can use your customer data to find trends in your audience and their actions.
  • Assess your marketing tools: Send time optimization and automated email campaigns are critical to effective customer retention. Determine how your current marketing tools can help you expand your campaigns.
  • Determine your sales goals: Performance metrics can help drive future marketing efforts. Analyze your current sales goals and how your current marketing plan is performing before you decide the goals for your retention efforts.

The best thing you can do is to introduce new customer retention strategies in stages and perform A/B testing to see what works for your ecommerce store.

Wrap up

Effective ecommerce customer retention strategies take some time to implement, but they’re worth the effort to increase your customer’s lifetime value (and ultimately reduce your marketing ROI). Keep these three things in mind when you’re updating your marketing plan:

  • Find out where your customers want to see improvements.
  • Analyze all of the information you have about your customers.
  • Determine the best channels for reaching your customers.

With the right digital marketing tools, you can introduce new customer retention strategies that boost your revenue and improve your brand’s reputation.

Looking for an email marketing tool that does more? Campaign Monitor has the tools you need to implement your ecommerce customer retention strategies.

This is a guest post from Karolina Mikołajczyk at NapoleonCat.

Email and social media are two vital pillars of digital marketing. They both have unique benefits and disadvantages, and even the most seasoned marketers can’t seem to decide which of them is ultimately more effective. Is there a winner in this debate at all?

A good digital marketing strategy is one that works towards hitting your business objectives by combining multiple tactics and tools. Email and social media marketing should (and often do) work together.

Multichannel communications are, by no means, just a marketing trend; their effectiveness has been proven by psychological studies. The familiarity principle of attraction states that we’re all attracted to what we recognize. This applies to consumer behaviors as well: The more touchpoints you create within your digital marketing strategy and the more you expose potential customers to your brand, the closer you get to conversions.

But how, exactly, do you go about integrating your social media efforts with email marketing? Certain social media strategies and content solutions can be used as powerful lead generation tools. Read on to learn how you can leverage social media platforms to expand your email marketing contact list.

Invest in next-level content marketing.

Every brand’s social media presence should revolve around solving problems or answering the needs of their audience through thoughtful content. This means you should focus on providing value to your followers. Social media is a competitive arena for businesses big and small—if your content doesn’t stand out, it’ll get lost in a sea of more attractive updates.

In some cases, appealing to your audience’s aesthetic or supporting causes they care about is valuable enough to build and sustain a loyal following. You can, however, go a step further and create advanced forms of content, such as eBooks, reports, webinars, or a podcast. These types of content provide your audience with tangible value: high-quality industry insights, specific knowledge, an opportunity to ask professionals their questions, etc.

Strategically, the best thing about these types of content is that the high value justifies restricted access. This, in turn, creates an opportunity for you to ask users to subscribe to your email newsletter or provide contact information before accessing your eBook, webinar, or podcast.

Cross-platform content promotion is a fun and innovative way to engage users and generate leads

 Source

Utilize social media for organic and paid promotion of the exclusive content you’ve crafted. Consider using cross-platform promotion too. For example, if you’re releasing a business-focused eBook, post about it on LinkedIn, where professionals go to seek such content. Make sure to include a call to action. Once a user clicks the download link, redirect them to Messenger, where an interactive bot will take over.

Adding some fun and innovation to the process will make for a memorable experience. And, ultimately, staying top of mind for existing and potential customers is the goal of most marketing efforts.

Reward your followers.

EBooks, webinars, reports, and podcasts can be highly effective for lead generation and email collection. They do, however, work best for business and technology-related topics. This doesn’t mean that retailers and services can’t utilize them in their strategies; it just might take a bit more creativity in the case of typical B2C businesses.

Contests are a solution suitable for almost every business profile. People use social media for a variety of reasons, and entertainment is definitely one of them. Social media contests are fun and engaging. They rely on simple but tried-and-tested psychological mechanisms. A sense of urgency and the promise of gratification make them particularly attractive compared to other types of social media campaigns.

Source

Similar to high-quality content, social media contests justify requesting your followers’ contact information because you need a way to get in touch with your winners. A database of contacts collected through a contest is particularly valuable. It’s essentially a new group of potential or existing customers you can add to your newsletter communications. And you know so much about them: They’re willing to interact with your brand, they enjoy social media, and they get excited about particular categories or products.

Use this information to craft tailored email communications that fit their specific tastes or needs. Provide them with deals relevant to the subject of your contest or with information they might find interesting. By doing so, you’re engaging in meaningful communication (and effectively building the customers’ loyalty toward your brand) rather than adding one more cookie-cutter newsletter to their inbox.

Regardless of the creative direction you choose for your social media contests and email follow-up, don’t forget to follow industry best practices. It’s extremely important to always get the participant’s permission to include them in your email communications.

Embrace paid social.

These days, most major social media networks offer paid promotion solutions. Their primary benefit is combining vast userbases (Facebook alone

is currently at 2.3 billion monthly active users) with highly advanced targeting options. This means you can use paid social to get your business in front of some pretty valuable eyes.

Source

Facebook’s Lead Ads are the social network’s approach to combining targeted paid posts with conversion forms. Traditional ads redirect traffic from social media to a brand’s website, store, or online form. In all cases, the user is taken to a new tab or window.

This makes sense when a sale is the desired outcome—the sooner the potential customer is able to add a product to their cart, the better. However, if your goal is signing users up for a mailing list, interrupting their social media experience and taking them to an entirely different site to request information might cause some of your potential leads to drop out along the way.

Facebook addresses this risk with Lead Ads. Once someone hits the call-to-action button on the ad, they’re able to fill out the form that follows without leaving their feed. This means that, with Lead Ads, you’re able to:

  • set up a campaign designed specifically to expand your email database,
  • place it in front of a highly customizable target audience,
  • collect information from your users in a seamless experience,
  • and easily measure your return on investment using Facebook Ads Manager,

all without leaving the Facebook platform. Combine Lead Ads with Facebook’s retargeting capabilities to reach users who’ve already interacted with your brand, and you’ve just created a foolproof and cost-efficient lead generation campaign.

Get creative with Messenger.

Social media marketing automation has been a hot topic in the digital marketing industry for a while now. Broadly speaking, the trend comes down to improving processes and workflows by handling certain tasks with the use of specialized software and AI. Examples of social media efforts that can be automated include planning and publishing content, setting up and optimizing paid campaigns, moderating user interactions, and social listening.

One area of automation that allows for a fair dose of creativity and helps convey your brand’s personality is automating replies. Using automation solutions like Messenger bots, you can set up fun and engaging guided conversations with your followers.

 Forbes uses an interactive Messenger bot, Frances, to sign Facebook users up for personalized news delivery.

Source

Bots can perform many functions for your brand. They can be programmed to answer frequently asked questions or provide social media users with basic information about your business, like company policies, shipping times and rates, and hours of operation. They can also boost your email marketing strategy by providing your followers with a unique route of opting in to your newsletter list.

Jordan’s Messenger bot gives users a chance to customize their newsletter experience, a great example of creative social media marketing.

Source

The great thing about guided conversations on Messenger is that they can be applied to virtually any business. If you’re active in the arena of email marketing and social media, you can utilize automation tools to create a stronger link between the two, regardless of your business profile. The examples above prove that the strategy is equally useful and relevant for a renowned business news outlet, as it’s for a streetwear brand.

Wrap up

Despite the vast differences between the uses and advantages of social media and email marketing, the two should complement one another in a holistic approach to digital marketing.

Social media is a dynamic environment, and social presence strategies can be flexibly adjusted to fit your specific business objectives. When setting out to expand your email database, utilize social media solutions that work best for the goal: Create high-quality, valuable content, engage your followers in competitions, invest in Lead Ads, or entertain your customers with guided conversations via Messenger bots.

Regardless of which method(s) you choose for your strategy, remember to view social media and email marketing as an integrated mechanism that works best when all of its parts are in place. And, as with any mechanism, remember to perform regular check-ups. For best results, monitor not only your own performance, but check in on your competitors too, and always keep an eye out for emerging industry trends.


About the author 

Karolina Mikołajczyk is a Digital Content Creator at NapoleonCat. She is a content and social media specialist with several years of digital marketing experience gained on two continents. Originally associated primarily with influencer marketing, she is currently exploring social media automation tools and strategies. Karolina loves fashion, music, and her two twin cats.

Article first published in June 2017, updated July 2019

In 2017, the travel industry was predicted to grow by 6%, turning it into a $381 billion industry. Now, travel continues to be commonplace for adults and young people alike, as family sabbaticals are becoming commonplace:

“Given that by 2020 it’s estimated that roughly half the UK and American workforce will be freelance and that 40% more children were being home-schooled in 2017 than in 2014, it’s no surprise that parents will be embracing [freedom to travel].” (CN Traveller 2019)

However, just because people are traveling freely doesn’t mean hospitality marketing should be ignored by travel companies. Competition in the travel and hospitality industry is fierce. Vacationers are savvy shoppers, and they want to visit amazing destinations at a great price.

What is hospitality marketing?

Marketing, as we know, is the process of getting your brand and its products or services discovered by consumers. Hospitality marketing is the same concept: However, it focuses in on the many segments of the hospitality industry, including:

  • Hotels
  • Resorts
  • Restaurants
  • Amusement Parks

The hospitality industry is often lumped in with the travel sector, which includes:

  • Airlines
  • Cruise Lines
  • Vehicle Rentals

What are the trends in hospitality marketing?

2019 is showing some significant switches in hospitality marketing, moving from more traditional sources of promotion to mobile-focused promotions that include a strong push for direct bookings. This means that those in the hospitality and travel industries should be focusing on optimizing their websites for mobile use with clear calls to action to “book now.”

Another trend that many sectors are seeing is the increase in consumers that desire a more personalized experience. This means more for those of you in hospitality because you’re relying on these consumers to trust you to book them a room, have a vehicle for them, and more. So, personalizing your communications with them, especially through email, is becoming more essential than ever.

Finally, those in the hospitality sector should be paying close attention to augmented and virtual reality. This technology is getting more and more refined and could play a massive role in helping hotels and resorts display rooms and their attractions to those on their websites who are looking to book.

How can I promote the tourism industry?

Let’s face it, with over half of the world’s population online, investing in proper digital marketing channels is a must. Yes, more traditional marketing channels, such as television and radio, are still viable options, but you’re more likely to have someone take action while they’re surfing the internet then while they’re driving down the interstate listening to your radio ad.

With that said, what are the most viable places for those in the tourism industry to promote themselves?

With that said, what are the most viable places for those in the tourism industry to promote themselves?

Source: Smart Insights

7 digital marketing tips for excellent experiences & repeat bookings

To help travel and hospitality businesses create excellent experiences and generate repeat bookings, here is a list of seven digital marketing tips:

1. Make it easy to sign up for emails

Research shows it takes the average traveler 45 days to book a vacation. During that time, they’ll search 38 websites before booking a trip, according to research from Expedia.

When a visitor arrives on your site, they should be able to search for accommodations easily—and sign up for email alerts.

If a customer visits your site, the opportunity to collect an email address is crucial. By joining your list, you can make a connection and keep your brand top-of-mind. The emails that you send during the research phase could be the deciding factor.

Make sure your email sign up form is in a highly visible place on the main page of your website. While this might seem like a basic marketing tip, a quick search of ten random travel sites shows just two sites encourage visitors to sign up for emails on their main page.

Take a cue from the Fairmont and add a sign-up form like this to your home page.

Fairmont – Digital Marketing - Sign Up Form

Takeaway: Make it simple for consumers to sign up, the easier and more straightforward, the better.

2. Inspire travel through newsletters

There are so many places to travel to, so why not provide a little inspiration to prospective travelers? Create newsletters that focus on specific travel deals that inspire subscribers to take action.

By using a combination of attention-grabbing images, great prices, and links to can’t-resist destinations, you’ll encourage subscribers to make their dream trip a reality.

Here’s an excellent example of an inspirational newsletter sent from Virgin Experience Days. There’s a great list of destinations here with attractive images and call-to-action buttons that practically lead subscribers to the checkout.

The more you learn about subscribers, the more specific your newsletters can get. You can segment your contacts and send specific destinations to specific customers based on their interests, previous purchase history, or expressed preferences.

Takeaway: Grab their attention with a combination of stock & user-generated imagery to show what’s possible.

3. Personalize messages by collecting data from the start

If you do publish newsletters, they should be personalized. This increases the likelihood of subscribers engaging with your email.

Travelers expect personalized messages. That means generating messages for the well-traveled professional and the parent who organizes a family trip once a year.

It’s a tall order, but one that reaps great rewards. Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates, but 70% of brands fail to send them, according to research from Experian.

To start sending personalized messages, you have to get to know your customers. To do so, start collecting information right from the start.

Take a look at the information that Air Canada collects from its new subscribers. Pay close attention to the travel preference section.

Air Canada – Collects Data from Email Subscribers

By collecting this kind of information, Air Canada can send emails that are personal and relevant to the traveler, like the one below. Notice that all of the deals that are offered are from the departure airport that the subscriber entered when signing up for emails, which in this case is Montreal.

Takeaway: Give users more control by offering them a preference center. This will not only make them feel as if their interests are your priority, but the information you gather will help you better personalize your message to them.

4. Create a loyalty program

To retain travelers and generate more loyalty, reward programs are becoming popular. They’re a win-win for many businesses as travelers earn rewards and businesses learn more about individual customers.

Seventy-five percent of travelers are willing to share their personal information in exchange for tailored promotions, priority service, or loyalty points, according to ZebraTechnologies.

Brands can reach customers by sending a variety of emails to their loyalty members. For instance, you can send a monthly email that provides a points balance, a newsletter providing industry news, and exclusive offers.

British Airways sends its new loyalty members an email that contains reward information along with links to travel deals and program details. It’s personalized yet informative.

 

Takeaway: Treat loyal consumers with special perks to show that they matter to you. 

5. Impress customers as they travel

When a customer books a flight or a room with your company, it’s your time to shine. It’s important to impress your travelers with relevant, timely information that’s important to their trip.

You can create a series of emails that arrive in a traveler’s inbox as they work their way through the trip.

Here’s a list of potential emails to send at various points:

Before departure

  • An email reminder with travel details
  • Upgrade opportunities
  • Exclusive offers for loyalty members
  • Encourage travelers to download your app
  • Check-in reminders

Day of departure

  • Updated flight, gate, or room information
  •  Newsletter that focuses on new in-app features
  • Events and activities available in their destination city

You can create a series of emails that arrive in a traveler’s inbox as they work their way through the trip.

Source: TripIt

Returning home

  • Flight and gate information
  • A customer service survey
  • Update on rewards points
  • Thank you for choosing your company
  • Book your next getaway now

You can automate these kinds of emails, so they arrive in a customer’s inbox as they travel. Finding an email service provider with easy-to-use automation features is crucial to impressing travelers.

Takeaway: Email automation is worth the investment because it helps to simplify not only the marketing team’s jobs, but gives consumers faith knowing that you’re helping them stay on top of their travel plans. When you personalize your consumer’s itineraries, they will be more inclined to engage with the emails you send them. 

6. Focus on mobile

You won’t be surprised to hear that smartphone use is growing. As of 2019, 81% of Americans owned a smartphone. That means the travel and hospitality industry must elevate its mobile marketing or be left behind.

The ability to check-in, review your itinerary, and pick your seat via apps or email notifications is great, but consumers want more.

Delta travelers can now track their bags via a RFID chip through the app. Travelers don’t have to worry if their bags will make it to their final destination. Virgin Hotel’s app, Lucy, lets guests control the temperature in their room and order room service.

Delta travelers can now track their bags via a RFID chip through the app.

 

Source: Delta News Hub

These examples point to the growing demand for mobile experiences that complement services provided by an airline or hotel. Some of the most popular apps downloaded by smartphone users are those used for travel purposes. In fact, travel apps have a 95% success rate among Android users.

Apps and email go hand-in-hand. You can send emails to encourage app use, like sending an email that highlights new features or gives subscribers an in-app promotion on their next trip.

Takeaway: Mobile-friendly is everything as more individuals move away from the use of desktops and begin relying more on cellphones and smartphones. Take the time to optimize your website for mobile viewing and don’t be afraid to explore the idea of an app for users to use for their travel needs. 

7. Use social media as an engaging digital newsletter

During vacation research, 55% of soon-to-be travelers liked social media pages related to their upcoming trip, according to Internet Marketing Inc.

If a potential customer swings by your Facebook or Twitter page, it’s your chance to make a first impression. Consider treating social media like a digital newsletter, where you keep new and existing customers up to date with promotions, company news, achievements, interesting announcements, and fun contests.

On Air Canada’s Facebook page, for example, you’ll find a great mix of promotions like a mention of additional flights from Vancouver to Melbourne and an informational post letting LAX travelers know that flights are now leaving from a different terminal.

Air Canada – Social Media Marketing – Facebook Posts Air Canada – Social Media Marketing – Facebook Posts

Posts that keep travelers engaged, like this contest that encourages fans to vote for their favorite video, also make a great impression on new and existing customers.

Air Canada – Social Media Marketing – Vote Video

Every email you send should also contain social media buttons to make sure your email subscribers are getting in on the social action too.

Takeaway: Social media is a valuable tool that shouldn’t be left out. Consumers turn to these brands for recommendations, and if a brand has positive reviews on these sites, they are more likely to book.

Wrap up

To successfully market to travelers, a combination of digital marketing techniques is a must. Travelers use a variety of platforms to research and reserve flights, hotels, and activities, which means brands must have a strong online presence that utilizes a combination of email and social media tactics. By using the seven tips above, travel and hospitality brands can create top-notch customer experiences while increasing repeat bookings.

Ready to take your travel email marketing campaigns up a notch? Check out these 5 tips for stellar travel email marketing campaigns.

Published October 2017, updated July 2019

Every company can leverage social media marketing to increase brand awareness, customer engagement, and sales. 

When email marketing and social media team up, they create a marketing duo that helps brands maximize their reach in today’s digital age.

That’s because an estimated 2.9 billion people will use email by the end of 2019, according to The Radicati Group, and an estimated 2.77 billion people will use social sites by that time, according to Statista.

However, like any other marketing channel or tactic, you need a plan to be successful on social media. You can’t just post funny memes on Facebook and tweet a few stats each week and expect results.

Read on to learn how you can create an effective social media strategy.

What is a social media strategy?

A social media strategy summarizes how you plan to use social platforms to promote your brand and its products.

This strategic summary should be detailed so marketers and leadership at your company can reference it for direction.

A successful social media strategy may include these four components:

  1. Overview: An overview gives a summary of the strategic plan, as well as where the brand currently stands on social media.
  2. Goals: Be sure to include a list of specific goals that you want to achieve with metrics that you will measure as you go.
  3. Execution: A plan is nothing without execution, so be sure to plan how you will achieve your goals. Include specific timeframes, tools used, and who is in charge of each task.
  4. Analysis: You won’t know whether your actions lead to results unless you measure how you’re doing. Include a plan for analysis in your social media strategy.

Create a social media strategy in 7 steps

Now, let’s get down to business with a step-by-step social media strategy plan that will bring ROI for your brand:

Step 1. Audit your current social media approach

To formulate a social media strategy plan, you must first assess where you’re at right now. Which sites see the most engagement? Where are you getting results?

Make a list of each social media site your brand uses, and outline what’s working and what’s not working on each channel. Here are a few questions to answer as you go along:

  • What social media site drives the most engagement for our brand?
  • Is our following growing, declining or remaining the same?
  • Are we able to populate each social media site we use with fresh content?
  • Do customers use social media to get product support? If so, which channels?
  • What types of content does the company post on each channel? How frequently?
  • How much time is spent on each channel per day? How about per week?
  • Where do we invest money on social media advertising? Are we getting results?
  • How much traffic to our website does each channel drive. Does that traffic convert to signups, customers or another relevant metric?

For a detailed, step-by-step approach to making a social media audit, you can follow the structure outlined in this article from Australian social media agency Hello Social.  They highlight the following steps and outline a selection of tools to compile and analyze your account data.

  1. Identify your marketing goals
    A good audit requires clarity of your objectives.  Define your goals and use this as a reference to assess the performance of your accounts.
  2. Compile the data from your social media profiles
    Combining the analytics data from your social accounts will allow you to assess the performance of each channel and your content pillars as a whole.  Particularly for small accounts you can learn more about your audience when your following is spread across multiple platforms.
  3. Analyze the data
    Effective social media marketing analysis should be a combination of scientific data collection and more intuitive research.  There are tools to help you achieve both of these, from analytics features to inspiring visualization tools.
  4. Identify top performers and weak points
    Make your analysis actionable by highlighting your strengths and weaknesses.  Draw clear conclusions from your data to identify your brand’s best and worst points.
Update your strategy

Take those insights and redefine your strategy.  Create new content pillars, test different audiences, and try new content formats.  Make sure you measure your results.

This is a time to figure out what’s working, but it’s also a time to assess whether it makes sense for you to continue on every social channel you have.

For example, if you don’t see any results on Instagram, it may make sense for you to double-down on another channel instead.

2. Research your customer base

To market effectively, you have to know your audience. That goes for any marketing, from email to social media, to pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Marketers can and should collect data on a regular basis. When subscribers join your email list, you might consider adding an extra field to collect one or two pieces of information, such as their birthday, job title, or address. You can also collect data by conducting surveys, using behavioral information or using progressive profiling.

As you collect data, you should build customer profiles, so you have a clear understanding of your customer base.

Once your audience is defined, you can figure out which social platforms your customers use.

3. Understand which audiences are on which platforms

It’s important to understand which social media sites your audience uses. You want to pick social platforms that align with the demographics of your customer base. To help understand who’s using which platform, here’s a quick look at demographics for each social site:

Facebook: Users are of all ages, income, and education levels.

Instagram: Most popular with college-educated women, 18-29-year-olds.

Pinterest: Most popular with women age 18-49 with varied education and income.

Twitter: Most popular with college-educated 18-29-year-olds that make $75,000+.

LinkedIn: Most popular with highly-educated 18-49-year-olds making $75,000+.

It’s also worth noting that Facebook, while the oldest social media site, continues to be the favorite. Research shows nearly 8 in 10 Americans use Facebook, more than double the share that any other platform gets, according to Pew Research Center.

While demographics are helpful, you should also monitor your metrics to see which channels are working best. Sometimes, despite demographic information, a social channel might get better results than you think. Keep an eye on metrics like referral traffic to see where the majority of visitors come from.

4. Set measurable goals

Creating a social media strategy doesn’t mean much if there isn’t a way to measure your success.

As part of your social media marketing strategy, you should decide which metrics you’ll use to assess whether you’re meeting your goals. Sometimes called KPIs, or key performance indicators, these concrete numbers will show you how you’re performing on social media.

While KPIs vary depending on your business, here are some of the most common indicators that measure success:

  • Conversion rates
  • Number of followers
  • Overall reach
  • Brand mentions
  • Total shares
  • Impressions
  • Comments and engagements

5. Give customers what they want

It’s time to start creating and sharing content that customers love, but where do you start? BuzzSumo analyzed social share data from 100 million articles over the course of eight months that can provide direction.

Here are a few tips:

  • Infographics are one of the most highly shared pieces of content.
  • Long form articles get more shares than shorter ones. Aim for 1,000-2,000 words per post.
  • Content that evokes a happy emotion like joy or amusement fares better than content that generates anger or sadness.
  • Include images in your posts to increase engagement and shares.

Make sure that you use a variety of content types, and don’t try to be overly promotional. Fans get turned off if the only content you’re sharing boasts about a sale or product.

Focus on content that’s relevant to your business and interesting to your readers.

6. Use tools to help scale

As you work on your social media strategy, it’s a good time to research tools that can help you achieve goals.

It’s important that tools complement your strategy, not the other way around. Many marketers rush to use the latest app and get so caught up in scheduling tweets and curating content that they forget that tools are meant to support the overall social media plan.

There are far too many tools out there to suggest, but consider looking for a social media management tool first that links all of your social channels to one dashboard where you can post, schedule, and track success.

Additional tools might include: a curation tool that generates a list of content from other sites that you can share; a calendar tool that can help you plan content for certain dates; a DIY infographic tool to help you build beautiful graphics without design skills; a tool to sync your email contacts to a social ad platform and send target ads to both followers and subscribers; and a photo editing tool to resize, crop, and adjust images as needed.

7. Monitor and adjust

Once content is live, start watching the metrics that mark your success. As you go, you’ll make adjustments. Some will work, others won’t. Just make sure that you’re learning lessons and sharing them with your team.

Remember, social media content isn’t created in a vacuum. Followers can suggest content too. Ask followers what they want to see via questions on social sites or email surveys for more insight.

Integrating an effective social media strategy with email marketing

Creating a social media strategy isn’t enough. Even implementing, monitoring, and updating it correctly isn’t enough. When you’ve gone as far as you think you can with this channel, what’s next? Start a new profile on a new platform? Raise your output on your existing accounts?

Luckily, you don’t have to do any of these things to be effective. The best part is you can get even greater returns from your social channels without expanding that presence directly. What’s the secret? It isn’t just about having an effective social media strategy. It’s about integrating it with other tools.

Let’s take email marketing, for example. The two have a lot in common. Email is about promoting yourself to a list of people waiting to hear what you have to say. The same could be said about your follower or subscriber list. They’re an audience you’ve built up and tailor to with your content.

The question about effective social media marketing alongside email marketing is exactly where the overlap should be. The best way to see the impact is to analyze those examples that utilize both email and social media marketing together.

Skillshare

The question about effective social media marketing alongside email marketing is exactly where the overlap should be.

 

Source: Really Good Emails

This email from Skillshare is linked to social media through one keyword that leads the text here—trending.

If you’re looking to combine your email and social channels, try referencing trending stories on your profiles then linking to any coverage of them in your emails. Does your team cover those trending stories with blogs, articles, or any other type of content?

An effective social media strategy will involve you tracking trending topics in your industry (or even outside of it, on occasion) and covering those for your audience. If you want to include email, provide more extensive coverage (or links to it) in your emails, then link to those on your social channels.

GoPro

An effective social media strategy will involve you tracking trending topics in your industry (or even outside of it, on occasion) and covering those for your audience.

Source: Really Good Emails

How about taking targeted sales emails, and turning the products into high-performing hashtags?

Here we see the three products, each with an area of focus. In this case, those areas are travel, adventure, and sports. These are goldmines of potential keyword and hashtag activity on social media. Search those topics, find related keywords or related stories, and slip your product mentions in that way.

For example, say there’s a trending hashtag about travel destinations during a time of year when people are typically in transit, say like Memorial Day Weekend or the end-of-year holidays. Mention any associated hashtags or trending topics, then slip in a mention of the travel kit.

You could even go a bit further with it, choosing which products to list in sales emails based on how well they could be promoted across social media.

You can take many other approaches to promote your channels together, and combining their potential, such as:

  • Celebrate social milestones in email or vice versa
  • Track prospects on social channels for your newsletter
  • Create entire campaigns, with emails and social posts, planned alongside one another

Wrap up

Every post, tweet, or pin should be published with your company’s social media strategy in mind. It’s easy to get caught up in daily posts or creating fun content, but if there isn’t a goal-oriented plan in place, you can’t tell if you’re succeeding or failing on social media.

And remember, once you have a strategy in place, it’s a good idea to review it from time to time so you can ensure you’re hitting or exceeding the benchmarks you set.

Looking for more social media tips? Check out more ideas on combining email and social platforms.

When it comes down to your brand’s social media strategy, you’ve probably set up a business page on multiple channels, including Facebook and Twitter. In fact, you’ve probably even considered creating an Instagram profile for your brand—but what about other channels?

Has your brand considered Reddit marketing as an option for reaching your clientele?

If not, then you probably should. But first, but let’s discuss social media marketing and why you should be considering it if you aren’t already.

Why you need social media marketing

As a marketer, you want to be sure to use the best marketing channels available to your brand, but you also want to focus on using each channel effectively. While email marketing is still the king of marketing channels, social media is a great way to grow your subscriber list and maintain regular communication with your audience.

In fact, during our research on the state of small business in 2019, when asked, the majority of respondents stated that social media was their most significant opportunity to build brand awareness.

In fact, during our research on the state of small business in 2019, when asked, the majority of respondents stated that social media was their most significant opportunity to build brand awareness.

Source: Campaign Monitor

While social media channels are an excellent option for marketers, it’s important to note that there are more options than just Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In fact, social media sites like Reddit are often underutilized.

What’s sad is that Reddit is one of the most visited sites on the internet. Currently, the social media giant ranks at the 13th most visited site worldwide, while, in the United States, that ranking jumps to the number 5 spot.

That ranking alone is one reason why marketers should be considering Reddit as a part of their social media strategy. In fact, the time spent by each user daily outranks the other sites on the top 10 list for the United States, coming in at just over 11 minutes.

What is Reddit?

Reddit is a valuable social media platform for marketers to consider, but what is it exactly? Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are pretty straightforward, but Reddit is often considered a more confusing platform for some users.

In a nutshell, Reddit is a collection of thousands of sub-communities (subreddits) that are built around particular topics or ideas.

How does this social media platform work?

The social media giant works by allowing users to visit the subreddits that pertain to their particular likes and interests. From there, users can post, comment, share, and so on, just like other social media platforms.

However, one thing that sets Reddit apart from other social media sites is the fact that each and every subreddit has its own rules and moderators, and they don’t favor outright marketing of products and services. Most users don’t visit Reddit to buy something; they want to explore, learn, and connect with others who share their interests—but don’t let that scare you.

Who does Reddit reach?

Reddit reaches more people than most other social media sites—and, by more people, we mean a greater variety of people. Since there are so many varying subreddits for users to explore, it’s an ideal place to get to know more of your brand’s target audience, especially if you’re looking to increase your male subscribers.

Here’s a nifty breakdown on who exactly Reddit reaches, in terms of their average visitors.

Here’s a nifty breakdown on who exactly Reddit reaches, in terms of their average visitors.

Source: Neil Patel

How does marketing on Reddit work?

If Reddit looks down upon marketers, how exactly does the social media platform help as a part of a brand’s social media marketing strategy? It all comes down to how you go about it. Blatantly posting an ad for a product or service is going to receive little to no traction, and what little you do get is probably going to be negative.

That’s not how you want to approach this platform. Instead, you want to use this one as a way of getting to know and better connect with your audience. Those who are visiting this site want to be entertained or informed. If you want to make the absolute most of this platform, approach it as if you were a member, not a salesperson. That being said, here’s how all marketing teams should begin when approaching Reddit:

  • Be a member. People are more likely to follow you and take you seriously if you’re an active, genuine participant within the community.
  • Give more often than you take. The general rule of most Reddit communities is to contribute 80% of the time, while only self-promoting your own personal content 20% of the time. By contributing, we don’t mean giving people links and samples to your own content—that falls under that 20%.
  • Be original. Reddit doesn’t work like Instagram and Facebook, where you can easily copy and paste your posts across each platform. The site simply doesn’t work that way. Getting original with your content will depend on which communities you join, so take some time to see what other users are posting and learn from there.

Once you’ve really made your presence known as a genuine person on the platform, other users are going to begin flocking to you for information and connections.

Ideal Reddit content for marketing teams

After you’ve taken the time to create your presence on Reddit, you can start really focusing in on creating ideal content for marketing your brand on the social media platform. Again, this platform is all about engaging with one another, so the best material here is going to be content that others can engage with and react to.

So what are some ideal types of content that businesses can use to increase their marketing efforts on Reddit?

GIFs

GIFs are some of the most popular pieces of content that users share on Reddit, so when you’re interacting with your following, these are almost always considered a win.

Take this GIF of a sloth from GIPHY. It fell under a category of “returning to work after a long weekend.” A brand could use this on Reddit to connect with others who aren’t a big fan of returning to “work as usual,” especially after a long holiday weekend.

Take this GIF of a sloth from GIPHY. It fell under a category of “returning to work after a long weekend.” A brand could use this on Reddit to connect with others who aren’t a big fan of returning to “work as usual,” especially after a long holiday weekend.

Source: GIPHY

Pictures and memes

Just like with GIFs, pictures are another way to engage with your audiences. Let’s work with the same example above, reacting to returning to work after a long weekend. This meme would be a great way to garner reactions from Redditors.

Just like with GIFs, pictures are another way to engage with your audiences. Let’s work with the same example above, reacting to returning to work after a long weekend. This meme would be a great way to garner reactions from Redditors.

Although you aren’t directly marketing anything, you’re connecting with your audience in a genuine way.

AMAs

AMA simply stands for “ask me anything,” and, on Reddit, these can be quite popular. Brands with bigger reputations have a lot of success in this setting because it gives fans a chance to dive deeper into the brand or a given individual on a totally new level.

Followers can ask literally anything, and that creates a sense of transparency that audience members will appreciate, especially if you’re answering honestly.

Followers can ask literally anything, and that creates a sense of transparency that audience members will appreciate, especially if you’re answering honestly.

Source: Social Media Examiner

Ask questions.

Asking users for their input is another great way to engage with the users of Reddit. Take the brand Wax and Wick, a company looking to sell candles to men. They took to the social media giant to see what users would suggest when it came to advertising this niche—one that usually promotes to women—to men.

Asking users for their input is another great way to engage with the users of Reddit.

Source: Reddit

Being transparent like this helped the brand to gather valuable information, but it also garnered interest in their brand. Many commenters not only put their two cents into the discussion but expressed that they would be interested in what they had to offer.

Wrap up

While having a solid social media strategy is vital for any brand, Reddit marketing, while useful, isn’t for everyone. Brands want to monitor how well their efforts are paying off, because, if the return on investment (ROI) isn’t there, then you’re simply wasting valuable time and resources. While Reddit may not be for every business, there are other avenues worth investigating, such as:

  • Facebook pages
  • Instagram business pages
  • Twitter pages

Need a little extra help with combining social media with your email marketing strategy? Let Campaign Monitor help. Check out our blog on how to combine the two channels to benefit your brand the most.

As a marketer, you want to use each marketing channel effectively to promote your brand. Luckily, marketing channels are not mutually exclusive, and you can use them together. But how do you combine social media and email marketing for the best results?

In this episode of The Email Minute, Shane tells us exactly how you can integrate these two channels to empower your marketing strategy.

Is your email working in harmony with your social media? If not, you could be missing a chance to gain more subscribers.

Hi, I’m Shane Phair, Chief Marketing Officer here at Campaign Monitor, and this is The Email Minute.

Today we’ll talk about the ways you can combine the power and reach of social media with email marketing.

First, use your social media presence to attract more email subscribers.

Screenshot 1 from Campaign Monitor's Email Minute series with Shane Phair Episode #19: Use social to grow your list when combining social media and email marketing

Put your email signup link in your social posts or in your bio, then encourage followers to join your list. This is an easy win, and gaining access to your follower’s inboxes now means you can deliver even more personal messages.

Secondly, target prospects on social media.

This is the second screenshot from Campaign Monitor's Email Minute episode 19 with Shane Phair: Combine social media and email marketing by targeting prospects on social media.

You can target prospects on social media by hosting Twitter chats that answer customer questions or promote gated content.

You can even integrate your subscriber list with social networks. This helps you find social media accounts affiliated with subscriber email addresses, allowing you to put faces to names.

Finally, use social media successes in your emails.

Screenshot 3 from Email Minute 19 video with Shane Phair: To combine social media marketing with email marketing, use social media to grow your list.

Use high-engaging media in your newsletters. This might be an Instagram story or a Facebook image. You might even use a positive social review in an upcoming email series, or share a post from a customer.

Now that you know how to integrate social media and email marketing, how will you make the most of these marketing channels?

Tell me with a tweet to @ShanePhair, or post a comment on our blog.

Every business, no matter the industry or product, relies on one thing in order to be sustainable and profitable: leads.

While the definition of a lead is highly debatable between marketers and sales personnel, the simple definition is an individual or organization with an interest in what you have to offer.

Because leads are the lifeblood of any business, lead generation then becomes a crucial part of a business’ survival. But in the cutthroat world of digital marketing, people are bombarded with so many forms, landing pages, and other lead generation tactics that they have started to ignore them.

So what can you do as a marketer to improve your lead generation?

One simple solution: use Facebook lead ads.

What are Facebook lead ads?

Facebook is likely the biggest and most effective social media platforms for marketers to operate on. The reason is simple – Facebook has a massive base of 2.32 billion users.

That’s why Facebook decided to give marketers a better lead generation tool—one that doesn’t require users to fill out forms. They called it Facebook lead ads.

example of facebook lead ad by word stream

Source: WordStream

Facebook lead ads are native ads that appear in a user’s news feed. The beauty of these ads is that they allow users to access your offer without having to leave the app and jump to your landing page or website. In just a few simple taps, your prospect gets the information they need, and you get a much-coveted lead.

Facebook lead ads are native ads that appear in a user’s news feed. The beauty of these ads is that they allow users to access your offer without having to leave the app and jump to your landing page or website. In just a few simple taps, your prospect gets the information they need, and you get a much-coveted lead.

Advantages of Facebook lead ads

Are Facebook lead ads worth the time, effort, and money? Let’s look at some of the advantages of lead ads.

Reduces drop off rates

Drop off rates refer to the number of people who reach your website or landing page but don’t fulfill the action of intent.

Here’s a typical scenario with many online ads. A user sees your ad and is interested, so they click on the ad. They find themselves on your website, faced with a form to fill out. For many users, particularly those who were in the middle of something unrelated to your ad, a form is a barrier. So they’ll likely click out of your website and go back to what they were doing. That’s a drop-off.

Since Facebook lead ads keep users in the app, drop-off is considerably lowered.

Higher lead conversion rates

The beauty and simplicity of Facebook lead ads are that they eliminate the form. This means you end up enjoying increased conversion rates when it comes to generating leads.
The higher lead acquisition rates are also because lead ads are designed specifically for mobile (since most Facebook users access it on mobile devices). If you’ve ever tried filling out a form on a mobile device, you know sometimes it’s complicated. So eliminating form filling encourages more conversions.

Highly targeted lead acquisition

Facebook lead ads are a great way of getting the right lead, since the ads show a clear proposition and get in front of your chosen audience. Facebook’s algorithm also helps you find the right prospects by targeting users who have expressed interest in products similar to what you’re offering.

This results in high-quality leads that are more likely to convert into customers.

How to optimize your Facebook lead ads for maximum conversions

Before you rush off to create a Facebook ad, you have to know that not all ads are created equal. If you want Facebook ads that drive engagement, you will have to apply Facebook ad best practices. Here are a few tips to help you optimize your Facebook lead ads so that they generate vetted leads for your business.

1. Define your target audience.

The primary purpose of Facebook lead ads is to bring in the right kind of leads—ones that are ready to buy from you. To do this, you need to understand what the right lead looks like for you.

Create a buyer persona that you’ll use to set your audience type as you create your Facebook ad. Failure to understand your audience will attract uninterested users. Besides it leading to a flopped campaign, this is obviously also a waste of money.

2. Use eye-catching visuals.

Most people who use Facebook do so to see what’s happening in their friends’ and relatives’ lives. Because of this, Facebook is more of a visually driven platform. When creating your Facebook ads, you have to make sure to pay particular attention to the images you use.

Here’s what makes for great images:

  • Relevant. Your image of choice must be relevant to the message in your ad. Otherwise, users won’t engage with it.
  • High quality. Avoid using stock photos as much as possible. Instead, have some graphics made or get some high-quality photos of your own.

Here’s a great visual example of a lead ad by The Milwaukee Bucks:

facebook lead ad that shows an intense moment in basketball and invitation to buy tickets

Source: Facebook

The Bucks could easily have used an image of their team lineup, but they decided to use one which depicts the action-packed game they don’t want you to miss. No basketball fan would want to miss a game that promises so much excitement.

Images speak as loud as your copy, so make sure to your imagery aligns with your message.

3. Be clear about what subscribers are getting into.

When creating your lead ads, make sure to include an intro. Although this is optional, omitting it will make your ad less effective as you lose out on some real estate you can use to make it clear why your prospect should sign up for your offer.

4. Pace yourself.

As you’ve already seen, Facebook has 2.32 billion active monthly users. That’s a very sizeable pool. This is why when setting your bids, you need to set a budget that brings you the right volume of leads. Set a budget that is too high and you’ll be overwhelmed by the large number of (low-quality) leads you’ll get. Set a budget that’s too low and you’ll only get a trickle.

The best way to determine your budget is to experiment until you hit your sweet spot.

5. Create an irresistible offer.

Everyone loves a special offer. Improve your conversions by creating an offer tailor-made for your target audience. Two hallmarks of a compelling offer:

  • Relevant. An irresistible offer is something that your ideal customer needs. If they don’t, they have no reason to sign up.
  • Urgent. One way to make your offer irresistible is to make it limited. This could be a limited time or while product lasts. Because people fear missing out, they’ll act fast to get the offer.

Be sure to make your offer something only your target audience will be interested in, and you’ll see better conversion rates.

6. Optimize your CTA.

Your call-to-action is an integral piece of your ad. It’s the last piece of the puzzle that encourages people to click on your ad. Make sure your CTA is clearly visible and tells people exactly what they should do. As much as possible, use language that relates your offer to the CTA.

7. Keep your forms as simple and short as possible.

When it comes to form design, make sure that your form is short, simple, and easy to fill. Long forms result in lower conversions, and high drop off rates as your prospects lose interest. It’s also easy for them to be distracted while reading and filling the form.

As for your questions, if you decide to use some, avoid open-ended ones a much as possible, as the main advantage of lead forms will be lost (not having to fill out too much information).

The best form designs feature as few fields as possible, and ones that are pre-populated.

Wrap up

Facebook lead ads are a phenomenal way to get people to sign up for your service, newsletter, or anything else you may be offering. Not only are they user-friendly for your prospects, but they’re also cost-effective for marketers.

If you haven’t been using Facebook lead generation in your marketing, you’ve been missing out. You can, however, make up for lost time by jumping on the bandwagon and ensuring that you optimize your ads for maximum conversions. Before you run off, check out our article on how to use email and social media marketing together to increase your results.

Since the advent of social media, many have assumed that email is dead. However, this has been proven untrue time and again. Email is still alive and well, and is one of the best ways to market your business.

However, that isn’t to say that there’s no place for social media marketing. It’s a very effective way for your brand to get exposure and to eventually grow not only your social media following, but also your email subscriber list.

Instagram is an especially effective platform for businesses. Regardless of what some people think, Instagram isn’t just for seeing the latest photos of your nieces and nephews—it’s a powerful marketing tool.

But why?

Why is Instagram such a powerful marketing platform?

If you want to get your brand in front of people, you should consider investing some time, money, and energy into Instagram marketing.

Here are some stats that will probably blow your mind.

  • There are 1 billion monthly users on Instagram.
  • Over 120 million people in the U.S. log onto Instagram regularly.
  • 71 million people in India are Instagram users.
  • 64 million Brazilians use Instagram.
  • 90% of Instagram users are under age 35.

This is a social media platform with worldwide appeal. Use this platform wisely and you’ll be able to build an audience for your brand not just in the U.S., but around the globe.

Why are so many people on Instagram?

These are just a few of the reasons why this is one of the most popular social media platforms around.

  • It’s easy to use
  • It’s mobile friendly
  • It has a fresh, young energy
  • It’s visually appealing
  • You don’t have to worry about as much spam
  • It’s not a limited social platform, meaning you can put your brand or message in front of more people and a wide variety of people—something you can’t really get from a platform like LinkedIn.

All of this can be used in your favor when it comes to social media marketing. With a smart Instagram branding strategy, it won’t be long before you build awareness around your brand.

Five steps toward an effective Instagram branding strategy

Are you ready to incorporate Instagram into your digital marketing campaigns? Here are five ways to employ Instagram for brand awareness.

1. Always be consistent with your brand personality.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it can be easy to get carried away on social media. You may find yourself tempted to post images that you find interesting, funny, or beautiful. This is something you can do on your personal account. However, it’s not the best course of action for your business account.

Consistency is key on social media. You need to have a direction and post images that are linked to your goal and to your brand’s personality.

This doesn’t mean that you should come across as cold or robotic—be as human as possible. You’re trying to attract people, after all. When posting images for your business, remember to include imagery that will further your brand’s goals.

Example of an Instagram grid. Instagram for brand awareness.

Source: Instagram

Tiffany’s is a great example of staying on brand without getting boring. They could just post images of their diamonds day after day, but that would get old fast. The result: loss of interest and eventually followers.

Instead, this company mixes the old with the new—and the blue.

Tiffany blue is a staple. Show someone a little blue box and they automatically think about Tiffany’s. They’ve used this to their advantage on Instagram. In most of their images, you’ll see at least a little hint of Tiffany blue.

Another example of consistency is what they post. They post information about their jewelry, the arts, pop culture, and fashion. This is completely in line with their brand. You won’t see them posting crazy GIFs or silly kid photos. Tiffany is all about classy jewelry with a modern edge—and that’s exactly what you’ll see in their Instagram posts.

To learn more about expanding your fan following, read the article from Replug, “How to Increase Followers on Instagram: Share Custom links”

2. Use hashtags strategically.

Hashtags are a great tool for building exposure and engagement with your audience. Be careful not to abuse this too, though.

The key word to think of when utilizing hashtags is: strategic.

Or, according to Social Media Today, the keyword is: strict.

  • S = Specific
  • T = Targeted
  • R = Relevant
  • I = Innovative
  • C = Concise
  • T = Thoughtful.

Always brand Instagram post example. This is part of our article where we cover examples of Instagram for brand awareness.

Source: Instagram

The hashtag #likeagirl went viral. Always brand took the term, which had been used in the past as a way to label someone as weak, and turned it into something powerful.

They put together a campaign of female empowerment, with images and videos of girls and women who were unaffected by societal expectations or limitations. Women around the world responded, which boosted brand awareness and loyalty.

3. Choose images wisely.

Instagram is an image-centric platform. The copy you write to go along with your post is important, but if you’re wondering how to build brand awareness—it’s in the photos.

According to Neil Patel, Instagram is great for businesses because they can promote their products without appearing overly salesy. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. You don’t have to oversell your product because the image is doing so much work for you.

Instagram photographic post with luggage. Instagram for brand awareness

Source: Instagram

This is about as salesy as it gets for luggage brand Away. Their message is simple and straightforward. They don’t go on and on about how they’re the best luggage brand or list all of the features of their luggage pieces. They let the photo do the talking.

Travel brand, Away, has an Instagram post with luggage and dog. This is an example of social media brand awareness campaigns. Use this to learn how to build brand awareness.

Source: Instagram

Most of the images on Away’s Instagram account are of their luggage in exotic locales, or with a cute dog and a fun little quip. Again, they let the image draw their audience’s attention. They don’t give too much away. Their goal is to attract, intrigue, and engage. If their followers want to know more, they can go to the company’s website.

4. Create a posting schedule and do your best to stick with it.

This is a grid of Instagram post ideas, helping you learn how to build a brand on Instagram.

Source: Pinterest

We’ve already mentioned consistency, but it bears repeating. Not only do you want your images to have a consistent feel in accord with your brand—you also want to post consistently. Otherwise, it’s out of sight, out of mind.

Instagram influencers (those who have large followings because of their brand and the authority content) post anywhere from a few times a week to a few times a day.

It’s really up to you how often you post. The main thing to remember is that you need to stick to your schedule. Your followers will start to expect content from you on certain days and you want to keep them engaged by delivering.

Be careful with scheduling, as you don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver. A lot of people make this mistake at first. They have ambitious goals but aren’t able to carry them out because of a lack of time, ideas, or energy.

Create a schedule that is realistic and that will let you achieve your goals. Social media management tools, like Buffer, can help you stay consistent by planning ahead.

5. Use Instagram Stories to your advantage.

Promotional Instagram story ideas and examples. Instagram stories are brand awareness tools you can use in your Instagram branding strategy.

Source: Instagram (Warby Parker) via Buffer

Instagram Stories are probably the most popular thing on Instagram now, and it’s something that a lot of brands are leveraging.

Instagram is utilizing two things people love: gorgeous images and engaging videos. If you want to reach out to your audience, humanize your brand, and boost your overall engagement, then Instagram Stories should be a big part of your social media branding strategy.

Wrap up

If you’ve been wondering about utilizing Instagram for brand awareness, now’s the time.

With a billion people using this platform worldwide, it’s a great tool to use to get your brand in front of your target audience.

With a good schedule and Instagram strategy in place, you’ll be able to see a good return on your investment—and fast.

In fact, used wisely (with the tips in our guide), you can use this platform to boost awareness of your brand and build your email subscription list. In time, your Instagram efforts will help convert fans and followers into loyal, long-term customers.

Are you interested in learning how to make your Instagram and email marketing efforts work hand-in-hand? We can show you how you can use your Instagram photos effectively in your email campaigns.

Marketers, like all professionals, are regularly looking to save time. That’s because marketers wear many hats, meaning they have to quickly complete one task, then move to countless others. The result is that some leads slip through.

When this happens, it can seem like a business is spinning its wheels unsuccessfully. This situation leaves marketers stressed and frustrated.

And that can affect bottom lines for any business.

Luckily, marketing automation can help (and maybe even rescue) your brand.

Marketing automation defined

Depending on who you talk to or what you read, you can find many different definitions for marketing automation.

However, in its simplest form, marketing automation is just a streamlined process. Through automation, you can use software, cloud services, and other technology to simplify and automate repetitive tasks and processes that would have otherwise been done manually.

Most of these tasks—like email marketing, for example—take up valuable time that would be better spent on sales.

Since every business is different, companies often take to creating a tailor-made marketing automation solution. The technology behind marketing automation is commonly called customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Marketing automation: The benefits

Even though marketing automation solutions are implemented in different ways, the bottom line is this: Automating various parts of your pipeline has common advantages across the board.

1. Marketing automation improves the customer journey.

One of the biggest benefits of marketing automation is the way it enables you to offer your prospects and customers a personalized customer journey. Since your customers are the reason you’re in business, investing in a customer relationship management system is worth it.

Marketing automation tools, like email service providers, allow you to send emails that are triggered by certain parameters that a prospect or client fulfills.

Marketing automation tools allow you to send emails that are triggered by certain parameters that a prospect or client fulfills.

Image Source: Campaign Monitor

This empowers you to be more personal with your customers, thereby building solid relationships with them. The triggers could be anything from signing up for your newsletter to abandoning a cart and everything in between.

According to research, such automated emails get:

  • 86% higher open rates,
  • result in a 196% increase in click-through rates, and
  • drive 320% more revenue than normal promotional emails

As you can see, marketing automation is definitely worth the investment.

2. Marketing automation helps you scale your campaigns.

Marketing automation can help you reach more people than you could possibly reach manually—even with a large team of marketers.

Not only is automation more efficient than manually sending emails, but it gives you greater control of your campaign. This is because every touch point is recorded and different customers are automatically segmented according to the way they interact with your emails.

The ability to scale your marketing campaigns automatically translates to an increase in leads and, ultimately, revenue.

3. Marketing automation recovers lost revenue.

Cart abandonment rates are said to be around 57% and 80% of these consumers never return. To put that in perspective, abandoned carts translate to an $18 billion loss in revenue per year.

Marketing automation helps you recover your piece of the $18 billion pie.

It would be virtually impossible to manually contact each and every customer who abandoned their cart. By automating this part of your marketing, you can easily send a personalized email to remind and re-engage a customer, recovering revenue that would have otherwise been lost.

It’s obvious from the benefits above that marketing automation isn’t a luxury investment—it’s a must for every business.

So how do you go about automating your marketing strategy?

Automating your email campaigns

Email is one of the most powerful marketing mediums at your disposal. But getting your email marketing campaigns right can be quite a challenge, especially since you have people in different phases of the customer journey.

Thankfully, with a good automation platform, you can easily handle each and every customer like the individuals they are.

So, how do you go about automating your email marketing?

1. Define your goals

Before automating your customer journeys, you need to set goals for your email marketing campaign.

Why are you sending out your emails?

Is your goal lead nurturing? Is it to onboard new clients? Or is it to re-engage those who have stopped reading?

The answer to these questions will determine the content you create for your emails, how you segment your list, and ultimately, how you’ll run your campaign.

2. Determine your triggers and rules

After defining your goals, the next step in marketing automation is to determine the triggers you’ll use. These triggers will set off your email sequence. A trigger could be something like subscribing to your list, purchasing a product or service, or abandoning a cart.

Your trigger will determine where and at what phase your marketing automation platform will enroll the customer.

Your trigger will determine the sequence your marketing automation platform will enroll the customer in.

Image Source: Campaign Monitor

The rules, on the other hand, determine what will happen during the automated email journey. For instance, if someone subscribes to your newsletter, your rule will determine when to send a welcome email and the gap between the subsequent emails your new subscriber will receive.

3. Design the content

Email marketing is all about communicating with your customers effectively. The content of each and every email you send has to be expertly crafted. This way, your message will not only convey your intent, but it will also make the recipient feel the email was specially written for them.

This is email personalization at its best.

In order to do that, you’ll need to gather as much information about your customer as you can. Armed with that information, you can then craft highly personalized email copy.

That’s one of the many benefits of marketing automation—it helps you gather a lot of information about customers across all your interactions with them.

4. Deploy your automated email campaign in your ESP

When it comes to the actual sending of your emails, you’ll need a powerful email service provider. Your ESP will need tools that can empower you to segment your subscribers automatically according to your workflows. Not only that, but it also needs to be versatile enough to handle multiple journeys with different rules and conditions.

With the flexibility marketing automation provides, you only have to set up a journey once and then let it run on autopilot.

All you’ll have to do is watch the results roll in while you busy yourself with other important aspects of the business that need your attention.

Automating your social media outreach

Social media marketing is another branch of automation that can yield tremendous results for your company.

If you’re wondering whether you even need to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon, consider the fact that there are 3.48 billion social media users worldwide.

If you’re wondering whether you even need to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon, consider the fact that there are 3.48 billion social media users worldwide.

Image Source: We Are Social

Social media marketing is great for:

  • Customer service
  • Brand awareness
  • Driving traffic to your website
  • Encouraging followers to subscribe to your list
  • Running promotions
  • Giving your brand a human touch

But it would be time-consuming to do all that manually on social media. Automating it frees up time while helping you drive your profits up, too.

What could be better?

With automation tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social (amongst others), you can easily manage all your social media accounts and interactions in one place. It’s a hub that allows you to create content, schedule posts, respond to mentions, and everything else you can on social media. This helps you run a streamlined and more effective social media marketing campaign.

Social media marketing software also helps you when it comes to analytics.

Your dashboard will give you deep insight into your followers’ interactions with your brand and content. This data will help you to perfect your social media marketing strategy by adapting to your customers’ needs.

Wrap up

Marketing automation is here, and it’s here to help improve your productivity and increase your profits. As a smart marketer, you’ll do yourself (and your business) a favor by automating the repetitive and mundane marketing tasks that take up so much of your time.

Plus, if you combine and automate your email and social media marketing strategies, you’ll have the capacity to scale and expand your business.

Adopt a marketing automation platform to turbo charge your marketing efforts, then watch your profits skyrocket. If you need to refine your knowledge on this subject, feel free to read our marketing automation guide.

This is a guest post from Elevation Marketing.

Getting more followers seems to be the name of the game on Instagram, but the platform is actually perfect to grow other parts of your business, too. In fact, one of the best ways to use Instagram to grow your business is to take your relationship with those followers off Instagram and into their inboxes.

Even in today’s social media-heavy landscape, email is still one of the most valuable ways to build lasting relationships with your audience. Why?

Because email gives you direct contact with potential customers. Instead of hoping they see your post while they’re aimlessly scrolling through social media, sending them an email guarantees your message will land directly in their inbox.

Add to that the fact that social platforms can close up shop at any moment (just look at what happened to Vine), and you have an incredibly strong argument for email marketing.

But let’s loop back around to Instagram.

Even if you have tons of Instagram followers, the chances are that some of them will miss your daily posts thanks to the new algorithm. If you have their email addresses, you can send important information like new products, launches, and latest posts straight to their inbox.

Why Instagram is a great platform for generating more subscribers

Building a following on Instagram is a high priority for many businesses today – and for good reason.

Instagram is the most engaged social platform, beating the likes of even socially-geared Facebook.

According to research, around 2-7% of followers interact with each post, putting it way ahead of Twitter, which sees less than 0.2% of followers engaging with each post. Users also spend longer on Instagram than any other social media platform, giving you more chance to connect and build relationships with them.

Image Source: YOTPO

Now that you know why Instagram should be an important part of your list building strategy, let’s dive into a few key ways you can use the platform to superpower your email list.

How to use Instagram to get more subscribers

1. Bring out the competitive nature of your followers

Everyone loves a competition. When we see the chance to win something incredible, we can’t help but put our name in the hat. And Instagram is the perfect platform for you to host a competition.

In fact, posts on Instagram that are related to contests get 64x more comments and 3.5x more likes than those that aren’t. This shows you can reach more people with a competition and use that leverage to promote your email list.

Watchmaker MVMT hosted a competition on Instagram that asked followers to tag two friends and follow the brand for a chance to win a watch.

You can switch up the rules in your competition by asking people to sign up to your email list instead of asking them to follow your account in order to help you grow your subscriber count.

Even if you don’t ask followers to sign up, the increased engagement on your competition posts will make them more visible to new customers who you can then guide towards your email list in other ways.

2. Get your followers involved

User-generated content (UGC) is all the rage at the moment. Sharing the photos, videos, and reviews of your customers is a surefire way to boost engagement as it acts as a digital version of word-of-mouth marketing.

Research shows that posts containing or featuring UGC have a 4.5% higher conversion rate than non-UGC posts.

Not only does it boost conversion rates (that means more subscribers on your list), it also gives you access to tons more content that might have otherwise taken you time and money to create.

The simplest way to do this is to create a designated hashtag and encourage your followers to add their photos and stories.

You can then use any UGC you’ve gathered in Instagram ads to build your email list. Research shows that ads featuring UGC have a 4x higher click-through rate than those that don’t, giving you the chance to direct people to your sign-up page.

Botolino Gelato, for instance, regularly shares content posted by its users.

3. Incorporate calls-to-action

It might be obvious to you that you want your Instagram followers to sign up to your email list, but is it obvious to them?

Actively asking people to take the next step and using calls-to-action to encourage them to click, buy, or sign-up might seem like an incredibly simple tactic, but it’s also incredibly effective.

Image Source: Wistia

In fact, using words like “sign-up,” “register,” and “download” significantly boost conversion rates, so why not make the most of these power phrases?

Use calls-to-action in your Instagram bio to guide followers toward your freebie, or incorporate them in your post descriptions to capture new followers that find your posts via hashtags or other means.

calls to action

Smoothie brand Green Blender put a call-to-action at the front and center of the Instagram bio to encourage followers to download a free ebook in return for their email addresses.

4. Use the power of stories

Instagram isn’t just a portfolio of pretty pictures anymore. In fact, their Stories feature has proven to be a massive hit with businesses and individuals alike.

There are more than 300 million active users of Instagram Stories every day, making it the perfect way to connect with your audience in an authentic, in-the-moment way.

The interactive nature of Stories has much more scope for conversion than regular Instagram posts because you can add text to your images, create “swipe up” links to take followers to designated landing pages, and create calls-to-action that literally dance on the screen (thanks GIPHY).

instagram stories

The brand furthermore uses Instagram Stories to promote their weekly newsletter. Users can swipe up to sign-up and receive workout routines and recipes via email.

Wrap up

It’s really no secret that Instagram is a hot commodity at the moment. As well as being a great platform to build your brand and reach new audiences, it’s also the perfect place to generate more leads and grow your email list.

Because it’s such an engaged platform with more people logging on every day than any other platform, it is ideal for promoting freebies, competitions, and starting conversations.

It’s easy to leverage the engaged nature of Instagram to encourage followers to sign-up to your email list either through a competition, via user-generated content, by incorporating choice calls-to-action, and by tapping into the new power of Instagram Stories.

After all, while social media and email marketing are both effective individually, an integrated approach can drive revenue and build your following far better than either channel alone.

Ryan Gould is the Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services at Elevation Marketing. From legacy Fortune 100 institutions to inventive start-ups, Ryan brings extensive experience with a wide range of B2B clients. He skillfully architects and manages the delivery of integrated marketing programs, and believes strongly in strategy, not just tactics, that effectively aligns sales and marketing teams within organizations.

Ryan is known for taking complex marketing and business challenges and developing solutions that simplify processes while driving customer outcomes and business value. He also thrives on guiding Elevation teams toward execution of strategies that help companies succeed in new verticals, while staying true to core values and brand integrity.