It is a delicate art and has always been so when it comes to combining social media channels with email marketing campaigns. For the ignorant, it is a headache. There are several companies that have an entire dedicated social media team and a separate email marketing teams. The obvious result of having different teams is that the marketing strategies and the contents used are often not in proper and desired alignment. Consequently, the channels operate as a silo.
On the other hand, if you can combine the most effective and fast mobile engagement of such a channel like Instagram with the direct touch of a dedicated email marketing campaign it will surely help you to grow in both these aspects.
Therefore, integrating Instagram contents within an email is the best investment possible simply due to the reason that Instagram is the fastest growing social network of today. In fact and according to several researches and studies, Instagram has even outpaced Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Therefore, it is high time that you know about the ways in which you can make the most of Instagram and supercharge your email marketing campaign in the process, if you have not done it already that is.
Hold a contest
The most fashionable and productive approach is to host a contest. Here is how you can do it.
- Run a social media campaign that is integrated in real time
- Build a contest around an automated feed of your latest Instagram photos
- Promote your efforts with proper and relevant hashtags to the subscriber base of your company
- Promise a gift card or any type of a reward to get more customers engaged with your Instagram campaign
- Give a personal touch to the photos and
- Create a real sense of community around your brand.
These steps will draw more Instagram followers toward your email marketing campaign.
However, you will need to be a bit careful and make the right selection of photos for your Instagram posts because these have a very short lifespan. You will need to have a contextual marketing platform to integrate your latest Instagram photos in real time with your targeted email campaigns. This will ensure that you create a dynamic and more engaging user experience.
If you use contextual marketing it will serve you with the latest social contents in emails. You will then be able to easily transform each of your email into an exhilarating invitation to something that is happening right at this moment.
The evolvement and involvement
The power of Instagram in email marketing has gradually evolved and today its involvement cannot be overlooked.
- Since October 2010, Instagram has seen massive development and rise in popularity and its user base. In the first two months after its release, Instagram hit the 1 million mark.
- Two years later, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion which put several critics at awe thinking how a small company that helps in sharing photos only can worth so much.
- Well, today Instagram have over 800 million users globally and around 100 million of them in the US.
The involvement of Instagram in email marketing was also gradual. Before the availability of contextual email technology it was not very easy to insert social media contents into an email template. The primary reason behind this was the quick tempo of social media that resulted in lacking on content relevance of the slower email messages.
Email marketers therefore looked for cross channel marketing with the help of social media icons in an attempt to decrease the volume of content upkeep. It was then and almost overnight the use of graphical social media icons became the new standard for integrating email and social media consistently.
Also, read: The Social Media Boom in our Daily Life
Since then, email technology has progressed expressively.
- Now, you can use an email to display the latest posts with imagery.
- When the email opens for the recipient it pulls the social account information in real time.
- This has helped Instagram to become a part of the live content in an email rather than being just a logo.
- In short, it has enabled the social content to synchronize seamlessly across both the channels.
- Apart from pulling in a live Instagram feed, you can also use the technology to customize the feed according to your need and make it more relevant for your brand and make it your essential content element for your brand.
- You can add Instagram to your current email campaign with the help of a small line of HTML code after customizing it for a couple of minutes.
It means that email marketing and Instagram work better together to improve your online brand visibility. Your email will be relevant right from the point it opens up to each recipient. It is the attractiveness of Instagram that will bring a refreshing visual element to your email and will provide a high return on investment.
Conversely, your email marketing efforts will now be able to drive more loyal inbox readers to follow your Instagram account which will further strengthen the Omni-channel Business-To-Consumer or B2C relationship.
Increasing email engagement
The key to success in email marketing is to increase the level of engagement which you can easily achieve by adding a live Instagram feed into your email. It will help you to keep your active Instagram users engaged on that network for eleven days a month. That means with weekly or even monthly emails you can dramatically increase the engagement level and benefit significantly from the email content interaction. You can even add a feed to an automated email campaign and save a lot of time and money not having to update constantly.
However, to achieve this you will have to follow a specific process to add a live Instagram feed to your email template such as:
- Promoting email registrations in Instagram
- Using contests or giveaways
- Using Instagram imagery to be more creative
- Creating an Instagram hashtag applicable only to the email users
- Promoting benefits for signing up and
Lastly, you must use an Instagram hashtag for filtering images pulled into your email for a custom display.
Walter Moore is a notable management consultant and digital marketing expert. Follow his email
marketing tips to draw more Instagram followers to your site.