We know – and we’re sure you do too – just how vital social media marketing (SMM) is to your business.
But driving potential customers to your social media isn’t just about icons on your website or a hashtag on your ads – you can easily do it through every email you send.
How? With a social email signature.
It might be the sign-off to your email, but your email signature can also be a clear and clickable invitation to start a new ‘social’ conversation – a conversation that can lead to conversion, making it a key part of your social media marketing (SMM) strategy.
It makes perfect social sense
A social email signature is an obvious way to integrate SMM into your marketing strategy, bringing together the fastest-growing marketing media – social – with what is still (and shows no signs of slowing) your most used business communication tool – everyday email. And when it comes to your marketing budget, they’re the two most cost-effective channels you have.
All about your brand
We don’t call signatures ‘email branding’ for nothing! A strongly-branded signature – boasting instant recognition, positive perception and easy interaction – is essential to effective email just as a strong brand (and high-quality branded content) is all-important in making your social channels emotionally engaging.
The key is consistency. Company-wide consistent signatures strengthen your brand and the same level of consistency should be applied across all your social channels to give a single, strong brand profile.
Secure your social strategy
Linking your email signature to your social channels will always be more effective if you’ve got a strong social marketing strategy in place. Have you conducted a social audit to understand what channels your audience and your competitors use? Are your social objectives SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely)? Have you decided on who you’re talking to, the type of content you need to post, how often, and of course who is going to create and post it?
Interactive icons
Applying social icons to your signature is the oh so simple bit (well, it is with Rocketseed) – instantly recognisable and lined up for clicking.
As they’re on every employee’s email signature, they can be configured to automatically link to either the company’s or the individual employee’s social media pages.
Choose your channels
Whilst it might look great to have an icon line-up of all the usual social suspects – Facebook; Twitter; Instagram; Youtube; Pinterest and LinkedIn – do you really need them all on your signature?
With each platform connecting differently and attracting a different demographic, just make sure you feature the ones that work best for your business. So if there’s no interest in your Pinterest, don’t feature it, especially if you are not regularly updating your content. The golden rule – if you’re going to link to a social channel, you have to actively manage it.
Track your traffic
Unsure which social channels are best for your business? Whichever icons you decide to have in your signature, Rocketseed analytics lets you compare click results to see which is attracting the most traffic via your signature so you can focus your social media energies accordingly.
Conversion through conversation
With one click on your social signature an email conversation can change into a social conversation.
Email branding – unlike sales-driven (and instantly swipeable) bulkmail – has a lot in common with social media. It’s not pushy about making a sale. It’s about connecting through conversation and building a relationship with your brand through emotional engagement.
This way you can really learn what your followers are like, what they think about, and how you and your business can make a real difference to them, but never lose sight of your overall objective and remember (to quote the social media expert Lori Taylor) ‘Fans are vanity and sales are sanity’.
All on-side with social
Email branding (whether banner or signature) on your internal email is also an efficient internal marketing method to ‘sell’ all your employees on social media marketing. Use it to spread the word of your social media policy (make sure you have one!) on all issues including confidentiality, posting guidelines, transparency, privacy and compliance. Just having the social icons on their signatures will encourage employees to contribute to your social media activity and build your brand.
Can you really afford to be anti-social?
The bottom line – a signature without social icons looks like you’re ignoring the most important media for marketing that has ever existed.
So, if you want to strengthen your marketing by having a social signature, contact our super-social account management team. Social signatures couldn’t be simpler.
Tracey Adams | Managing Director
Connect with Tracey on LinkedIn here
