Search US website

Why Use Email When You Can Simply Tweet

Founder, Duct Tape Marketing Recent Posts

3 Comments

August 25, 2009

Related Topics:

OPEN Forum Message

Company Culture

Can you recognize signs that your company's culture isn't working? Get advice from the experts on what to look for–and how to fix it.

Learn more

Featured Response

“Jeffrey - I probably didn't make the point ...”

John Jantsch

View all comments  


The wild world of social media and social networking has some folks throwing off plans to continue to use more traditional forms of lead generation and advertising in favor of the no cost, no hassle methods found in social networks like twitter.

Of course most are finding this strategy isn’t quite the silver bullet they had hoped for or been sold by the social media’s breed of snake oil salesman.

After the hype settles however, there is one approach that is getting very positive results, meaning leads and conversions, for small business owners.

That approach is the integration of email marketing and social media. By combining the awareness and reach that social media offers with the content and conversion that email offers, you can more effectively turn your social media activity into revenue and transactional activity.

Before I dive into specific applications let me set the table for why this combination is such a powerful approach.

The culture of social media is a non-selling one; attempts to blatantly make offers are sometime even met with hostility. Email, on the other hand, has always been a transactional environment – odd as it may seem, the same person who may be offended by your pitch on your blog might welcome your discount coupon through email. 

What this means is that you should focus some percentage of your social media creating awareness for your white papers, webinars, and bi-weekly newsletter. In this manner, your social media activity can also help build your email list. A large and engaged email list is far more valuable to most  businesses than almost any amount of Facebook fans when it comes to monetizing your activity. (But, it’s the artful blending of the two I am speaking about here.)

In addition to actively participating in social media and earning the right to create awareness of your email content, the following tactics will help amplify your activities.

  1. Make sure the links to your social media profiles appear in all of your emails – you can add them as content blocks in your HTML newsletter and in the email signature of your individual emails.
  2. Archive your email newsletters online and make your primary content retweetable (using tweetmeme button) and then point to your newly archived content in tweets and status updates. Here’s an example using many of the elements discussed.
  3. Place newsletter sign-up forms on Facebook fan pages using FBML application and a bit of HTML coding. (Make sure this form also appears in your archived newsletters.)
  4. Offer an email subscription option for your blog’s RSS feed and get permission to add these folks to your email newsletter.
  5. Tease abstracts of your primary newsletter or white paper content on your blog from time to time, pointing to the full content through a list building landing page.
As with any marketing activity the quality of your email and other content will ultimately dictate the level of interest and trust your combined efforts garner, but as you move farther into social media, don’t forget to bring the original sales powerhouse, email, with you.

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing.

What do you think?

Member avatar

Change social network

Join the conversation ( 3 )

  • John Jantsch 2 years 9 months and 1 days ago

    John Jantsch

    Jeffrey - I probably didn't make the point clearly enough - I suggest offering email as a way to allow people to subscribe in addition to RSS it's the ultimate choice. There are still plenty of folks out there that don't use RSS readers (I know, can you beleive it) so by offering email as an option you capture those folks using the method they prefer.

  • PAUL ROSENFELD 2 years 8 months and 27 days ago

    PAUL ROSENFELD

    Hi John, As usual, you're forward thinking. I think you're teeing up an important - and typical - concern for small businesses who frequently use email but not social as much. I think the fundamental assertion you make is a gret one - social is about education and relationships, and email is frequently about conversion. Systematically funneling the webinar attendees and other educational visitors into an email list makes good common sense. The part that confused me is how the header was quite different than the body. I think the header can be a good story all by itself. I also believe the header could just as easily say "Why email when you can text?" Since we're fanminder.com, we see the same wonderful instanteous two-way communication channel between biz and their customers as twitter EXCEPT with mobile, 100% of your customers can be satisfied whereas with twitter you're lucky if it's 5%. Let's face it, a typical small biz - say 90% - isn't rushing to use social tools and won't be abl

  • JEFFREY MOLANDER 2 years 8 months and 29 days ago

    JEFFREY MOLANDER

    John, asking RSS subscribers to opt into an email list seems both gratuitious and counter-productive. I say this because RSS subscribers have likely chosen RSS over email purposely. I say it's gratuitous because it's not supportive of allowing the reader to CHOOSE for themselves. Social media for the sake of growing one's email list alone -- at the expense of reader choice -- is not wise in my opinion. I know you suggest asking but it's a bit of a stretch for me -- even to ask.

Crash Courses

Tax Deductions for Your Business

Think you're paying too much in business taxes? Learn more about some possible deductions with our latest crash course.

Launch Course

Javascript is currently disabled. Please enable javascript for the optimal OPEN Forum experience.

All users of our online services subject to Privacy Statement and agree to be bound by Terms of Service. Please read.

© 2012 American Express Company. All rights reserved.