Facebook & Email Are The Same Animal!

So what do I mean by Facebook and Email Marketing are the same animal!

Let me give you some examples and stats so you understand what I mean.

  • 84% of your Facebook fans are current or former clients. The same as email.

Here are some terms you might see a similarity in as well:

  • Email call’s them Subscribers – Facebook calls them Likes
  • Email call’s them UN-subscribes – Facebook calls them Un-likes
  • Email call’s them Opens – Facebook call’s them Reach
  • Email call’s them Clicks – Facebook calls them Engaged Users
  • Email call’s them Forwards – Facebook calls them Shares.

So with this information you can see how Facebook is just a face-lift of Email. This means that the people on your email list and the people on your Facebook and other social media should all be the same people.

Here are some more stats (I know you all love them as much as me!):

  • 58% of adults check their emails first in the morning
  • 11% of adults check their Facebook first in the morning
  • 44% of companies look at Facebook as a way to get new clients. This is wrong!

So what do I mean with that last stat. 44% of companies look at Facebook as a way to get new clients, and why are they wrong? But first let me clear one thing up. You will get one or two new clients from Facebook but this isn’t where the money is. Those one or two clients will be generated from the ripple effect when someone might share a post with one of their friends who might be interested and so like you and then might turn into a client. See all those “might”s now you see what I mean I hope.

If you use Facebook (all social media) & email in a smart way those “might”s will start to run for the hills. You have to remember one key thing…

We “Like” what we Like already!

Just think about how many Facebook pages there are. How will people find you if they don’t already know you?

Facebook is a ratification of your relationship with your customers not the creation of them.

So what should we do?

There are three key areas that should crossover between Facebook & Email:

  1. Systems & Testing
  2. Channel & Audience
  3. Message & Content

Systems & Testing

Email Marketing and Facebook should be joined at the hip. This means the person doing the email marketing in your company should either be the same person or work with the person who deals with the Social Media and Facebook.

Testing should be done all the time. When I say testing I mean testing the time of day, what day, images & headlines for email sending and Facebook Status updates. The reason for testing constantly is that your market grows and changes over time so you need to know what it is doing.

A good system for this is Pagelever.com This is a system that helps you keep better track of your Facebook stats.

You should also be using Google Analytics and your Email Marketing system should also be providing your with stats. You need all of this information.

Channel / Platforms & Audience

We all know that our email inbox explodes every morning and most of us hit the delete button faster than we drink our morning coffee. So what’s the solution?

A targeted and strategic attack to keep your brand at the top of your customers minds. This means having a “Home Base” a place you push your customers towards be it your company Blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

I would personally suggest for the B2B world that your “Home Base” is your company Blog. The reason is that Facebook is constantly in flux. There are also rumors running round the Tech World that Facebook will soon start charging companies to have a Fan Page. So don’t get trapped or forced into parting with your money. Keep your “Home Base” something that you have full control over.

So we have our “Home Base”.  We now know where we will be sending people with our Calls to Action but here is something very important you need to know about Facebook. The majority of Facebook users don’t like to leave Facebook once they are online. They spend on average 11 hours a day on Facebook. Therefore when dealing with Facebook Users and asking them to do something try and keep it all on Facebook. For example email sign up forms & special landing pages. The other kinky think with Facebook users is once they have “liked” your page it is almost never that they will go back to it again. They will get all there information from you in their New’s feed. This means once a week you should remind them to sign up for your email newsletter or go to this landing page as they won’t see it any other way.

You also need to start crossing some platforms with your social media. There are lots of Social Media platforms out there. I have six suggestions of the ones you should concentrate on but with all business you need to use your own knowledge to decide if these are the 6 for you or if something else is better for you and your customers.

The Six I would recommend are:

  1. Email Marketing
  2. Facebook
  3. Twitter
  4. SMS (text message marketing)
  5. Linked In
  6. Google +

With these 6 elements you can keep in touch with your customers. However, you should aim to have all of your customers and potential customers on all 6 platforms. This way you have more opportunities to convert these customers and former customers into additional business.

Here are some examples of how you can do this with Email & Facebook:

  • Add email sign up to Facebook
  • Add a “Please like us on Facebook” like to email confirmations
  • Add a “Please like us on Facebook” to your unsubscribe emails
  • Only 18% of companies have Social Media buttons on there Emails
  • Incorporate Social Log In if your site requires a log in.
  • 77% of online buyers prefer to use social log in instead of creating a new account

Let me talk quickly about this “Social Log In”. You might have used it yourself and it is becoming the Online Passport for most online shoppers. Remember that people are very lazy. If you give them the option to click one button and then they can shop or fill in tons of forms. They will almost always pick the one click option.

This is also very good news for us because when you use Social Log In you get access to a lot of information about each person that uses it. You can use that for Data Mining and Targeted Marketing!

Let me give you an example:

Your company sells DVD’s and uses Email Marketing. Without Social Log In. You have to guess what DVD’s to offer to your audience. However with Social Log In you get all the information and you find out what movies these people like plus lots more. So now you can  use this data to target your emails to different customers and convert them to sales. Clever don’t you think!

So how else can we do this cross platform thing? Let me give you another example. We send out an email and we add a button that says “Share with your Friends on Facebook”. We then segment our email list so that we have a new list of all the people who clicked the link and shared the information. We now know who the active Facebook users are in our list. We can then tailor special emails just to them sending them to our Facebook page to be active again.

Here is something you need to be aware of when it comes to Facebook and something I only discovered recently.

Facebook has a filter system that works for each user of Facebook. Facebook says it helps you see the most relevant things first. So what does this mean for us. Well if people are not interacting with our Status Updates then we will slowly vanish from their News Feed, even though they have liked us. The likelihood of them seeing our updates becomes low.

This means we have to keep the content relevant and engaging. A good way of doing this is asking questions, starting conversations, working out polls, starting competitions and posting useful information. You can then email the people in your Facebook list and ask them to join in with all the fun your having on Facebook. This keeps people engaged and keeps them in the loop.

Message & Content

We touched on message and content briefly above but let’s roll up our sleeves and have a good look.

I get asked a lot about what content companies should write about in their emails and social media. When it comes to B2B Content is King and and social media should be the marketing for the content.

So how we find that content depends on your market and your customers but here are some cool ideas for how to find it.

  • Crowd Surf – use Facebook to ask questions, do polls and start a conversation then use this information to write your content. People will already be engaged.
  • Fan Posts – use Facebook Fan Posts as endorsements for example “Here are some statements from our supporters on Facebook” add these to your emails, website or blog

Make your Facebook Fans feel Special!

What is the point of clicking the “Like” button if you don’t get anything special from it. We are all having to work very hard to keep our audience interested and engaged with us and this will only get harder as more and more companies start to use Facebook. The best way is to make them feel special.

Here are some ways to develop this special bond:

  • Promote Email Pre-Launch on Facebook “Our next email newsletter will be going out soon why not sign up now to get our deals”
  • Give your Facebook fans a 24 hour heads up on deals and offers

In Conclusion

OK, so there is a lot of information in here and I don’t want you to bite off more than you can chew. You need to sit down and work out your content, segment your email marketing lists and then start working on crossing platforms. As my Dad says “Take your breath in short pants”

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and please like White Rabit on Facebook with this lovely Link!

Talk soon & Keep Smiling

Gem