FUEL LINES Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media

The mix of social media and email marketing can greatly accelerate your social media presence and in turn generate inbound leads for your agency’s new business.

An email newsletter is one of the two most important sources for information and advice for small and medium businesses, according to a study entitled, “Optimizing Email Newsletters for Small/Medium Businesses” released by Bredin Business Information, Inc. (BBI).

According to the study of over 380 executives …

• Email newsletters remain highly relevant. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said that even in the age of Facebook and Twitter, email newsletters are as, or more, important than ever. Ninety-seven percent rate them an important or very important source of business management advice, more than print and broadcast media, major company websites and social networks.
• Readers spend time with email newsletters. Fifty-eight percent spend more than a minute reading an email newsletter in their inbox, and 73% spend more than a minute reading (or watching) content that they click through to from the newsletter.
• Readers prefer frequent email newsletters. Forty-two percent prefer weekly delivery, 27% monthly and 12% daily. Only 5% prefer a quarterly delivery schedule.
• Readers want “how-to” information in their email newsletters. On a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (important), how-to content rated 3.6, slightly ahead of case studies, perspective pieces, product information and offers, and company news.
• Readers want information on their industry and a quick and easy read. Roughly 80% of respondents rated those as important or very important newsletter criteria.
• SMBs use email newsletters themselves – after having a website (70%), an email newsletter is the second most popular online marketing tactic (63%).

The rise in popularity of social media only enhances email newsletters. The two can work powerfully together to generate inbound leads for your agency’s new business pipeline as you share content and engage in conversations.

Here are a couple of tips to mix email marketing and social media:

1. Repurpose content. The content for your newsletter can come from your blog. Don’t assume that just because you’ve written it that everyone has read it. People are busy. Your audience will read your content in a variety of ways. Your helpful posts will be found by keyword search or through an RSS reader. It may be seen through your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts.

I recommend choosing your newer, highest ranking posts to use for your email newsletter. Include a snippet of teaser copy and a link-back to the full article on your blog site. Give your recipients 4 or 5 of these choice articles to choose from in each newsletter. It will take literally 15 minutes at most to create the newsletter. Anybody can be easily trained to put it together and allows for it to be consistently created and sent, even when your agency is at its busiest.

This link provides a good example of an agency’s email newsletter that derives content from its blog, Big Fuel

2. Use your email list to “jump-start” your social media presence. Your blog should be the gate-way to your agency. This is the place where you want to generate a consistent flow of targeted traffic. The use of your email list to send your email newsletter will provide you with a spike in your blog’s traffic, as you introduce those on your list to your rich, helpful content.

Your list will also accelerate your followers on other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your social media presence will also help to grow opt-ins for your email list.

Additional tips:

• Send your email newsletter twice a month. Set the send-dates in advance.
• The email should come from you rather than the agency. It is much more personal.
• Use a blog post title for the email newsletter’s subject line.
• Best days to send, usually are Tuesday and Wednesdays. You can always test other days/times once you have a benchmark established.
• Compare your blog’s analytics to your email analytics whenever your email newsletter has been sent. Also compare analytics of previous email newsletters to improve your open and click through rates.
• Remember that the fuel for this engine will be new content. You’ll need to be consistent in creating it.

A great resource for small and midsize ad agencies is iContact’s 35 page report Email Marketing Best Practices

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 12:20 pm and is filed under New Business Tips, New Business Trends, Promotion, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.