By bbr

by Sarah Warlick, copy editor

New research proves the point – when marketers use social media in combination with email campaigns, they achieve a more powerful response.

It seems like common sense and now VerticalResponse has done the research to prove it. MarketingProfs has the details in an online article, and the results are clear. VerticalResponse sampled 3,116 of their small and medium-sized email marketing clients, including those who use social media and others who stuck with email exclusively over the past two years. Financial services firms who use the strategies in conjunction had among the highest email open rates of any industry, at 22.6 percent. If your firm is using social media along with email marketing, you’re on the right track!

“This is really compelling evidence showing those who combine email marketing and social media obtain greater results from their campaigns,” said Janine Popick, VerticalResponse CEO. “The numbers clearly show that those who broadcast content across multiple online touch points are getting a lot more engagement than those who don’t.” In fact, campaigns that combined the two strategies earned a 28 percent higher open rate than email alone.

Think about it: When potential clients see your firm on social media sites, they are getting extra opportunities to become familiar with the company and develop some brand recognition. The hope, of course, is that this recognition comes with appreciation for the information you’re sharing on these platforms and a growing perception of your firm as a respected industry player and a thought leader. The more they recognize and respect the brand name, the more likely they are to regard your email as a potential source of valuable information and open it rather than deleting it as junk.

Surrounding prospects with your glimpses of your firm offering tips, testimonials and solutions is a great way to be thought of as a trusted companion in the financial world. Emails from trusted companions get read; emails from faceless companies that appear out of the blue are spam. Which one do you want to be?

It takes a variety of approaches to make your presence both recognizable and welcome, and the combination of social media and email earns the status more effectively than cold emailing.

What do you think? Do you have a favorite combination of marketing strategies that has proven especially effective? We’d love to hear what has worked well for your firm in the comments.