About the session
The session was a webinar focusing on how businesses and nonprofits can leverage social media, email, and text messaging to connect with their customers and supporters. The discussion covered the unique aspects of each of these channels and how they can be used effectively in a marketing strategy. The speakers also shared insights on how to create a positive subscriber experience and how to use each channel in concert to enhance the overall marketing approach.
You can view the webinar directly through Wistia or right here on the Blog!
Key speakers
- Stephanie French, Senior Producer for Webinars, Constant Contact
- Dave Charlest, Director of Small Business Success, Constant Contact
Agenda
- Understanding the importance of smartphones in today's digital marketing landscape
- Discussing the unique aspects of social media, email, and text messaging as marketing channels
- Exploring how businesses can harness the strengths of these channels
- Discussing how to create a positive overall experience that impacts the bottom line
Takeaways
Each channel - social, email and text - has its unique strength in digital marketing
This webinar emphasized the importance of using a multi-channel approach to marketing, highlighting the unique strengths of social media, email, and text channels. The panelists argued that utilizing each of these channels strategically could boost user lifetime value, enhance consumer decision-making, and improve content marketing outcomes.
“Social media is what you're going to use to build awareness, drive engagement with your brand,” said Speaker A. Speaker B agreed and added that, “Email is there to help you deepen those relationships and provide more detailed information to people. And remember, texts are short, but they're best for exclusive and very timely messages.”
When discussing the importance of personalizing marketing messages, Speaker B emphasized the use of segmentation to send relevant content. “This is the number one way that you can really start to think about increasing or getting better results from what you're doing, particularly in the, I mean, just marketing in general, but more so when you start thinking about email, because the tools are available to help you do that.”
Businesses should aim to provide an overall great customer experience across all channels
The panelists emphasized the need for businesses to create a seamless customer experience across all marketing channels. They discussed how businesses can achieve this by providing value, being conversational, and using each channel to support a common message or idea.
“A lot of businesses are doing just the promotional thing, and that makes me want to unsubscribe really quickly.”
In terms of creating a unified message across all channels, “You want to think about how can you take one topic and then use each of the channels to kind of support each other in talking about that topic?”
The importance of obtaining permission and adhering to regulations in digital marketing
The webinar underscored the importance of obtaining permission from customers before sending them marketing communications, especially in email and text marketing. The panelists stressed that adhering to various laws and regulations is not only necessary for legal reasons but also because it helps build trust and improve the customer experience.
“When it comes to communicating and people on, keeping people on your text list, you want to make sure you're providing a great experience there. So what else do we have in terms of providing a great experience, Dave?” “Permission is the biggest thing here. You want to avoid getting into trouble or having negative reactions to your business by just adding people.”
Businesses should always include an opt-out option in their communications, and they should be mindful of the time they send messages. She added, “Just like with email marketing, you want to be mindful of the time that you're sending. You can only send between 08:00 a.m. And 09:00 p.m..”
Insights surfaced
- Over 86% of the world's population owns a smartphone, presenting a valuable opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers.
- A cross-channel marketing approach can boost the average user lifetime by 76%.
- Emails and SMS from small businesses are among the most helpful communications to consumers when making a purchase decision.
- The "party principle" concept was introduced, where social media is the big party, email is the after-party, and text is the VIP group.
- Each social media platform has its own personality and businesses should choose the ones that align with their audience and their own brand personality.
- Email marketing is successful because people opt-in to receive emails, giving businesses control over when and how they communicate with their audience.
- Text marketing is good for short, immediate messages that are time-sensitive and exclusive.
Key quotes
- "It's the businesses that reach the customers and the channels they prefer that will win."
- "We know that a cross-channel marketing approach can actually boost your average user lifetime by 76%."
- "You want to get those people onto your email list. That's like that after party, right? These are the people that, you know, you're looking forward to connecting with on a regular basis."
- "Social is really about creating those engagement moments so that more people are aware of your business."
- "With email, you have this opportunity because people are raising their hands to say, yes, they want to hear from you."
- "If someone gets a text message that goes right away and usually somebody looks at their phone, and so you have this immediacy to it."
- "Your email marketing journey has to start with permission."
- "Engagement marketing boils down to this. You're trying to provide a wow experience."
