The Dynamic Duo: Facebook Ads and Email Marketing
Marketers continue to commend email marketing as one of the best strategies to drive a high ROI, with 73 percent of businesses rating it as the number one digital channel. Email marketing has maintained a firm foot in marketing strategies, but social media advertising has also moved through the ranks. 67 percent of businesses rated social media channels as ‘excellent’ advertising platforms, and Facebook is leading the pack as the most popular social media channel. With 2.41 billion monthly active users and exceptional targeting capabilities, Facebook advertising is becoming an important investment for businesses.
But imagine if the power of these channels was combined, what would that do to your campaign results? Together with our connected agency, Wired Plus, we considered how Facebook Ads, when used in conjunction with email marketing, could accelerate your marketing performance.
How can Facebook Ads and Email Marketing work together?
Today’s customers are well informed and each one has a unique buyer journey. Within a matter of minutes, we can compare competitors before landing on a website and converting. As a result, businesses face the challenge of being noticed within a saturated ad space. Showing up at the right time in the right place with the right information is no simple task. In an effort to stay ahead and attract new audiences, brands often forget the value of existing customer databases and how that data can be better used to support your marketing efforts to target consumers across different channels.
Email marketing is one of the best performing strategies for many businesses, with social media following close behind. What if marketers could leverage the power of these platforms together, using them to support one another to generate even better results? Many businesses use email marketing and Facebook advertising within their strategies, but what if businesses started to use them in conjunction? Leveraging multiple touchpoints throughout the buying journey can create an enjoyable omnichannel experience for their customers.
It was reported that email marketing has a 6.05 percent conversion rate, while social media stands at only 1.9 percent. It’s clear that users are more likely to convert through email but using the power of Facebook Ads alongside email campaigns can help boost these conversions further. Harvard reported that 95 percent of our purchase decisions are made by the subconscious mind, making it more important than ever to imprint a memory of your brand on your consumer. Repetition and consistency across touchpoints can help breed awareness, familiarity and trust with your business.
What better way to generate a relevant audience for your Facebook Ads than by using an email list full of prospects who have already shown interest in your brand? Combining your insights and strategies for email marketing and Facebook advertising is an effective way of attracting, converting and maintaining customers.
The benefits of using Email Marketing and Facebook Ads together
Grow your email list
Email marketing is a great way to communicate with your audience. However, when GDPR came into force in 2018, it resulted in a smaller yet more engaged audience for many brands but ultimately, businesses still want to grow this database to gain more potential customers. For example, you may have a small database and be struggling to get anonymous visitors to subscribe to your emails. Or, you may have a large database of inactive subscribers resulting in low open and click through rates. Facebook Ads can help you grow an active and engaged email database. As they are carefully targeted, these ads allow businesses to promote messages to a highly relevant audience, increasing the chance of engagement and presenting the opportunity to attract new subscribers who have a genuine interest in your products.
Not only can you set up lead gen ad campaigns to capture email data and increase newsletter sign ups but creating lookalike audiences are also an effective way to increase your email database too. By uploading your email list to Facebook, lookalike audiences uncover people who have similar qualities, interests and preferences to your email list. That’s a whole new prospect audience who are in the market for your products, available for you to attract and convert.
Re-engage inactive subscribers
The average email open rate is 18 percent meaning 82 percent of subscribers are inactive and don’t interact with the emails you send. But Facebook Ads can be an effective re-engagement tool. Often, consumers click an ad because it’s familiar, and your email subscribers are no different, they are more likely to click an ad having recognised your name in their inbox. By re-engaging your inactive email subscribers and unsubscribes through another medium, you increase the chance of prospects engaging with your emails.
Brands often retarget customers who interact with them on Facebook, but have you ever considered running retargeting ads using your email campaign data? Use this insight to inform your Facebook retargeting ads, dramatically enhancing the performance of your campaigns.
Increase the reach of your content
Get more from your email content. Facebook Ads places your content in the spotlight, enabling you to get in front of your audience with visually engaging snippets such as a blog post, article or downloadable asset.
Additionally, if you are running a lead generation campaign such as ‘Download our whitepaper’, ‘Register for our event’, or ‘Join our webinar’, Facebook Ads can be used to generate conversions.
Setting up triggered email workflows around Facebook ad conversions will help to keep your brand at the forefront through consistent and relevant contact. More and more marketers are using automated triggers campaigns to target contacts with highly relevant communications designed to meet consumer needs at a given point in their customer journey. Brands who do this see increased engagement level and ultimately, more conversions.
Cross-channel learning
Finally, test what is working across your email campaigns and compare to your Facebook Ads. Heat mapping from emails is a great way to understand the effectiveness of imagery and call to actions, which can then be applied to your ad campaign. Test, track and tweak to optimise performance and conversions. Businesses can also use email campaigns to test ad copy and messaging by using open rate and click through rate data. If an email subject line performed well, this can be used to inform your Facebook Ads and vice versa.
Reap the rewards of increased brand awareness, increased customer engagement and increased conversions by using email marketing and Facebook Ads to support one another. Remember, subscribers who open your emails may not be willing to convert at that point in time, but that doesn’t mean there is no interest there. A less intrusive contact reminder through Facebook Ads could be an effective way to engage your audience in earlier stages of the customer journey. Email marketing could then be used to keep in touch with ready-to-nurture opportunities when buying signals increase.
Email marketing presents the opportunity for personalised, one-to-one sale pitches direct to your customers’ inbox, while social media advertising allows you to connect brands to customers, placing yourself in a more visible online space. We spend countless hours creating, tracking and optimising email marketing campaigns and Facebook Ad performance. Why not use the insights from one to inform the other? Joining these two forces has the potential to significantly improve your overall performance and success.
What is your opinion on using these two platforms together? For further information on Facebook Advertising speak to Ingenuity Digital and for email marketing, contact our connected agency, Wired Plus.