Social media has evolved dramatically over the years so much so that it has now become an integral part of the lives of common people as well as the business owners.
- This is ideally a platform that helps people and businesses to stay connected with the others in the circuit.
- It helps the businesses to establish a relationship with the users and increase their business marketing prospects.
One of the most significant trends noticed among the businesses today is the integration of social media with email marketing. This has produced remarkable results, much better than each of these used separately.
Role of Instagram
Among all different social media channels, Instagram plays a significant role over and above other social networks. According to studies of The Drum it is found that:
- In 2015 the influence of Facebook was about 52% of all online and offline purchases made by the consumers.
- This number is up from the 36% mark of 2014.
This not only shows the importance of social networks for the retailers to manage their business marketing as well as the direct impact of social media on their marketing efforts as well as the buying behavior of the consumers.
Instagram on the other hand, has grown in its number of followers in leaps and bounds to reach more than800 million by the end of 2017 and is expected to reach the one billion mark soon this year. This is in fact far too much as compared with Facebook, its parent company as well as other social media networks.
This makes Instagram the perfect and most favored channel for the marketing purpose, email and otherwise, for all businesses irrespective of their nature, type, form, and size.
- According to another research it is found that there are more than 500 million Instagram business accounts making the best of this visual platform to reach out to more and more audience with their products and emails.
- As for Facebook, it is only 50 million small business accounts use their pages to connect with their customers. Out of this, only 4 million businesses pay for social media advertising on Facebook.
The Instagram Stories Ads, on the other hand, are far more effective and popular due to its power to reach out to a much larger audience.
Therefore, when a business, large or small, use Instagram as their email marketing tool, with or without the help of experts or its likes, they will gain better visibility and will surpass their competitors who do not comparatively easily.
Create an emotional response
When Instagram is used for business marketing purpose, it will create a better impact on the minds of the users so that they can respond in a much better way and generate an emotional response.
Videos and pictures attached with emails create a greater impact on the viewers and the recipients of the mails. According to the research report of ReelSEO, it is found that:
- More than 4.4 million videos are uploaded directly to Facebook and
- It generates over 199 billion views.
This is considering the fact that Facebook has only 50 million small business accounts using this platform.
When you consider Instagram and its 500 million business accounts and nearly a billion active monthly users, the number will naturally increase manifold, and it may not be just ten times, considering the simple mathematical ration proportional calculation.
Research has also shown that adding visual elements into emails make this tool more powerful and business owner can get even more response from their users as that will make their posts more personalized.
This, researchers say will increase conversions and they have also come up with useful statistical data that will encourage you to integrate social media with your email marketing campaign. The data says:
- 68% of marketers typically publish video content on Instagram and other social channels
- 70% of marketers plan to use it for their marketing purposes
- 34% of marketers have already used Instagram Live and
- 37% plan of them plan to use it.
Ideally, posts and mails that have no visual content in it generate a much lower response. According to the research report of AdEspresso, 20% of accounts can generate an emotional response in the users with no ads in it.
Therefore, if you add a visual element you will be able to deliver more dynamic and customized messaging to people at different stages of their journey as well as during key times. This will definitely yield much better results.
Other things to consider
There are a few other things that you should consider while using Instagram for your email marketing campaigns.
- You must post your messages at the best time so that the recipients can see it as soon as it is delivered. You will, therefore, know then times when your users are most active. HubSpot research says that the best time to post on Instagram is 3:00 p.m. on all Wednesdays. Other ideal times include 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays. You will be better off if you use auto-schedule tools so that you do not miss out on any opportunity.
- Focus on links because that will increase the chances of interaction by as much as 92%, according to the report of HubSpot. This is the easiest way to gain better results, the open rate for your mails and views and shares for your posts.
- You must also make sure that you are actively engaged the social networks so that your target audience is never frustrated by not getting any response from you. Ideally, Lithium reports says that 78% of social followers who complain usually expect a response from the brand within an hour of putting up the complaints.
Lastly, you will need to do everything that is within the capacity of Instagram to gain more visibility and open rate for your emails so that you gain the best results from your email marketing campaign in the most efficient and effective way.
Thanx for this useful information