Email marketing is one of the original, reliable, cost-effective, and most trusted tools for marketers to reach out to their customers. Today, there are other forms of communication such web notifications, mobile push notifications, and programmatic ads that marketers use, but email still remains one of the priority channels to connect with customers.

Times have changed and so have emails. What started as a simple text-based email can now be a beautifully coded pleasant-looking email. Numerous studies have been done and there are benchmarks available on email open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate, the best time to send an email, the best time an email is opened/clicked, and type and format of the subject line.

Today the email open rate is not as high as it was 20 years, and yet it remains one of the best, convenient, and cost-effective mediums to get the attention of the consumer.
Let us discuss some email marketing growth hacks through social media platforms.

Facebook pre-targeting

Once you have created your email list, upload it to Facebook as a custom audience. Create an ad, primarily a brand awareness ad without any CTA. The idea is not to encourage them to click on the ad, but to make sure that they see the message that you are trying to convey. Maybe you can play with it and make a countdown ad in case of a product launch or a promo.

In case they do click on your ad make sure to link it is a good landing page on your website and is not diverted to your Facebook page
Custom Audience Hacks

Make the best use of lookalike targeting on Facebook. Instead of uploading the entire list customer list, segment it based on highest-LTV customers and other criteria, and create lookalikes based on that group.

Make use of Facebook’s native targeting and segment the audience to address audiences based on different titles, companies they are employed with, etc.

Use third-party data companies (e.g. data.com, Acxiom, and Datalogix), which allow you to target businesses of different sizes, specific roles, decision makers, etc.

LinkedIn pre-targeting

Connect with your target audience on LinkedIn (highly beneficial for B2B businesses). You can connect with them one at a time, or bulk upload your email list to LinkedIn and send them a connection request. Once they accept your request you can connect with them directly through LinkedIn messaging (remember not to turn them off with your message; don’t overdo it.)

One benefit, once you connect with them, is you can see the groups they are part of on LinkedIn and you can request to join those groups too and connect with probable leads. Make use of Chrome extensions like Rapportive. Also if you are connecting with someone through LinkedIn you can download your connection details and use it in list building.

Pay attention to details. While sending a connection request, make sure to send a personalised message.
 

Twitter pre-targeting

Way back in September 2014, Twitter announced Facebook like email address-based targeting and created a custom audience, as Facebook does, without the need of any third party tool. So you can upload a customer list of email addresses directly to Twitter and target them with ads.

Twitter also provides multiple methods of promotion

Appending solutions like FullContact helps find Twitter accounts associated with the email addresses on your list.

Follow them on Twitter for a direct connection (in case they follow you back) or you can see whom they are following and look for patterns to run ads on Twitter against those @usernames that they are following

Promoted tweets in Twitter are also blocked by AdBlock on the web UI. If you are aware that your audience uses an AdBlock-type system, do not waste your money on Twitter ads.
 

CRM re-targeting

Apply a combination of all these hacks and run your email campaign.

Happy email marketing and connecting with your customers.