How to Use Multiple Digital Channels (Without Overwhelming Your Audience)
Editors Note: We’re excited to welcome Amanda Salem, the Director of Content Marketing at Constant Contact to the Dear Handmade Life blog for a series of blog posts to help you market your creative business.
When I first started my small business over 20 years ago, Constant Contact was my first email service provider! And after testing other providers, I’ve recently switched back to Constant Contact. From gorgeous drag and drop templates to easy ways to segment your email list, I love Constant Contact, and their customer service is awesome. Want to talk to an actual human? Yeah, they’ve got you!
Lucky you, Constant Contact is offering our readers 30% off their first three months. Just click here to get this awesome deal.
P.S. – You can catch the replay of our free workshop with Constant Contact, How to Make the Most of Your Next Market: How to Integrate Your Email Marketing with Your In-person Craft Fairs to Build Your Audience & Make More Sales right here!
Now, here's Amanda to share how to use multiple digital channels
(without overwhelming your audience).
How do you reach your audience? While email marketing is a perennially strong digital marketing tactic, technology has taken us beyond that channel and into other forms that work well alongside it, including social media marketing and SMS text messaging. And while it can seem tempting to be everywhere all at once just so you can be sure to capture your audience, the one thing you want to do is avoid overwhelming your audience. So how can you use multiple channels while still maintaining your message and keeping your customers happy, informed and engaged?
Below, we’ve outlined the types of messages that work well for email, social media and SMS text messaging, along with a sample of how these things might work together for a single campaign.
Email Marketing. You’re probably already familiar with the types of marketing emails you receive that you find engaging. Email newsletters, abandoned cart reminders, and feedback requests are all common forms of email marketing. What they have in common is that they are usually a substantial amount of content, or a complex mix of content, and the ask that they are posing is typically not in-the-moment urgent. An email newsletter giving your audience your latest updates, expert tips and advice, and upcoming events is chock full of information that your customer can choose to act on immediately… or digest later at their leisure. (This is also a safe route if you are still working to build your list of SMS contacts for outreach!)
SMS Text Messaging. Even though smartphones have developed to display lengthier and lengthier text messages, SMS text messaging is still limited in just how much information it can convey. This channel’s primary strength lies in its ability to reach customers exactly where they are, in the most urgent moment– in fact, interested subscribers are overwhelmingly likely to open and read a text message within 3 minutes of receiving it. Reaching out to your customers with concise, urgent, and immediately actionable marketing messages is an excellent fit for SMS text messaging. Additionally, the tone you take with text messages can be more casual, conversational and approachable than you might typically apply to your email outreach.
Social Media. While every social channel is different and flourishes with a slightly different type and mix of content, social media can be a great fit for messages that are broad-based, appealing to current customers and new prospects alike. Most social media channels also have the advantage of displaying highly visual content in an appealing, easy to share manner, enabling your followers to easily amplify your message with the click of a button. Because social media is also a great place to engage with your buyer community, sharing content generated from your customers (like product reviews, real-life product photos and more) can be a good way to tell your customers’ success stories and boost engagement.
An example of using the three channels together might look like this:
- In your monthly newsletter, you share with your subscribers that you will be teaching a painting class at the local library, inviting them to register and attend.
- The day of the event, you text your subscribers who have registered to attend to remind them of the place and time of the event and that you look forward to seeing them.
- After the event, you share photos from the event, as well as attendee posts about the event, on your own social media channels.
Ultimately, you have used three channels to communicate about the same event, but each channel has been used for a unique purpose, and to drive different areas of engagement: awareness, interest, and appreciation.
As you start to experiment with different channels within digital marketing, the best thing you can do to determine what’s right for you and for your audience is to review any reporting you have access to, including open rates, click rates, and other engagement metrics, as well as listening to feedback from your customers and tailoring your messaging to them. By keeping your customers in mind any time you branch into new efforts, you can never go wrong!
To learn more about how to promote yourself to your customers using digital marketing, be sure to check out our webinar with Constant Contact’s Director of Small Business, Dave Charest.
About Constant Contact
Constant Contact delivers for small businesses and nonprofits with powerful tools that simplify and amplify digital marketing. Whether it’s driving sales, growing a customer base or engaging an audience, we deliver the performance and guidance to build strong connections and generate powerful results. For more information, visit www.constantcontact.com.
