Email Marketing Vs Social Media Advertising For eCom Brands: The Killer Combo?

Why The Answer Isn’t One Or The Other… it’s BOTH

Is this your marketing strategy?

“Should I invest in ads? Or should I get started with email marketing? How can we scale most efficiently?”

Chances are you’ve probably asked yourself these questions if you’re running an eCom brand. You might also have tried several different marketing methods, but none really seemed to stick — leaving you without progress and burnt out from stretching yourself too thin & trying to do everything at once.

Focus is important. And in this article, we’ll explore where you should dedicate your focus if you’re looking to scale — email, or ads?

Both must work together to take your brand to the next level and increase the amount of revenue you generate but also improve your customer relationship and brand awareness.

Actually, both have their own purpose and must be part of the same strategy. Let me ask you one simple question so we can get started:

What does advertising do?

…

Exactly. It gets traffic to your site. New eyes on your offers.

But how do you make sure you convert eyes into buys?

That’s where Email Marketing comes into play.

You see, the average store can turn about 1–2% of its visitors into customers. Even well-converting ones rarely go far above 2–3%. But what happens to the rest?

The rest don’t buy and leave, probably to never return. 98–99% of your visitors…

But with well-done sign-ups, you can turn up to 12% into email subscribers, which gives you a second chance to convert them into customers down the line.

In short? Advertising gets you prospects and Email Marketing makes sure you keep them.

If you know what you’re doing when it comes to Email Marketing, it’s not uncommon to see 30% of your revenue coming from your Email Channel. That’s 30% more revenue than if you were not doing anything with Email at all.

Let me put it this way. For every $100 that your ads generate, Email can put an extra $30 on top of that. At very little added cost… can you see what that would do for your profit margins?

So how do you get Ads and Email Marketing to play into each other's strengths? How do you leverage your email list to improve the efficiency of your ads and bring even more people to your newsletter?

Improve Ad Performance With User-Generated Content & Social Proof

Let’s first look at how Email Marketing can enhance your Advertising efforts (outside of making them insanely profitable by converting prospects on the back-end).

The answer is social proof. People love your product. We have to make sure that your prospects see that.

…but how? With the power of the often overlooked Post Purchase Email Sequence.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when we see an ad with plenty of positive reviews in the comment section?

That people love the product they bought.

But most importantly, it tells you that whoever is running that ad is probably legit… and given how many companies sell hot garbage dropshipped from China, that’s a legitimate concern.

As an eCom brand, social proof is one of the best tools you can leverage to boost your credibility.

So don’t hesitate to ask your customers to leave comments under your ads after they’ve tried & like your product.

However, it’s not just the comment section that can be enhanced. It’s the ad itself, too.

Actually, user-generated video ads are CRUSHING it in 2021. The key to them is that they need to be REAL. You want selfie-style videos from your customers.

So after they purchased from you, use your Email Marketing to ask them to tell their story, how bad their problems were before finding your product, what they tried that didn’t work and how you helped them, …

Edit the UGC into a great and inexpensive video, combine it with some great copy and you’ve got a moneymaker on your hands. For cheap.

But, you should also…

Outsmart Your Competition On & Before Big Holidays And Events

Big events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a blessing to business owners. The amount of money you can make is ridiculously high, however…

It’s not easy. The competition for the limited ad space is insane. Ad costs are through the roof as everybody is desperately scrambling to sell as much as possible. It’s a bloody fight to seize your cut of customers.

But you can more or less completely circumvent that. How?

Well, you can’t escape the fact that there’s competition. But you can evade the massively increased cost.

Start early, while everyone else is just getting ready for Black Friday. Plan out the entire Q4 in advance and start heavily running ads before everyone else does too.

Dedicate your ad budget to growing your email list, so all that you have to do on that special day is run killer email campaigns. Everyone else is spending like crazy while you’re already done investing your budget and can send your promotions almost for free via Email.

The new subscribers you gain this way are also a more long-term investment than just trying to get one-time sales for the special sale — you can always send them more email campaigns at no added cost.

If you attempt this strategy, planning and starting early is essential.

Plan at least a month in advance and one month after Black Friday for pre and post-event emails so you’re warming up properly and making the most of it.

You should also get expert help to make sure your Email Campaigns don’t fail you on the special promotion day, otherwise, that money went to waste.

In the same way, something else that would help you is…

Retargeting Ads On Social Media To Interested Email Subscribers

Would you rather run ads to people that you’re not certain will be interested in your offer…

Or to people that you know are somewhat interested in your products?

If you’re like most people, you’ll choose the latter. That’s what targeting options are for, right?

Now, here’s the thing. You already know that your email list subscribers are at least somewhat interested. Why else would they have signed up to your list?

Most brands have the same approach to their Email Marketing: Barely doing anything at all.

No plan behind their Email Marketing, no regular email sending, only sending emails when it’s time for a SALE… that is, if they even bother doing anything at all.

A lot of the brands we audit have a mostly cold list of unengaged subscribers. Don’t believe me?

Try this: Go into your Email Marketing Software and create a new Segment of subscribers. Set it to display only subscribers who haven’t opened an Email of yours in the last 6+ months.

There’s a good chance that this is going to be more than 50% of your total email list. If that’s you, please take a seat. This is your intervention, we need to talk.

Is this really how it should be? Do you really know what you’re doing? Doesn’t your Email List deserve more love?

Anyways, even though these people might not remember you at the moment, they’re probably still interested in your offer. You just didn’t talk with them about it enough.

You should consider starting a warmup email campaign, and start running ads to your list on a low budget.

By doing this you make sure you’re retargeting only the people who showed interest in your offer and…

You create a cycle that ensures you’re always there no matter where they are.

Which is fantastic because this allows you to stay top of mind. Think about it, being everywhere your customer goes will make it hard to forget you.

And the best part?

This is very simple to pull off.

You only have to download your subscribers’ list to your social accounts and start running ads.

By the way, talking about social media, don’t forget to…

Leverage It to Build Your Email List

You can use Social Media Ads to break into new audiences and then build a segment from that in your email list or update existing customer data.

How?

Here are three simple ways to do that:

1. Run ads to direct people to a landing page where you give them something in exchange for joining your email list. It can be a one-time offer, it can be free shipping, it can be a huge discount, get creative.
2. Launch contests and giveaways for signups.
3. Run your normal ads that get people to visit your store, and turn up to 12% of them into Email List subscribers with well-converting Popups.

Not only will this create engagement with your customer base but also grow your email list. If done right you’ll have plenty of people signing up and you’ll increase your brand awareness.

Now, if you’re skeptical about how profitable Email Marketing really is, or are unsure how to make it work, you’re not alone.

To get started, ask yourself one question.

If you were to sell a book, who would you sell it to a group of people who have never heard of you or people who already know you and like you?

Which would cost more time and effort?

Exactly, selling to people that don't know you takes much more work…

After all, it’s no wonder one of the best marketers in history (Gary Halbert) said this:

“The best list of customers is your own list of customers. Your own customers should respond far better than any other list you can get. Of course, there is one caveat. They must be satisfied customers!”

While we don’t agree with a lot Halbert did, he’s 100% right here.

6 out of 10 marketers consider email marketing their most effective marketing channel — it is and remains the most cost-effective, scalable, and highest converting channel out of them all.

It’s also the most complicated. With a bit of effort, everyone can run ads, create content or engage their customers a bit on Social Media — not that we want to downplay other kinds of marketing, they’re all very important.

But it’s very hard to royally screw it up. With Email, screwing up is easy, especially with the complexity Email Marketing Software like Klaviyo can bring to the table.

Klaviyo is awesome, but if you don’t know what you’re doing your Email Automations can quickly turn into an ugly case of “digital spaghetti” — a huge blob of Email Sequences that nobody actually understands anymore.

And I can virtually guarantee you there’s some funky stuff happening in there that you’re not even aware of. Because that’s what we consistently find when working with brands who’ve been doing it all by themselves.

But done right? Email works.

• Email Marketing produces $38–41 per each $1 spent, which is a fantastic 3,800% ROI.
• 85% of U.S. retailers consider Email Marketing their most effective customer acquisition & retention tactic.
• Individuals who buy through Email Marketing spend 138% more.

As you can see, an email list might well be the most valuable asset you can have as a business owner, the capacity email marketing has to drive sales without spending much on advertising is unparalleled.

In fact, it has been proven that getting a new customer can cost 5 times more than retaining an existing customer. And increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95% and higher…

So, if I was you, I would get cracking on getting the most out of your email list.

Before we go, one last thing:

Email Marketing will massively increase your Advertising ROI

All you have to do to be profitable when running Ads with a strong Email back-end is to initially break even with your Advertising.

Remember, for every $ you make, your back-end can add an extra 30 cents. Due to the nature of Email (it’s not instant), that extra money will take a while to be generated. Email Marketing typically trails a few weeks behind, just because the sequences take a while to get sent.

So if you’re not really running ads on a big level yet but would like to get ready for that… Or if you’re already heavily advertising but don’t have a grip on your Email Marketing…

Then the added profit email will generate for you once it’s properly set up will make it massively easier to scale and become wildly profitable.

If you want to scale your Brand, you need a plan. An Email Marketing Battle Plan.

In our 1-week Email Battle Plan, we take apart your entire Email Marketing Setup and show you how to assemble it new & better. At the end of the week, you’ll get:

• All Email Sequences fully reviewed & outlined
• Email Deliverability fully checked
• Newsletter strategy
• Segmentation & Lists Outlined
• General Marketing Feedback for your brand
• Signup Strategy, how to grow your Newsletter
• How to Build a Community around your brand
• Content Strategy, what to send to your Newsletter
• 100% availability if you have questions or need help/feedback

Interested? Apply for your Email Marketing Battle Plan & we’ll get in touch to set a call so we can get to know each other. The goal of that call will be to find out if we are the right fit for you. We don’t go in guns blazing with the hottest pitch of the month — we want to see if we can help you.

You Can Apply Here.

If you’d like to see how you could increase your own Email Marketing results, give us a visit at bullseye-persuasion.com

Don’t forget to clap (you can do up to 50 claps) & comment.

See you soon & stay focused!