Facebook and email might be two different forms of communication, but they work the best when you create a hybrid of both.

Facebook is a platform to address and connect with mass audience. In business, these audiences are mostly your target users and customers who like and consume your brand. This means that Facebook is primarily used to keep yourself at the top of all other brands and your followers updated about your new products.

When it comes to email, you are using a communication channel that is more focused and personal. It lets you connect with people individually and target them exclusively. These people include your customers, potential customers and the people who might be interested in your product (ones who have never approached or visited your page on Facebook but were at your website or viewed your content in their newsfeed and clicked on it).

This mini-analysis shows that Facebook and Email are vital to each other when it comes to digital media marketing, and even though work differently, are able to become a super marketing power when integrated together in a strategy.

There are different ways to integrate the both platforms.

1. Analytic Integration: 

Through this type of amalgamation, you can strategically use the channels to draw up analytics from both sides. Creating two equal standard values can help you compare performance on both platforms.

For example, lets says that one subscriber to email is equal to 10 followers on Facebook. Now, with this type of comparison you can find out which medium is working better and where you need to prove.

2. Channel Integration: 

For channel integration, your goal is to drive traffic on both platforms. While you need people to share and repost your content on Facebook, you also need them to sign up for your monthly newsletter via email.

This can be made possible by using innovative softwares like Bleupage and TabFu. The softwares have email marketing feature through which you can make Facebook posts. Its working is very simple. When you are posting an update, do it with the opt-in option. This way people would need to enter their email address if they want to view and share it. This not only creates targeted mail lists but also help to ensure the viral flow of your content on Facebook.

You can also use auto responders, where when a person likes your Facebook page, they will receive a thank you note in their mail and if a person has subscribed to email but not visited the page; send them a quick message asking to like you.

3. Message Integration: 

Use both platforms to deliver same kind of message and see the difference in its viewer and readership. Email your subscribers a combined coherent document or paste in the body section of mail, a content and updates that you are posting on social media throughout the day.

Monitor the response and analyze how people choose to respond on both mediums. It is not necessary that the response is direct and immediate. Look for screenshots with your company’s name or campaign title hashtags on other mediums like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can also use one channel to promote the other one like releasing teasers of content that you are going to post on Facebook via email and vice versa.

Apart from these, there are other creative ways to unify these two platform using third party softwares. You can build a database using combined login system, so you can collect the email addresses of users when they log in to one their social media accounts. Using this technique, you will need to create op-ins and Facebook tabs inside the pages, so it can only be viewed when the email is inserted.

There is no harm in using the content particularly designed for emailing on Facebook and contrariwise. Another effective way to use both channels side by side is to use custom audience feature on Facebook. You can target your ads to right people by just writing email addresses, Facebook unique identification number and cell phones. Yes, I said ‘email addresses’, which means that this exceptional feature is the king of dreams in combining two channels. A win-win situation for your social media page, email subscriber list and the individual himself, who is only shown the content he wants and is interested in.

Integration between Facebook and email is necessary because

• It increase leads and sales for your product. When you email the features of your product to your subscribers, put in your web address and Facebook page link.
• If they find even the small part of an email interesting, they are likely to click on links and this helps in increasing your reach and conversions.
• Email Service Providers (ESPs) are becoming highly sophisticated and refined. They provide you with complete metrics when it comes to email marketing. Using these metrics, you can identify and leverage your key influencers, who are further sharing your mails.
• Provide incentives and rewards to these influencers so they keep doing so. You can also use these influencers to test new campaigns and ask their opinions or suggestions to make them better.
• There is no doubt that Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the digital world, and almost every individual with access to internet and smart phone or laptop uses it. This fact does not mean that other communication channels on internet are not as important or necessary, because they are.
• Facebook works in a specific way just like email works in its own way. This presents marketers with opportunity to deliver creatively crafted content that might appear different but has the same bottom line. This content then can be used accordingly for the suitable platforms.
• Using email with Facebook allows you to explore ideas and deliver content to a wide spread audience. Professionals who lie between the ranges of 45-60 years understand email completely but might find Facebook a little too complicated to use.
• You can easily increase your reach by interacting with teenagers and young professionals via Facebook, while use email for older professionals and target audience.
• Delivering content through email not only allows users to share it on Facebook, but other platforms as well. Never forget to add the share button icons in your email message body. People who like the content in mail would want to share it further on their networks and share icons make things one-step easier.

It totally depends on the reader if he or she wants to share the whole thing or chooses a line to share on social networks as a quote. Either way, you are able to reach more people and your content is influencing a part of the target audiences.

When it comes to tying the knot between Facebook and email, make sure there is only person who is overlooking the ceremony and make sure he / she keeps doing that. If two different people are handling the channels, you will never be able to create a sound strategy where both can work succeed together.

Integrations needs to be done by one person who has a combined (Facebook + email) social media strategy instead of individual strategies for the platforms.