The Peanut Butter and Jelly of Email Marketing and Social Marketing

Social marketing is hot. It is hard not to stumble upon a marketing article these days that doesn’t discuss how some aspiring business is connecting to others through Twitter or finding new niches through Facebook. It is easy to see why. Facebook has become one of the most trafficked sites, second only to Google. And, Twitter has grown tenfold in terms of unique users over the last year, according to the most recent ComScore analysis.

With all this excitement, it is difficult for the marketer to separate the reality from the hype; the ROI from the distraction. Also, it leaves the all important question for many marketers: how social marketing relates to their leading customer retention medium — email marketing.

Wait no more. At the Online Marketing Summit this week in San Diego, I am going to lead a presentation that answers these very questions. In fact, we’ll look at three things:

  1. How email marketing and social marketing are more like peanut butter and jelly versus apples and oranges, They are great complements and rely on each other to be effective.
  2. How marketing engagement strategies that worked for other mediums also work here and introduce the GAMER framework: Goals, Audience, Mediums, Execution, and Results.
  3. A few examples from other organizations (retailer, B2B marketing, college, …) that had a blended email marketing and social marketing strategy to drive some very real marketing results.

So, if you are going to be (or can be!) in the San Diego area this week, join me at the Online Marketing Summit on Friday @ 9:30 for my session titled “Engagement Strategies: Email Marketing and Social Marketing”. It should be good.

And … in case you can’t make it, you can always follow me on Twitter.