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Social media is playing an increasing role in customer engagement. However, as Econsultancy found in their 2009 Customer Engagement Report, email marketing remains by far the most important customer engagement tactic.

Since that report was published, a new study by eMarketer showed that when social media and email marketing are combined it strengthens the reach and viral marketing potential of both marketing channels.

However, the real power of the integration of social media and email marketing lies in the ability to engage customers in conversation. It is about generating word-of-mouth and enabling people to engage in conversation with your business when and where they want. Marketers today must embrace the power of online customer conversations and facilitate them using whichever channel the customer prefers.

According to every major study released in the last several years, that channel is most likely going to be email, followed by the web and increasingly social media. Hotmail recently surveyed their users and found that the top three reasons people have a Hotmail account all have to do with communicating with businesses, whether it be to keep up with a company’s developments via newsletter, receive transactional email confirmations or get special offers and discounts.

The power of customer engagement: why social media and email marketing are best friends

Earned media is defined as awareness gained through publicity or grass roots action, and this term has taken on new meaning with the advent of social media. By analyzing your subscriber database and empowering them to spread the word about your brand through viral marketing, your customers can literally become your most effective "earned" marketing channel.

To accomplish this, start by looking at your email database. Who are your most profitable customers? Who are opening and clicking on your emails the most? Who are the most engaged with your brand? These segments should be your first targets for an integrated social media and email marketing campaign. Key rules of thumb when designing your campaign include:

- Give them something to talk about. This is social, after all. What about your message is worth sharing with someone else? If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t launch the social email campaign.

- Make the conversation seamless. Use email marketing as the launchpad to start a conversation in social media.

- Move from listening to engaging. Customer engagement is about creating relationships that result in value for both customers and businesses. Listen to your customers, engage in conversation with them and inspire other customers to chime in where appropriate.

- Use the right technology. Make it as easy as possible for people to share your message and take it viral in social media. Plus, you’ll need detailed tracking on how well your program is performing, including reach, engagement and conversion metrics for the C-Suite.

Discover StrongMail’s integrated social media and email marketing solutions and download the “Email in the Age of Social Media” white paper to learn how to effectively integrate social media into your email marketing campaigns to drive customer engagement.

If you simply want to engage your customers via social media and learn how to turn Twitter and Facebook into revenue generating channels, request private beta access to StrongMail Social Direct, a killer new social media management tool.