How to use social media in email signatures effectively

Social media has firmly secured its role as a staple marketing channel and your organization is most likely active across many social media platforms. You'll also have links to your social media pages on your company website. 

Now, think how many emails you send out daily and weekly. Every email you send is an opportunity to connect with a person in your social network and increase your social reach. Adding social media icons for email signatures is a great way to get loads of new fans for free. 

If you’re not using social media in email signatures or email signature icons at the very least, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to introduce your customers to your Twitter feed, Facebook page or LinkedIn profile. Adding social media links to your email signatures is a great way to: 

• Get new fans or followers for free 

• Improve the reach of your marketing campaigns 

• Increase your customer loyalty 

Turn email contacts into social connections 

Subtly inviting readers to join you on social media through your email signature, can be much more comfortable than paid advertising, direct marketing or on-channel endorsement – and the results reflect it. 

A simple start can be adding social media icons to your email signatures. However, try to limit the number of link icons per signature. Better yet, distribute them appropriately to various teams. 

You can add a hyperlink to your LinkedIn profile in your sales team’s email signature template. Your customer service team’s signature could go to your Facebook page relating to your whole company. Marketing could use your Twitter profile. The choice is yours! 

Rather than offer discounts or free items, offer information about your company or exclusive content. Rather than ordering recipients to ‘Follow’ you, give them a potential benefit of doing so. Show readers the opportunities available if they follow your social media channels. 

So, consider the use of social media in email signatures like any other social situation. Your success depends on three factors: 

• Be there. Let your email users know you’re on social media and they can join you with a single click. 

• Be interesting. Offer them some information and an incentive to do so, perhaps with a promotional banner beside the link. 

• Be yourself. Incentives offered should be appropriate and reflect your sector or output. 

Connecting with email recipients on social media 

So, how does social media in email signatures work? Well, firstly email signatures have a strong situational element. A recipient of your emails is already thinking about your company when reading your message. This means they can spare a few minutes to look at your social media profiles. 

You then consider that social media often provides the most up-to-date information from your company. Using social media in email signatures means you’re keeping your most important clients in the know easily. 

Also, social media in email signatures offers your target market another avenue to continue that business relationship outside of traditional communication channels. People are more likely to engage with your brand on social media if they already have an existing relationship with you. Social media in email signatures can then be used as a subtle lead-nurturing avenue. These can work better than targeting recipients with ads and email marketing communications. 

However, you need to make sure that the social content you link to is relevant and up to date. Don’t add links to accounts you don’t use anymore. Having a link to your Google+ profile is pointless when it’s no longer available. If you haven’t tweeted from your corporate Twitter account for more than a year, don’t include a link to it in your signature. 

Recipients only want to read relevant and up-to-date content, so adding social media in email signatures when the profiles are inactive isn’t a good user experience. 

Summary 

As different as social media and corporate email are, combining the two channels via email signatures can be very effective. Linking to your social networks from your email signatures can easily promote your latest content to people reading your messages. It also helps to increase your follower count and engagement levels at little to no cost.