Since the Web 2.0 marketing was introduced in 1999, social media has rapidly become an essential part of any online marketing strategy.

Social media networks on the web, including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, have turned marketing and promotion into a two-way conversation between companies and their customers. For companies looking to monitor their brand presence online, they can now target their audiences where they hang out in cyberspace: by joining in with conversations on social media sites, blogs and web forums.

The introduction of social media networks and social search engines, including YouTube, Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati and Flickr, means that more people than ever before are sharing content via the Internet.

By offering interesting, informative and exciting content online, companies can experience cost-effective, viral marketing, through customers socially bookmarking and sharing their content with their followers and friends online.

However, in a world full of social networks, email marketing still offers the best ROI and is more important than ever in the Web 2.0 world. So how do you successfully combing both marketing efforts?

Five top tips for combining social media and email marketing strategies:

• Incorporate social media widgets that link to your networks in marketing emails, so that your customers can find and connect with you easily online.

• Run a social media competition alongside an e-shot campaign. This is a great way to gain more followers by offering customers a chance to win something. For example, on Facebook you can get people to ‘like’ your company page first, before entering the competition, or get followers to RT a message on Twitter, or re-pin your picture and create a board on Pinterest.

Linking a social media competition with your email campaign also has added CRM benefits, as you can collect customer information by asking for an email address, to which you can send future marketing emails to in the future.

• You customers should be able to share newsletter and email marketing contents on social media networks with ease.

• Similarly, customers should have the option to sign up for your email marketing and newsletter list on all company social media sites.

• Stuck for content ideas? To give your email campaigns studio quality, create effective, eye-catching, email marketing content with the help of free email templates.

Social media networks do not take away from the need for a strong email marketing strategy; they simply heighten the customer experience, allowing great content to be shared with friends and communities online as well as creating new opportunities for adding customer information to your CRM strategy.

Email marketing is evolving and all successful marketing strategies in the Web 2.0 world should be combining social media and email marketing efforts for maximum ROI.

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