Many brand separate their email marketing campaigns and social media strategy. However there are plenty of ways both worlds can work together. 

This article will cover five simple ways you can integrate your social media channels with your existing email marketing.

1. Ask Email Subscribers to Share and Connect

You can generate great cross-pollination results through a dedicated email campaign.

This can be as simple as broadcasting an email communicating to your audience that you have a Facebook or Twitter account, and outlining the benefits of Liking or following those channels.

Alternatively, create an auto-responder that thanks new sign ups for subscribing and outlines your brand's social media channels.

2. Encourage sharing of content

Your content can be relevant to those outside of your own subscribers. 

Therefore, you should encourage those that have opted-in to share your content to their friends and followers.

Provide links within your email campaign that allows your audience to easily share across their preferred social networks.

With Twitter and Facebook, you can even tailor what the shared message can be. 

3. Incentivise following

A cross-pollination campaign can be improved with an incentive tied behind it. This can include discounts, access to exclusive content, etc.

By providing an incentive to perform an action such as following or Liking, you will improve your chances in gaining a social media subscriber base.

Services including Gleam and MailChimp can help installing relevant apps within your newsletter. 

4. Promote email channel at sign up

This is the reverse of promoting your social media channels on your email auto-responder.

Newsletter sign ups on websites are pretty standard, but many social media channels forget that a follower doesn't necessarily know you have an email subscription channel too.

If you have a strong following on a particular social network, don't hesitate to ask for new email subscribers via that channel.

Facebook now lets you add a “Sign Up” button in your header, that you can setup on your Page.

5. Include a Twitter feed in your email

Try highlighting a particular tweet or adding your Twitter feed in your email campaigns.

Platforms such as Movable Ink can even display real-time feeds, based on when your recipients open their email, instead of when you send it.