Last Updated on June 11, 2018 by Larious
Instagram can surely be a highly target oriented visual marketing platform if you strategize it well. On the other hand, email marketing is something which remains as a thriving digital marketing avenue for decades.
A recent study had shown that social media marketing through Instagram seems to offer 25% more engagement rates to brands when compared to promotions through other platforms. With more than 800 million monthly active users, Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social network sites in the world. Given this popularity of this platform, there is a fair chance that almost all of your target audience may be or will be there on Instagram.
The concepts like Instagram’s hashtag and the follow feature etc. makes it much easier for the users on Instagram to connect with the relevant content and conversations. The marketers may also use the same strategy to reach to potential customers by fighting through the noise and get them engaged.
Further, in this article, we will discuss how to effectively integrate Instagram to your email marketing strategy to build a considerable following and engage the followers effectively. First things first, before incorporating Instagram into your mailing strategy, first you need to have a good audience base. Here are a few things to consider it.
#1. Using hashtags
If you are trying to get engaged more with the apt audience to grow your followers, then it is essential to do regular content posting to reach to more. Hashtags are the right way to take your content to the right audience as most of the users now do hashtag search to see what they would like to view. Not just on Instagram, but hashtag content is now relevant on Facebook and Twitter too.
You can get tag ideas by doing baseline research on Instagram. There are some sites and blogs too listing the most popular hashtags. There are top-rated hashtags related to various niche areas, which you need to identify to be added to relevant posting. For example, some of the top hashtags for coffee shops or coffee related images are like:
- #coffee, #cafe, #Instacoffee, #Cafelite, #Caffeine, #hot coffee, #coffeeaddict, #coffeegram, #coffeeoftheday, #cotd, #coffeelover, #coffeemug, #coffeelife etc.
You have to maintain a customized and constant hashtag strategy. The approach should be the same as you devise a keyword strategy for website SEO. Not only the general popular hashtags for the industry and products, but you can also think of product specific and brand hashtags too to try and make these popular. If not done yet, you can go back to your previous posts too and add some relevant hashtags at any point in time.
#2. Follow the followers of your competitor
This is an excellent strategy as advised by the top digital marketing experts. As per their advice, the top engagement strategies are following, liking, and commenting. To do this well, you need to identify the similar brands and competitors in your industry and see who is engaging with them. You can proactively follow these users and try to engage with them through the above strategies to buy real Instagram likes. A study shows that this effort can yield you better results like
- Following others: 14% follow back
- Following + liking their content: 22% follow back
- Following + liking + commenting: 34% follow back
This approach can be tried on other social networking platforms too.
3) Using the right filters
You can try and maximize the reach of your posts by choosing the right filters for images. Some of the best filters marketers successful make use of are:
- Valencia, Early Bird, X-Proll, Rise, Amaro, Hefe, Lo-fi, Hudson, Sierra, etc.
However, in many cases, no filter may be the popular choice. You can review it manually to see which gives you the best look and feel to decide over it.
With a great fan following, you can next think of integrating your Instagram efforts with email marketing to reach to more. Further, we will discuss a few successful strategies for it.
- Insert the Instagram feed to mails
The first thing to do is to insert your Instagram feed into mailers. With this, the subscribers will try for a sneak peek into your account to stay connected to it. Getting them on to the page will help you make them a follower if they find interest.
2. Try and get UGC over email
UGC means user-generated content. UGC can add value to your Instagram feeds, which can be anything like a review, testimonial, or a photo featuring your product. It is easy now to install a UGC plugin on to your website, which will show the Instagram photos on your product pages.
To initiate it, you can plan a segmented mail campaign first based on the purchase history of the customers. Introduce some hashtags for your products and identify the users on your mailing list to contact and prompt them to post photos of themselves featuring your products under the specific hashtag on Instagram to avail a gift coupon or so.
3. Announce a contest through email
You can leverage the user’s interest to content by starting some exciting Instagram contest. Come up with a unique hashtag under which the participants can post photos or relevant content based on the contest theme to win exciting prizes. With some valuable takeaways, people will be enthusiastic about getting engaged, and it will give you hype in organic social media marketing reach. Moreover, the users will extend the content naturally to their followers too, which will help enhance your follower base.
4. Directly invite your loyal customers to follow you on Instagram through email
You can send an official mail message to your loyal customer base to follow you through Instagram too, which will help them get the latest notifications and special offers from you instantly through this platform. You can also encourage them to contribute and participate in the Instagram campaigns and contents you run by sending email alerts.
The primary thing you have to keep in mind while handling Instagram and email marketing is that doing things out of the box will only bring in some significant results for your effort. One needs to think strategically and make a comprehensive plan to device the Instagram-email marketing approach to make it successful.
Author bio: Harris is a leading blog writer and content marketing professional with thousands of real Instagram followers for his postings. He used to write smart tips for newbie digital marketers as to how to buy real Instagram likes, smart Facebook marketing, email marketing tips, etc.
