It’s no secret that email campaigns are a great place to promote your products and services, but what about the other components of your business like social media? Part of successfully growing a business is creating and maintaining a solid digital footprint across channels, and email subscribers are a great starting point. Here are our suggestions for promoting your social channels via email.

Buttons in every header: You probably have social buttons in your email footer, similar to the buttons you most likely have on your website, linking to each of your social media pages. But how about in the headers as well? As we know, the most important content of your emails needs to go above the fold.

Share buttons: This one’s a little more indirect, but put ‘Tweet this,’ ‘Share this,’ and ‘Pin this’ buttons next to, or overlayed on top of, photos and snippets of shareable content (read: beautiful images and quote-worthy lines), and make sure those buttons pre-populate content that tags you. That way, when someone tweets “Love this blog post from [@AhoyEmail]: How to Convert Your Email Subscribers to Social Media Followersl,” they’re not only exposing your brand to their followers, but they’re also engaging with your brand. If you’re not quite sure how to do this via HTML, try Click To Tweet, an easy-to-use platform that creates a trackable link housing the Twitter content you want your audience to share.

Dedicate campaigns: Dedicate specific email campaigns to promoting each one of your social channels, and really bring out the big guns. Are you sharing enviable photos on Instagram? Email out a collage of your most-liked photos via email. Is your Facebook Page THE place to find out about your newest products? Give your readers a head’s up that they need to follow you for the latest and greatest. Is your Pinterest full of genius life-hacks that showcase the need for your products? You get the point.

Just ask: Sometimes, all it takes is a simple “Please?” Ask, and you shall receive some followers.

Contests and rewards: To reach the less kind souls who know they can get something out of the deal, make your readers feel like they’re missing out by not following your pages. This is a great way to start gaining followers out of subscribers, but build on that momentum by running social-only contests or giveaways that require following your brand.

Feature followers: Give your best followers some attention by sending out an email campaign of your favorite brand ambassadors, with screenshots of their engagement with your brand. Nothing like a little FOMO to get some new followers.

Need help getting social via email? ahoy! is here to help.