The Power of Instagram in Email Marketing

Posted: 02 Sep 2016 06:00 AM PDT

Since October 2010, Instagram has seen massive growth in its user base. In the first two months after release, Instagram hit 1 million users. Two years later Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. The world didn’t understand how a tiny company that helps share photos could be worth so much. How could Facebook justify paying that much for a tiny competitor? Well, today they’ve grown to over 500 million users globally with around 100 million users in the U.S.

Instagram in Email Marketing

Before contextual email technology was available, inserting social media content into an email template wasn’t easy. Social media’s quick tempo left slower email messages lacking in content relevance. Email marketers began cross-channel marketing with social media icons to decrease the amount of content upkeep. Almost overnight, graphical social media icons became the standard for integrating social media into email consistently.

Email technology has evolved significantly. Now, an email can display up-to-the-minute posts with imagery. As the email opens for each recipient, social account information is pulled in real-time. Instagram can become a portion of live content in an email instead of just a logo — social content is synchronized across both channels seamlessly.

A excellent example of a live Instagram feed in an email is CheapCaribbean.com. They’ve not only begun pulling a live Instagram feed, but they’ve also customized the feed to become their branded content element.

Instagram was added to their current email campaigns with a small line of HTML code after a few minutes of customization.

Email Marketing and Instagram: Better Together

Infusing these two online channels improves online brand visibility and email relevance from the start. Instagram’s attractiveness brings a refreshing visual element to email’s already proven return on investment. Conversely, email marketing drives loyal inbox readers to follow Instagram — strengthening the omnichannel business-to-consumer relationship.

Increasing Email Engagement

Adding a live Instagram feed into your email isn’t just another way of inserting a social media logo. With active Instagram users engaging on that network up to eleven days a month, weekly or monthly emails could benefit dramatically from an increased lift in email content interaction. A feed can be added to an automated campaign, preventing constant updates, thus saving marketers time and money.

Email & Instagram Tips:

Adding a live Instagram feed to an email template isn’t the only benefit to cross-channel marketing between the two mediums. Here are a few other items to try:

Promote email registrations in Instagram using contests or giveaways
Use Instagram imagery for email creative
Create an Instagram hashtag that only applies to email users, promoting benefits of signing up
Use an Instagram hashtag to filter images that are pulled into the email for a custom display

The creative aspect of email is just one part. To make sure your messages make it to your recipient's inbox, download the Email Deliverability Guide for Modern Marketers.