Integrating Facebook ads and Email marketing

Chart of the Day: A case study shows how integrating these channels increases purchase

This chart of the day is a little different from the typical insights we have about consumer and business use of digital media and tech. It fits with our current integrated marketing theme, showing how two channels can be more powerful than one. We know that is the theory of integrated communications, but you only get to see the reality when a 'hold-out' test is run for a campaign with a control group who saw one media type only. These are rarely published, so this isn't new, but the principle still applies.

Here's the test design, you can see that some of the audience of the retailer who ran the test just got to receive an email (the control group), others were served Facebook ads, but the interesting group are the combined 16% who opened emails and saw Facebook ads.

So, what were the results amongst this the combined group and the other benefits of integration?

1. Those on the Email list who saw Facebook ads too were an impressive 22% more likely to purchase.
2. When reached with Facebook ads, email openers were 8% more likely to click on email.
3. Facebook ads extended email reach by 77%.

• Source: Salesforce blog: Advertise Based on a Single View of the Customer
• Sample: A retailer campaign over two weeks in April 2014, targeting 925,000 US email subscribers using Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Facebook Custom Audiences. Facebook Offline Conversion Measurement matched and correlated ad impressions to email engagement and transactions.