Have you checked your email today? There is a wide range of marketing methods available to businesses today. Email and social media marketing are just a few of them. Compared to social media marketing, webinars, and video campaigns, email marketing is the oldest method that is still relevant today.

According to statistics, 4 billion people use email every day. (Statista, 2021)

Emails can be used to promote a product and service, but that's not the end of the story. Daily emails can be used to inform customers about company news or to reach out to potential customers. It is one of the most efficient and cost-effective methods a company can use.

Did you know that more than half of the world's population - 58.4% - uses social networks? (Datareportal, 2022)

Social networks allow a company to build its brand image and reach its target audience on different platforms. A company can inform its audience about the latest news, products, and services on business pages and make sales.

To manage this process easily and efficiently, digital tools help you segment, personalize and be present in the environment where your existing and potential customers spend their time. In this article, we will look at the benefits of email and social media marketing for businesses and how we can manage this process from a single system with Odoo.

As the statistics show, email marketing is one of the primary forms of digital marketing. According to the 2020 MarketingProfs survey, in the B2B segment, emails are the second most used marketing channel behind social networks.

Statista forecasts that revenue from emails will grow to USD 17.9 billion by 2027. If you're not using email, now is the time to start.

Global Email Marketing Revenue 2020-2027 (USD billion)

(Source)

Let's take a look at some of the main benefits of email marketing:

1) Increasing sales

Email tools allow you to create tailored emails with promotional campaigns, discounts, or special offers, targeted at a specially selected audience. 

The more relevant the message, the more likely it is to be read, even by a customer who is not at a computer but using a mobile phone or tablet.

2) Maintaining customer relations

Make your customers loyal. Building relationships with consumers through email marketing can be about sending emails with helpful information about a product or service, helping solve everyday problems through educational content, advice, or send a gift voucher for a birthday.

It helps to create a positive impression and encourages customers to seek information about your company and the value you provide to them.

3) Automation of work tasks

Automation is one of the main benefits of email marketing. You can write the content of your emails in advance and schedule them to go out on the right day and time.

Using an app with automation capabilities, campaigns can be configured to send each message when certain criteria are met. In Odoo ERP, this functionality is provided by the marketing automation module, which we will look at below.

Social networks have become a vast global tool that can help a person or a company achieve various goals. By creating and publishing content according to best practices and following the system's algorithms, content can reach the right audience at the right time.

According to global statistics, the average time spent on social networks is 2 hours and 27 minutes. This figure can vary depending on location. (Hootsuite: Digital Trends Report 2022)

In addition, people use different social networks to consume the content they want. For example, in the UK, the average 16-24-year-old has 6.9 accounts on social networking platforms where they are registered and used. (Avocado Social)

Let's list some of the benefits of social media marketing too:

1) Building visibility and recognition

On different platforms, businesses can provide information about the latest news, products or services, and customer and employee stories. With social networks, you constantly remind your audience of your company's existence. It shows that the business is real and can be trusted.

2) Attracting new customers

Social networks help attract new customers. Nowadays, platforms offer a variety of sales opportunities, such as Instagram/Facebook stores, direct messages, call-to-action buttons, scheduling appointments, etc.

You can also increase conversions by publishing product posts because you are promoting the product to an audience that likes you, as they are already following the business page.

3) Maintaining customer relations

Similar to email marketing, social media marketing allows you to build relationships with your customers. Using another tool, you can improve how your audience and potential customers feel about your business. Post helpful information, respond to comments, correspond online, solve their problems, and you will end up with loyal customers who will buy your product.

Odoo is a modular platform that delivers your business's functionality in one place. So in this system, a company can find apps that help manage the marketing process without leaving a single screen.

Odoo offers several modules in its core functionality that cover marketing needs, apart from an app store with more than 200 apps in the marketing category.

Let's take a detailed look at each of the above modules and how they simplify everyday work tasks:

1. Email Marketing Module

The Marketing module will help you to successfully follow your strategy and use your time efficiently.

When you navigate to the Email Marketing module, you will see a screen with existing campaigns created by the profile you are logged in with. In addition, we can see the campaign's performance, the quantity sent, the number of emails delivered, and other data.

To create a new campaign, click the "Create" button.

A new screen opens where we can configure, select the audience, choose the email structure, or start building the email from scratch.

For us to send your campaign, you need to add a list of recipients. It can be done simply by selecting from the list of recipients, e.g., contacts (this will be possible if the contact module is installed). Odoo allows you to prepare a mailing list where you can add the desired contacts yourself.

In this example, we chose contacts.

We added the criteria, and out of 70 available contacts, the system selected 43 with an email whose address was "United States."

Let's get to the content of the email and choose one of the templates.

We are planning to organize an experience exchange event soon, which will be useful for our customers to get to know the service better. We have therefore inserted two blocks of events in the letter, which will take the user to a page where they can register and book a place. By the way, there is a module for organizing events in Odoo.

The letter's content is easily customizable, even if you chose a preprint. We can make configurations by pressing each element on the screen's right side.

Once the audience is configured, and the content is ready, we can send a test version to any email address. The campaign can be sent immediately or scheduled for a later date and time.

This way, we can take the time to configure several deferred email campaigns in one day and have the peace of mind that we won't forget to send an important email with the new product to our customers.

2. Social Marketing Module

Odoo provides an excellent opportunity to connect some of the most popular social media platforms and manage this process in one system. Previously, Odoo could connect Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, and from version 15, you can add Instagram and Youtube accounts.

To get started with social networks, you need to add your existing accounts to the Odoo system.

Once you have added the necessary accounts, you can start preparing your entries. The steps are elementary. Click the "NEW POST" button and fill in all the required fields, choose which platforms to publish on, enter the body text, add an image and decide when to publish.

If the entry needs to be scheduled, then a date and time must be selected.

From now on, accounts and posts will appear on the screen when you log in to the Social Media Marketing module.

Thanks to the connectivity of the Odoo modules, you can create marketing campaigns and track them easily. Each tab is connected to a separate Odoo module, e.g., "Revenues" refers to the invoices module, "Opportunities" to the CRM module, and "Quotations" to the sales module. It's a magic trick that helps to capture every aspect of the business and extract data that helps to make better decisions and track the customer journey in detail.

When you create a new campaign, you need to create a post for it. Suppose a social media user takes action, such as filling in an application form, after navigating to that post. In that case, a new customer card is created in the Odoo CRM module, where the additional information tab will tell you which marketing channel they came from.

It will help us track each new customer in the sales funnel and understand the return on each campaign. In the CRM module, we can group the new customer cards. If we need to understand what source the customer came from, we select the grouping option, and Odoo groups all defined sources for us.

3. Marketing Automation Module

If you have a database of existing or potential customers, Odoo provides a simple and effective solution for creating and processing marketing campaigns.

In schematic terms, it looks simple: for positive feedback, we take one action; for negative feedback, we take another.

Let's look at an example and create a new campaign.

The campaign needs a name and an audience. Similar to creating a new email, we can choose a contact list, but this time we will target new customers, and with Odoo, this is very easy. We select "Target" -> "Lead/Opportunities" and configure the settings to choose new customers in the sales funnel.

Next, we add the campaign activities by clicking the "ADD NEW ACTIVITY" button and filling in the required fields. We define the name of the activity, the type, the activation, and when it should be executed.

In this way, we can create multiple email cycles. But the functionality is not limited to that. Odoo allows us to move customers forward in the sales funnel. We need to strategically determine at which point we do the qualification. Let's say that when a customer replies to an email, we can qualify him and change the stage from "New" to "Qualified".

To do this, add a sub-activity under the created activity, select "Server action," and create a new one. The following figure shows how to configure the action.

When we are finished, we can see the entire workflow.

Similarly, we can add activities in cases where the client does not reply, resulting in a server action to set the system to archive the client's card.

And, of course, we can monitor campaign performance by managing tabs.