Public relations and email marketing are important strategies that can help build a company’s or brand’s image in the eyes of the public. While both strategies have different modes of operations and different objectives – they can be used together to create a more effective marketing strategy. In fact, email marketing can be a vital addition to PR.
What is Public Relations?
Public Relations is the process of using strategic commutation methods to build an advantageous relationship between the public and a company or brand. Public relations usually involve communications that take the form of press releases, whitepapers, reports, and the careful involvement of news teams or journalists
The focus of public relations is to build or improve the image of a brand in the eyes of the public, where the public is the brand’s target audience. This is accomplished through the usual channels, or through the strategic involvement of influencers or experts in the industry that the brand or company is in.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the use of email to get the brand’s or company’s marketing messages across. Usually, the emails are delivered to subscribers who have opted to receive the company’s marketing messages.
The primary purpose of email marketing is to generate brand awareness, and help build a positive relation between the brand and the customer. To do so, email marketing must consider what the right kind of content is for the brand, and then deliver that content to their target audience.
Usually, email marketing is a part of a marketing campaign, and is used to prompt the customer into action. Email marketing can include newsletters, promotional campaigns, milestone emails, feedback campaigns, and promote campaigns that help generate leads.
How to Use Email Campaigns for Public Relations
While public relations and email marketing seem like two different marketing strategies, they work towards the common goal of making a company or brand look good. Both public relations and email marketing have considerable overlap when it comes to strategies. They both involve communicating with the public, but public relations primarily deals with the media that the target audience relies on for information, while email marketing deals with the target audience directly.
Public relations and email marketing – they both focus on the delivery of information to the target audience, in a timely manner.
Which is why both the strategies can complement each other in the following ways:
- Email marketing can help boost PR – People rely on media for information, and a mention in a reputed publication can help boost a brand’s endorsement. Email marketing that mentions any relevant press coverage can help build the reputation of the brand in the eyes of their target audience.
- Email marketing can be used to announce events – Event announcements are an effective method of combining public relations with email marketing. If an important event is coming up, then email marketing can help generate interest and ensure sign-ups, while public relations focuses on promoting news and information about the event.
- Email marketing can be used to build better community relations – While PR efforts can focus on getting press worthy contributions of the brand out to the media, the email market can help the target audience become aware of the contributions to the community made by the company or brand.
