As brand owners rely more and more on social networking sites as a marketing tool, some are predicting that email will lose its central position as online activity shifts more towards the social networking channels.

Having said that, email marketing volumes are not exactly declining and are in fact, enjoying exponential growth along with the popularity of these social networking sites.

The simple explanation for this is that email and social networks do not compete with each other, but rather complement each other, and can be integrated to create better and more engaging strategies than either could on its own.

The following are 6 ways to socialize your email marketing campaigns.

1. Include social media channels in the header

Find free social media icons to add to your email header. Once you add them to your header, don’t forget to link them to your social media platforms.

Take it a step further by including social sharing buttons in your email newsletters. These buttons are different in that they allow users to post a link to your newsletter or specific content in your email to their social networks.

2. Create social-media-only offers

Create social-media-only offers and promote them through your social networks. Make it a secret sale that customers only discover when they ‘like’ your Facebook page.

There are many free Facebook apps that allow you to build customized pages. Many of these apps should allow you to display different content for people who ‘like’ you vs. those that don’t.

3. Add email signup to your Facebook page

First, you will need an email signup form that is associated with your email newsletters. Many of the more popular email platforms will make it easy to copy and paste some code that is associated with the form.

Install and paste the code you copied from your email platform into the application.

4. Consistency

Remember that social networking is about sharing relevant content from various pertinent sources and stimulating the conversation. Do not over distribute your marketing content and make recipients feel overwhelmed by press releases.

Maintain a consistent balance of your own marketing content and provide helpful information in the context of answering frequently asked questions and incorporating external links to relevant content.

5. Repurpose content

Repurpose content from your newsletter. There’s no need to create brand new content to engage people on social networking sites. Instead, repurpose snippets of articles that were originally created for the email newsletter campaign.

Think of these little snippets as “microcontent” or one tip, idea, or article you find to be especially helpful. A teaser and a link back to the archived newsletter or blog is all the content you need to start to bridge the gap between email and social media.

6. Share

Make every newsletter shareable by adding a ‘like’ button for Facebook or providing the option to tweet your email newsletters on Twitter. The subscriber that shares something on Facebook, also creates the possibility for an unknown audience to continue to spread information to more prospective customers.

Afterwards, invite subscribers of your email newsletters to connect with your social media pages and make your relationship known in the network.

Email marketing is still a relatively young channel that continues to grow and evolve at a rapid rate. Emerging channels such as social networking and mobile marketing will complement email, but email will likely remain for the foreseeable future.

Social media is simply a more direct marketing channel that creates revenue opportunities outside of those available with just email marketing. Use this vehicle to reengage your loyal audience and revolutionize the relationship they have with your brand.